The Heirloom of Prayer

During her sunset years of life, Kendra’s grandmother hand-stitched several colorful quilts for Kendra.  They are some of our favorite heirlooms—especially the double wedding band quilt.  The blankets remind us of Memaw’s generous love, fun-loving spirit and quirky personality.  I think of her every time we pull a quilt out of our hallway closet.

Perhaps you have an heirloom from a much-loved-one.  A family piano.  A treasured set of crystal.  A piece of framed art.  These items reflect that individual’s kindness and care.  They tell us something about the heart of that person.

Leaving an inheritance is a common practice.  We’ve come to expect it from those who are important to us.  But what about the One who is most important?  Did Jesus leave an heirloom?  If so, what was it?  What gift did Jesus bequeath to those who lived after he left?  If Jesus had written a will, what legacy would he have listed on its pages?

Perhaps with such questions in mind, George Buttrick writes this: “Two signs of Jesus abide, though all else be ignored or forgotten—a prayer and a cross…These are His memorial: not a tombstone or a moneyed foundation, but a simple prayer and a gallows set against the daybreak.”[i]

You may not be surprised to find the cross listed on Jesus’ Last Will and Testament.  Almost universally, when people think of the Christ they think of the cross.  The worldwide symbol of Jesus’ contribution to humanity is his cross.  The world-changing summary of Jesus’ challenge to humanity is his cross.  He died so we might live.  We die so that others might live.

But you may be surprised by the mention of a prayer.  A prayer is listed among his most prized possessions?  Buttrick is referring to a specific prayer—what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.”  Besides the cross, what captures the heart of Jesus is the heirloom bequeathed to us in his Lord’s Prayer.  As Jesus sought some way to pass down what most mattered to him, he chose to grant us the inheritance of Calvary’s cross and the Lord’s Prayer.  William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas write, “So if you are asked, ‘Who is a Christian?’ the best answer you can give is, ‘A Christian is none other than someone who has learned to pray the Lord’s Prayer.’”[ii]  To be a Christian is to pray Jesus’ prayer.

What’s so valuable about this prayer?  Consider its wonderful words:

⁹  Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread,
¹² and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (Matt. 6:9-13 ESV)

The prayer, as Frederick Buechner writes, focuses primarily on God’s omnipotence and our impotence.  It is rooted in the belief that God can still do anything and that we still can’t do much of anything.  It is the ultimate declaration of dependence.  It puts God in his place.  It puts us in our place:

“We do well not to prayer the prayer lightly.  It takes guts to pray it at all…’Thy will be done’ is what we are saying.  That is the climax of the first half of the prayer.  We are asking God to be God.  We are asking God to do not what we want but what God wants…To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.  You need to be bold in another way to speak the second half.  Give us.  Forgive us.  Don’t test us.  Deliver us.  If it takes guts to face the omnipotence that is God’s, it takes perhaps not less to face the impotence that is ours.  We can do nothing without God.  Without God we are nothing.”[iii]

The prayer puts God in his place and us in ours.  It invites the tiger out of the cage.  Authors Mike Breem and Steve Cockram propose that everything Jesus taught about life in the kingdom of God is summarized in this brief prayer.  True discipleship comes only as we learn to pray this prayer.[iv]

The cross and this prayer.  These are Jesus’ greatest gifts.  In them we find all that is needed for a life of following in his footsteps.

In his book Unspeakable Os Guinness tells the story of a Christian leader whose son had been killed in a cycling accident.[1]  Although this Christian leader was devastated he managed to suppress his grief, even preaching powerfully at his son’s funeral. His display of hope in the midst of tragedy led many to admire him.  But weeks after the funeral of his son, the man invited Guinness and a few friends to his house.  According to Guinness, this man then proceeded to speak and scream “not with the hope of a preacher but with the hurt of the father—pained and furious at God, dark and bilious in his blasphemy.”  It must have been a moving and troubling scene: a strong Christian leader screaming at God, dark and bilious in his blasphemy.

I recently heard an interview with Grammy winning Christian musician Stephen Curtis Chapman.  In a tragic accident in 2008 Chapman’s his five year old daughter was killed.  Chapman described that catastrophe and the years following it as “dark times.”

“Dark” is an appropriate description for how many of us feel in the face of death.  Almost universally, when death hits, darkness falls.  Even people of deep Christian faith experience darkness in the presence of death.  We often stumble in the dark times associated with death. 

This is true even of the first followers of Jesus.  In John 11 we witness a tragic death.  It involves a man named Lazarus.  Larzarus has two sisters-Mary and Martha.  Ten times in John 11 John reminds us that Lazarus, Mary and Martha are siblings.  John doesn’t refer to their family connection just one time.  He refers to it ten times.  John wants us to feel the deep love between this trio of sister, sister and brother.

Lazarus, Mary and Martha dwell in Bethany, a small village outside of Jerusalem.  Their home is a kind of hideaway for Jesus.  He seems to have spent significant time in their home.  Jesus is unusually close to Lazarus, Mary and Martha.

But Lazarus gets sick.  Jesus is some distance away when Lazarus falls ill.  Jesus has been run out of Jerusalem by a violent mob.  Mary and Martha thus send someone to find Jesus and tell him that Lazarus is not well.  The searcher finally finds Jesus and announces, “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (Jn. 11:3 ESV).  Immediately the sense of potential tragedy deepens.  Because not only is this a brother beloved by Mary and Martha.  This is a friend beloved by Jesus.  “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

A few days later, Lazarus is dead.  Was it bone cancer?  Was it pneumonia?  Was it an infectious disease?  Was it a bad heart?  We don’t know.  But Lazarus is dead.  According to Jn. 11:38, they bury Lazarus in a small cave and roll a stone in front of the tomb.  It’s reminiscent of the scene after Jesus’ death.  They bury him in a small tomb and roll the stone in front of it.

And Jesus knows how hard people are going to take this death.  So he says this to his disciples in Jn. 11:10, “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”  This is veiled language.  But Jesus seems to be implying that when people are hit with a death like Lazarus’ death, some wind up stumbling as if they are walking in the dark.  “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles…”  So often when death arrives darkness falls.  It causes even people of deep faith to stumble.

Lazarus’ death seems to cause Mary and Martha to stumble.  When Jesus finally arrives, Martha runs to him and says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn. 11:22 ESV).  A little later, Mary says the same thing, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn. 11:32 ESV).  Mary and Martha are tripping around in the darkness of Lazarus’ death.

This scene is portrayed in a moving way in a recent film about Jesus: [PP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR1ku3kE2lY to 0:38 - 1:35 ]

In an old movie from the 1960’s Max Van Sydow plays Jesus.  As Jesus approaches Mary and Martha, Martha runs to him and scolds him: “Come to bury the dead?  Or have you come to feed the mourners?  You made a leper well.  You made a cripple walk.  Was it too much to ask that you keep my brother from dying?  Why do you come now that he is dead, when you could have come when he lived, when he needed you?  Why?”  We often stumble in the darkness associated with death.

And yet Jesus promises that there is another way to experience such tragedy.  Listen to what Jesus tells his disciples before they make their way to Lazarus’ tomb: “If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world” (Jn. 11:9 ESV).  Again, this is veiled language.  But Jesus seems to be implying that it is possible to face the death of a loved one and walk steady and stable as if walking in the light of day.  It’s possible to encounter times associated with tragedy and not have darkness but have light instead.

How is this possible?  How is it possible to find light in one of life’s darkest times?  Jesus puts it this way to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn. 11:25 ESV).  This is the last of the “I Am” statements of Jesus.  It is the climactic statement.  In this Sunday morning series we’ve heard Jesus promise to be the bread of our life; the light of our world; our door and our shepherd; our way, truth and life; and our vine.  One of the reasons I’ve called this series “Slice” is that each of these “I am” statements gives us a slice of the whole picture of Jesus.  But this “I am” statement is perhaps the biggest slice of all.  When it comes to the tragedy of death, Jesus wants us to know that he is the resurrection and the life.  And this is what makes it possible to face death with a different perspective.  Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we do not have to stumble in the dark times associated with death. Instead, we can walk steadily as if in the light of day.

And Jesus not only makes this claim.  He proves this claim: ³⁸ Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. ³⁹ Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴²  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³ When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” ⁴⁴  The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (Jn. 11:38-44 ESV).  Jesus proves that he is the resurrection and the life.  Death has no chance in the face of Jesus.

A Puritan writer once said that if Jesus had not named Lazarus when He shouted, he would have emptied the whole cemetery!^[2]  No doubt this is true.  Jesus not only speaks this climactic “I am” statement.  He proves it.  He raises this man Lazarus from the dead.  And because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we no longer have to stumble in the darkness.  We can walk in the light.

Two years ago Rick and Beverly Ross lost their daughter Jenny.  Jenny’s brother Josh is a friend of mine.  Rick and Beverly recently wrote about Jenny’s death:[3]  “Two years ago today, my family was halfway through the roller coaster ride of our 31-year old daughter Jenny’s struggle for her life. The previous week she had gone to the doctor, been diagnosed with the swine flu, and sent home with a prescription of Tamiflu.  Three days later, she was much worse. At the hospital we discovered that she had been misdiagnosed. Actually, she had Group-A strep, and it had gone untreated for days – throwing her body into septic shock. It ravaged her body like a wildfire. After a cruel battle, she went to be with Jesus on February 22, 2010.  As my wife and I walked down the ICU hallway after leaving Jenny’s room, Beverly asked, ‘What do we do now?’ Being the task-oriented person I am, I thought she was referring to making arrangements. But what she meant was, ‘How do we do life now?’ ‘How do we take our next step?’ ‘How do we breathe our next breath?’ Beverly is a licensed marriage and family therapist, so she knew that grieving would be difficult physically and emotionally. But as she later said, ‘What I didn’t anticipate was the spiritual eruption. Death created a spiritual earthquake and left me searching through the rubble to find the remnants of my faith.’  Paula D’Archy once said, ‘I know this, you can’t die from crying . . . or I’d be dead.’ Never having been a crier, I have now come to appreciate her words over the last couple of years. Just a couple of weeks after Jenny’s death, my oldest son, Josh, a minister in Memphis, TN, called me one Sunday morning and said that we, a family of ministers, would be ‘playing wounded’ for a while. He reminded me of how Emmitt Smith played one of his greatest games with a separated shoulder. And I totally understand and agree with what Josh said, as two years later we continue to ‘play wounded.’ But many are the times I have thought that I would rather play with a separated shoulder than with a broken heart.  Still, I often think of something Jenny said several years ago as she struggled with secondary infertility. She said, ‘I want people to remember me as someone who, even when she didn’t get her way, praised the Lord.’ And that is what we as a family choose to do. As Beverly has said, ‘Our family has been called to do hard, so we will do hard.’  Being a minister, I have come to view grief in a totally different light. Grief that, too often, I had naively assumed passed in a couple of months. I had mourned the death of my father and my father-in-law. But I had never known grief – not like this. Now, when I hear about a teenager killed in a car wreck or a young mother who died of breast cancer, my first thoughts go to the families. Oh, what grief!  Paul asked the question in 1 Corinthians 15, ‘O death, where is your sting?’ I can tell him. It is piercing the hearts of people who lose loved ones. Oh, I know that through Jesus, the sting has been ultimately removed. But it sure feels like a swarm of killer bees right now.  There are so many spiritual things that I used to KNOW that I don’t know anymore. Lots of things I once had tied up – that now look like a fishing reel when it has ‘bird-nested.’ But I am taking the advice of a fellow minister, John Scott, who told Beverly and me to ‘learn to be content in the mystery. I am learning to live the words of Anselm of Canterbury, who once prayed, ’I do not try to understand you so that I can trust you. I trust you so I can understand you.’  Some people have insinuated that they will be glad when Beverly and I ‘get back to normal.’ I know they mean well and only have our best interests at heart. But what they need to know is that this IS our new normal. Our lives have been forever changed by the events of two years ago. In some ways, even for the better. I am a better minister today as I walk with the bereaved. And my faith has been put to the test in such a way that I no longer wonder how I would respond in the face of real persecution. I have learned what trust REALLY means. That word is huge to me today. Trust. And hope. And peace.  So, back to Beverly and me as we walked out of ICU that day nearly two years ago. We stopped in the hallway and looked into each other’s eyes. She said, ‘Remind me what we believe.’ And I stood in that moment speechless. It seemed like an eternity, although it was only a second or two. ‘Remind me what we believe.’ And in that moment, with all of the theological positions and views I have often thought were so important, only four words came from my mouth: ‘The tomb is empty.’  When life was at its darkest, I can imagine that Mary and Martha may have asked Jesus this question, “What do we believe, Jesus?  In the face of this tragedy, what do we believe?”  And Jesus, in answer, raised Lazarus from the dead.  And God, in answer, raised Jesus from the dead.  What do we believe?  The answer is found in these four words: The tomb is empty.

A few weeks ago in this series I talked about Van Gogh.  Scot McKnight writes about Van Gogh.[4]  He says that if you follow Van Gogh’s life, you find a gradual increase of the color yellow in his paintings.  For Van Gogh, the color yellow indicated the hope and warmth of the love of God.  The more yellow you found in a painting by Van Gogh, the more you could assume that on the day he painted that piece, Van Gogh believed the world was filled with the light of God’s love.   A few weeks ago we looked at a painting filled with darkness.  It seemed to point to a time when Van Gogh could see very little of the light of God’s love.  But there is another painting which Van Gogh created later in life.  It overflows with yellow.  It’s filled with light.  And not surprisingly, it is called “The Raising of Lazarus.” This entire picture is bathed in warm light.  Some even believe that Van Gogh painted his own face on Lazarus to personalize this painting.  What’s Van Gogh saying?  He’s saying that even at the darkest times, in the face of the death of a beloved brother and friend like Lazarus, it’s possible for the world to be filled with light.

Jesus wants you to know that in the darkness of death, it’s possible to not stumble and not fall.  It’s possible to find light in the midst of that darkness.  It’s possible because of one climactic claim of Jesus: “I am the resurrection and the life.”  It’s possible because of the undeniable truth of four simple words: “The tomb is empty.”  Say them out loud with me: “The tomb is empty.”

Last year New York Times editorialist Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about evangelical Christians.[1] The column confessed that some evangelical Christians act in ways that are immoral and hypocritical.  But he went on to write this:

…in reporting on poverty, disease and oppression, I’ve seen so many others. Evangelicals are disproportionately likely to donate 10 percent of their incomes to charities, mostly church-related. More important, go to the front lines, at home or abroad, in the battles against hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide, and some of the bravest people you meet are evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics, similar in many ways) who truly live their faith.  I’m not particularly religious myself, but I stand in awe of those I’ve seen risking their lives in this way—and it sickens me to see that faith mocked at New York cocktail parties.

Kristof stands in awe of Christians who truly live their faith.  The biblical word for this kind of world-changing life is “fruitful.”  When the Bible describes people doing what Kristof sees Christians doing, it uses the word “fruitful.”  To donate for the needy, to battle against hunger, and to stand against genocide is to live a fruitful life.  And that kind of fruitful life by Christians catches Kristof’s attention.  He applauds these fruitful lives.

This type of life is one that God applauds.  God prizes fruitful lives.  God loves it when his people donate to charities, battle human trafficking, and truly live their faith.

In fact, God dreams about this fruit.  In the book of Isaiah, God puts it this way: In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit (Is. 27:6 ESV).  There are several other passages like this in Isaiah.  The words “Jacob” and “Israel” are used here to refer to the people of God.  Here God pictures his people as a vine that takes root, then blossoms and then fills the whole world with fruit.  And in the context of Scripture fruit is consists of things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  God prizes this fruit.  He loves this fruit.  He wants his people to fill the whole world with this fruit.

But, as the New York Times piece confesses, we—the people of God—don’t always bear this fruit.  Sometimes we forget the priority of fruitful living. We don’t value fruitful living as much as God does.

Richard Stearns puts it this way:[2] “The predicament of the American church is that we live in a kind of Magic Kingdom. Like going to Disneyland, you buy your ticket, and once you are inside the gates, everything you experience is controlled. The rides, the food, the shows are all there to entertain and amuse you. All you have to do is be there and observe.  Yet just beyond the walls of Disneyland is Anaheim and the rest of Los Angeles, including the streets of Compton. This is the real world with real problems: pollution and congestion, drugs and violence, islands of upscale neighborhoods surrounded by slums. Inside the Magic Kingdom, the outside world is almost inconceivable…But our job is…to tear down the walls and transform the world outside.” It’s easy for Christians to gather and forget about the rest of the world, the real world outside these walls.  But God’s dream is that his people would be like a vine that grows throughout the world and bears fruit that transforms that world.  Sometimes we get so comfortable in our Disneyland that we forget the priority of fruitful living out there.

But even when we do prioritize God’s vine-vision, we often find that it’s a hard vision to fulfill.  It can be overwhelming to walk into that broken world outside these walls and attempt to live the kind of fruitful life that will make a difference.

I recently came across a book about Dr. Paul Farmer.  Farmer was moved deeply by the plight of people around the earth who did not have access to adequate medical care.  He dedicated himself to bringing modern medicine to remote places and poor people.  The book about his life is called “Mountains Beyond Mountains.[3] The title comes from a Hatian proverb.  Farmer spent years in Haiti establishing a medical clinic for the poor.  The proverb states this: “Beyond mountains there are mountains.”  It is a realistic and somber portrait of the world outside these walls.  You climb one mountain, and there’s another one waiting.  It describes the massive need Farmer was trying to fill as he travelled to Haiti, Peru, Cuba and Russia. You help one poor person get better, there’s a line of others waiting.  You make a dent in one country or with one tribe, there are dozens more.  It can be overwhelming.  There seems to be mountain after mountain of need in the world.  And we may feel completely incapable of bearing the kind of fruit that can topple those mountains.

Jesus’ disciples may have felt similarly.  In Jn. 14:12, Jesus challenges his disciples to go and bear even greater fruit in the world than he did.  He urges them to scatter and live even more impactful lives than he did.  Then he drops a bomb on them—he’s about to leave.  In John 13-17 Jesus is saying goodbye.  He tells them again and again that he’s about to be killed on a cross, raised from the dead, and lifted to the Father’s right hand.  Jesus is about to exit.  They will be the ones left with the mess of the world.  They will be the ones facing mountain after mountain of need.  We heard last Sunday how this news has troubled their hearts (Jn. 14:1).  They may have felt completely incapable of bearing the kind of fruit that could make a difference in the world.

It’s in this context that Jesus makes a statement: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  ³Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:1-5 ESV).

Most scholars believe that Jesus is using the vineyard image from Isaiah.  When Jesus says “I am the true vine” he’s saying “I am the vine God’s always dreamed about.”  Though God talked about his dream of a fruitful vine in Isaiah, his people in the Old Testament never fulfilled that dream.  They failed to carry out God’s vision.  Rather than bringing the fruit of love and joy and righteousness and justice into the world, at times they brought just the opposite.  In light of that failure, and in light of what the disciples must surely be feeling about their own ability to bear fruit, Jesus says simply, “I am the true vine.”  Jesus is that vine capable of bearing the kind of fruit that can transform the world.

Yet Jesus is not going to bear that fruit alone.  He tells his followers: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”  Those of us who follow Jesus are the branches.  That means we can bear fruit through partnership with Jesus.  Jesus promises in this text that he can bear his fruit through us.  He promises in vs. 5 that we branches can bear “much fruit.”

Jesus is essentially telling us this: He maximizes our ability to bear fruit.  One of the primary things Jesus does is to maximize our ability to bear fruit.  Jesus sees himself as a vine.  He sees you as a branch.  And Jesus is able to take his own fruitfulness and grant it to you so that you become as fruitful in the world as he was.  This is God’s plan for taking is his vineyard dream and turning it into reality.  Through Jesus, he maximizes your potential to bear fruit.

But how does this work?  How does Jesus’ fruitfulness become ours?  How does Jesus pass on the ability to live a world-changing life?

Listen to Jesus’ explanation: “⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you…⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love…¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. ¹⁷ These things I command you, so that you will love one another (John 15:4-7, 9-10, 16-17 ESV).  Jesus says that the key to fruitfulness is found in one concept: “abide.”  It’s only by abiding in Jesus that we bear the fruit of Jesus.  Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates this concept this way: “Make your home in me.”  When Jesus says “abide in me” he’s saying “make your home in me.”  It’s only when we make a home in Jesus that we can bear the fruit of Jesus.

What does it mean to abide in Jesus?  What does it mean to make our home in Jesus?  We might think of this in terms of some different dwelling places.  Let’s consider three dwelling places.  Let’s imagine a hotel room, a dorm room, and a house.  Raise your hand if you’ve ever stayed in a hotel room.  How many of you even take the time to unpack your suitcase and put your clothes in the dressers?    For most of us, the hotel room is temporary.  We’re in and we’re out.  We just need a bed to sleep on and a place to store our stuff.  The priority is what’s outside the hotel room.  The amusement park.  The golf course.  The mall.  The state park.  The hotel room is just a base from which we launch out into what really interests us.  And sometimes that’s how some of us treat Jesus.  He’s a temporary place we go to when we need some rest or some recuperation.  But what truly interests us is outside of Jesus.  He’s just a rest stop.  He’s not someplace we truly abide.

Let’s consider a dorm room.  How many of you lived in a dorm room or an apartment when you were in college?  I lived in the same dorm room for three years while I was a student at New Mexico State University.  Yet despite the fact that I was there for three years, I never really settled in to my dorm room.  It was mostly a place where I could catch a nap, change my clothes, and do a little work.  I did a large part of my homework elsewhere because the dorms were so loud.  I spent the weekends at my mom’s house eating her food and letting her do my laundry.  And some of us treat Jesus that way.  He’s much more just a hotel room.  But, when it comes down to it, we’re never really at home in him.  We spend significant time in him and with him.  But ultimately, there’s something temporary and superficial about our walk with him.  He’s not someplace we truly abide.

But let’s consider a home.  Not just any home.  A well-lived-in home.  I think of the home where my great grandmother Gertie lived.  She lived there with her twin sister Vertie.  Gertie and Vertie.  They lived in a farmhouse in Missouri.  In the kitchen was a wood-fueled stove they used for decades.  The linoleum floor nearly had grooves in the paths where they had walked much of their lives.  The living room had a sofa so worn and soft you could fall asleep in it in a minute.  There were pictures of parents and children and grandchildren and great grandchildren on the walls.  I remember watching Gertie sit in an old rocking chair and read from the Bible she’d owned for many years.  The cover was cracked from use and time.  Every nook and cranny of that house was filled with memories.  They had lived every square inch of that house, and lived it for decades.  When Vertie died and it came time for Gertie to leave the house, it was gut-wrenching.  In fact, she didn’t live long after she left the house.  Her life was in that house.  She had made a home in that house and it had made a home in her.

Jesus is saying that we need to treat him like that.  Not like a hotel room.  Not like a dorm room.  But like a place where we truly are home.  It’s only when we make a home in Jesus that we can bear the fruit of Jesus. When we dwell in Jesus, abide in Jesus, make our home in Jesus, then he’s able to take his own supernatural fruit-bearing ability and transfer it to us.  He shapes us and makes us into fruitful people who topple mountain after mountain.

What does that look like?  How does that happen?  How do we make our home in Jesus?  How do we abide in Jesus and thus gain his fruit-bearing ability?  Jesus gives some brief clues here.

Jesus seems to say that abiding in him, making our home in him means abiding with his people, in his principles, on his path, and in his prayer.

• Jesus talks here about the importance of loving other Christians, of being in intimate community with his followers.  His people.  Jesus talks about letting his word abide in us.  His principles.  Jesus speaks of our need to obey him.  His path.  And Jesus urges us to pray for what we need to bear fruit.  His prayer.
• Abiding in Jesus includes fellowship and friendship and support among his people.  It includes learning and reflecting upon and meditating upon his word, his principles.  It includes walking his way, practicing his preaching, obeying his word.  His path.  And it includes humble dependence upon God for what we need to bear fruit.  His prayer.
• We abide in Jesus as we participate in a loving community, pursuing spiritual paths together, sharpening each other, holding each other accountable, and encouraging each other.  His people.  We abide in Jesus as we constantly read his word, consume his word, meditate on his word, study his word, and listen to his word.  His principles.  We abide in Jesus as we apply his teaching to our lives, as we practice what he preaches, as we let his teaching impact our relationships, our work, our school, and our families.  His principles.  And we abide in Jesus as we hit our knees, as we devote ourselves to prayer, as we passionately pursue a life of prayer.  His prayer.

The book Welcoming Justice was co-authored by two men.  One was Charles Marsh, a younger white professor.  The other was John Perkins, an older black Christian leader.[4] On the day they met, Marsh, the white man, sheepishly confessed that his grandmother was an ardent racist who thought that Martin Luther King. Jr. was a dangerous troublemaker and that most blacks were better off under slavery. Perkins’ response puzzled Marsh.  “What does she grow in her garden?” he asked.  “What do you mean?” Marsh replied.  Perkins said, “What does she grow? Cucumbers, squash, mint, tomatoes? I have the sweetest tomatoes in my garden this summer. You can eat them like apples. Your grandmother like tomato sandwiches? I bet she does. Let me ask you another question: does she like blueberries? I love blueberries.”   And in great detail he described all the ways he loved to eat blueberries: freshly picked, over ice cream, in blueberry pie. He said, “I always keep blueberries in my refrigerator. When we get to the house, I’m gonna give you a bag of blueberries, and I want you to take them to your grandmother and tell her they’re a gift from me.“  Perkins, the black man, gave Marsh, the white man, a bag of blueberries to deliver to the racist grandmother as a gift.  After Perkins gave Marsh the bag of blueberries, Marsh called them a “gift that marks you as a new kind of person.” He wrote, “I haven’t been quite the same since I accepted those blueberries.” Perkins responded to racism not with hate or vengeance.  He responded with fruit—love and compassion.

That’s the kind of fruit that becomes possible as we abide in Jesus.  It’s the fruit that can change the world.  The closer we stay to the vine, the more his fruit is born through us.  It’s the fruit that makes all the difference in the world.

[2] Richard Stearns, “Shedding Lethargy,” Leadership Journal (Winter, 2012).

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Mountains-Beyond-Healing-World-Farmer/dp/0375506160/ref=pd_rhf_pe_p_t_3

[4] Charles Marsh and John Perkins, Welcoming Justice (IVP Books, 2009), 61-61.

In 1942 the U. S. government decided to carve a road from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Big Delta, Alaska.[1] Called the Alaska Highway, it would stretch 1,422 miles over the Canadian Rockies, through the Yukon Territory, and into remote Alaska.  A recruiting poster made this promise to anyone applying to work on the job:

“Men hired for this job will be required to work and live under the most extreme conditions imaginable.  Temperatures will range from 90 degrees above zero to 70 degrees below zero.  Men will have to fight swamps, rivers, ice and cold.  Mosquitos, flies and gnats will not only be annoying but will cause bodily harm.  If you are not prepared to work under these and similar conditions, do not apply.”

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government believed this road was needed to keep the Japanese from potentially invading Alaska.  They sent 16,000 soldiers to help build the road.  It cost $138 million—the most expensive construction project of World War II.  The initial team, transported by plane and train, arrived with 174 steam shovels, 374 blade graders, 904 tractors, 5,000 trucks, bulldozers, snowplows, cranes, and generators.  Conditions were miserable.  One oft-repeated tale concerned a staff sergeant who, arriving in Dawson Creek during a blizzard, asked his superior officer, ‘Major, where do I sleep?’ The grinning major replied, ‘Take any snowdrift you like. This one is mine!’  In the winter, pick axes bent against the frozen ground.  Any vehicle that got wet from a still flowing stream had to keep moving because the water on it could freeze and snap the axel in two.  In the spring, rivers flooded and equipment and men were trapped in thick mud.  Those familiar with the project claimed it was the most difficult construction project undertaken since the building of the Panama Canal.  Yet, in the end, they were successful.  They completed a road through the most difficult territory imaginable.  They made a way when there seemed to be no way possible.

We are determined to create roads where it seems none can exist.  We are determined to make a way where there seems to be no way.  We have such fortitude, such technology, and such will that we humans have been able to carve roads in the most extreme environments.

Yet sometimes we face obstacles we cannot overcome.  Sometimes we cannot make a way through.  Sometimes there is no way. Sometimes, despite our courage, despite our ingenuity, despite our desire, there just is no way through.

This was spiritually true in the time of a man named Isaiah.  Isaiah was prophet in the Old Testament.  He wrote a long book of 66 chapters which is near the middle of your Bible.  Isaiah lived and preached when the nation of Assyria invaded and exiled the nation of Israel.  He also described the time when the nation of Babylon would invade and exile the nation of Judah.  The nation of Israel and the nation of Judah were filled with God’s chosen people.  No one could have ever imagined Assyria and Babylon overtaking these nations.  No one could have imagined the holy city of Jerusalem being invaded.  Yet this is exactly what happened.  And this is what Isaiah recorded.  The chosen people of God were trampled.  The beautiful city of God was terrorized.  Every aspect of the people’s lives was turned in its head.  They were dragged away from all they had ever known into a place and among a people that was completely foreign.  And there seemed to be no way out of it.  There seemed to be no way of ever getting from the strange and uncomfortable place where they now were to familiar and comfortable place where they once were.  There was no way return to that good life with God.  All hopes, all dreams, all ways were blocked.

Have you ever felt that way?  Felt like there just wasn’t any way out of your joblessness?  Felt like there just wasn’t any way out of your marriage crisis?  Felt like there just wasn’t any way out of your struggle with pornography?  Felt like there was no way to get from a strange and uncomfortable spot in life to the familiar and comfortable spot where you want to be?

That’s how Isaiah’s readers felt.  But Isaiah’s message was a remarkable message of comfort.  We might summarize the whole book of Isaiah in this way: When there is no way God makes a way.  One of the recurring images in Isaiah’s book is God’s “highway.”  Throughout his book, Isaiah writes of a God who will plow a straight and level road from hopelessness to hope, from despair to dancing, from isolation from to intimacy with God:

• ⁸ And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it.  It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. (Is. 35:8 ESV)
• ³ A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Is. 40:3 ESV)
• ¹⁶ Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters… ¹⁹ Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Is. 43:16-19 ESV)
• ¹¹ And I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up. (Is. 49:11 ESV)
• ¹⁴ And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.” (Is. 57:14 ESV)
• ¹⁰ Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples. (Is. 62:10 ESV)

It was as if the people’s unfaithfulness and the circumstances of the invading nations had piled boulders onto the road, washed out the road and left deep valleys, and created unshakeable mountains blocking the path.  The result was a spiritual territory that looked like Alaska.  But God, through Isaiah, declares that he’s in the highway business.  And he’s going to carve a road where none seems possible.  Isaiah says “where there is no way God makes a way.” Just as God plowed a highway through the Red Sea to lead his people from Egypt to the Promised Land, so he will once again plow a highway from the pit to the peak, from hopelessness to hopefulness.  God promises to find a way to get the people back to where they need to be.

When John the Baptist arrives on the scene in John’s Gospel, he grabs on to this very image and uses this very language.  When the Jews demand to know who John the Baptist, he quotes from Isaiah: He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” (John 1:23 ESV).  “I’m part of God’s road crew,” John is saying.  “I’m a paver.  I’m a bulldozer.  I’m here to join God’s ongoing work of making ways where there seems to be no way.”   It turns out that the construction project God started in Isaiah’s day was still going on in John’s day.  There were still people struggling with discouragement and with misery.  There were still people who weren’t where they wanted or needed to be in life.  And John was now part of that ongoing effort to pave a way where there seemed to be no way.

Not surprisingly, Jesus eventually identifies his mission using the same language.  The only other use of this language in John’s Gospel comes in John 14.  It comes in the context of troubling times.  The people in John 14 are feeling very much like the people were feeling in Isaiah’s day.  In John 13:21-30, Jesus indicates that he knows that Judas is about to sell him out, and Judas leaves their dinner gathering to do this very thing.  Even Jesus, according to John 13:21 is now “troubled in his spirit.”  Then, in John 13:31-14:14 Jesus makes repeated remarks about the fact that he is about to go—a reference to his impending death on the cross.  At least 9 times we read about Jesus going away from them.  He’s about to leave these followers of him.  They will feel, according to John 14:18 like “orphans.”  They will feel abandoned.  Then, in John 13:36-38 Jesus has to tell Peter that he knows Peter is going to cave in when the time comes.  Not even Peter will not stand his ground.  Peter will deny Jesus and give in to fear and scatter just like everyone else.

The result, according to Jesus in John 14:1 is that their “hearts” are “troubled.”  These are the toughest times Jesus and his followers have ever faced.  Everything is coming unraveled.  All the things they’ve been hoping for and planning for and working for are suddenly becoming impossible.  Their team is falling apart.  Their courage is melting.  The future is cloudy.  And Jesus himself is about to leave.  It’s as if there’s been a landslide and the way forward has been blocked.  There’s been a flash flood and the road’s been washed away.  Spiritually, life looks like remote Alaska.  And there seems to be no way forward.

It’s in this context that Jesus makes a remarkable statement: ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6 ESV).  This is the only other use of “way” in John’s Gospel.  It seems certain that Jesus has in mind what John the Baptist had in mind.  Both were thinking of the God who makes a way in the book of Isaiah.  Both were thinking of God’s ongoing construction project to pave a path for people where no path seems possible.  Jesus is saying that he is the highway Isaiah wrote about so long ago.

More specifically, I think Jesus is saying three things about the way in which he is the way.  First, Jesus is saying that his way is sure—he will make a way when there seems to be no way. Against the background of God’s “highway” language in Isaiah, Jesus is reasserting that in him, God will find a way.  When there seems to be no way, in Jesus, God always finds a way.  God’s plans will persevere.  God’s wishes will become reality.  Especially in those times when there seems to be no way, in Jesus, God finds a way.  Especially to these disciples whose hearts are troubled and who fear that everything’s falling apart, Jesus wants them to know that if they’ll just hang on to him, they’ll make it through.  Jesus will make a way forward even though none seems possible.

While working on this message I had breakfast with a fellow preacher from another city.  The story he shared with me overwhelmed me.  A core staff member at his congregation had quit.  But in leaving, this disgruntled staff member had spread all kinds of lies about the preacher.  Now he had to clean up that mess as well as deal with major financial stress in the congregation.  At times, as my friend shared his story, there was a part of me that wondered if there was any way to resolved all these issues.  But I kept thinking about Jesus’ statement: “I am the way.”  When Jesus says that, he’s speaking it in the context of a God who paved a way through the Red Sea, who paved a road back from Babylon to Jerusalem, and who, Jesus knew, would even pave a road back from the grave itself.  No matter how dark things seem to be, no matter what obstacles seems to be in the way, no matter what challenges you or your family or your friends are facing, Jesus is the way.  Through Jesus, God will make a way.  Jesus is saying here that his way is sure.  Where you are filled with doubt and wonder how you’ll ever make it through a situation, remember this statement: “I am the way.”

But I think Jesus is saying even more.  Second, Jesus is implying that his way is sacred—his way will ultimately lead you closer to the Father. Jesus not only says, “I am the way,” but he adds “No one comes to the Father except through me.”  He’s telling these troubled disciples that if they will just stick with Jesus, Jesus will make a way through all of this suffering and all of these challenges.  And the result will be this: they will all be closer to the Father.  If they will stick with Jesus, the result of the hard times will be that they get closer to God.

Jesus will not necessarily make a way through your illness so that you are healed for the rest of your life.  Jesus will not necessarily make a way through your joblessness so that you get a job next week.  Jesus will not necessarily make a way through your relationship struggles so that your marriage is renewed this weekend.  But the most important way Jesus makes is a way to deeper intimacy with God.  Jesus will make a way through whatever you are facing so that the result will be that you are closer to God.

Jesus may have a different destination in mind than you and I do.  When we hit difficult times, the destination we want to reach is one where is no more difficulty.  The destination is one where all the problems are resolved and all the pain is gone.  But if Jesus is the way, his destination is our deeper relationship with God.  That’s what Jesus is most concerned about.  So when Jesus starts carving a path for us through difficult times, that path may not lead where we think it ought to lead.  It may not resolve all pain.  It may not resolve all problems.  But here’s what it will do—it will lead us closer to God.

We Christians usually use this verse to discuss why Jesus, and only Jesus, and no other religious leader, is the way to the Father.  That is an appropriate use of this text.  We could legitimately take time this morning to explore from an intellectual perspective how Jesus is the only way to the Father.  But the context for this statement was a pastoral one not an intellectual one.  Jesus wasn’t addressing a group of religious thinkers trying to understand whether Christianity was superior or inferior to other world religions.  Jesus was addressing a group of struggling disciples trying to understand what God was doing in the midst of some very trying times.  And as Judas left to betray Jesus, as Peter would soon deny Jesus, as Jesus predicted his own death, what Jesus wanted these disciples to know most of all was that Jesus would lead the way through all of this and the result would be a deeper relationship with the Father.

Finally, Jesus is saying that his way is strange—his way will be unlike other ways. It’s not only sure.  It’s not only sacred.  But it’s strange.  Eugene Peterson has written a book exploring the many facets of this simple statement “I am the way.”  His book is called  The Jesus Way.[2] Peterson argues that one of the most overlooked elements of Jesus’ statement is the kind of way Jesus was.  Jesus’ way was very different from other ways of the day.[3] There was, Peterson says, the “way of Herod.”  Herod used power and fear to control people and bend people to his will.  Jesus’ way was just the opposite.  And there was, Peterson says, the “way of the Pharisees.”  The Pharisees majored in the minors.  They made spiritual mountains out of molehills.  The called critical what was truly marginal and marginal what was absolutely essential.  Jesus’ way was just the opposite.  Peterson argues that when Jesus promises to be our “way,” it’s going to be a way that’s unlike any other way we might follow.

John Dickson illustrates this further.  He wrote a book last year entitled Humilitas.[4] It’s based on post-doctoral research he did on ancient societies.  Dickson found that for an ancient person, to pursue personal honor was the greatest good.  To suffer shame was the greatest harm.  In the ancient world, the average person would always choose a way that led to greater personal honor.  The average person would always reject a way that led to greater shame.  And, Dickson writes, the most shameful and honor-less place in the ancient world was a cross.  The cross represented a way that no one in the ancient world would take.  Yet the cross was the way of Jesus.  The cross was the way of Jesus’ followers.    Thus, Christians in the ancient world began to redefine the greatest good in life.  They started using a word that, up to that point, has been associated with servitude and indignity.  The word is translated “humility.”  Dickson found that “humility” only became a virtue after Christians began using it in ancient society to describe the counter-cultural way of Jesus.  When Jesus says “I am the way,” he’s implying “My way is the way of the cross, the way of humility, the way of service, the way of lowliness.”  It is a way unlike any other way.

Still reflecting on this, Eugene Peterson points us back to Isaiah.[5] We began our journey this morning in Isaiah and his “highway songs.”  But there is another set of songs in Isaiah.  They are called the “servant songs.”  They are found in Is. 42, 49, 50, 52, 53.  In them, Isaiah sings of how God’s great roadwork on the earth will be accomplished through a humble and lowly servant.  Isaiah is singing that the way in which God works as he plows his highways is a strange way.  God will pave his way through lowly and menial servants.

Is. 53 is perhaps the most famous of these servant songs.  Isaiah sings this about the one through whom God will make a way: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men… But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed… He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”  This was the way of Jesus.  And if we cling to Jesus, and let him make a way in our lives, a way that leads us closer to the Father, this will be our way as well.  It is a strange and humble way.  But it is truly the only way forward.

Is there something in your life that feels like a Dead End?  Is there an issue in your life in which it seems there is no way forward?  While we sing this morning, I invite you to write that issue down on the Dead End sign on your seat and then bring it up here and place it in this wheelbarrow.  It’s a way of saying to Jesus, “Take this and make a way through it.”

[2] Eugene H. Peterson , The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way (Eerdmans, 2007), 27.

[3] Peterson, 217.

[4] John Dickson, Humilitas (Zondervan, 2011).

[5] Peterson, 170.

Tim Hansel is the author of a book entitled When I Relax I Feel Guilty.[1] He tells of the time when Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck decided to travel across the United States.  Steinbeck and his dog set out in his truck.  He recorded these observations when he stopped one evening in a diner: “It was all plastic…the table linen, the butter dish, the sugar and crackers were wrapped in cellophane, the jelly in a small plastic coffin sealed with cellophane. It was early evening and I was the only customer. Even the waitress wore a sponge apron. She wasn’t happy, but then she wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t anything.”  That’s a striking description: she wasn’t happy, but then she wasn’t unhappy; she wasn’t anything.  It’s also a convicting description.  I fear it describes some of us.  We aren’t happy.  We aren’t unhappy.  We’re not really anything.  If forced to answer honestly when someone asked us, “How are you?” some of us just aren’t sure what we would say.

Perhaps this explains our preoccupation with happiness.  According to Psychology Today, in the year 2000, fifty books on happiness were published.  In 2008, four thousand books on happiness were published.[2] Could it be that so many of us are caught between happy and unhappy that we can’t seem to get enough books about that elusive state of happiness?

There is a sense is which many of us are alive, but we don’t always seem to thrive. We aren’t happy.  We aren’t unhappy.  We’re not really anything.  We are alive.  But we’re not really thriving.  We’re not bad.  We’re not great.  We’re just kinda OK.

In this context, perhaps one of the greatest statements made by Jesus is found in John 10: I came so they can have…more and better life than they ever dreamed of. (Jn. 10:10 The Message)  “Abundant life” some translations say.  “Rich and satisfying life” some translations say.  “More and better life than they ever dreamed of.”  Why did Jesus come?  What is this all about?  He came so you could have “more and better life than you ever dreamed of.”  He came so you could thrive not just be alive.

And this word “life” means so much more than just experiencing forgiveness of sins or escaping the fires of hell.[3] “Life” in Jesus’ mouth has as much to do with our time before death as it does with our time after death.  It has as much to do with here and now as it does with heaven.  Jesus came so that you could experience at this very moment more and better life than you’ve ever dreamed possible.  He came so you could thrive right here and right now.

In fact, in this same chapter, Jesus describes himself as a door which provides access to this abundant life: ⁷ So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. ⁸ All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.  (John 10:7-10 ESV).

We are exploring seven “I Am” statements from Jesus in John’s Gospel.  We’ve heard Jesus say “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” and “I am the good shepherd.”  Here, Jesus says “I am the door.”

Jesus is using an image which may not be familiar to most us.  He describes a door that goes out and in.  In a small Jewish village most families owned a few sheep. The houses had small walled courtyards where the sheep were kept. Because each family had only a few sheep, a shepherd for each household was not justified, so several households would have one shepherd to look after all their sheep. Early each morning the shepherd moved from house to house.  The doorkeepers would open the courtyard door.  The shepherd would call to the sheep.  And the sheep would walk out through the door and follow the shepherd into open country.^[4] When they were in the open country the shepherd would find a cave or create a round stone-walled enclosure.  He might place thorn bushes on top of the stones to keep out wild animals.  The shepherd would lead the sheep through the doorway into the cave or enclosure.  Then the shepherd would sleep across the entrance to keep the sheep safe.^[5]

This image is what Jesus has in mind when he says “I am the door.”  The courtyard door granted the sheep access to the open country as they walked out that courtyard door.  The cave doorway granted the sheep access to safety and protection as they walked in that door.  In the same way Jesus says that he is our door.  Jesus envisions himself as a door which offers access to abundant life.

What we are so often missing, Jesus came to provide.  He is a door which offers access to more and better life than we ever dreamed of.  For people who are alive but not thriving, Jesus is the door which offers access to abundant life.

There are a lot of doors in life aren’t there?  There’s the career door.  There’s the education door.  There’s the relationship door.  And each of them promises to provide access to better life.  If we’ll just get the right career or the right education or the right relationship we’ll be happy.  But Jesus is saying he is the one true door.  He is the only door in your life which can provide you access to rich and satisfying life.

If that’s true, why don’t more of us who follow Jesus experience abundant life?  Why do even we Christians sometimes find ourselves alive yet not truly thriving?

Jesus’ image provides a clue.  Jesus could have used any image to describe this rich life and his role in providing it.  He intentionally chose the image of a door for sheep.  Specifically, Jesus chose the image of a door that goes in and out.  Jesus chose a scene in which sheep in the open country go in through a doorway to a cave or enclosure.  There they find rest, refuge, retreat, and renewal.  And Jesus chose a scene in which sheep in a courtyard go out through a door to the open country where they flourish and thrive.  Jesus could have used any image to describe abundant life and his role in it.  He chose this image.  And in so doing, he gave us an important clue about how to gain access to abundant life, and why some of us may not be experiencing this life.  Jesus is saying that he offers access to an abundant life consisting of both an inward focus and an outward focus. Notice his words again in John 10: Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out… (John 10:9 The Message)  Jesus is describing the way sheep go in that cave door to a place of refuge and projection.  And he is describing the way sheep go out that courtyard door to the open country.  Jesus is our door to rich and satisfying life.  But he is a door through which we must go in and out.  Jesus is picturing the spiritual life as a door that opens both inwardly and outwardly.  And if we want to experience abundant life, we have to learn to live on both sides of the door.

Jesus is picturing the spiritual life as a door which opens two ways.  It opens inward to a quiet and calm place of rest, refuge, retreat, and renewal where sheep can sleep and settle and be protected.  But it also opens outward to the open country where the sheep can flourish, reproduce, and grow.

The earliest Christians built their spirituality around this two-way door.  They talked about the vita contemplative and vita activa.[6] Contemplative life.  Active life.  Contemplative life had an inward focus.  It consisted of habits and practices of rest, renewal and reflection.  The contemplative life was life going in the Jesus-door.  Active life had an outward focus.  It consisted of habits and practices like service and ministry.  The active life was life going out the Jesus-door.  The earliest Christians believed that you had to practice both types of life if you wanted the full life offered by Jesus.  You walked in the Jesus-door to vita contemplative and practiced rest, renewal, and reflection.  But you also walked out the Jesus-door to vita activa and practiced service and ministry to others.

Beloved spiritual writer Henri Nouwen described the full Christian life as one that consists of both an “inward journey” and an “outward journey.”[7] The inward journey leads us to find the Christ dwelling within us.  The outward journey leads us to find the Christ who is dwelling and working out in the world.  The inward journey calls for practices such as solitude, silence, prayer, meditation, and contemplation.  The outward journey calls for practices such as compassion, witness, outreach, healing, and accountability.  Nouwen believed that in order to experience the rich and satisfying life Jesus came to give, we have to engage in both journeys.  We have to journey in the door of Jesus and practice solitude and silence and prayer.  We also have to journey out the door of Jesus and practice compassion and outreach to others.

And here’s the key: we experience Jesus’ abundant life only as we attend to both the inward focus and the outward focus.  Jesus came as a door that opens two ways—inward and outward.  But the reality is that many of us spend a great deal of time only going through this door one-way.  Many of us live our lives largely on one side of the Jesus-door.  For example, some of us go inward through Jesus and often practice rest, refuge, retreat and renewal.  Others of us go outward through Jesus and often practice service and ministry.  But those of us comfortable on the inside of that Jesus-door rarely venture outward.  And those of us comfortable on the outside of that Jesus-door rarely go in.  But we experience Jesus’ abundant life only if we live on both sides of the Jesus-door.

Some of this is related to our personalities and preferences.  The Myers Briggs foundation, the group behind a widely used personality test, writes this:[8] The first pair of psychological preferences is Extraversion and Introversion. Where do you put your attention and get your energy? Do you like to spend time in the outer world of people and things (Extraversion), or in your inner world of ideas and images (Introversion)? Raise your hand if you label yourself an extrovert.  Raise your hand if you label yourself and introvert.  Most of us have a personality and preference for the inner world of ideas and images or the outer world of people and things.  And we carry this preference into our life with Jesus.  Those of us who are introverts spend time going in the Jesus-door and engaging in prayer, reflection, contemplation, silence and solitude.  But we rarely go out the Jesus-door.  Those of us who are extroverts spend our time out the Jesus-door and do mercy, compassion, and outreach.  But we rarely go in that door.  Yet, if we want to experience the true abundant life, we have to live on both sides of the Jesus-door.  Those of us who are introverts need to go out and spend time in mercy and outreach.  Those of us who are extroverts need to go in and spend time in prayer and silence.

Abundant life comes only when a church or an individual engages enthusiastically in both sides of the Jesus-door.  Abundant life flows into us and through us only as we live out a rhythm which involves going in through Jesus for rest and renewal in prayer and study and solitude, and then going out through Jesus for ministry and compassion and service.

In fact, each side of the door leads to the other.  As we go in the Jesus-door for regular times of rest and renewal, we are empowered then to go out the Jesus-door for regular times of ministry and service.  And as we go out the Jesus-door to impact the world around us, what we experience informs the kind of reflection and contemplation we do when we go back in the Jesus-door.

We have tried to frame our ministry at Highland around this idea.  Our vision is to help people discover the more they are meant for.  We want people to experience the abundant life Jesus has for them.  And this takes place as people engage in four activities.  Worship God and Grow with friends.  That’s inward work.  Serve others and Share Jesus.  That’s outward work.  We believe that as a church we’ve got to develop a rhythm of going in the Jesus-door and going out the Jesus-door.  We gather in the Jesus-door for worship and growing with friends in Sunday School classes and Huddles.  We scatter out the Jesus-door for service in ministry and sharing Jesus with others in places like our Reach Groups.  Highland experiences full life only as we live on both sides of the Jesus-door.  The same is true for each of us individually.

Unfortunately, we tend to judge others by what side of the door they spend their time in.  Those of us who like to go out the Jesus-door and do ministry and service tend to label those who spend time in the Jesus-door as people who are unconcerned about the world and disconnected from real life.  Those of us who like to go in the Jesus-door and do prayer and solitude tend to label those who spend time out the Jesus-door as superficial and busybodies.  But both sides of the Jesus-door are equally important.

Most likely, you tend to spend the bulk of your time and energy on one side of this door.  Some of you are constantly going in the Jesus-door and spending time in silence, prayer, and Bible study.  Others are you are constantly going out the Jesus-door and spending time in ministry and service to others.  Raise your hand if you tend to spend most of your time in the Jesus-door.  Raise your hand if you tend to spend most of your time out the Jesus-door.  And because we neglect the other side of the door, we fail to experience the rich and satisfying life Jesus came to give.  We fail to experience abundance because we fail to live on both sides of the door.  If you want to increase the richness and abundance of your life, those of you who spend most of your time out the Jesus-door should carve out some time to go in the door.  Determine this week to spend some time in silence, solitude, prayer, reflection, or study.  Those of you who spend most of your time in the Jesus-door should carve out time to go out the door.  Determine this week to spend some time in compassion, mercy, service and ministry.  The more we live on both sides of the door, the more we experience Jesus’ abundant life.

In his book The Circle Maker Mark Batterson tells this story that illustrates the power living in the Jesus-door:[9] A few years ago, I was reading through The Book of Legends, a collection of stories from the Jewish Talmud, when I discovered the true legend of Honi the Circle Maker… A devastating drought threatened to destroy a generation–the generation before Jesus. The last of the Jewish prophets had died off nearly four centuries before. Miracles were a distant memory. And God was nowhere to be heard. But there was one man, an old sage who lived outside the walls of Jerusalem, who dared to pray anyway. His name was Honi. And even if the people could no longer hear God, he believed that God could still hear them.  With a six-foot staff in his hand, Honi drew a circle in the sand. Then he dropped to his knees and raised his hands to heaven. With the authority of the prophet Elijah who called down fire from heaven, Honi called down rain.  “Lord of the Universe, I swear before your great name that I will not move from this circle until you have shown mercy upon your children.”  Then it happened.  As his prayer ascended to the heavens, raindrops descended to the earth. The people rejoiced over the rain, but Honi wasn’t satisfied with a sprinkle. Still kneeling within the circle, Honi lifted his voice over the sounds of celebration.  “Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain that will fill cisterns, pits, and caverns.”  The sprinkle turned into such a torrential downpour that the people fled to the Temple Mount to escape the flash floods. Honi stayed and prayed inside his protracted circle.  “Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of benevolence, benediction, and grace.”  Then, like a well-proportioned sun shower on a summer afternoon, it began to rain in perfect moderation. Some within the Sanhedrin threatened excommunication because his prayer was too bold for their taste, but the miracle couldn’t be repudiated. Eventually, Honi the Circle Maker was honored for “the prayer that saved a generation.” The circle he drew in the sand symbolizes the power of a single prayer to change the course of history. Time spent in the Jesus-door in things like prayer can save a generation.

In a few weeks I’m presenting at the Christian Scholar’s Conference at Lipscomb University in Nashville.  During that conference, Lipscomb will confer an Honorary Doctorate of Laws upon veteran civil rights attorney Fred Gray.  When Gray was in college in Nashville, he vowed, “to become a lawyer, return to Alabama, and destroy everything segregated I could find.” Gray began his legal career as a sole practitioner, less than a year out of law school, and at age twenty-four, represented Mrs. Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, the action that initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Gray was also Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first civil rights lawyer. This was the beginning of a legal career that now spans over 55 years.  Determined to right the wrongs he found in his native State of Alabama, Gray has been at the forefront of changing the social fabric of America regarding desegregation, integration, constitutional law, racial discrimination in voting, housing, education, jury service, farm subsidies, medicine and ethics, and generally in improving the national judicial system.  One of the first African Americans to serve in the Alabama Legislature since reconstruction, Gray was also the first African American elected as president of the Alabama State Bar Association.  Gray is a powerful example of what can happen when even just one person commits to living out the Jesus-door and ministering and bringing justice and righteousness into a culture.  An entire country can be changed.

As we close I want you to think about these two questions: On which side of the Jesus-door to I tend to live?  What is one practice I can engage in this week that will help me spend time on the other side of the Jesus-door?

[2] Julia Baird, “Positively Downbeat,” Newsweek (9/25/09).

[3] John Ortberg, “Ministry and FTT,” LeadershipJournal.net (June 2008).

^[4] Kruse, C. G. (2003). Vol. 4: John: An introduction and commentary. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (229–230). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

^[5] Kruse, C. G. (2003). Vol. 4: John: An introduction and commentary. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (231). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[6] Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (IVP, 1984), 99.

[7] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit (HarperCollins, 2010), 123.

(Author)

[8] http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/extraversion-or-introversion.asp.

[9] http://www.catalystspace.com/content/read/the_circle_maker/

On Sunday morning’s we are exploring seven statements from Jesus, about Jesus which are recorded in John’s Gospel.  They all begin with the words “I am.”  We call them the “I Am” statements.  The series is called “Slice” because we so often just want a slice of Jesus with the rest of our life.  But in these “I Am” statements, Jesus shows us what it would be like to have all of Jesus; to let Jesus truly be our life.  This morning’s “I am” statement comes from John 8 and John 9.  Jesus claims to be “the light of the world.”  What does this mean?  What kind of light is Jesus?  What does his light enable us to see?

Two lights played significant roles in my life when I was young: a night light and a black light.  As you know, these are two different types of lights.  A black light exposes something bad and a night light uncovers something good. As a young child, I had a night light.  Like many young children, I was afraid of the dark.  I could imagine creatures with tentacles under my bed, monsters with fangs in the corner of the room, and goblins with long fingernails hiding near the window.  But the warm and soft glow of the nightlight uncovered the fact that all was well.  The night light revealed that there were no monsters.  There was only my safe room.  Night lights comfort.  Night lights relieve.  They show that the bad thing we thought was there isn’t.  Night lights uncover something good.

By contrast, black lights expose something bad.  There are all kinds of ugly stains that are invisible in normal light that become visible in black light.  We think there’s nothing bad, but then the black light exposes something really nasty.  Stephen Kingsley writes this: “In our family carpet cleaning business we offered a special service for removing pet urine odors. To show potential customers their need for the service, I would darken the room and then turn on a powerful black light. The black light caused urine crystals to glow brightly.  To the horror of the homeowner every drop and dribble could be seen, not only on the carpet, but usually on walls, drapes, furniture, and even on lamp shades. One homeowner begged me to shut off the light: ‘I can’t bear to see anymore. I don’t care what it costs. Please clean it up!’ Another woman said, ‘I’ll never be comfortable in my home again.’  The offense was there all the time, but it was invisible until the right light exposed it.”[1]

Black lights expose something bad.  Night lights can uncover something good.  These two lights help us make sense of this morning’s text.

Two stories about light are narrated in John 8 and John 9.  Twice, once in each chapter, Jesus talks about light.  Near the beginning of John 8, Jesus says this: “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (Jn. 8:12 ESV).  And near the beginning of John 9 Jesus says something similar: “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (Jn. 9:5 ESV).  The statement in John 9 comes at the beginning of a story about a blind man whom Jesus heals.  Jesus’ saying “I am the light” seems to introduce that story.  Last year we listened to that story during another series.  We won’t focus on it this morning.  The similar statement in John 8 comes at the end of a different story.  Jesus’ saying “I am the light” seems to conclude that story.  That story in John 8 will be our focus this morning.

Both the story in John 8 and the story in John 9 are stories about lights.  Both stories involve a conflict between Jesus and the leaders of religion. Jesus has one kind of light.  And the leaders of religion have another kind of light.  This creates conflict.

Let’s read the story in John 8 which Jesus’ statement “I am the light” is attached to:¹ but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. ³ The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst ⁴ they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” (Jn. 8:1-5 ESV).

2T.4

A brief word about our story: your Bible, like mine, may indicate that this story is not considered to be part of the Gospel which John wrote.  We do not possess the actual document John wrote.  But we have early copies.  And those early copies do not have this story.  This story, however, is very important.  Later copies of John’s Gospel have it.  And most scholars believe that this event actually happened.

A group called “the scribes and the Pharisees” show up early in the morning in the courts of the temple.  They’ve brought with them a woman whom John says, “had been caught in adultery.”  She’s not just been accused of adultery, like some political candidate might be.  She’s doesn’t just have a history of adultery, like some prostitute might.  She’s been “caught” in adultery.  This means she’s been caught “in the act.”  Moments or seconds ago these leaders of religion yanked her out of bed where she was sleeping with a man she was not married to.  She’s not just shoplifted.  She’s not just been caught speeding.  She’s been caught breaking either her or the man’s wedding vows.

And while such behavior might be commonplace today, it was severely condemned in Jesus’ day.  In fact, as the leaders of religion point out, in the Old Testament law “Moses commanded us to stone such women.”  This was a crime worthy of death.  Actually, the Old Testament law required both the man and the woman to be put to death (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22).  But the leaders of religion have conveniently left the man back in bed.  They just want the woman.  And though they clearly have impure motives, their reading of the law is correct.  Regarding the woman, her crime is worthy of death.  She should be stoned to death.

Let’s imagine that this story is a story about light.  After all, one verse after this story ends we hear Jesus say, “I am the light of the world.”  Let’s imagine that this story is a story about light.  Let’s imagine that the leaders of religion have one kind of light and Jesus has a different kind of light.  What kind of light are the leaders of religion carrying?  I’ll make this suggestion: Religion often carries a black light to expose our evil. There’s only one concern in the hearts and minds of these religious leaders: expose the woman’s evil.  Reveal her misdeed.  After all, they make the woman stand, as John puts it, “in the midst.”  They make her stand right there in the middle.  Visible to all.  And they don’t give her name.  Even if they know it, they don’t use it.  They just call her “This woman.”  They want to portray her as a monster.  They want to picture her as inhumane.  These leaders of religion drag the woman into the middle of this crowd and turn on their brightest black light so that the stain of her sin is visible to everyone around.

And too often that’s true with religion today.  Today many people still assume that religion has no warm and comforting light to offer.  It’s only light is like a black light which illuminates the sin and evil of the world around us.  Scot McKnight writes about Van Gogh:[2] He says that if you follow van Gogh’s life, you find a gradual increase of the color yellow in his paintings.  For van Gogh, the color yellow indicated the hope and warmth of the love of God.  The more yellow you found in a painting the more optimistic Van Gogh was about the world being filled with this warm and comforting light of God’s love.  But in a particularly depressed state, according to McKnight, van Gogh pained “The Starry Night.”  The painting features a yellow sun and yellow swirling stars.  Van Gogh was saying that in nature we can see the light of God’s love.  In addition, in the houses of the nearby village we see glimpses of yellow light.  God’s love is filling those houses.  But notice the church building which sits near the center of the painting.  It’s the one item in the painting with no yellow at all.  It was van Gogh’s way of saying that religion offers no warm and comforting light at all.  The only light it offers is one which accentuates the darkness and depression of the world.   Religion carries only a black light to expose our evil.

Earlier this year I attended a seminar led, in part, by a friend named Steve Joiner.  Joiner is a minister and runs the Institute for Conflict Resolution at Lipscomb University.  He shared the story of a time when he was flying somewhere and was assigned a middle seat in the airplane.  Through conversation, he learned that the two men on either side of him were a gay couple headed to a gay and lesbian function.  They asked Steve what he did.  He leveled with them: “I’m a fundamentalist minister.”  One of them laughed and said, “No, really.  What do you do?”  Joiner said again, “I’m a fundamentalist minister.”  Both gay men said, “You can’t be!”  “Why?” Joiner asked.  “Because you haven’t told us yet that we are going to hell!”  Most people expect religious people to carry black lights and to immediately expose and draw attention to the evil that’s in their lives.  Because that’s what religion does.

One of the most recent and gut-wrenching examples of this comes from a film entitled “The Stoning of Soroya M.”^[3] The move is a true story, based on a non-fiction book by the same name.  It takes place in an Iranian village in the late 1980s.  The movie tells the true story of a woman falsely accused of adultery.  The fundamentalist religious leaders in the village have her put to death by stoning. ^[4] The film was made to draw attention to the cruel way that religion was operating in Iran in the 1980’s.  It is a troubling illustration of the way religious people carry only a black light and use it to expose the evil in others.  That is the light we see in the hands of the religious leaders in John 8.

But notice how Jesus concludes the story.  In John 8:12 Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  What kind of light is Jesus talking about?  What does Jesus illuminate?

Will Davis Jr. wrote a book entitled Ten Things Jesus Never Said.[5] One of the ten things Davis suggests Jesus never said is this: “You’re too far gone to be saved.”  Davis puts it this way: “Is there ever a point where we get too sinful for God?  If we hit new moral lows or set records in the sin department, isn’t there a line we cross where we simply move beyond God’s reach?… After all, in the world God created, there are clearly points of no return.  If someone commits a heinous crime, they can go to jail or, in some cases, even forfeit their life for what they did.  For some extremely poor decisions, there’s only justice and consequences.  Wouldn’t it be the same with God?  Why shouldn’t we expect that God, who is fair and just, would determine that there are just certain things he won’t pardon?…Is there a point where we’re simply too sinful for God to save?” Isn’t that ultimately the question raised by the leaders of religion?  This woman is too sinful to save.  This woman’s mistakes have exceeded God’s mercy.  The just and fair thing to do is to stone her.  We’ve got to make an example of her.  The community needs to see what happens to people who break families.  Jesus, what do you say?

But notice how Jesus addresses this: ⁶This they said to test him,  that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷ And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”⁸ And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹ But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. ¹⁰ Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” ¹¹ She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (Jn. 8:6-11 ESV).  If the leaders of religion want to play around with a black light, Jesus can play that game.  He strips the black light from their hands, removes its harsh glow on the woman, and turns its light on them.  He says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  All they can see now is their own sin.  The oldest and wisest are the first to see the ugly stains on their own hearts.  But eventually, the entire group leaves.

But the black light is not Jesus’ light of choice.  He only uses it here as a defensive weapon.  His preferred light is different.  It turns out that Jesus carries a night light to uncover God’s compassion.  When Jesus finishes this story by saying, “I am the light of the world,” he’s not saying that he’s come to shed light on our sin.  He’s saying, that he’s come to shed light on our God.  This story is the ultimate illustration of this.  Sinners like this woman, like us, fear God like a child fears the dark.  We can imagine all kinds of things going on in the dark recesses of God’s mind.  In fact, when we are at our worst, we tend to imagine the worst about God.  We presume he’s going to be a monster because of the evil in our lives.  But Jesus has come to shed light on God’s compassion.  He’s come to help us see that even in our mistakes, God offers mercy.

Skye Jethani relates a story about holding a series of meetings with college-aged students.[6] On one night the students wanted to discuss how they were struggling with the same sins over and over.  And as they failed day after day, the students agreed on one fundamental thing: God was extremely disappointed with them.  Often through tears, students shared stories about how they believed God must be disappointed with them.  After listening to their stories, Jethani asked, “How many of you were raised in a Christian home?” They all raised their hands. “How many of you grew up in a Bible-centered church?” All hands stayed up. Shaking his head in disbelief, Jethani said, “You’ve all spent eighteen or twenty years in the church. You’ve been taught the Bible from the time you could crawl, and you attend Christian colleges, but not one of you gave the right answer. Not one of you said that in the midst of your sin God still loves you.”

Especially when we struggle with sin again and again, we imagine the worst.  We think God is so disappointed in us.  But Jesus did not come to confirm those fears.  Rather he came to relieve them.  With his light Jesus does not seek to expose our evil as much as he seeks to uncover God’s compassion.  Jesus shines his light on God so that we can finally see that even in the midst of our sin, God still loves us.

We see this comforting light at work in the final dialogue: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Lord.” “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”  It’s not your sin that Jesus came to highlight.  It’s God’s grace.  That’s the light Jesus came to bear.  That’s the torch Jesus came to carry.  He came to shine away your worst fears about God.

Some of you this morning have been dying under the glare of the black light of religion.  Either some religious person has been holding it over you.  Or you yourself have been holding it over you.  And all you can see is the evil in your life.  All you can think about is that sin, that mistake, that stupid thing you said or did which you never should have said or did.  And it’s eating you up inside.  But Jesus has come to relieve you.  As the light of the world, he’s come to show you something besides your sin.  He’s come to show you a God who loves you deeply in spite of that sin.  And though religious people and even you want to stone you and condemn you, Jesus does not.  He wants to surround you with love and grace and mercy and forgiveness.  If you’ll let him, Jesus can be the light of your life.

And that light is the only light that can truly lead us away from our sin.  We might think that the religious light is the only light that will drive us from sin.  But this is not the case.  It’s only when we truly see the love and grace of God that we are drawn away from sin to something far better.  Tim Keller tells this story:[7] The acclaimed foreign film Three Seasons is a series of vignettes about life in postwar Vietnam. One of the stories is about Hai, a cyclo driver (a bicycle rickshaw), and Lan, a beautiful prostitute…Hai is in love with Lan …. Lan lives in grinding poverty and longs to live in the beautiful world where she works, but in which she never spends the night. She hopes that the money she makes by prostitution will be her means of escape, but instead the work brutalizes and enslaves her.  Then Hai enters a cyclo race and wins the top prize. With the money he brings Lan to the hotel. He pays for the night and pays her fee. Then, to everyone’s shock, he tells her he just wants to watch her fall asleep. Instead of using his power and wealth to have sex with her, he spends it to purchase a place for her for one night in a normal world… Lan finds such grace deeply troubling at first, thinking that Han has done this to control her. When it becomes apparent that he is using his power to serve rather than use her, it begins to transform her, making it impossible to return to a life of prostitution.

This is what happened to the woman caught in adultery.  The leaders of religion shined their light on the ugliness of her sin.  But Jesus shined his light on the beauty of God’s love.  And when it became apparent to her that Jesus was using his power to serve her rather than use her, it began to transform her.  It made it impossible to return to a life of adultery.  She went and she sinned no more.

[2] Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed (Paraclete Press, 2004), 65-66.

[3] http://www.thestoning.com/flash.php#/story/

[4] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204119704574235830111853594.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

[5] Will Davis Jr. Ten Things Jesus Never Said,33.

[6] Skye Jethani, With (Thomas H. Nelson, 2011), 80-82.

[7] Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God (Riverhead Books, 2008), 96-98.

If you go out to eat at an average restaurant, you’ll find two kinds of dishes.  There are main dishes.  And there side dishes.  I suppose there are times when we choose a restaurant solely because it has our favorite side dish.  For example, you might choose Olive Garden just because you love the bread sticks and the salad.  But most of the time we choose a restaurant because of the main dish.  We are there to eat the entrée.  The side dishes are nice.  But what we hunger for is the main dish.  For many of us, a satisfying meal consists not just of a side dish but of a main dish. We can think about our lives in a similar way.  There are side dishes.  And there are main dishes.  There are things that are not terribly important.  And there are things that are extremely important.  We all have our side dishes and our main dishes in life.  This is even true when it comes to what we would probably call our spiritual life.  Spiritually, some things are more important to us than others.  This morning and in this new series we’re exploring what it might be like to let Jesus be not just a side dish, but the main dish of our lives.  We are exploring what life might be like if didn’t just take a slice of Jesus, but we took all of Jesus.

It seems that large numbers of religious people today want Jesus as the main dish.  There is a growing call in the Christian world for the Christian faith to focus more on Jesus and less on other things.

A wildly popular video captures this enthusiasm for making Jesus preeminent.  In January of this year, a poet named Jefferson Bethke created a video entitled “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.”[1] It’s a monologue trashing religion and upholding Jesus.  Here’s part of what Bethke says in the video: “I mean if religion is so great, why has it started so many wars; Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor…Religion might preach grace, but another thing they practice; Tend to ridicule God’s people, they did it to John The Baptist; They can’t fix their problems, and so they just mask it; Not realizing religion’s like spraying perfume on a casket; …Because if grace is water, then the church should be an ocean; It’s not a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken; Which means I don’t have to hide my failure, I don’t have to hide my sin; Because it doesn’t depend on me it depends on him…Which is why Jesus hated religion, and for it he called them fools; Don’t you see so much better than just following some rules…Now back to the point, one thing is vital to mention; How Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrum; See one’s the work of God, but one’s a man made invention; See one is the cure, but the other’s the infection; See because religion says do, Jesus says done; Religion says slave, Jesus says son; Religion puts you in bondage, while Jesus sets you free; Religion makes you blind, but Jesus makes you see”  Since its posting on January 12, the video has been viewed over 19 million times on YouTube.

Its popularity, I believe, is due to the fact that it expresses what many Christians today are feeling.  We seem to truly want Jesus as the main dish.  We seem to want to make everything else a side dish.  What we appear to truly hunger for is Jesus.  But I wonder if that’s really what we’re asking for?

In Jesus’ day, large numbers of spiritual people also seemed to want Jesus as the main dish.  This becomes very clear in John 6.  Notice this description: ¹After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. ² And a large crowd was following him… ³ Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. ⁴ Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. ⁵ Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him… (John 6:1-5 ESV).  According to v. 2 and vs. 5 a “large crowd” is “following” Jesus and “coming toward” Jesus.  They seem to be hungering after Jesus.  What they appear to want more than anything else is Jesus.

We read something similar a few verses later: ²⁴ So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.   ²⁵ When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” (John 6:24-25 ESV).  Once again a “crowd” is “seeking Jesus.”  They seem to be hungering after Jesus.  What they appear to want more than anything else is Jesus.

But I wonder if that’s really what they’re asking for?  It appears that these spiritual people want Jesus as their main dish.  But it turns out that what they truly wanted was Jesus as a side dish.  Listen once more to vs. 2: And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.  They’ve seen or heard of the official’s son whom Jesus healed in John 4.  They’ve seen or heard of the invalid whom Jesus healed in John 5.  John calls these “signs.”  These miracles are sign-posts pointing to the deity of Jesus.  The crowd has seen or heard of these signs.  And that’s what this crowd truly wants, according to John.  They aren’t coming to Jesus because they want Jesus.  They are coming to Jesus because they want the healings and the miracles.  Jesus is actually their side dish.  The main dish is really the miracles.  What they are truly hungry for, what they want as an entrée, are the miracles and healings.

The same thing is true of the crowd mentioned later in John 6.  Jesus points it out in vs. 26: Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” This crowd is a little different than the first crowd.  They aren’t hungry for signs and miracles.  They are hungry for more of the food Jesus just provided.  A few verses earlier Jesus fed this crowd with five barley loaves and two fish.  And Jesus perceives now that’s the real reason they are seeking him once more.  They aren’t coming to Jesus because they want Jesus.  They are coming to Jesus because they want another good meal.  Jesus is actually their side dish.  The main dish is really the food.

In fact, we read that just after Jesus provided the meal, in vs. 15, this same crowd tries to take Jesus by force to make him king. What they really want is the political and cultural change someone like Jesus can bring to their desperate nation of Israel.  Overwhelmed and overshadowed by their overload, the Roman Empire, they see in Jesus an opportunity to finally end Roman rule and usher in a new era of economic prosperity, health, and a golden age.  Jesus is just a side dish.  The main dish is the political and cultural change he could bring to their country.

I suspect sometimes we’re just like these crowds.  We say what we really want is just Jesus.  We say we want everything else to just be a side dish.  But I suspect that sometimes what we truly want is Jesus as a side dish. For some of us, what we’re really after is healing.  We want healing for our marriage.  So we turn to Jesus.  We want healing from our cancer.  So we turn to Jesus.  We want healing from a loss.  So we turn to Jesus.  This isn’t a bad thing.  Jesus has the power to heal.  Highland is filled with people who can testify to Jesus’ power.  But what if Jesus, for some reason, won’t bring that healing?  Will you still want him?  Will Jesus alone be enough?  Or does it have to be Jesus + healing?  If, for some reason, Jesus doesn’t heal your marriage and it falls apart, or doesn’t heal your cancer and it gets worse, or doesn’t heal the loss and you get depression, will you still want Jesus?  Is Jesus really your main dish?  Or is the healing the main dish?

In his book Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis writes the fictional dialogue that takes place between demons who are trying to divert people away from the Christian faith.  At one point the demon Screwtape writes to the demon Wormwood:[2] “What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And’.  You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order…” These were things that would have been important to Lewis’ readers in the early twentieth century.  Tullian Tchividjian (pronounced cha-vi-jin) writes that “Today, Screwtape’s list would doubtless look different.  The currently tempting formulas might include ‘Christianity and coolness,’ ‘Christianity and self-affirmation,’ ‘Christianity and self-improvement,’ ‘Christianity and personal progress,’… ‘Christianity and popularity,’ ‘Christianity and success,’ ‘Christianity and power,’ Christianity and social status,’ ‘Christianity and reform,’ even ‘Christianity and tradition.’”[3] His point is that most of us have an “and.”  Very few of us truly hunger for just Jesus.  There’s an “and.”  There’s something else that Jesus is the means to.  That something else is really our main dish.  Jesus is just the side dish.

Jesus challenges this when he says this to the crowds: ²⁷ Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. (Jn. 6:27 ESV).  What I’m here for, Jesus is saying, is something much deeper than just these side dishes.  The crowds misunderstand Jesus and they get into a debate about the bread and fish again.  At the end of the discussion they beg Jesus in v. 34 to keep giving them bread, to keep filling their physical hunger.  But Jesus wants so much more than this.

He puts it this way:  ³⁵ Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst… ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever… ⁵³ So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. ⁵⁵For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (Jn. 6:35-56 ESV).

Do you hear what Jesus is saying?  He’s saying something like this: “I am the main course.  I am not just a side dish.  I am the bread of life.  If you eat me, you don’t need anything else.  If you consume me, you will be fulfilled.  If you have chewed me up and swallowed me down, it will not matter what else you haven’t eaten.  If you make me the main dish, you won’t even need the side dishes.”

This is a difficult teaching.  Jesus is essentially saying that all these “ands” don’t really matter.  He is suggesting that all these side dishes aren’t necessary.  He’s promising that if all these “and’s” and all these side dishes were taken away, and all we had was Jesus, we’d still be fulfilled.  We’d truly be fulfilled.

But not everyone believes that.  Listen to what happened to the crowds at this point: ⁴¹ So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”   ⁴² They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”… ⁶⁶ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:41-42, 66 ESV).

Some in Jesus’ day were not satisfied with Jesus as the main dish. Strip away the healing, and many walk away.  Strip away the meals, and many walk away.  For many, Jesus alone simply isn’t enough.  He’s not enough to be the main course.  He’s a great side-dish.  He’s a wonderful slice of bread on a plate filled with other things.  But if everything else is stripped away, and he’s all we really have to eat, we’re just not sure we’ll be satisfied.

But the point of this text is that we can be satisfied with Jesus as the main dish—especially when side dishes disappear. Jesus is challenging us.  Be he’s also comforting us.  He’s saying that when you get to those hard times in life when all the “and’s” are removed and many of the side dishes are gone, you can still find fulfillment in him.

A friend and I are studying the lives of two Christians: Saint John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.[4] Both lived in Spain in the 1500’s.  Teresa experienced many hardships.  Her mother died when she was twelve.  Shortly after becoming a nun she suffered a paralyzing illness that left her an invalid for three years.  She recovered but then came under attack by spiritual mentors and leaders for her actions and teachings.  Their critique had such an impact on her that for two years she could not pray.  For twenty years she wrestled with self-doubt.  She writes that, in the end, the only way she survived these hardships was that she learned that Jesus alone was enough.  Her health disappeared.  Her good reputation disappeared.  Her self-confidence disappeared.  She had no side dishes left.  But she did still have Jesus.  And she learned that he was truly enough.  She wrote a poem which expressed her conviction.  It is often referred to by its first line: “Nada te turbe – Let nothing disturb you.”  In English the poem reads, Let nothing disturb you; Let nothing make you afraid; All things pass; But God is unchanging, Patience is enough for everything.  You who have God lack nothing.  God alone is sufficient. As each side dish was removed from her life—her mother, her health, her standing—all that remained was Christ.  And in the end, she realized that he was sufficient.

Tullian Tchividjian wrote a book entitled Jesus+Nothing = Everything.[5] In it, he writes of a troubling time in 2009.  The Florida church he planted was merging with declining church nearby.  But members of the declining church protested Tchividjian’s leadership.  Blogs were written and letters were circulated with false accusations against Tchividjian.  A petition drive was started to remove him from the pulpit.  He writes, “Never had I experienced anything so tough. I could hardly eat, had trouble sleeping, and was continually battling nausea. I felt at the absolute end of myself.”  Just as the conflict climaxed, he left on vacation.  He writes: “In my misery I told God that I wanted my old life back. The answer from God…was simple–but sobering: ‘It’s not your old life you want back; it’s your old idols you want back, and I love you too much to give them back to you.’  You see, I never realized how dependent I’d become on human approval and acceptance until it was taken away. For the first time, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being deeply disliked and distrusted. I was realizing just how much I’d been relying on the endorsement of others to validate me–to make me feel like I mattered. In and of itself, human approval and acceptance are not bad things. They are, in fact, a gift from God. But I had turned them into idols by making them my primary source of meaning and value and worth and significance, so that without them I was miserable and depressed.”    He had made acceptance from others his main dish.  And Jesus had become his side dish.  But when the acceptance was stripped away, he was forced to allow Jesus to be the main dish.  And suddenly, for the first time in his life, he realized that Jesus was enough.  He slowly began to realize that Jesus + nothing = everything.  Jesus became the bread of his life.

Ultimately, that’s what this whole series is about.  We’re exploring the “I Am” statements of Jesus.  Seven times Jesus reveals who he is in a statement in John’s Gospel that begins with “I Am.”  And every one of these statements relates to the idea of “life.[6] One of the key words in John’s gospel is life.  It is used at least thirty-six times.  The seven I am statements all relate to John’s theme of life in Christ.  If you want life, all you need is Jesus.  Jesus called himself “the bread of life” and “the light of life.”  He is the door of the sheep that enables us to find “abundant life.”  He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life so that we might have life. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus told Martha.  To the disciples He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life”  Jesus is “the true vine” which brings life to us, the branches.  These I Am statements are many different ways of saying one thing: Jesus is life.  Jesus is enough.  So often we make him our side dish.  We just want a slice of him.  And we make everything else the main dish.  But Jesus wants us to know that he, alone, is enough.  If we’ll make him the main dish of our life, we will always be fulfilled.  Even when everything else is stripped away from us—our health, our dreams, our career, our loved ones, our finances—we’ll learn that Jesus is enough.  Jesus + nothing will = everything.  He is the bread of life.  Will you let him be yours today?

As we stand and sing, I want you to think about your side dishes and the main dish.  What is one thing that you’ve made a main dish but truly ought to be a side dish?  While we are singing, if it would be helpful, I invite you to write that thing down on a card and bring it up to this table and place it on the small side dish.  It will be a tangible way of beginning to treat it truly as a side dish and not as the main dish.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters – Special Illustrated Edition (HarperOne, 2009), 153.

[3] Tullian Tchividjian Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Crossway, 2011), 38-39.

[4] Gerald G. May The Dark Night of the Soul (HarperOne, 2004), 15-40.

[5] http://www.catalystspace.com/content/read/jesus_nothing_everything/

[6] Warren Wiersbe Jesus in the Present Tense (David C. Cook, 2011), Kindle Edition, 305.

Last year preacher and author Rob Bell wrote a book about hell.  The book was called Love Wins.[1] It sparked a firestorm within the larger Christian community because it challenged traditional teaching about hell.  It also fueled serious discussion within the larger non-Christian culture.  For example, Time magazine followed the book’s release with an edition with these words splashed across the cover: “What if there’s no hell?”[2] A few months from now a movie will be released entitled “Hell and Mr. Fudge.”  The movie tells the true story of a Church of Christ minister who rebelled against traditional views of hell.  There’s a lot of discussion in our churches and in our culture about hell.

In his book, Rob Bell points out why hell is such a provocative issue: “A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear…Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, will only a select number “make it to a better place” and every single other person suffer in torment and punishment forever? Is this acceptable to God? Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?”  As Bell reveals, there are many difficult questions when it comes to hell.

This morning we begin a 4-part series on the problem of hell.  We’ll be exploring four concerns that many have about the traditional doctrine of hell. 

• We’ll look at the capacity of hell.  For many, the traditional Christian teaching means there’s going to be too many people in hell—too many who do not deserve to be there.  The problem is put this way: Hell is overcrowded.
• We’ll look at the severity of hell.  For many, the traditional Christian teaching means that hell is too severe.  A loving God wouldn’t treat people this way.  The problem is put this way: Hell us unloving.
• We’ll also look at the eternality of hell.  For many, the traditional Christian teaching about hell being eternal is sickening.  It might be one thing for God to punish the ungodly in a severe way.  But to punish them for all eternity?  The problem is put this way: Hell is unrelenting.
• We’ll look also at the reality of hell.  That’s where we begin this morning.  The problem is put this way: Hell is fabricated.

Obviously, we will be covering a lot of ground in this series.  It will demand more of your mind and heart than normal.  And, I can’t answer every question fully.  Thus this series may just be the beginning of your own study of hell.  In this morning’s Link you’ll find some of the books I’ll refer to in this series.

We’ll begin with the last problem I mentioned: many people have a problem with the reality of hell.  There are Christians and non-Christians who feel that hell is a fabrication, one big lie, which preachers and churches have created to manipulate others.  They feel that Jesus never talked about hell, and the authors of the Bible, at least the New Testament authors, have no real interest in hell.  As I read in the quote a few seconds ago, some feel that belief in hell is misguided and toxic.  They believe Christians have made a mountain out of a molehill.  If you really took the time to read the Bible, you’d find that hell is not a very big deal. 

But this isn’t just a contemporary concern.  It’s a concern that’s existed for a long time.  Seminary president R. Albert Mohler Jr. writes about the history of people’s struggle with the doctrine of hell.[3] The first major challenge to the traditional view of hell came from a theologian named Origen.  Origen believed everyone would ultimately be reconciled to God.  He taught that if anyone did go to hell, it would only be temporary.  But Origen’s teaching was rejected in AD 553.  The church’s consensus on hell continued to be widely held for another thousand years.

During the seventeenth century and eighteenth century in Europe, some religious thinkers and philosophers began to raise serious questions about hell.  One group named the Socinians taught that hell would not be eternal but that the ungodly would be destroyed completely in hell.  Philosophers began arguing that hell should be viewed metaphorically, not literally.

In the nineteenth century, British Prime Minister William Gladstone stated that hell had been “relegated … to the far-off corners of the Christian mind … there to sleep in the deep shadow as a thing needless in our enlightened and progressive age.”  He and others believed it was time to rid the Christian faith of the old-fashioned notion of hell.

Certain preachers and theologians in America agreed.  Influential Brooklyn preacher Henry Ward Beecher called the doctrine of an eternal hell a “hideous” doctrine and “spiritual barbarism.”  And in the 1970s and 1980s, challenges to the traditional doctrine of hell finally moved into evangelical Christianity.  The point is simply that Christians and non-Christians have long wrestled with the notion of hell.  If you’ve ever struggled, you are not alone.  The doctrine of hell is one that raises very serious questions.

I want to address these doubts by surveying what the Bible actually says about hell.  We don’t have time to look at every text, or to go into much depth with any one text.  I don’t normally cover this many texts in a sermon.  But this survey is essential to addressing the question at hand in this morning’s sermon.  I encourage you to write these texts down and study them later on your own.

The New Testament leaves no doubt about the reality of hell. You cannot read the New Testament and believe that hell is a molehill.  You cannot read the New Testament and believe that hell is a marginal and unimportant matter.

Let’s look at Paul’s writings.  Surprisingly, the word “hell” does not occur in Paul’s writings. But Paul does teach about hell. We’ll look at Romans and 2 Thessalonians.  In his letter to the Roman church, Paul relates some important truths about the future punishment of the ungodly.

• Paul writes that the wicked are objects of God’s wrath (9:22) and they continually store up wrath for the day of wrath (2:5–8; 3:5).
• Paul writes that the future punishment of the ungodly consists of “death” and “destruction.” Sinners, Paul states, deserve death (1:32), the wages of sin is death (6:16–23), and those who live according to the flesh should expect death (8:13). Also, Paul writes that sinners are vessels of wrath “prepared for destruction” (9:22).
• He writes of future punishment as being “accursed and cut off from Christ” (9:3 ESV).

Paul teaches most directly about hell in 2 Thessalonians.  Hell, Paul writes is “vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord…” (1:8-9).

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Two passages in Hebrews talk about future judgment:

• Hebrews 6:1–3 refers to the future punishment of the wicked as “eternal judgment” (6:2), which the author says is an “elementary doctrine” of the faith (cf. 6:1).
• Hebrews 10:27–30 depicts this judgment as fearful and dreadful, a “fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”

Peter and Jude write about hell.

• Peter and Jude both depict hell as “destruction” (2 Peter 2:1, 3, 12; Jude 5, 10, 11).
• Both describe hell is like a gloomy dungeon, where rebellious angels are held for judgment (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6 is similar).
• Peter likens hell to Sodom and Gomorrah’s burning to ashes (2 Peter 2:6)
• Peter also writes that hell is a place of retribution (2:13) and “utter darkness” (2:17)
• Jude describes hell both as a punishment of “eternal fire” (Jude 7) and “gloomy darkness (Jude 6).

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Revelation contains some of the most noteworthy passages on hell.  Consider Revelation 14:9–11:  “⁹ And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, ¹⁰ he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.¹¹ And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.” In Rev. 20:15 John writes, “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Perhaps most importantly, Jesus speaks of hell.  Jesus gives a central place to hell in his best-known sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matt. 5–7. There, Jesus warns against hateful anger, because “whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matt. 5:22 ESV).  In this same sermon, Jesus urges us to gouge out a sinful eye or cut off a sinful hand because, “it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (Matt. 5:30 ESV)  Top of FormBottom of Form

Later, when LaTop of Form

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Jesus sends out the Twelve, he realizes they will be harassed, hated, and persecuted.  So he gives them a speech to deepen their courage and conviction.  Jesus tells them, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”  (Matt. 10:28 ESV).

Jesus accused his opponents of turning people away from God, producing a convert who is “twice as much a child of hell” as they themselves (Matt. 23:15 ESV).

There is no doubt.  The Bible is very clear.  Hell does exist.  Hell is a critical matter in the Christian faith.  It is not a creation of preachers or churches.  It was taught by the most central figures in the Christian faith, including Jesus.  Jesus believed in hell.  He warned us against hell.  It is not a thing needless in our enlightened and progressive age.  I would suggest that hell has never been a more needed doctrine than it is in this age.  I believe it’s critical for Christians to recapture a healthy and biblical view of hell.  It is not something we can afford to dismiss or ignore.

Kathy Chapman writes about something her child once said.[4] “One morning, my 4-year-old son, Kevin, and his grandpa went out to buy donuts. On the way, Grandpa turned to Kevin and asked, ‘Which way is heaven?’ Kevin pointed to the sky. ‘Which way is hell?’ Kevin pointed towards the floor of the truck. Grandpa continued, ‘And where are you going?’ ‘Dunkin’ Donuts,’ Kevin replied. For many of us, not much has changed since we were four.  We’d much rather think about Dunkin Donuts than about heaven and hell.  But the New Testament is clear.  Hell is a reality.  And it is a reality that must be addressed.

How do we make sense of all of these passages?  That’s what the rest of this series will do.  We’ll unpack some of these texts and look more deeply into them.  But for this morning, I want to share three broad points.  Author Christopher Morgan argues that passages like these point to three realities.[5] These points serve as a beginning place in our discussion about the reality of hell.  Morgan writes that hell represents the reality of God’s punishment, God’s destruction, and God’s banishment.

First, hell represents the reality of God’s punishment.  In Matthew 25, Jesus describes hell as “eternal punishment.”  In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul discusses hell as God punishing those who disobey him.  Hell represents the reality that God will punish sin.  Hell is simply God finally punishing the sin that remains in the world.

Second, hell represents the reality of God’s destruction.  In 2 Peter 2, Peter writes of hell as “destruction.”  In 2 Thess. 1 Paul describes hell as a place of “destruction.”   New Testament scholars point out that when biblical authors speak of destruction, they are referring to something that loses the essence of its nature or loses its function.  One writes, “[in the Bible when God destroys things or people] they cease to be useful or to exist in their original, intended state.”  Thus hell is the state we exist in when we cease to be useful to God or when we cease to function in our intended way.  Hell is not just God punishing sin.  It is God destroying creations who have chosen not to function in the way they were intended to function; not to pursue the purpose for which they were created.

Finally, hell represents the reality of God’s banishment.  This idea of hell as a banishment from God is prominent in the teachings of Jesus.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims that he will judge the world and declare to unbelievers, “depart from me!” (Matt. 7:23).   Jesus later portrays the wicked as being excluded from the kingdom: “Depart from me … into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). Hell is banishment.  Hell is not just God punishing sin.  It’s not just God destroying creations who have chosen not to function the way they were intended to function.  It’s also God banishing those who’ve chosen in their lives to live apart from him anyway.  It’s them being removed from his goodness and grace.

We can put it this way.  Hell is a real place where justice is finally served–punishment, relationships are fully severed–banishment, and our life’s purpose is fatally stopped—destruction. That’s the reality of hell.

Why is all of this so important?  Because without this reality, we could not truly understand the cross.  The reality of Hell sheds light on the reality of the cross. [6] On the cross, Jesus takes on himself the punishment that is ours because of our sin.  Justice is finally served—but on Jesus not on us.  And, on the cross, Jesus faces complete destruction.  From the pre-crucifixion torture to the cross itself, Jesus is completely destroyed.  Even though we were the ones who refused to serve the purpose for which we were created, on the cross, Jesus was fatally stopped.  And, on the cross, Jesus is banished from God.  That’s why he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  That divine relationship is fully severed.  Bell wants to argue that to accept the reality of hell is to subvert the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love.  I would argue just the opposite.  It’s only when we accept the reality of hell that we can truly understand Jesus’ message of love and Jesus ultimate act of love on the cross.  Because on the cross, Jesus went through hell for us.  Jesus experienced hell so we would never have to.

I want to close each of these lessons with three brief words of application.  Here they are: Hell stirs our mission, spurs our maturity, but does not summarize our message. First, hell does not summarize our message.  There are too many who assume that Christianity is solely about escaping hell.  It’s fire-insurance.  Rob Bell writes this sad story: …Several years ago we had an art show at our church. I had been giving a series of teachings on peacemaking, and we invited artists to display their paintings, poems, and sculptures that reflected their understanding of what it means to be a peacemaker. One woman included in her work a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, which a number of people found quite compelling. But not everyone. Someone attached a piece of paper to it. On the piece of paper was written: “Reality check: He’s in hell.” Hell is a reality.  But it’s not what we lead with when we engage others.  It’s not the center of our faith.  And too often we turn people away because we make hell our first conversation.

But second, the reality of hell ought to stir us to greater mission.  Because hell is real, we’ve got to reach out to people who don’t know God or Jesus and try to persuade them to become followers of Jesus.  Charlie Peace, a criminal in England, on the day he was being taken to his execution, listened to a minister reading from the Word.[7] And when he found out he was reading about heaven and hell, he looked at the preacher and said, “Sir, if I believed what you and the church of God say, and even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that.”  The reality of hell ought to stir us to greater mission.

Finally, the reality of hell ought to spur us to greater personal maturity.  Because hell is real, not only do we not want people around us to go there, we don’t want ourselves to go there.  We should therefore be doing all that is within our power to live the kind of holy life that keep us from the possibility of hell.  We should repent of anything that might lead us down that broad way that leads to destruction.

[2] “What if there’s no hell?” Time (April 25, 2011).

[3] R. Albert Mohler Jr., Chapter One, “Is Hell for Real?” in Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, editors, Is Hell Real or Does Everyone Go to Heaven? Zondervan, 2011 Kindle Edition, pages 11-21.

[4] Kathy Chapman, North Lauderdale, FL. Today’s Christian Woman, “Heart to Heart.

[5] Christopher Morgan, Chapter Three, “Four Pictures of Hell” In Morgan and Peterson, Is Hell Real, pages 37-47.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ravi Zacharias, “The Lostness of Humankind,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 118.

In the wake of the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University, New York Times writer David Brooks wrote an article entitled, “Let’s All Feel Superior.” [1] Brooks commented on our tendency to ignore our own sins but notice the sins of others. Brooks writes that many commentators have contemptuously asked of the Penn State scandal: “How could they have let this happen?” “How could officials have just stood by when this abuse was going on?”  We assume that we would have done better than Penn State officials.  But Brooks notes that history shows that ordinary people often don’t get involved in correcting an injustice.  This happens so often that psychologists have a term for it—”the Bystander Effect.”  Brooks writes, “In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves.” Unfortunately, according to Brooks, today when something terrible happens, we try to blame it on someone else.  Brooks warns that it’s easy to vilify others from “the island of our own innocence.” It’s easy to ask, “How could they have let this happen?” But Brooks writes:  “The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive? …. [Sadly], it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.”

We are quick to see the dark underside of others.  But there is something within us that denies the dark underside of ourselves.  We are quick to ask, “How could they let this happen?” but very slow to ask “Why did I let this happen?”

This may be especially true for Christians.  Rebecca Pippert once attended two very different events: a graduate-level psychology class at Harvard University and a Christian Bible study adjacent to Harvard.[2] Pippert offered the following observations on how the two groups addressed their own faults: First, the students [in the graduate-level psychology class] were extraordinarily open and candid about their problems. It wasn’t uncommon to hear them say, “I’m angry,” “I’m afraid,” “I’m jealous” …. Their admission of their problems was the opposite of denial. Second, their openness about their problems was matched only by their uncertainty about where to find resources to overcome them. Having confessed, for example, their inability to forgive someone who had hurt them, [they had no idea how to] resolve the problem by forgiving and being kind and generous instead of petty and vindictive.  [But the contrast with the Bible Study group] was striking. No one spoke openly about his or her problems. There was a lot of talk about God’s answers and promises, but very little about the participants and the problems they faced. The closest thing to an admission [of sin or a personal problem] was a reference to someone who was “struggling and needs prayer.”  “The first group [the psychology class] seemed to have all the problems and no answers; the second group [the Bible Study] had all the answers and no problems.”

Too often that’s how we Christians come across.  We have all the answers to all the sin that’s out there in the world.  But we don’t seem to have any personal problem with sin in our own lives.  We’re quick to see the dark underside of others, but not of ourselves.  And as we’ll see this morning, overcoming this is critical to experiencing renewal.

This is our third Sunday in Col. 3:1-17.  I’ve chosen this text because it focuses on something which is close to the heart of many of us this time of year: renewal.  Near the center of this text, in vs. 10, Paul writes of how we are being “renewed.”  This text summarizes what God does to bring renewal into our lives and how we can join God in that work.

On the first Sunday of the year, we looked at the first of four steps Paul urges us to take to experience renewal.  The first step is “rethink.”  Renewal begins with our thinking.  You change living by first changing thinking.  I called you to adopt some habits by which you could fill your mind with Christ and the things of Christ.  Last Sunday, the focus was on vs. 17 and its call to “do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.”  Renewal happens when we realize that we don’t have to pack our bags and become a missionary to serve Jesus.  We can serve and honor Jesus with every single word and every single deed.  The second step is “redo.”

This morning we move to Col. 3:5-11: ⁵ Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming. ⁷ In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. ⁸But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. ⁹ Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices ¹⁰and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. ¹¹ Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Col. 3:5-11 ESV)

Paul begins by literally urging us to put to death our “earthly members” or our “earthly parts.”  He states in vs. 7 that these parts used to characterize the way we once lived.  And they are still influencing the way we live today.  In other words, even though we are Christians, there are still parts or sections of ourselves which are still earthly or sinful.  This is very significant.  Paul is saying that even though we’ve been cleansed by the blood of Jesus and made into heavenly people, there are still parts of us that are very earthly.  The transformation from sinner to saint does not happen quickly.  Though we are Christians, we still have sinful elements in our lives. The very first thing Paul wants us to do is to acknowledge that we still struggle with these sinful parts.  We must acknowledge our sinful sections. If we want to experience renewal, we must confess that we are in need of it.  We must admit to ourselves, to one another, and to our God that there are still sections of our hearts, pieces of our mind, slices of our soul which are still oriented toward earthly things and not heavenly things.  We can’t be quick to see the underside of others and ignore our own.  One of the keys to renewal is to admit that we too have sinful aspects to ourselves.

In fact, the Christians Paul writes to here were still wrestling with very significant sins.  First, Paul lists their five sinful sections of intimacy: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness.  These words all have to do with sexually intimate sins and they move from the most egregious outward expression to the most private inward expression.  At the end of the list we find covetousness—desiring something which cannot be ours.  This was the tenth of the Ten Commandments.  This morphs into evil desire—the longing for something which is evil or contrary to God’s wishes.  This in turn transforms into passion, a sexual hunger and longing.  This becomes impurity and then sexual immorality.  “Sexual immorality” refers to any sexual act outside of marriage.  And Paul knows the Christians in Colossae used to let these sins run rampant and that there are still sections of their lives struggling with them.

Second, Paul lists their six sinful sections of irritability: anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and lying.  These words all have to do with sins of irritability.  Anger—smoldering hatred of someone.  Wrath—what happens when that hatred turns to action.  Malice—a desire to cause harm.  Slander—words that do cause harm.  Obscene talk and lying—speech intended to abuse and confuse others.  Paul knows the Christians in Colossae used major in these sins of irritability and there are still sections of their lives which wrestle even now with them.

A first step to renewal is to admit that we too have sections of our hearts, pieces of our minds, and slices of our souls that wrestle with sins of intimacy and sins of irritability.  We are not perfect.  We do fail.  We do have problems.  That’s the first step toward renewal in this text.

In just a moment Paul’s going to call us to deal aggressively with these sins.  But first let’s look at the motive Paul supplies.  In vs. 6 Paul writes, On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In other words Paul says that God reprimands us for this sin. Simply put, God hates this type of behavior.  And if we allow it to rule our life, he will direct his wrath toward us.  He will reprimand us severely.  He sees these actions and attitudes as idolatry, as Paul writes in vs. 5.  When we let these sins into our lives, we remove God from the throne of our hearts and place either the object or our lust or the object of our hatred  on that throne there.  And God simply will not put up with it.  We should make no mistake.  God will hold us accountable for these things.

But Paul writes not only of this negative motivation.  He writes also of a positive motivation.  In vs. 10 Paul urges us to take action because we “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”  In other words God renews us from this sin. God not only reprimands us for this sin.  He also renews us from this sin.  God is working to make us into brand new people.  And we should therefore take action against these sinful sections of our lives because we want to partner with God in that renewal.  I think what Paul is saying here is this: “Be who you are.”  To continue to live in these sinful ways is inconsistent with who God has made you and is making you.  Be the renewed person you are.  Be the dead now alive person you are.  Participate and partner with God in his work to bring transformation into your heart and mind.

And the way we partner with God in this renewal is by practicing the two strong commands in this text: ⁵Put to death therefore what is earthly in you…⁸But now you must put them all away.  Paul is saying that if you want to experience real renewal in your life this year, it’s going to take aggressive action.  You can’t play around.  You can’t be half-hearted about it.  Not only must you admit the sinful sections of your life.  You must also become ruthless and intense about them.

The words translated “put them all away” literally mean “take off” or “lay aside.”  Paul imagines these sinful parts of ourselves as clothes.  And the only way to truly deal with them is to take them off—all the way off.  In other words we must fully shed this sin. Whatever is standing in between you and the person God is renewing you to be, you must fully shed it.

Too often, when it comes to sin in our lives, we treat it like we treat our summer clothes.  When it’s winter, some of us put away our summer clothes.  They go in the back of the closet, or in a box in the attic, or in a drawer.  But when summer comes again, we pull them back out.  We never really get rid of them.  We just put them aside for a season.  The same is true with so many of the sins we struggle with.  We enter a season in which we get really serious about holiness.  So we take off that sin, fold it up, and put it away.  But we don’t throw it away.  We don’t toss it out.  We put it someplace where, when the time is right and we’re no longer so focused on holiness, we can pull it back out.  We can wear that sin once more.

But Paul’s saying that if you want to experience real renewal, you’ve got to fully shed that sin.  You’ve got to take it off and throw it away never to be worn again.  You’ve got to rip it off and remove it so far from you that you could never find it even if you wanted to.

And this morning, that’s exactly what some of us need to do.  You’ve been playing around with some sin.  You’ve been toying with stopping it.  But you’ve not really gotten serious about it.  Your short temper.  Your filthy language.  Your pornography.  Your selfishness.  Your verbal abuse.  Your gossiping.  Your backbiting.  And this morning Paul is calling you to shed that sin like a pair of clothes you never want to see again.  He’s calling you to get serious about this and get rid once and for all.

But Paul uses even stronger language in vs. 5: ⁵ Put to death therefore what is earthly in you… There is no uncertainty in this language.  Paul’s saying “Don’t play with sin.  Don’t just fight sin.  Kill it.  Murder it.  Beat the life out of it.”  In other words Paul calls us to to fully slay this sin.

But the problem is that we too often are unwilling to slay the sin in our lives.  In his book The Great Divorce C. S. Lewis writes about this.[3] He describes a human who finds himself in heaven.  The man was called a Ghost.  On his shoulder sat a red lizard, symbolizing the sin in his life.  Lewis writes:  “What sat on his shoulder was a little red lizard, and it was twitching its tail like a whip and whispering things in his ear. As we caught sight of him he turned his head to the reptile with a snarl of impatience. “Shut up, I tell you!” he said. It wagged its tail and continued to whisper to him. He ceased snarling, and presently began to smile. Then he turned and started to limp westward, away from the mountains.  “Off so soon?” said a voice.  The speaker was more or less human in shape but larger than a man, and so bright that I could hardly look at him. His presence smote on my eyes and on my body too (for there was heat coming from him as well as light) like the morning sun at the beginning of a tyrannous summer day.  “Yes. I’m off,” said the Ghost. “Thanks for all your hospitality. But it’s no good, you see. I told this little chap,” (here he indicated the lizard), “that he’d have to be quiet if he came—which he insisted on doing. Of course his stuff won’t do here: I realize that. But he won’t stop. I shall just have to go home.”  ‘Would you like me to make him quiet?” said the flaming Spirit—an angel, as I now understood.  “Of course I would,” said the Ghost.  “Then I will kill him,” said the Angel, taking a step forward.  “Oh-ah-look out! You’re burning me. Keep away,” said the Ghost, retreating.  “Don’t you want him killed?”  “You didn’t say anything about killing him at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that.”  “It’s the only way,” said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the lizard. “Shall I kill it?”  “Well, that’s a further question. I’m quite open to consider it, but it’s a new point, isn’t it? I mean, for the moment I was only thinking about silencing it because up here—well, it’s so…embarrassing.”  “May I kill it?”  “Well, there’s time to discuss that later.”  “There is no time. May I kill it?”  “Please, I never meant to be such a nuisance. Please—really—don’t bother. Look! It’s gone to sleep of its own accord. I’m sure it’ll be all right now. Thanks ever so much.”  “May I kill it?”  “Honestly, I don’t think there’s the slightest necessity for that. I’m sure I shall be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it.”  “The gradual process is of no use at all.”  “Don’t you think so? Well, I’ll think over what you’ve said very carefully. I honestly will. In fact I’d let you kill it now, but as a matter of fact I’m not feeling frightfully well today. It would be silly to do it now. I’d need to be in good health for the operation. Some other day, perhaps.”  “There is no other day. All days are present now.”  “Get back! You’re burning me. How can I tell you to kill it? You’d kill me if you did.”  “It is not so.”  “Why, you’re hurting me now.”  “I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.”  “Oh, I know. You think I’m a coward. But it isn’t that. Really it isn’t. I say! Let me run back by tonight’s bus and get an opinion from my own doctor. I’ll come again the first moment I can.”

Can’t we hear ourselves in this man?  We try to keep our sin quiet so it won’t disturb the people around us.  We punish the sin by taking him home because he’s not behaving.  But when it comes to killing it, well, that’s too drastic.  We’ll think about that later.  We’re sure we can keep it in check.  No need for violence.  And we just can’t bring ourselves to do whatever it takes to deal a death blow to our red lizard of sin.

But Paul is telling you this morning that if you truly wish to experience renewal, there’s only one thing that works: death.  You’ve got to do whatever it’s going to take to kill your sin.  If it means quitting your job, do it.  If it means changing schools, do it.  If it means ending a relationship, do it.  If it means losing sleep or losing money, do it.  If it means never getting on the Internet again, do it.  If it means never watching TV again, do it.  If it means cutting yourself completely and totally off from the wrong crowd, do it.  Nothing is too drastic.  Nothing is too radical.  Nothing is too costly.  Paul is asking you to identify a sin that is getting in between you and God.  And he’s telling you to kill it.  Murder it.  Slay it.  Don’t just hurt it.  Don’t just punish it.  Don’t just battle it.  Kill it.  Slay it.  Fully and completely.

So ask yourself, What sin is keeping you from God, keeping you from being the person God is renewing you to be?  And what would it take to kill that sin?  Not maim it.  But kill it.  What do you need to do to deal with this sin in a deadly way?

What I want to urge you to do today is to make a decision to kill that sin.  Make a decision this morning that you are going to put that sin to death.  As this year begins, decide this morning that you’re going to do whatever it takes to slay that sin.  [Life Center - And as a way of helping you visualize that commitment, I want to encourage you to do something this morning.  Grab one of the blank sheets from the back of the chair in front of you.  Write on it some sin you are struggling with.  And while we are singing, come up and drop that paper into this casket as a way of demonstrating your desire to kill that sin.]

Each Sunday our elders are available for prayer and counsel at the Shepherd’s Corner.  If you’re struggling to put a sin to death, I urge you to visit with some of our shepherds after this service is over.

[2] Rebecca Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons (InterVarsity Press, 2001), 31-32.

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (HarperOne, 1946), 106-111.

Perfect Prayer

“Did I pray that correctly?”

I’m sometimes asked this question by a friend when we meet for prayer.  After she completes a brief time of leading our petitions, she occasionally gives voice to this fear: “Did I pray OK?”  She worries that she isn’t using the right words in the right way.  She frets that she doesn’t have the right emphasis and the right emotions.

Another friend regularly asks me to pray on his behalf, something I am honored to do.  But there are times when he prefaces his request with remarks like this: “You always pray better than I do.  You always know just what to say.  I think God’s more likely to answer your prayer about this than he is mine.”  My friend doubts he can produce the kind of plea that will catch God’s ear.

People of prayer have long struggled with this perspective.  It’s an outlook which views God as one who must be persuaded to act.  And only precise prayer-words will convince this reluctant God to answer affirmatively.

This was even a stance taken by many even in Jesus’ day.  While preaching about piety in Matt. 6:1-18, Jesus warns,

“The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.” (Matt. 6:7-8 The Message).

Some ancient mystics believed they needed the right rule, the perfect program, or the most winsome words in order to get what they wanted from God.  Only those who could stitch words together into a flawless format could win over God’s heart.

Simple Supplication

But prayer is intended to be much simpler.  Peter Kreeft writes about the ease of prayer:[i]

Prayer is easier than we think…We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.  You do not have to master some mystical method. You do not have to master a method at all.  Can you talk to a friend? Then you can talk to God, for he is your Friend. And that is what prayer is. The single most important piece of advice about prayer is one word: Begin! God makes it easy: just do it!

Prayer is easier than we think.  It doesn’t require seamless sentences and faultless phonetics.  It can be as natural and unscripted as a conversation with a friend.  Jesus’ preferred image is that of a dialogue between a child and a parent: “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father…’” (Matt. 6:9 ESV).

Still, many of us feel the need for help.  We realize we don’t need perfect prose or sanctified speech.  But we’re not exactly sure what to say.  We feel a bit like Anne of Green Gables.[ii] The movie features Ann Shirley, an orphaned child placed the home of Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert.  One evening Marilla and Anne discuss prayer:

“Have you said your prayers?” Marilla asks Anne.

“I never say any prayers,” Anne responds.

“What do you mean? Haven’t you been taught to say your prayers?”

“Mrs. Hammond told me that God made my hair red on purpose, and I’ve never cared for him since.”

“Well, while you’re under my roof you will say your prayers.”

“Why, of course.  If you want me to. How does one do it?”

“You thank God for his blessings, and then humbly ask him for the things you want.”

“I’ll do my best. ‘Dear gracious heavenly Father, I thank you for everything. As for the things I especially want, they’re so numerous it would take a great deal of time to mention them all. So, I’ll just mention the two most important: please let me stay at Green Gables; please make me beautiful when I grow up. I remain yours respectfully, Anne Shirley—with an e.’ Did I do all right?”

“Yes, if you were addressing a business letter to the catalog store. Get into bed.”

“I should have said ‘amen’ instead of ‘yours respectfully.’ Think it’ll make any difference?”

“I expect God will overlook it—this time. Good night.”

We want to embrace the simplicity of prayer promised by Jesus, but we’re so often still unsure of what to say or how to say it.

The Ready Made Prayers of Jesus

This is why Jesus introduces us to what Mark Thibodeaux calls “ready-made prayers.”[iii] Jesus’ “Lord’s Prayer” in Matt. 6 is one of these—a pre-written prayer ready to be prayed by any follower of Jesus hungry for help on praying.  Through supplications such as this, Jesus takes us by the hand and walks us through a conversation with the Father.  Not to show us the only words that can ever be used.  But to reveal to us themes and habits that make for the most fruitful and enriching times of divine discussion.

This “Lord’s Prayer” is only one of many ready-made prayers.  The Gospels are filled with other petitions Jesus himself spoke.  They provide magnificent mentoring regarding prayer.  There are at least ten occasions on which the Gospel authors record the actual words Jesus spoke in prayer.  In them we find Jesus praying at least three types of prayers.[iv]

First, Jesus prayed inward prayers of complaint.  Here, Jesus gave voice to the deepest feelings of disappointment.  In his inward prayers of complaint Jesus teaches us how to look deep within ourselves and to share dark and discouraging feelings with God in prayer, to complain about our pain.

• ³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” ³⁹And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” ⁴⁰And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? ⁴¹ Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ⁴²Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” ⁴³And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. ⁴⁴So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. ⁴⁵Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴⁶Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” (Matt. 26:36-46 ESV)

• ³³And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. ³⁴And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ³⁵And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” ³⁶And someone ran and filled a sponge with  sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” ³⁷And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. (Mk. 15:33-37 ESV)

• ²⁸After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now  finished, said ( to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” ²⁹A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. (Jn. 19:28-29 ESV).

Second, Jesus prayed upward prayers of confidence.  Despite the darkness and the despair, Jesus was able to pray upwardly with confidence that God still ruled, still listened, still reigned, and still cared.  Through these upward prayers of confidence Jesus shows us how to trust God even in the darkness.

• ²¹ In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” (Luke 10:21 ESV)

• ⁴¹And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” (John 11:41-43 ESV).

• ²³And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵ Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. ²⁷“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” (John 12:23-29 ESV).

• ³⁰When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (Jn. 19:30 ESV).

• ⁴⁴ It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, ⁴⁵while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. (Lk. 23:44-46 ESV).

Third, Jesus prayed outward prayers of compassion.  Here Jesus looked outward and prayed for the needs of friends and foes alike. With his outward prayers of compassion Jesus instructs us how to passionately plea for the people around us.

• ¹When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, ²since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. ⁵And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.  ⁶ “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. ⁸For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. ¹¹And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. ¹²While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. ¹³But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. ¹⁴I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹And for their sake  I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. ²⁰“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. ²⁴Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:1-26 ESV).

• ³² Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. ³³And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. ³⁴And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:32-34 ESV).

Take Ten

Choose one of the prayers of Jesus above and use it to inspire and/or inform a time of prayer today.

[image]

[ii] Anne of Green Gables (Walt Disney, 1985), based on a novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

[iii] Mark Thibodeaux, Armchair Mystic (Saint Anthony Messenger Press, 2001).

[iv] See my Prayers from the Pit (21^st Century Christian, 2011).