We Are What We Eat: A Communion Meditation

My wife and I like our son to eat food that’s nutritious and good for his development. We allow ice cream once in a while, but we know that giving our child a steady diet of junk food would be parental malpractice. He needs vegetables, vitamins, fruit, protein, complex carbs, and a reasonable dose of fat.

When he gets bored at mealtime and doesn’t want to eat the rest of his green beans, we encourage him to finish eating. We tell him that eating his food will help him to be big and strong like his daddy.

Maybe you’ve heard the saying “You are what you eat.” That doesn’t mean that you become green beans if you eat green beans. It means that eating healthful food empowers you to have a healthy body and a healthy life, while eating too much junk food empowers you to have a junky body with a junky life. This observation reminds me of another saying: “Input equals output.”

My congregation’s sermon this weekend comes from Romans 8, and in verses 1-11 we find a similar inside-outside connection.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (ESV)

What goes into us shapes how we live. “You are what you eat.”

When the Holy Spirit lives in us, God transforms our lives. “Input equals output.”

The Spirit enters us in various ways.

We “receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” when we believe the good news of Jesus and when we are baptized (Acts 2:38; Ephesians 1:13).

The Holy Spirit enters people through the laying on of hands (Deuteronomy 34:9; Acts 19:6).

The Holy Spirit can enter people who are around others in whom the Spirit is working (1 Samuel 19:18-24).

The Holy Spirit fills followers of Jesus when they speak (Acts 2:4; 4:8; 13:9) and when they are persecuted (13:50-52).

God gives the Holy Spirit to people who ask (Luke 11:13).

The Holy Spirit can even enter people before birth (Luke 1:15).

Beyond these ways, the Holy Spirit can operate in ways that are unexpected and unexplainable (John 3:8). As the hymnist William Cowper penned in the 18th century, “God moves in a mysterious way.”

I look forward to listening to tomorrow’s sermon on Romans 8. Before that sermon, I get to say a few comments to prepare the church for communion. As I get ready for that privilege, my meditation on verses 1-11 leads me to see communion as one way in which the Holy Spirits enters us and empowers us for life in God’s mission.

A long-held belief in Christianity is that Christ is somehow present with his followers in communion (also called the Eucharist and the Lord’s Supper). Although great thinkers in the history of the church have disagreed about exactly how this presence operates, many Christians have believed that in some way Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is present when gathered communities of Christian faith consume the bread and cup, commemorating Jesus’ crucifixion and celebrating the hope of his return.

Through this process of remembering and celebrating, the Holy Spirit continually fills the body of Christ (the church) and empowers that community of Jesus-followers to carry out God’s mission of blessing the world.

When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we do more than eat crackers and drink wine or grape juice.

When we participate in this event, the Holy Spirit enters us yet again and strengthens us to live for God.

As a child, I experienced amazement when the bread and cup were served. When I looked at the people around me, I could tell that this practice was something special, something mystical. I didn’t understand what was happening, but the holiness of the moment drew me in.

I have not always experienced that amazement at communion. The Lord’s Supper has not always seemed special. I have not always noticed the mystery of the Eucharist.

So I pray for the ability to see the mysterious transformation that God is working through the Holy Spirit when followers of Jesus take the bread and cup together. Through the Spirit, the bread and cup become more than a snack and more than an ancient practice the meaning of which we’ve forgotten. They become a meaningful meal that fuels us for life.

When we eat the body of Christ together, the Spirit empowers us to be that body.

We are what we eat.

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The Offensive God: Who’s In Your Blank?

I grew up near the Texas-Mexico border. My mom was a Spanish teacher, and I played with Mexican American friends and didn’t notice any differences between us.

Then in college and grad school I studied missions and intercultural communication and was blessed with several international mission trips, so those kinds of cultural differences haven’t been big problems for me.

But in college I had a roommate who was a member of a group that my culture had taught me to despise. Because of where I had grown up, that was my Nineveh experience.

That was when I had to choose to participate in the reconciliation that God is working out in the world. I had to get over myself, my own assumptions and preferences and comforts, and embrace a person who was noticeably different from me and was a child of God, created in the divine image.

Intergroup conflicts plague humanity – conflicts along lines of ethnicity, class, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other demographic distinctions.

These conflicts have challenged the universal reconciling work of God.

We see that sad truth in our own day. Maybe you see it where you live. I see it here in Memphis.

We see it in church history, and we see it in the Bible.

One place where we see it in the Bible is the book of Jonah.

God tells Jonah to go minister to the Ninevites, a group of people that Jonah despises. Jonah travels by ship in the opposite direction because he can’t stand the idea of preaching in Nineveh.

God sends a great storm. The sailors do what they know to do to save a ship in such a storm, but nothing works.

Jonah sleeps, careless about what happens. The sailors cry out to their gods, and the captain wakes up Jonah and tells him to call on his god.

The sailors cast lots, and the lot falls to Jonah. The sailors question Jonah, who toss him overboard. The storm is targeting him.

They don’t want to throw Jonah into the sea. They try other options to no avail. They pray to God and toss Jonah. The storm calms, and the sailors worship God.

God send a big fish to swallow Jonah, who is in the fish for three days and three nights. There Jonah prays, and at God’s command the fish vomits Jonah onto land.

Jonah receives his mission from God again and goes to Nineveh, announcing coming calamity. The people of Nineveh fast and repent, and God relents.

Jonah gets mad. He says that he knew that God was “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (ESV). That was why Jonah had resists the call to Nineveh. He hated the Ninevites and wanted them to suffer God’s wrath.

God’s mercy on Nineveh makes Jonah want to die. (He says so three times!)

In great disgust, Jonah goes outside the city, sets up a shade tent, sits under it, and waits to watch the city’s destruction.

God provides a shade plant for Jonah and then sends a worm to destroy the plant. Jonah gets a sunburn and feels sorry for himself.

God wants to redeem a group of people that Jonah despises, and Jonah lets his prejudice limit his involvement in God’s mission. Jonah gets so upset that he wants to die!

Place yourself in the Jonah story.

See yourself in the character of Jonah. God tells you to go minister to ______; and you think, “No way! Those people are evil. They’re disgusting. They probably won’t even listen to God’s message. And even if they do listen, they don’t deserve God’s mercy. And if I minister to them, my people will despise me for it.”

Now ask yourself, “Who’s in the blank? Who are the people I can’t stand? Who are the ones I’m so uncomfortable with that I would rather die than share God’s mercy with them?” When you answer that, when you fill in the blank, you can get a sense of what Jonah experiences when God tells him to preach to the Ninevites. He chooses to go in the opposite direction. And when God extends mercy to Nineveh, Jonah is angry.

A major turn happens near the end of the story. In chapter 4 God questions Jonah about his anger, and we see that God is right in extending mercy to a people group that Jonah despises.

This story of intergroup conflict reminds us that God is working out a mission of reconciliation.

As we see in the New Testament, God is bringing all people groups together under Christ. When we live in that mission of reconciliation, we participate in the life of Jesus, who crossed cultural boundaries. He talked with people despised by his own group. He even empowered a Samaritan woman to be a missionary. In Christ we find and live out peace, unity, reconciliation, and love that transcend and transform cultural differences.

In that mission we can rejoice instead of being angry.

The “new creation” is coming. God is working it out in the world. One day all cultural conflicts will be transformed into a beautiful peace in which diverse people groups live and worship together in Christ. In the meantime we get to participate in that reconciliation that God is producing.

This can be hard for us, but I see a glimpse of hope when I watch children, still innocent of the hatred that pervades our world. My white son plays with black children and Jewish children without even knowing that they come from different cultures. That day is coming for all, and God calls us to participate here and now in its coming.

 

What’s your Nineveh experience?

 

Who’s in your blank?

 

Whatever our answers, God wants to empower us to reach diverse groups of people, even people we’re uncomfortable around, especially people we’re uncomfortable around. God calls us to join the mission of universal reconciliation in Christ. How will you participate?

God of mercy, God of reconciliation, we praise you for your love that reaches far beyond our own groups. We thank you for giving us opportunities to proclaim your mercy and to participate in your reconciliation. We pray for strength. We pray for boldness. We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Amen.

This blog post is a slightly modified version of a chapel sermon I preached at Harding School of Theology on Monday, June 16, 2014.

 

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Beyond a Building

“The church has left the building.” Yesterday we began a series of group discussions with that title. My preparation of the discussion guides is assisted by the work of John Grant. Here are a few reflections from yesterday’s conversation.

In the first chapter of Acts, Jesus leaves some parting words with his followers who are still expecting a restoration of their nation. In 1:8 we find these words: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (NIV).

Instead of residing in a temple, God’s Spirit lives in God’s people and empowers them to be witnesses of Jesus (testifiers of his death and resurrection and life and teachings), not just in their current city but into the surrounding areas and even “to the ends of the earth.”

The kingdom of God into which followers of Jesus are called is more than a set of beliefs proclaimed from pulpits in church buildings. It is a way of life (both actions and words) that blesses the world far beyond the walls of worship places, beyond Sunday and into Monday through Saturday, beyond the sacred and into the secular.

How will you allow God’s Spirit to empower you to live out that kingdom way of life in your everyday contexts? Your home, your workplace, your neighborhood, your sports field, your grocery store can be holy grounds, contexts of the Holy Spirit’s moving through you into the world beyond church walls.

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Real Friends

Jesus is in a crowded house when a noise comes from the roof, a hole appears, and a stretcher lowers. Friends have brought a person suffering from some sort of paralyzing disease. Jesus looks at the friends’ faith and forgives the man (Mark 2:1-12).

Jesus forgives the man neither because of anything the man does nor because of what he believes. The forgiveness is not a response to the man’s faith; it’s a response to his friends’ faith. The man has faithful friends, friends who believe that something powerful and life-changing is happening in Jesus, friends who have so much faith that they bring their friend to Jesus. They bring their friend whom everyone else wants to avoid. They bring their friends who’s an outcast. They bring their friend who cannot help himself. And they have faith that Jesus can help him. That’s what real friends do.

That’s pretty much part of what I said to my congregation this Sunday morning, and today I found Alan Taylor’s blog post that speaks more fully to relationships among Jesus, his followers, and “those on the fringes.”

When we interact with people while maintaining a sanitized circle we may be doing good and meeting needs, but we are not imitating Jesus, and we still have much to learn about the fullest dimensions of living a cruciform life in the model of Jesus. I’m convinced that the call of Jesus demands that we not only love and meet the needs of those on the fringes, but that we allow ourselves to be counted as one and the same. Isn’t that the heart of the incarnation?

For more on this, read Alan’s entire post by clicking here.

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Active Love

What characteristics do you consider when looking for a local church to join? What characteristics help you decide to stay in a congregation or to leave and look elsewhere?

This morning I read a blog post designed for church leaders. According to it, research has shown that “members have ideas of what a local congregation should provide for them, and they leave because those provisions have not been met.” In other words, “the main reason people leave a church is because they have an entitlement mentality rather than a servant mentality.”

The way of Jesus is more than something we receive. It’s something we give.

It’s more than something we believe. It’s something we do.

Today my nation remembers a man who gave and did. He wasn’t perfect, but he preached and practiced justice and reconciliation through nonviolence. He saw and proclaimed the heart of God, a heart still aching from our ongoing brokenness.

Maybe a better way to choose a “church home” is to find a group that has a place for you to use your specific skills and interests to participate in that “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). If you choose a faith community in that way, you’ll be less likely to leave for self-centered reasons.

Don’t look for a show. Join a mission!

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Redefining Reality

Life in God’s mission doesn’t let us just hang out in our homes or offices or church buildings with people who talk and act like we do and make us feel good about ourselves.

When we look at the life of Jesus, we see him spending time with people. We see him touching people’s lives. We see him talking with social outcasts and eating with people who are despised by the religious establishment. When he’s asked about the greatest commandment, he says basically, “Love God and love others.” And Jesus does more than say it; he lives it—a love that rescues individuals and revolutionizes societies and redefines realities.

New Testament scholar N. T. Wright says, “Jesus was going around ‘doing the kingdom’, healing the sick, cleansing lepers, feeding the hungry, he was celebrating at a party with all the wrong people, transforming people’s lives and saying cryptic things such as: ‘Let me tell you what the kingdom of God is like.’”

That was a radical way to live. Imagine the people’s shock when they heard Jesus say, “…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That life might seem strange, but it’s the life Jesus calls us to. And it’s still radical today.

This post is a modified part of my sermon, “The Immediate Kingdom,” in Memphis, TN, on Sunday, January 13. You can click here to listen to it.

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New Heaven, New Earth

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev 21:1).

As I wrote in yesterday’s post, “Revelation shows an ancient vision of an ancient understanding of an eternal reality beyond/behind the one we most tangibly experience.” Despite the gaps of time and culture between us and the last book of the Bible, we can rejoice in a belief that God will ultimately bring universal renewal. Sadness and sickness and death and divisiveness and all evil will vanish.

That is God’s mission. That is our mission. God is accomplishing it; we get to participate in it.

(Day 363: Revelation 20-21)

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Every Tribe for God

Why is Jesus worthy? Reflecting on the book of Revelation, Richard Oster addressed that question on March 21:

It has been easy for a complacent church at times to laud, magnify, and praise Christ for his redemptive work on the cross, but manifest less enthusiastic about a commitment to the style of globalism in missions contained in the words “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9b).  One does not need to have advanced theological training, or even know Greek and Hebrew, to realize the necessary connection in the heart of God between a believer’s embracing the personal benefits of salvation and then showing a commitment to the globalization of those benefits….

John the prophet, in contradistinction to the prevailing regime, saw “every tribe and language and people and nation” as parts of God’s alienated, but beloved, creation, longing for a partial redemption in the present, and a complete restoration and redemption in the New Heaven and New Earth (Rev. 21-22).

Click here for Dr. Oster’s full post.

(Day 359: Revelation 4-8)

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Real Religion

Religion has a bad reputation these days. People claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” Our understandings of both terms have suffered warping. We tend to think of spirituality as feelings or ideas instead of the life of discipline it is, and we often use the word “religion” in reference to institutionalized religion that has lost relevance and authenticity.

The end of James 1, however, gives us a different definition of religion. Real religion, according to this text, is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Of course this is countercultural, but it’s our calling. The universal church, local congregations, and individual members of them are all to be about God’s mission among people in need, including but not limited to orphans and widows. (Those were the needy in the community James was addressing.)

Numerous alternatives can compete for our attention, but helping people in need must remain at the heart of our mission. Everything else of importance should lead us to that.

(Day 353: James 1-5)

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The Relational Battle

“Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes” (Eph 6:11).

Ephesians is about God’s mission of reconciliation, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Chapters 1-3 lay out a theology of the church’s role in that mission, and chapters 4-6 give practical ways to live it out. There we find guidelines for life together in the church, in the home, and even in the workplace, depending on how you interpret 6:5-9. Then we come to the section about spiritual warfare and the “armor of God.”

Evil opposes the mission of unity, and the text gives us ways to victory in that battle. To defeat “the devil’s schemes” to thwart this mission, we need truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, salvation, “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” and prayer (6:14-18).

(Day 343: Ephesians 4-6)

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