Christmas 2011

I’m not going to be posting my Christmas sermons – with services & family things & a week off over New Year, I just don’t think I’m going to get there. So instead I thought I’d let you in to what’s been growing in my head & heart over the past few months as background to what I’ll be preaching on over the next couple of days…

For a while now I’ve had this sense that we’ve missed the point. From the outside I guess everything looks OK, but I have this gnawing feeling that somehow we’ve lost sight of what it’s all supposed to be about. That lead me to ask the question:

What is the point?

I don’t mean that in a nihilistic way, that everything is meaningless & pointless. Instead, I mean why do we do what we do? What’s our purpose? Maybe the one or two books on Derrida & the philosophy of deconstruction were one or two too many, but I’m sort of thinking that we can keep really busy, do a whole lot of stuff that looks great, but in the end what’s it all for? What are we actually trying to achieve?

And is who we are consistent with who Jesus wants his people to be? Please note, because I think this is vital – I don’t believe that the Christian faith is primarily about what he wants us to do, but who he created us to be!

Earlier this week I was doing some prep work for my Christmas sermons when I read through John 1:1-14 a couple of times. For a humble fisherman, John was capable of some amazing thought.  This passage is just beautiful & layered with meaning. I’m going to have two attempts over the next two days at unpacking some of it, but I encourage you to also do it for yourself. In Jesus we meet a man who is full of life & light (v4), grace & truth (v14,17) who gives us ‘the right to become children of God’ (v12)!

So maybe that’s the point. This is who we are – children of God, full of light & life, grace & truth. As the Son of God inhabits a human body, he joins all of God’s fullness with us to give us these gifts & more!

Jesus joins all of God’s fullness with you, to give you all your heart & soul & spirit need this Christmas & always…

 

 

So, what does your heart, soul or spirit need right now? This is not a time to wrap up our lives in pretty paper, decorate them with tinsel or fairy lights & pretend everything is OK. The Son of God enters the world surrounded by animal manure, so the crap in our lives isn’t going to shock him at all. Christmas is a time to bring our deepest needs to him, because in the birth of Jesus, the Almighty promises to give us everything we need for this life & the next.

We’ll all be unwrapping gifts this Christmas. Jesus is a gift we can unwrap not just at Christmas, but every day of our lives. The more we do that, the more good things we find in our relationship with him, and the better God’s gift gets.

I really hope & pray the peace the angels proclaimed to the shepherds on that first Christmas Eve will fill your hearts & lives with joy & hope, now & always.

Advent Conspiracy Wk 4 – Love All

Most people’s concept of Christmas is dominated by a jolly guy who gets his red & white suits (I don’t think he supports North Adelaide Roosters in the SANFL) from a menswear store for the bigger sized gentleman. He allegedly has a couple of lists & everyone’s name appears on one or the other. One is headed Naughty while the other is titled Nice. Make the Nice list & you get good stuff; fall over into the Naughty list & you get nothing, or even worse…

How often do we transfer this picture of Father Christmas across to our heavenly Father? Sure, we talk grace but when it comes down to it I know too many Christians who beat up on themselves because they don’t think they deserve good things from God, or else are trying really hard to be ‘good’ people in a whole range of ways to try to make his Nice list.

I’m so eternally thankful that my heavenly Father is not Father Christmas & works in a totally different way.

You see, Jesus shows us that God’s standard to make the Nice list & avoid the Naughty list is loving him with all our heart, mind & soul (in other words, making God my #1 priority in life with everything else revolving around him) and loving others as ourselves (treating others as we want them to treat us, or living in giving relationships instead of just what we can get from the people around us) – see Matthew 22:34-40. If we were to take that seriously in our lives, where would we end up – on the Nice or the Naughty list?

Seriously – think about that for a minute…

I don’t say this to make people feel bad about themselves or to lay a guilt trip. Christmas only makes sense when we realise that on our own, if we live only under God’s expectations on us, we end up in a place where we don’t want to be.

But that’s when the gift of the Son of God becomes all the more amazing & miraculous. God isn’t Father Christmas. He doesn’t give us what we deserve.

He gives us what we need.

The Jewish people of Jesus day believed there were 2 types of people – God’s chosen people who were able to live in relationship with him because they had the right family line, the right rules to live by, the right way to worship, and then there was everybody else. They called them Gentiles & they had no right to any sort of access to God. They were outsiders, excluded from any sort of good thing from God because they didn’t deserve it.

But then Paul writes these words to conclude his letter to the church of Rome:

Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith – to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Romans 16:25-27 NIV)

It’s one of those times when Paul’s words come tumbling out of his mouth in a big confusing jumble. What he’s basically saying is that in Jesus God reveals a mystery that the Old Testament prophets foretold – God doesn’t give people what they deserve; he gives us what we need. To show that, he gives this grace those very people whom the Jews had excluded from God’s good gifts – the Gentiles.

In other words, God shows that he’s about giving people what they need & not what they deserve by giving good things to those who were considered the least deserving – all non-Jewish people. That means us!

It all points to the same idea: this Christmas, we celebrate God’s greatest gift to people – his own presence with us in the person of his Son. He doesn’t give that to people who think they deserve it; he gives it to people who need it.

He gives it to people like you & me…

In the Advent Conspiracy material they talked a lot about Loving All being about social justice & giving to anyone who is in need. I’ve wanted to bring it back a step because, when it comes down to it, we’re all in need. When we confess that & recognise the gift God gives to us of his Son, then it changes the way we see the people around us. We’re all in need. In Christ, God gives us all our hearts, minds & souls need. When we find that for ourselves, we’ve got something good to give. God wants us to give that gift of love, grace & compassion indiscriminately – not just to those who we think deserve it, but to everyone who needs it.

Because, in the end, that’s all of us…

God’s peace be with you this Christmas season.

Advent Conspiracy Wk 3 – Give More

Initially this might look like a contradiction to last week’s topic – Spend Less. It’s funny & maybe a little bit sad how we associate giving with things & stuff. However, the greatest gift any one person can give to another is her/himself. It’s when we give of ourselves – our time, energy, effort, etc, not just our cash – to others that the really great gifts are given.

So how do we do that at Christmas? The guys over at Advent Conspiracy have put together a website of ideas at Rethinking Christmas that you can check out. There are heaps of ideas to wade through there. My favourite example of a ‘relational’ gift from the AC book is where a bloke gives his Dad a bag of coffee with the understanding that he was only allowed to drink it with his son. Through that bag of coffee, the son was giving his Dad his time & the opportunity to build a stronger, closer relationship.

The point is to not just sort through a bunch of ideas & pick one like we would as we walked through a supermarket isle. It’s to give some thought to the other person who will receive the gift & think about who they are, what they like, what you value about them & how you can give them a gift that shows you that you value them. It’s to give of ourselves in our relationships with each other.

That takes a lot more time & effort, although probably less money, than just buying them something, but it’s a gift you’ll be able to enjoy together into the future.

It really reflects what Christmas is all about. A lot of the time when people pray we can thank God for the things he gives us. It’s good to acknowledge God as the giver of every good thing we have in life, but at Christmas God gives us so much more. He doesn’t just sit in heaven & throw stuff at us. Instead he gives us the most valuable thing he has – himself. That’s one way to understand Jesus – he is God giving himself to us as one of us. The person of Jesus is God’s gift to us of a relationship with himself as Jesus makes God & humanity one in his own body.

As God gives us the gift of himself, he also gives us a whole lot of good things with that. For example, during Advent & Christmas we usually talk a lot about hope, love, peace & joy. These are Gods’ gifts to us in the person of Jesus. As he gives us himself in relationship, he also gives us these blessings. Another way to think about it is by looking at the prophet’s words in Isaiah 61:1-3. Jesus quoted these words in Luke 4:14-21. When he said that they were fulfilled in the hearing of the people who listened to him read, he was saying that he gives these gifts in relationship with himself.

Think about that for a second – he’s promising the gift of good news to anyone who is need; healing for the broken-hearted; freedom for those trapped in addiction; release from those imprisoned in the darkness of depression; vengeance, aka justice, to those who have been wronged; comfort for those who mourn the loss of a loved on; praise to those who despair; and still there’s more…

At the heart of the Lutheran understanding of God is that he is a God who gives these & all that our hearts, souls & spirits need every time he speaks his promises in Scripture, a baby is baptised, he gives the body & blood of his Son in the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion, or in community with other believers. These are God’s gifts to you in Jesus every day of your life!

There are some important ways this faith works out in our relationships with each other. People say that every relationship is a balance of give & take. That might be so, but when the taking outweighs the giving, then something is wrong. As the one who gives all of himself to us in Jesus, God calls us to be in giving relationships with each other. Are our relationships more about what we get from the other? Or more about what we can give?

Secondly – I’m tired of being a part of a church organisation that talks more about what we can get from people, rather than what we can give. Maybe you’ve been part of or overheard the conversations – ‘we need to get more people into church’, ‘I can’t get my child to worship’, ‘we need to get people into positions of leadership’, and so on… I began doing this a bit this past year, but from now on it’s going to be my mission to challenge anyone who talks about ‘getting’ people in the church to re-think & re-phrase what they are trying to say in terms of what we can ‘give’ instead. ‘Getting’ is the language of expectations & law. ‘Giving’ is the language of grace!

So this Christmas, give less stuff; give more of yourself. It’s a whole lot harder, but when we develop this kind of attitude, trusting in the God who gives all of himself & his goodness to us in Jesus, then everyday becomes a little Christmas.

God’s blessings to you.

Advent Conspiracy Wk 2 – Spend Less

Yesterday we looked at the second topic of the Advent Conspiracy – Spend Less. I’d introduced the AC to people a week earlier at our annual Advent Tea so yesterday was the first week I’d actually preached on it.

One of the main reasons I’ve gravitated towards the AC is because we live in a society that is so heavily dominated by consumerism. In the AC DVD the presenters talk about consumerism as a religion & I reckon they’re right. Buying more stuff is sold to us as the best way to improve our quality of life. If you’re not sure about this, just ask LG – ‘Life’s Good’ with their products, right?

When John the Baptist appears on the scene at the start of Mark’s gospel, though, he is about as far from being a consumer as you can get. He doesn’t turn up in his Sunday best eating at the finest restaurants. He’s wearing rough, camel-hair clothing, kept together with a leather belt, eating locusts & wild honey (Mark 1:6). On one hand it identifies him as the Elijah-figure who was going to appear to announce the coming Messiah (see 2 Kings 1:8). What it also shows, however, is that being faithful to God is not a matter of fancy clothes & restaurants – it’s about being true to him & trusting him for everything we need.

In our consumer culture, do we trust God enough to share what we have – our possessions, our time & our energy – with people who need it? Or do we exist to consume more & more stuff? I’m thinking that when John the Baptist called God’s people to repent & turn away from their shallow, selfish & sinful ways and back to God, he’s also calling us away from consumer lifestyles & back towards a life with God at the centre. Jesus says the same thing when he teaches that we can’t serve two masters – either we will love one & hate the other, or we will be devoted to one & despise the other. We can’t serve both God AND material possessions. It’s going to be one or the other (Matthew 6:24).

During Advent we talk about God’s gifts to us in the birth of Christ as being things like peace, love, hope & joy. I believe that material possessions will not give us these things in a deep, long-lasting way. If I’m wrong, please let me know. From my experience, they only come through a committed relationship with the Son of God. They are his gifts to us, but so often they are like a present that we’ve admired from the outside but never taken the time to unwrap & enjoy them.

This Christmas, I want to encourage you to unwrap & enjoy the gifts of hope, love, peace & joy that God gives to you in Christ. If you don’t know where to find them, let me know one way of the other & I’ll do what I can to help you. A good place to start, though, is by re-prioritising our Christmas season. The AC can help you with that.

When I was working in secondary colleges, one of the students’ favourite questions to try to find a whole in the Christian faith went something like this: if God is so good, why doesn’t he feed all the hungry people in the world. My response was something like: God has already given us all we need for the people of this world to have enough of everything; we just prefer to hang on to what we have for ourselves & not share with others. If only those of ou who live in wealthy countries would be willing to share what we have with those who have less, and if only the leaders of countries in need would be willing to let the aid through to those who need it instead of using it to make themselves wealthy. It sounds so simple – why doesn’t it happen?

We can all help change happen by spending less money this Christmas & using some of it to help people in real need. One way is through Australian Lutheran World Service, but there are lots of organisations who are working for the good of those in need. When we make Christ the centre of our worship this Christmas & not the god of Consumerism by spending less & using what God has given us to be a blessing to others, we start to find the real blessings of peace, joy, hope & love.

God’s blessings to you & yours…

Advent Prayer Requests

I really like the way Brett McCraken writes & his thoughts on Advent. Check him out here.

All we need

It seems like we live in a world where people want more & more stuff. Consumerism is king & it worries me that even we in the church aren’t immune. We want things our way, more of what we want in terms of music, worship styles, programs, and so much more, even if it comes at the expense of others.

In total contrast is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9. In particular, verse 7 jumped out at me:

… you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.

Can you imagine living every day where we didn’t lack anything? Where we had everything we needed?

I don’t want to head down the road of talking about spiritual gifts – people have their opinions about what they are & their place in the church. If you want to know more about them, can I suggest that you have a look at 1 Corinthians 12-14 where Paul discusses them a fair bit. The main things I want to pull out of what he says, though, is that spiritual gifts are for the benefit of others, not just ourselves (see 12:7) and the greatest gift God’s Spirit gives to our spirit is his love (see 12:31 & 13:13).

Now, with these 2 ideas in mind, let’s have another look at 1 Cor 1:7. How would your life look if you could wake up every day in the sure faith that you are totally, unconditionally, perfectly loved. I seem to be saying this a lot lately, but I’m not talking about a shallow, selfish, emotionally-driven kind of worldly love. Instead, I’m talking about the kind of love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a. This isn’t just a nice sentiment. Neither is it just a description of how we are supposed to love each other (although can you imagine what our congregations & communities would be like if we did?). Instead, if God is love (1 John 4:16), and God’s Spirit gives his gifts to us, then when we read 1 Cor 13:4-8a, each one of these are God’s gifts to us as we live in union with him through Christ – he is patient, kind, not easily-angered with us but instead seeks our good above his own and doesn not keep a record of our wrongs. Go through the 1 Cor 13:4-8a list & think about that – each thing in there is God’s gift to you in Christ.

That’s why Paul can say that we don’t lack any spiritual gift – God has given us everything our hearts, minds & spirits need in Christ. He just keeps on giving them to us through his word of promise and the body & blood of his Son in his Supper (aka Holy Communion). It’s like God gives us this enormous gift of love in Christ. When we open it up & start exploring it (like in 1 Cor 13) it just gets more & more magnificent. In fact, there’s so much in that gift, we’ll never reach its limits! (see Ephesians 3:17b-19).

That gives us something good to share with the people around us. A symptom of our consumer culture in the church is that we tend to use the good things God has given to us for our own benefit, in ways that will suit us. This is where I go back to God’s gifts being for the ‘common good’ & not just for my own good. Every person in the community of believers has been given something that is good from God – that person’s spiritual gifts. God doesn’t want us to hang on to those gifts & be selfish with them. There are people around us in our community who need what God has given us. When we get over ourselves, see the needs around us & then use what God has first given us to benefit them & for their good, then Christ is alive & at work in our community. Sometimes the way God gives us all we need is through the community of believers, our brothers & sisters in Christ, through you.

This Advent season I’m hoping that a group of people will be willing to take up the Advent Conspiracy to enter into the story of the birth of the Son of God in a fresh way, to find the good things God gives us in that event. This is what I think is at the heart of it – God has given us everything our hearts, minds & souls need to live as his people. He will also provide for all our physical needs as well. In this abundance, he also gives others what they need through us. As we look to worship fully, spend less money, give more of ourselves in relationship, & love all by being inclusive with the people around us, my prayer is that we find that we really do have all we need. That means we also have good things to share with others…

Sorted

The people who would have first heard Jesus’ story about the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) wouldn’t have been surprised by Jesus talking about the judgment at the end of time. As far as I’m aware, Jewish people of Jesus’ time were looking forward to when the Lord would descend in glory to sort his people out from the rest & deliver them from the forces that were oppressing them.

What would have surprised them, though, was when Jesus said that the King had been here all the time in the most unlikely ways. Jesus says:

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (verse 40)

There are a number of stories from history of kings who have dressed as peasants and mixed with the ‘little people’ to find out exactly what was happening in their kingdom. Here, Jesus is saying that God does exactly the same thing. Jesus is the glorious God dressing himself in human clothes to walk with us to find out what life is like in this world, to experience what we experience and identify with those in need. What this story is telling us is that God continues to walk among us, but not as the powerful, popular or prestigious. Instead, the King of Glory walks among us in humility, as the last, the lost & the least (hmmm… sounds like a Relient K song!).

To be honest, I think sometimes we miss the point of this text. I’ve heard too many people in the church use it to promote particular programs, projects or other very worthy ministries, while at the same time there are people right under our noses that either we treat less than kindly or even totally ignore. It’s almost as if we think we can gossip about, judge, condemn people around us because we’ve fulfilled the requirements of this story through the ‘big’ things that we do.

I don’t want to put down the various ‘bigger’ things that our church does. I’m thankful that our church has a social conscience & we have organisations like ALWS that do amazing work in other countries, doing on our behalf what we’re unable to do. I fully support them & their work! My problem becomes when we use our involvement with ministries like this to justify ourselves, while we treat the people around us in ways that continue to de-value them. I’ve seen it happen. That’s not what we are meant to be about as the people of God.

Instead, Jesus comes to us everyday as the people around us who are in need. There are people in our cities & country who are without the basic necessities of life. But there are also others with whom we rub shoulders whose needs are different but still very real – the young people in our congregation, the addicted, those suffering from mental illnesses, people whose marriages are less than perfect or even on the brink of falling apart, along with others whom we can be quick to criticise when they don’t do things we think they should or how we think they should be done.

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here & suggest that the basic message of this story is that we are actually treating Jesus the way we treat the people around us. It’s not just about refugees or the homeless – it’s about how we treat people everyday of our lives & whether we live in relationships where we are taking from them, or giving to them, whatever their needs might be.

So what are the needs of the people around you? Is your relationship with them more about what you get from them or what you can give to them? What if those people are actually the King, coming to you in humility? How would your relationship with them change if you were to see Christ in them & that what you do for them, you’re actually doing for him?

For sure – support the ‘bigger’ programs & projects of the church, but never overlook the ‘little’ people with their needs along the way. That might just be Jesus in front of you…

God go with you.

Deborah

I like the story of Deborah (Judges 4). Not only is she a strong female figure who takes a huge step outside the social norms for her day, but in doing so she becomes a great example of what it means to live a life of faith & love – trusting God & loving the people around us. It’s another way of expressing the ‘love God & love people‘ idea of Christ. I’m becoming more & more convinced that Paul’s idea of faith & love (see 1 Corinthians 13:13, Galatians 5:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:8) is what the Christian life is all about.

When Deborah gave Barak the word she had received from God, it contained a command – to take 10,000 men against Sisera, the leader of the Canaanite army, & his 900 iron chariots (the super-weapon of the time) – but also a promise – that God would give him into Barak’s hands, meaning he would win the battle. Barak wasn’t convinced, so he says:

If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go. (Judges 4:8)

In doing this he seems to be looking for a way out of the fight because women didn’t go into battle! But that’s where Deborah is so surprising. She breaks all the social rules by agreeing to go into battle with the men! These days we are familiar with figures such as Joan of Arc & other warrior women, but what she was doing was totally unheard of!

In doing this, as I’ve said before, Deborah becomes a great illustration of faith & love. She trusted God’s promise enough to step out of her comfort zone under the shade of her palm tree. She showed her faith by walking with Barak into the battle he was about to fight, putting her own life at risk. That’s love – risking everything for the sake of someone else’s benefit.

Through her actions, she also becomes a model of Christ. We all face battles in life – financial pressure, relationship breakdown, depression, fear, guilt, addiction – the list keeps going on & on. God doesn’t sit in his comfort zone of heaven telling us to fight harder or barking orders at us. Instead, in the person of Jesus, he steps out into the reality of our life to walk with us. In doing that he trusts his heavenly Father to provide for him as he loves the people around him & us to the point of giving up his own life for us. Then his Father shows that he can be trusted as he raises him from the grave, defeating death, the devil & all the forces of darkness in this world.

In the resurrection of Jesus from death, the battle is won. He gives his victory to you as he walks with you through your battles.

That’s a big promise & like Barak, we can find it hard to get our heads around it. The battles we fight look too big, too overwhelming. That’s where we can all become Deborah to each other. That’s where we can become members of the body of Christ to each other. As we walk together as God’s people in faith & love – trusting his promises & helping each other – through the battles of life, Christ walks together with us in each other.

What tends to happen then, in my experience, is when I leave my battles with my heavenly Father & focus my attention on walking with others in their battles, God sorts mine out for me one way or another. So Deborah gives us the model of Christian community – as we walk together in faith & love, Christ is made real in our lives through us.

What battles are you facing at the moment? What about the people around you, or maybe someone you’ve lost contact with recently – what battles are they facing? How can you walk with them in faith & love through what they’re battling?

To whom can you be Deborah this week?

God’s peace.

Children of God

There are lots of factors that go into shaping our identity. We could get into the debate about whether nurture or nature shapes us more, but in reality my guess is that it’s both: the circumstances of our lives shape the raw material of who we are as we have received it from our parents. We all inherit certain things from our parents whether we like it or not, whether we’re prepared to admit it or not. Our identities are largely shaped by what our parents pass on to us.

It works the same way in our spiritual lives as God seeks us out to adopt us as his children. There is a popular idea that everyone is a child of God because he created us, however, this doesn’t take into account that, according to the Bible, sin & our own rebellious spirits have broken that relationship (for example, see Romans 5:6-8). For God to seek us out, meet us where we are & adopt us as his children is an act of infinite & perfect love.

This becomes the fundamental building-block of who we are. The bottom line of our identities in Christ is that we are children of God. The apostle John wrote this:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:1-3)

There is so much in this to grapple with, but a few things jump out to me straight away. Firstly, as I’ve already said, our identities are shaped by our relationship with our heavenly Father. He adopts us into his family so that’s who we are – children of God!

Secondly, exactly what it means to be a child of God is a bit of a mystery. John seems to be saying that our world & the worldly part of us won’t get it because they didn’t get who Jesus was as God’s eternal Son. But the day will come when Jesus will return & when that happens, not only will we get who Jesus really is, we’ll also get what it means to be God’s kids (see Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11&12).

Thirdly, what that means is that to get a better idea of who we are as God’s children, the best place to look is at God’s eternal Son. The more we get to know Jesus as God’s Son, the more we get what it means to be a child of God & the more we understand who we are as God’s children. The better we get to know Jesus, the better we get to know who we are. That’s why a close relationship with Jesus is so important for the life of the Christian person – through it we grow into who our heavenly Father has made us to be.

Fourthly, John does point to a couple of gifts that our heavenly Dad passes on to us when he makes us his children: love & purity. There’s a whole lot I could say on both of these, but they are foundational to our identities as children of God. We are loved – unconditionally, perfectly, totally. From what I know of adoptions, they don’t come cheap. Our heavenly Father was willing to pay the ultimate price to adopt us as his children. Our brother was will to give up his own life so we can join the family. Love doesn’t come any greater than that. We are pure – like Paul says, there’s no condemnation for God’s kids! (see Romans 8:1) The dirt doesn’t stick anymore because we have been washed clean & stronger-than-teflon-coated by the blood of Christ. To see ourselves from the perspective of our heavenly Father means to see us as his children who are totally 100% loved & clean!

To be children of God means living a life consistent with that – a life of faith & love – but I’m not going to go into the ethical & moral implications for us. I think we’ve been too quick sometimes in the church to jump to our Father’s expectations on us without people getting a solid grasp of who we are. Of course our identities will shape our words & actions, but I believe these words & actions flow from who we are, not the other way around. When we’re growing as God’s children & his family, it’ll show in our lives.

There’s so much more I could say about this text & what it means to be a child of God, but this has already gone longer than I’d hoped. I suppose what I come back to, though, is the question of how our relationship with our heavenly Father is going? We can too easily take our relationships for granted, especially with family, & God is no different. He adopted us to have a relationship with us. Is that relationship healthy? Or could we be spending more time with him?

The thing is: the more we get to know our heavenly Dad through our brother Jesus, the more we get to know ourselves as his kids & family.

God’s peace to you & those close to you.

Free to be Real

We celebrated the Reformation yesterday. While not all Lutheran churches celebrate it for different reasons, for me it’s important because the Reformation was meant to be an ongoing movement. It’s not about bashing other churches from the pulpit or waving a ‘Lutherans are best’ flag or anything like that – it’s a reminder that we are to be a church in continual reformation, working towards connecting the truth of God’s-grace-for-us-in-Christ with a constantly changing but still needy world.

For me, when I dig past the impact the Reformation had on shaping Western European Christianity, society & even systems of thought, it comes down to the story of one person struggling to be loved. Luther was living in a social context that was dominated by fear & guilt. It seems to me that all he wanted was to be loved (I have a book on my shelf entitled ‘Psychohistory and Religion: The Case of Young Martin Luther (Fortress Press, 1977) which I’m going to read one day). So he tried hard to get God to love him, by becoming a monk & trying to be as ‘good’ as he could, but then trying to be worse than he was by beating himself up (emotionally, spiritually & physically) so he could earn more of God’s grace. One way or another, he was trying to be something he wasn’t in order to get God to love him.

Luther’s breakthrough came when, through meditating on God’s word, wrestling with him  in prayer & struggling with his own personal demons, he discovered that he didn’t have to be anything he wasn’t – that God loved him just as he was in the person of Jesus. Reading Luther’s account of his ‘conversion’ in what is called his ‘Tower Experience‘, when Luther realised that what he had thought were God’s expectations on him were actually God’s gifts to him, he writes: ‘I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.’ His whole life turned around & he was free to be who he was – a flawed & broken person who was loved perfectly & totally by God in Christ Jesus.

Jesus says,

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31,32 NIV)

Luther found this freedom when he stopped trying to be something he wasn’t & found a gracious & loving God in Christ. When I look at people around me, there are so many people who need to hear this same message & find this same freedom. We celebrate freedom in our culture like an idol, yet so many of us are trying so hard to be something we’re not in order to try to be loved or accepted by others or by ourself. After last week’s post on loving God & loving others, the one comment I kept getting from people is that the area in which they struggle is loving themselves. When we’re not happy with ourselves, we try to be someone else. So we become slaves to who we think we should be, or who others think we should be. In the end, it’s all lies…

Christ offers us freedom from those lies. He comes to us as we are, sees past all the pretending, the masks, the attempts to be something we’re not, he sees our wounded, flawed, broken, sinful hearts, and he gives himself totally to us as an undeserved act of perfect love. Knowing he sees us as we are & loves us unconditionally gives us the freedom to be ourselves. The truth we find in Christ is that we are flawed, broken & sinful, but he loves flawed, broken & sinful people. He doesn’t love who we think we should be; neither does he love who we’re pretending to be. He loves us exactly as we are and so we can be free to be exactly who we are.

There’s a whole lot more I can say about this & how it links with Reformation thought, but I’ll leave it at that for now. We don’t need to be afraid of the truth. When we find the truth of God’s perfect & unconditional love in Jesus, just like Luther did, we can find the freedom to be who we are. That’s real freedom – the freedom to be real.

God’s blessing to you…