Lenten Meditation (Day 35)

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (John 13:34 ESV)

I pray…for those who will believe in me through [the disciples'] message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20b-21 TNIV)

Another implication of being our brother’s keeper involves unity.  Now, among Protestants, this seems to be a touchy subject.  We revel in our autonomy, and we seem to interpret unity to mean that we lose this.  But is autonomy really the best (or most Biblical) way?

You see, if everyone is taking care of everyone else, autonomy will be a non-issue.  Why?  Because we will, instead, be interdependent.

In Ephesians chapter 5, Paul commands,

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:21 RSV)

In this passage, Paul is commanding us to be imitators of Jesus.  Rather than lording over and living His life separate from His disciples, He relied on them and served them.  We are to act in a similar manner toward our brother.  And this is the distinguishing mark of a Christian, or it should be.

People will know that we are Jesus’ followers by the way we treat each other.  And when we treat each other properly; when we act as if we are our brothers’ keeper, a mutual bond forms.  We serve each other.  And through this bond of service, true unity is born.

More on this true unity tomorrow.

Lenten Meditation (Palm Sunday)

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” (John 12:12-15 ESV)

Over the past few weeks, we have covered a decent amount of ground.  I know that I have probably not done this topic justice, but let me give a brief summary of what it was that I was trying to get across.

All of us are indeed our brother’s keeper.  This idea has been true from creation to the present and it is never going to change.  While family in the Old Testament referred specifically to blood relation, in the New Testament, Jesus expanded the boundaries of who is included in this relationship.  The family, that once consisted merely of blood, was expanded to include other disciples and immediate followers of Jesus.  But Jesus doesn’t stop there, and in one sentence He shatters even that understanding of family and expands it to include whoever does God’s will.

Now, to this point, what God’s will is has not been properly defined.  So, today I would briefly like to do that and then begin a week-long discussion on what the implications are of being our brother’s keeper.

God’s Will Defined

He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8 TNIV)

Some of my responders, in defining God’s will, limited God’s will to getting saved.  Now, while believing in Jesus as the Messiah and making Him lord of your life is vitally important, this is not all that God demands of people.  As we saw in the passage above, God wants more than relifious duties.  As Paul states in 1 Corinthians 13,

If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-2 TNIV)

And as Jesus said before him,

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21a ESV)

religion is not all that God demands.  God also demands justice, love, and mercy, to name a few.  And anyone who does these things is doing God’s will.

The Implications

Since we now have an understanding of God’s will that consists of more than simply “getting saved;” and since Jesus has expanded the family (or at least those who we are to treat as our family), what are the implications?  How does “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother,” impact the truth that we are our brother’s keeper?

The first thing this should do is humble us.  I want you to see one important detail in the Palm Sunday text:

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it (John 12:14a ESV)

Jesus, the King of all kings, rode into the city where His throne will later reside on a donkey.  Jesus, “who was made lower than the angels for a little while” (Hebrews 28b TNIV), humbled Himself even further by riding into His earthly kingdom on a donkey.  This is Jesus setting us an example.

This earth is our kingdom.  In the beginning, God set people as rulers over the earth (Psalm 8:6-8).  But this is not license to exploit and abuse the earth.  Rather, this one fact is intended to humble us.  The Psalmist states,

[W]hat are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:4 TNIV)

In the same way that being made the rulers of creation should humble us, knowing that our family is anyone who is doing God’s will should humble us.

We are our brother’s keeper.  We are our family’s keeper.  We are each other’s keeper.

This is big.  I pray that we would all see it as such.

Lenten Meditation (Day 34)

Whoever loves true prayer and yet becomes angry or resentful is his own enemy. He is like a man who wants to see clearly and yet inflicts damage on his own eyes. - Evgarius the Solitary

Lenten Meditation (Day 33)

A time frame of several generations [for a paradigm to finally take hold in a culture] used to bother me, but now I realize that each of us, like David, must simply serve God in our generation, and then die (Acts 13:36).  And then others will take up the baton (if we have passed the baton reasonably well), and on through successive generations.  We don’t need to name our times in order to use them in faithful service to God - although understanding them as well as we can makes sense to me.
(Brian D. McLaren and Tony Campolo.  Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel.  Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.  2003.  281)

Lenten Meditation (Day 32)

[The] ancient writers saw God as having a heart.

That feels.

That responds.

That hurts.

That fills with pain.

God…grieving.

And what is the source of this grieving?

People.

People God had made who have freedom.  Freedom to love anybody they want.  And freedom not to love anybody they want.  God takes this giant risk in creating and loving people, and in the process God’s heart is broken.

Again and again and again.

Divine heartbreak.

For some, this is an entirely new perspective on God.  Many of the popular images of God are of a warrior, a creator, a judge, a system of theology, a set of absolute truths, a father, the writer of an owner’s manual.

But a lover?

A lover whose heart has been crushed, and expresses it in…poetry?

This raises questions about what is at the base of the universe.  What, or maybe we should say who, is behind it all?

A set of beliefs, which you either believe or you don’t, and if you do, you’re in, if you don’t, you’re out?  A harsh judge and critic, who’s making a list and checking it all the time?…

The story the Bible tells is of a loving being who loves and who continues to love even when that love is not returned.  A God who refuses to override our freedom, who respects our power to decide whether to reciprocate, a God who lets us make the next move.
(Rob Bell.  Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 2007. 96-98)

Lenten Meditation (Day 31)

I would teach the children music, physics and philosophy, but the most important is music, for in the patterns of the arts are the keys to all learning. - Plato

Lenten Meditation (Day 30)

When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others. - Confucius

Lenten Meditation (Day 29)

Religions die when they are proven to be true. Science is the record of dead religions. - Oscar Wilde

Lenten Meditation (Fifth Sunday)

When I was five, my family visited my grandparents in California during Christmas vacation. They lived in an apartment building with an alley beside it - very exciting for a boy who lived on a farm in Michigan. At some point in my exploration of the alley, I decided to make a Christmas present for my dad out of the things I had found there. So on the morning of the twenty-fifth, my father had the privilege of opening a gift of a piece of black and green drainpipe glued to a flat gray rock with little white stones resting on the inside of it.

A masterpiece, to say the least.

The reason I remember this is because I visited my dad at his office a few days ago, and while I waited for him to finish his meeting, I wandered around looking at the pictures on his walls and the papers on his desk and the things on his shelves. On one of his shelves sat the drainpipe and rock sculpture, thirty years later.

Lenten Meditation (Day 28)

Parents and legislators love to blame people like us for corrupting the youth of this country, but the kids were corrupted long before we ever got to them. - Brian Hugh Warner (Marilyn Manson)