Feed My Sheep

There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

--CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

Jesus' charge to Peter, recalling him to ministry when Peter seems to have been bent on returning to his life of fishing, was to feed his sheep. It was a crucial moment - Peter seems to have been on the verge of throwing in the towel on the idea of ministry, having failed so badly in denying Jesus. Jesus repeatedly asks Peter if he loves him; Peter keeps insisting that he does. And Jesus' response to him is "Feed my lambs," "Tend my sheep," "Feed my sheep."

It's not enough to say that you love me, Peter. I'm not finished with you. I have a job for you to do. I need you to take care of my sheep.

Jesus' words hearken back to John 10, where he proclaims that he is the good shepherd. He talks about his sheep knowing his voice, and about laying down his life for his sheep. What he doesn't talk about in either John 10 or John 21 is breeding sheep. He doesn't talk about using sheep to get more sheep. He doesn't talk about expanding the flock. He does talk about bringing in the "other sheep that are not of this fold" - presumably, in historical context, those Gentiles who would trust in him. But his focus, especially when talking to Peter, is on care for the sheep.

There was nothing romantic, in Jesus' day, about caring for sheep. Nothing glamorous. It was a dirty, unskilled job that left one ceremonially unclean all the time. It was a humble occupation.

Caring for God's people - which is what Jesus was charging Peter with doing - is still a humble occupation. It's messy and difficult and frustrating, and it's unsurprising that so many pastors strain against it. We're told that the most effective form of church leadership is not to be a shepherd, but rather a rancher. This accords well with the American idea that bigger is always better, that the only alternative to growth is stagnation, and with the romantic idea of the cowboy on the lone prairie. It just doesn't accord all that well with Scripture, especially with Jesus' charge to Peter.

What I most object to about the rancher model is not that things like hospital ministry and counseling can be done by people other than the pastor, or that people's gifts should be encouraged so that the body ministers to the body. These things I strongly agree with. What I object to is the focus of ministry leadership being continually outward. 

If you want to get needs met by the church world today, the best place you can possibly be is outside it. Be a prospect, not one of the faithful. The faithful are there to bring more people in, not to have their own needs met. That's the way it is, out on the ranch.

Somehow, that doesn't match what Jesus said about the world recognizing us as being his disciples because we love one another. Or what Acts says about the early believers providing for one another's needs, not as an outreach effort to those on the outside, but out of mutual love. And it doesn't match Jesus' simple command to Peter:

Feed my sheep.



If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

What's Wrong with Visionary Dreaming

I just got blown away by this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it has sprung from a wish dream…He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the later, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dreams bind men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.” (Life Together, 27-28.) 

What Does It Mean to Follow Jesus

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.

--Matthew 4:18-20 NIV

The phrase Jesus uses most often to call people to become his disciples is the familiar phrase, "Follow me." Most people are reasonably clear on what that meant in Jesus' day, at least for Peter, Andrew, and the rest of the twelve. They left their occupations and traveled with Jesus, being taught by him and being commissioned to do the things he was doing: preach the good news of the kingdom, drive out demons, and heal sicknesses (Matt. 10). Their "following" was quite literal: Jesus was an itinerant preacher and they went with him wherever he went. Following Jesus involved sacrifice: Peter once said to Jesus that his disciples had "left everything" to follow him, and Jesus didn't contradict Peter, but rather held out to him promises of reward (Mark 10:28-31).

It's difficult to say in what sense other people also followed Jesus. Crowds followed Jesus from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other, and Jesus rebuked them for having wrong motives (John 6:24-26). However, it's clear that at least some people outside the circle of the Twelve were also disciples, or at least true believers who followed Jesus' teachings: Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and the other women who went to anoint Jesus' body and found the tomb empty. Joseph of Arimathea is also identified as a disciple of Jesus, albeit secretly, along with Nicodemus (John 19:38-39). So to be a disciple or follower of Jesus did not necessarily mean to be one of those who actually went around with him physically.

These questions become relevant for us in the present day because there are some current teachings relating to discipleship that make assumptions regarding what following Jesus is all about, largely based on the biblical example of Jesus and the Twelve. These teachings also relate to how we understand the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), because Jesus' command was to "make disciples," not merely to make converts. What it means to be a disciple, what it means to follow Jesus, is thus very important.

Rob Bell's "What Is the Bible?" Series

Rob Bell has been blogging a series called "What Is the Bible?" If you're interested in reading it from the beginning, it starts here.

I'm neither a particular fan nor a particular detractor of Rob. (He strikes me as the kind of guy who'd like you to refer to him by his first name. Rob, feel free to call me Keith if you pop in.)

I read his Velvet Elvis, which didn't make a really significant impression; I think he was just tilting at different windmills than those that occupy my back yard. I haven't read any of this other books, including the controversial Love Wins. I was going to write that I have no particular axe to grind, but of course that isn't true; everyone has an axe to grind. I guess it's more true to write that I'm not jumping on board any particular pro-Rob or anti-Rob bandwagon.

So anyway, back to the "What Is the Bible?" series. A good summation of Rob's method can be found in Part 13: Consciousness and Violence. Rob's essential argument is that the Bible was written by people (he doesn't deny divine inspiration, but I suspect that what "inspiration" means is one of the things he'll get around to), those people were influenced by their own cultural biases and attitudes, those biases and attitudes become a part of the text, but also some new thoughts and ideas that weren't a part of the writers' culture also get introduced, which pulls the consciousness and attitudes of humanity forward. This process is very slow, because humanity is incapable of turning on a dime. God works from where we are, and draws us toward the next step forward.

Mike Breen and Building a Discipling Culture: A Dissent

Note (January 7, 2018): since this post has engendered more comments than the Blogger platform seems able to deal with, I would like to invite anyone interested in continuing the discussion over to a more recent post at http://www.schooleyfiles.com/2018/01/new-analysis-of-building-discipling.html. You can download an excellent in-depth commentary on Building a Discipling Culture  from there, and commenting and responding will be easier to get to than on this page.

Last summer, I commented on a review of Mike Breen's Building a Discipling Culture. The original review was at a blog entitled Notes from the Trail. In it, Jeff Noble offered a mixed review of Breen's book, lauding its intentional and structured approach to discipleship, but questioning the necessity of such a convoluted approach to discipleship and the effectiveness of the geometric images that Breen employs.

Based on my own experience in a church that had begun using Breen's approach, I commented on Noble's review. I've thought long and hard about whether to deal with the subject here on this blog, and decided that rather than saying a lot myself, I'd simply reprint my comment on the original review, along with a couple of the responses to me. I'm doing so because I think that Breen's approach is dangerous, and I feel that I need to let people know. My comment on the original review read as follows:

If I Were to Start a Church....

My family has been on a journey to find a church for a while, and we've been toying around with the idea of starting a church in our home. I would much rather find a body that we could worship with and support, but some aspects that I think should be in a church seem to be very hard to find in practice. Not that the individual elements are hard to find, but the combination of all of them seems to be impossible. With that, these are the top ten things that I'd like to see in a church that I attend or pastor:

1. Grace-based.

   This seems to be the hardest thing to find. Oh, churches always pay lip service to God's grace, but mostly they extend it to outsiders. Once you're inside for any length of time, it's all about performance--whether that performance is dressed up as "imitating Jesus" or "avoiding worldliness" or "evangelizing the lost" or "supporting the ministry" or "helping with the project." There seems to be very little opportunity simply to rest in the finished work of Jesus, and very little acknowledgement of the faithfulness required in simply doing your job honorably and treating your family in a godly manner. The truth is that Jesus did all the work, and the only righteousness I can have is by trusting in him.

The Means Justify the End

We've all heard the phrase, "The end justifies the means." Actually, I've more often heard the phrase, "The end doesn't justify the means," when the "means" being discussed are actually illegal or unethical. But we live in a world where ends are supposed to justify means all the time.

When I was growing up, "evangelistically speaking" was a euphemism for exaggeration, if not outright lying. In the workplace, achieving a goal is often an expected norm, even if it involves treating people badly to accomplish it.  One often finds that behind closed doors in a "successful" church, the leader is harsh, demanding, perhaps even abusive, or uses people to accomplish a project rather than having interest in them as individuals with their own needs. Success, it seems, is its own justification. As long as you didn't do anything outright illegal or sinful--with that interesting set of blinders evangelicals often use with regard to what is and isn't sinful--then it's okay. The end is good, and we just won't look too closely into the means.

Roger Olson and Evangelical Secularism

Roger Olson has recently written a passionate post entitled, "Have American Evangelicals Become Secularized? Some New Year’s Reflections on Changes during a Lifetime." I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Olson, and his piece deserves thoughtful reflection. In discussing the differences between the church world he grew up in and the church world that exists today, Olson writes,

In 1950s evangelicalism we memorized Scripture. Who does that anymore? Then we sang theologically rich hymns and gospel songs. Who does that anymore? Then we studied our Sunday School lessons on Saturday (if not before). Who does that anymore? Then we attended church on Sunday evening and invited “unsaved friends” to hear the gospel. Who does that anymore? Then we gathered in each others’ homes for fellowship and prayer and Bible study. Who does that anymore?

Jamal Jivanjee on Missional Confusion

Jamal Jivanjee has a great post on the Illuminate blog--not new, but I just stumbled onto it--called Missional Confusion & the Amway Gospel.  Really great stuff.  Here's a sample:

The evangelical system has become a glorified ‘pyramid’ scheme. Like the soap, we are taught to tell people about this amazing man named Jesus Christ who loves us and died for us. We tell the world that He is the living bread. We tell people that the water He gives will satisfy. We tell people that he comes to give us abundant life, etc… then, shortly after a person is interested in this Christ and says yes, the focus changes. Instead of discovering and experiencing the depths and beauty of this glorious man, we are quickly taught that there are things we must ‘do’ to get more and train more Christ ‘distributors’.

Jivanjee also discusses the different parts of the body and how that factors in to going about the real mission of Christ in this world--very much like what I share in What's Wrong with Outreach. 

Excellent stuff. Check it out.

If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

TV News

We can learn a lot about the problems of the contemporary church by examining a seemingly unlikely source: television news.

Broadcast television news viewership has been declining for many years. There are several reasons: competition from 24-hour cable news outlets, the rise of news accessibility on the internet, and increasingly popular opinion-based news coverage appearing on all types of media. Present-day viewership is now less than half of what it was in 1980.

During the same time period, increasing pressure has been brought to bear on television news outlets to become financially self-sustaining. Once considered a public service by broadcasters, television news divisions have become subject to the same pressures as their entertainment divisions: generate advertising revenue by increasing ratings and market share. This has led to a trend toward so-called “soft news”—lifestyle, celebrity, and human-interest stories that function more as entertainment than serious information. Networks found that soft news stories would increase market share, especially when promoted heavily with teasers, so they pushed their news departments to air growing amounts of soft news, often over the objections of veteran journalists.

The Problem with a Cross-Centered Theology

Those who know me know that I wear a cross signet ring. It's actually my college class ring; I wanted something that I would want to continue wearing, and not just put in a box somewhere, so my parents bought me a plain signet ring and had a cross etched in it. It was intended as a statement of my faith, as an opportunity to share Jesus with others.

The cross has been the main symbol of Christianity for most of its history. Not all of its history--it wasn't until crucifixion stopped being actively used by the Romans as a means of torture and death that Christians began widely using it as the symbol of their faith. But it has long been Christianity's predominant symbol. Every church has at least one. Most Christian organizations use it in their logos. And it's not hard to see why. What Jesus did on the cross for us is central to what we believe.

Most Christians, if asked what they believe, would offer something like this: "God created human beings to be in a relationship with him, but we messed that up through sin, so he came to the earth as a human being--Jesus--and lived a sinless life and then died on a cross in our place, so we could be in a relationship with him again and spend eternity with him in heaven." You'll notice that the cross is at the very turning point of this statement of faith. It's completely central.

Now, although I agree with every part of that statement, there's something I think is missing--and it's more significant than simply the fact that the whole thing needs a lot of fleshing out and explanation. What's missing is the resurrection of Jesus. Having had this issue brought to my attention by N. T. Wright's fantastic book, Surprised by Hope, it is astonishing to me that any statement of Christian faith could ever be made without reference to the Resurrection. And yet I wonder how many people, reading that statement the first time through, noticed its absence or considered it significant.

Of course, you could tuck it in there, right between "place" and "so," and it would fit. And Christians do believe in the Resurrection and do think that affirming the Resurrection is important. My problem isn't that Christians don't believe in Jesus' resurrection; it's that the Resurrection ends up being an afterthought in the way most of us think about our faith.

Think about it: we view the central problem as sin, and the fact that a holy God can't simply let sin slide. The penalty--death--must be paid. The solution is a substitute: if someone who doesn't deserve to die dies in our place, then we don't have to die ourselves. The crime is paid for. And that's what Jesus did on the cross. But notice what we've done: Jesus' work on the cross solves the problem. When He said, "It is finished," it really was--that is to say, the whole problem is solved. It's like the end of a detective story: once the detective solves the crime, the story is, for all intents and purposes, over. The technical term for the ending of a story, after its climax, is denouement. It's really just window dressing, and a lot of modern writers try to get rid of it entirely, and just end at the climax. You can think up your own window dressing, imagine how it came out on your own.

That's what happens to the Resurrection, in the typical way of looking at it. It happened, and we believe in it, but it's not really crucial to the story. If it hadn't happened, it wouldn't really matter, because the sin problem is already taken care of at the Cross. We try to make it matter, by saying that it demonstrated that Jesus really was who he said he was, or that it proves that there is life after death. But whatever it demonstrated, or whatever it proves, really doesn't matter in the end--the real work had already been done.

But that's not how the Apostle Paul saw it. "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor. 15:14). For Paul, the Resurrection is absolutely central. All of the gospel messages preached in the book of Acts make the Resurrection central. What Jesus did on the Cross was very important. But the biblical writers seem to indicate that what he did by rising from the dead was equally important, maybe even more so.

In my next few blog posts, I'm going to sketch out why I think the Resurrection needs to occupy a more central place in our theology. And I'm wondering if we've missed a rather obvious symbol of the faith. The world has seen us as people of the cross for a long time. Maybe it's time we need to be seen as people of the empty tomb.

Consumerism is Thoroughly Pagan

This paragraph from Alan Hirsch's The Forgotten Ways encapsulates much of where my thinking is at recently:

Speaking to the insecurity of the human situation, it was Jesus who said "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matt. 6:31-33, emphasis mine). Consumerism is thoroughly pagan. Pagans run after these things (Gk. epizēteō "seek, desire, want; search for, look for"). Seen in this light, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Extreme Makeover, Big Brother, and other lifestyle shows are of the most pagan, and paganizing, shows on TV. Even the perennial favorites about renovating the house paganize us, because they focus us on that which so easily enslaves us. In these the banality of consumerism reaches a climax as we are sold the lie that the thing that will complete us is a new kitchen or a house extension, whereas in fact these only ad more stress to our mortgages and our families. These shows are far more successful promoters of unbelief than even outright intellectual atheism, because they hit us at that place where we must render our trust and loyalty. Most people are profoundly susceptible to the idolatrous allure of money and things. We do well to remember what our Lord said about serving two masters and about running after things (Matt. 6:24-33).

One of my greatest concerns right now is that the church world, at least in the US, far from being a prophetic voice against this paganism in our culture, is enthusiastically in bed with it. To take a stand against the consumerism of our culture is to be labeled a communist.

Reflections on Passion Week: Good Friday

    The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
          --T.S. Eliot, East Coker

There is nothing remotely new that I could possibly write concerning the events of Jesus' trial and crucifixion. But in the vein of re-reminding us of how revolutionary Jesus' message had been in its original context, and how unsurprising it is, after all, that his message and actions would lead to his rejection, not only by the religious leaders, but by the people as well, it might be well for us to remember how odd and unexpected and unfitting would have been crucifixion as the mode of God's redeeming humanity. It's so easy for us now to parrot, "Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day." We forget that neither the Jews nor anyone else could possibly have expected this. As Paul writes to the Romans, "we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles," (1 Cor. 1:23).

The Messiah was the hope of Israel's deliverance from foreign domination. To be crucified by that same foreign power would have been the last thing the Jews would have been looking for in their Messiah, and if they had truly thought he was the Messiah, they would not have delivered him over to Pilate or cried out for his crucifixion. Actually being crucified, if there were any doubt, would have disqualified him in the eyes of the Law: "anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse," (Deut. 21:23).

For the Greeks and Romans, the idea of a crucified god was the height of idiocy: paganism worshiped beauty, honor, and power, not weakness, helplessness, and shame. The pagan philosopher Celsus mocks the very idea:

You acknowledge that he openly suffered. How is it credible that Jesus could have predicted these things? How could the dead man be immortal? What god, or spirit, or prudent man would not, on foreseeing that such events were to befall him, avoid them if he could; whereas he threw himself headlong into those things which he knew beforehand were to happen?...

So the crucifixion makes no sense either to Jews or to pagans. And yet, this is the means by which God chose to save the world. It made no sense. The nonsensical nature of it should not be lost on us today. Because we've come into a time in which the crucifixion is once again nonsensical. But it nonetheless woke the hearts of many, even as it brought the scorn of some, and so may it do today. Let's not be afraid of the foolishness of the Gospel. It's wiser than the wisdom of humanity.

Reflections on Passion Week: The Passover Lamb

The last thing that Jesus does, before the events that directly lead to the Crucifixion, is eat the Passover meal with his disciples (Mk. 14:12-26). While a lot has been written regarding the symbolism of the original Passover in Egypt and the Passover lamb specifically as both relate to Jesus and the crucifixion, I'm not sure we reflect very much on what the Passover meant to the Jews at that time.

Passover was both a remembrance and a promise of freedom. The Jews were recalling God's deliverance of them from bondage in Egypt. If we were to take what Independence Day means to Americans (or meant, in a more patriotic time), and multiply it about a hundredfold, we might get a sense of what Passover meant. God's miraculous deliverance from slavery! The birth of a new national identity, the beginnings of the journey to the Promised Land, the new realization of God's special concern for them as his chosen people. That is what Passover meant, except that now it was bittersweet, because Israel was no longer free. They had failed to fulfill God's commandments to them, had been judged, and had lost their independence. And so now the remembrance of being set free had become a promise of future freedom. Once again, God may deliver us! Once again, we may be a free people under the rulership of God alone! This is what the prophets had foretold, and it was what every Jew devoutly longed for.

What must it have meant for Jesus, as his last act before being delivered over to the Gentiles to be crucified, to celebrate the Passover? We know that he agonized over going through with the crucifixion in Gethsemane, begged the Father to prevent it from happening. John writes that he was "troubled in spirit" at the meal itself (John 13:21). Here they were, celebrating deliverance, looking forward to promised freedom, and Jesus knows that his freedom and his life will be taken from him in a matter of hours. And he knows that these men, who are closer to him than anyone else on earth, do not and cannot understand. They will not understand until it's all over with. One of them, in fact, has misunderstood so badly that he will betray Jesus into the hands of his enemies. The rest will run away from him; the one who protests the loudest that he will defend Jesus to the death will in fact deny any knowledge of him. All this, he knows, as together they eat the sacrificed lamb and the unleavened bread, as they dip their bread into the same dish and drink from the same cup.

Jesus knows that he comes to bring freedom; he also knows that the freedom he brings is not what his disciples expect or long for. He knows he is a king; he also knows that his kingdom is not of this world. He knows that all must be disappointed in him before they can have their faith renewed. He knows that he has come to bring them, not what they want, but what they need, and at a cost far greater than any of them can imagine. He knows that the deliverance from Egypt, grand and spectacular as it was, is merely a foreshadowing of the deliverance he has come to offer.

In what ways is our own vision limited? How far do our own desires fall short of what he longs to give us? Don't imagine merely a greater degree of what we already want. Imagine something else, something other, something different. Abraham, Moses, David, Paul; each of them and countless others saw the death of what they longed for before they saw the birth of what God had for them. In what ways do we misunderstand God's purposes? And are we open to having our vision changed?

Reflections on Passion Week: Everything You Believe Is Wrong

During Passion Week, a number of pronouncement narratives are related (Mk 12:13-44 and parallels). You may have noticed that in many types of stories that the Gospels tell about Jesus (technically called "pericopes,") the story ends with Jesus making a final pronouncement. We never find out what the reaction to it was; the climax, and the point, of the story lies in Jesus' pronouncement. So one way of looking at an extended series of these stories and tying them together is by pulling out the significant pronouncements and setting them together. This is particularly useful in this case, since for most of us the stories are sufficiently familiar that merely citing the pronouncement brings to mind the entire context. So here goes:

• "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
• "When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.... He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!"
• "The most important one is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
• "Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."
• "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything­­--all she had to live on."

What do we get when we put all these pronouncements together? It seems to me that Jesus is correcting a number of different misperceptions that either his opponents or the people themselves have. He's essentially saying, "Everything you believe is wrong."

For example, the Pharisees and the Herodians--otherwise bitter enemies--join forces in order to try to trap Jesus over the issue of taxation. Taxation here is representative of the whole relationship between the Jewish people and the Roman government, opposed by the Pharisees and supported by the Herodians. The real question is, should the people of God be in support of a hostile pagan government? Jesus here deals with the conundrum by essentially saying, "You're both wrong; you're conflating religious with political allegience. Don't get tied up in knots over the government; give them their due, but focus your true allegience upon God."

Similarly, when the Sadducees question Jesus about marriage and the resurrection, Jesus tells them that they're wrong in their presuppositions about both. While Jesus confounds the Sadducees' skepticism regarding a resurrection, he does so by also confounding what were probably the Pharisees' assumptions concerning the nature of the resurrection. Rather than thinking of the resurrection as a simple extension of earthly life, with aspects such as marriage being continued, Jesus affirms resurrection but asserts that it is a completely different mode of being, in which the categories of marriage do not apply.

In response to the question of the greatest commandment, Jesus responds with what would have been a perfectly acceptable answer from the Shema ("love the Lord your God"), but then extends it by adding Leviticus 19:18 as a second commandment that is "like" the first. Essentially, Jesus is saying, "You are wrong in your understanding of what it means to love God: it necessarily entails loving people as well."

Jesus moves on to challenge the nature of authority as popularly understood at the time: spiritual authority is not a means to receiving honor, preference, and prestige, and those who wield it for that purpose, instead of being blessed by God, will in fact be "punished most severely." Matthew 23 extends Mark's short denunciation and demonstrates how scathing Jesus' condemnation is. We miss the point, since we have come to view Jesus' opponents as the "bad guys" and his criticisms as rather obvious (Jesus' examples of the Pharisees' pomposity appear ridiculous largely because of the cultural distance between them and us). In reality, the Pharisees were relatively popular among the people at the time, and honor accorded to them was considered normal.

Finally, Jesus challenges the contemporary view of giving to God. Instead of focusing on the absolute value of gifts, Jesus focuses on what the gift means to the giver: the proportion of one's goods being given, and therefore the degree of faith required to give.

So, in essence, Jesus says: You're wrong about one's relationship to the government; you're wrong about the nature of marriage and the resurrection; you're wrong about what love of God entails; you're wrong about the nature of spiritual authority; and you're wrong about the value of gifts given to God. If you want to follow God as he wants to be followed, you're going to have to unlearn almost everything you think you know about God.

And we wonder why the crowds turned against him. How many of us would turn on anyone who challenged our preconceptions in that way? How many of us, in fact, do?

Reflections on Passion Week: Authority and the Parable of the Tenants

After Jesus cleansed the Temple, all the Synoptics record Jesus' authority being challenged (Mk. 11:27-33; Mt. 21:23-27; Lk. 20:1-8). We often focus on Jesus' actual response and neglect the nature of the question and the irony of the situation. The "chief priests, the teachers of the Law, and the elders" are all arrayed against Jesus, even though the different designations indicate different factions that would ordinarily be competing with one another. They challenge Jesus, not on the substance of what he has done (which would commit them to trying to justify the money changers and sacrifice sellers) but by what authority he presumes to challenge the system. The irony of the situation is clear: these groups claim institutional authority from God, but have been tolerating sinful and exploitative practices in the Temple complex; meanwhile Jesus, who actually posesses authority from God and has been using it to oppose their corrupt system, is being questioned on the basis of his authority to do so.

This irony is what allows Jesus to dismiss their question without answering it: his authority derives from the same source as that of John the Baptist, also an outsider rejected by the Jewish authorities. What he and John were doing--calling people to repentence, challenging a corrupt religious system--itself attests to the authority by which they were doing it. The situation is analogous to the one in which the disciples stopped a man who had been driving out demons in Jesus' name (Mk. 9:38-40), "because he was not one of us." It should give us pause, when we're tempted to challenge the authority of someone to act, when we can't actually oppose the action itself.

Jesus responds with the Parable of the Tenants (Mk. 12:1-12; Lk. 20:9-19; Mt. 21:33-46--actually in Matthew, Jesus responds with three parables that increasingly develop the same theme). A landowner rents his vinyard out to tenants and goes away on a journey. Later, he sends servants back to collect the fruit due him. The tenants abuse or kill the servants; lastly, the landowner sends his son, who should have been respected more than any of the servants; instead, the tenants kill him, specifically because he is the heir and they hope to gain the vinyard for themselves.

Aside from the clear allegorical features, this is specifically a parable about authority. Who, specifically, has authority from the landowner--the tenants or the servants? They both have a kind of delegated authority. The tenants have the authority to work the land and produce as much fruit as they can, as well as not to give it to just anyone who comes along. But the servants, and preeminently, the son, have the authority to take from them what is due to the landowner, and it is that authority that the servants challenge. They have forgotten that it is the landowner's field, and greedily covet it for themselves. In doing so, they bring down judgment on themselves, and those who have challenged Jesus' authority clearly understand that Jesus has turned the tables, challenging their authority and placing them under judgment. While the crowds may still be with Jesus, all of their leaders are now firmly opposed to him. It's the priests against the prophets: do you side with those who have all the institutional authority, or with the guy who comes out of nowhere, claims to be speaking for God, and challenging the status quo? It's a tougher decision than many of us would like to admit.

When we have been given a place of service, one of the hardest things to do is to remember that the service still belongs to the Lord. We speak of "our" church and "our" ministry as a descriptor of association: it is the one that we give our service to. But it is too easy for "our" or "my" to become a possessive: the one that in some sense we think we own. We need to recall that any place of ministry that we have is actually God's, and whatever success we attain is also God's. If we don't, we challenge His authority over "our" church and "our" ministry (or "our" home, "our" family, or "our" job, for that matter). And as the ending of Jesus' parable makes clear, that's not a position we want to put ourseves in.

Reflections on Passion Week: The Cleansing of the Temple

Just a change of title; no new material.

The synoptic tradition places Jesus' cleansing of the Temple on Monday of Holy Week (Mk. 11:12-19). Here we see that, instead of attacking the hated Romans, Jesus attacks the Temple system--more specifically, the system of money changing and sacrifice selling that had grown up around the Temple. It's difficult to say what effect this would have had on the Jewish populace, and specifically, the crowds who had hailed him as King the day before. The money changers (who exchanged Roman coinage, necessary for commerce in the world at large, for Hebrew shekels, to pay the Temple tax) and sacrifice sellers (who sold animals suitable for sacrifice) provided services that were both useful and extortionary. And the scripture records that the crowds were "amazed at his teaching" (Mk. 11:18), so some of the reaction was evidently positive.

And yet there was a subtext to Jesus' message that would have been disturbing. He specifically recalls Isaiah's prophecy that the Temple would be "A house of prayer for all nations." The word "nations" (ethnoi) was used specifically for Gentiles, and the area of the Temple complex that the money changers and sacrifice sellers would have been set up in was the Court of the Gentiles. So the area that had been specifically set up for people from other nations to have access to God had been co-opted by those who had something to gain from exploiting the sacrificial system. (We'll leave aside the point that the court of the Gentiles itself was the outermost court--a type of inclusion that really meant exclusion and made a mockery of Isaiah's words, "my house," not an outer courtyard surrounding the house, "will be called a house of prayer for all nations.") It was probably easy to justify elbowing out the Gentiles: there were presumably few Gentiles using it, so it could be rationalized as utilizing wasted space.

The issue of separation from the Gentiles is a thorny one. Throughout the Old Testament, God had told Israel that they must be separate from the rest of the nations, and for much of that time, Israel didn't want to be. They wanted a king, just like all the other nations. They were constantly being drawn into idolatry and the religious practices of surrounding nations. This continued until the Babylonian captivity, when Israel was finally made to understand that they had to be separate. With the conquests of Alexander the Great and the advent of Hellenism, the party of the Pharisees ("separated ones") developed as an anti-Hellenistic movement devoted to preserving Judaism and keeping it separate from encroaching foreign cultural forces. E.P. Sanders argues that the aspects of the Law that were focused on most strongly during the Second Temple period were those aspects--sabbaths, dietary laws, circumcision--that separated Israelites from the Gentiles. It is in this milieu that Jesus brought back the issue of the inclusion of the Gentiles prophesied by Isaiah.

As later history would show, the developing Christian church would continue to have problems with the assimilation of the Gentiles. It turns up in Acts 11, when Peter is questioned about evangelizing the household of Cornelius. It returns in Acts 15, when a council is convened to determine whether Gentile converts must be required to follow the entire Law of Moses. It recurs in Acts 21, when Paul returns to Jerusalem and is accused of subverting Judaism and defiling the Temple by bringing in Gentiles. Once again, we are in a position where it is difficult to appreciate the import of the Bible's words: the Jew/Gentile issue is no longer a live one in the Church (largely because the Church has long since become predominantly Gentile). It's easy to say, "Yes, Paul was right to argue that Jewish laws shouldn't be mandated for Gentile believers." The question is, what roadblocks have we erected that present artificial stumbling blocks for other groups to receive the gospel?

Exclusion seems to be a perennial feature of human nature. Everyone wants to belong to an "in" crowd, and the existence of an "in" crowd necessitates that some must be defined out. It's both amusing and saddening to see someone protest bitterly against "cliques," only to cease protesting upon inclusion in one of them. Jews divided humanity up into Jews and Gentiles; Greeks divided humanity up into Greeks and barbarians. It's easy to cheer Jesus on for opposing religious profiteering; a little harder to examine the "in" crowds that we may have created for ourselves and the cultural roadblocks we may have erected against others. "Neither do I condemn you" and "Go and sin no more" are both parts of the gospel. But the first one comes first.

Reflections on Passion Week: Palm Sunday

Just a change of title; no new material.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Passion Week, the final week leading up to Jesus' crucifixion and Resurrection. A number of different approaches to this event reveal layers of meaning....

The first approach is that of responding with the crowds. When churches celebrate Palm Sunday by giving out palm fronds and encouraging the congregation to wave them in recognition of Jesus as messiah, they are encouraging this response.  On the surface, the crowds appear to recognize Jesus as messiah, although the liturgical and celebratory usage of Psalm 118, which the crowds were quoting, was already well established, for example as the benediction to the feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles). Mark seems to leave open the possibility that Jesus was in the middle of a celebration that was not necessarily self-consciously directed toward him (11:8-11), but Matthew and Luke tie the celebration directly to Jesus' presence (Mt 21:8-11; Lk 19:36-40). John also ties the celebration to Jesus but adds, "At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him" (12:16 NIV), indicating that whatever they had understood themselves to be doing at the time was given new meaning after the Resurrection. So this first response is one of recognition: we are to recognize that Jesus is King.

The problem with this response, as the second approach argues, is that it ignores subsequent events, especially the crowds' later rejection of Jesus before Pilate (Mk 15:11-14; Mt 27:20-23; Lk 23:13-23). While it is dangerous to regard "the crowds" as a static group of people comprising the same individuals, it is at least possible that members of the "crowds" of Palm Sunday were also members of the "crowds" standing before Pilate at Jesus' trial--at any rate, the crowds crying "Hosanna" were not a force of opposition to the crowds crying "Crucify him"; they had either changed allegiances or disappeared into anonymity. The second approach recognizes the crowd's recognition of Jesus as messiah as superficial, and calls for not mere recognition, but for commitment to him. The crowds were fickle: as long as the wind appeared to be backing Jesus, they were with him; but when the going got tough, they ran, or worse, turned on him. This approach recognizes the possibility of apostasy, especially in the face of persecution, and encourages steadfastness. The second response is one of commitment: we are to commit ourselves to his service, regardless of trials or difficulties.

Yet another approach questions the reasons for the crowds' apparent change of loyalties. It's easy to lose track of the events of Passion Week, since the Gospels give so much detail to them: about 3/8 of Mark (by chapter count) is devoted to the events of Passion Week; 1/4 of Matthew and Luke; and nearly half of John. These chapters do not reveal a rising opposition to Jesus that had not existed before. Certainly we see the Pharisees and Sadducees trying to trap Jesus, but this had long since been going on, as especially John's Gospel reveals. So if the crowds had already recognized Jesus as messiah and were following him as late as the beginning of Passion Week, what happened to change their allegiance so quickly? The answer would seem to be, not the actions of Jesus' opponents, but Jesus' actions themselves.

The crowds recognized Jesus as messiah, but the concept of messiah was thought of in political terms: the messiah was to deliver the people from their oppression by the Romans. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem with the crowds that were there to celebrate the Passover--a feast dedicated to remembering God's deliverance of Israel from the oppression of slavery in Egypt--it could have been expected that He would rally the people against Rome. Not necessarily to lead an actual revolt, but some anti-empire rhetoric may have been well received. But that's not what he did. On the next day, Jesus enters the Temple and challenges, not the Romans, but the Temple system itself.

We all like to think that Jesus is on our side, challenging issues and authorities that we oppose. We think, in short, that we're on his side, when we're really wanting him to be on our side. What shakes us up is when Jesus starts challenging our sacred cows, shaking up our systems, opposing our assumptions and cherished ideas. Jesus did this, during his final week, to a greater degree than he had done before. It's hard for us to see this in a modern reading of the Gospels, since Jesus is opposing a system that we no longer strongly identify with. We don't recognize how revolutionary his teachings were, how astonishing his words and actions would have been to those who heard him first. And this may explain how those who initially paved Jesus' way into Jerusalem with their own clothing and acclaimed him as their king could, in a few days, turn against him so violently. And it might be worth considering: how many of our cherished balloons would Jesus burst if he were to come physically into our own sanctuaries? And how many of us would be crying out, "Crucify him," if we didn't know for sure who he was, and he was threatening our own beliefs?

What do you think? Anyone want to peel the onion further?

The Privilege of Pastoring

In August, when my family went up north for Alan Gillies's memorial service, we had the opportunity to get together with some of the people I had the privilege of pastoring about ten years ago. We sang songs and shared. It was a really lovely time. And it made me think a lot about my experience of pastoring.

I was twenty-nine when I began pastoring in Brimley. It was my first and only pastorate, except for a semi-official assistant pastoral position I had had just prior to coming to Brimley, in a small church that didn't really need an assistant pastor. I was about two years out of seminary, chafing to get into full-time ministry, and thinking at times that it would never happen. And then I got a letter out of nowhere, and had to look at a map to find out where Brimley, Michigan was. We looked at the map index, and found the grid number, and followed the column up, and up, and up, and there it was, on the shore of Lake Superior. Cecile burst into tears--not because of where it was, but because she had just had a breakthrough with the girls in the Missionettes class that she taught, and she didn't want to leave them. "Honey, I don't even have to respond to this!" I told her.

"Yes you do," she said, "this is God."

And so I sent the church a resume, figuring it wouldn't hurt to get rejected one more time. And then they called, and wanted us to come up. We met the previous pastor and his wife, and then the board, and they were all very kind, and before I knew it, I was pastoring the church.

And I didn't know what I was doing. My seminary training had mostly been in Biblical exegesis, systematic theology, and church history, not on the practical issues of pastoring a church. I felt my youth; I felt my shyness, which God had overcome in me to a great extent, but not nearly as much as He has since then. I often had the horrible feeling that I was "supposed" to be doing something different from what I was doing at the time, but I didn't know what it was, or I didn't know how to choose. I've learned a lot since then about leadership, about giving direction to a group of people, about the importance of reaching out to people and building relationships. At the time, I was simply responding to needs as best I could, studying for messages, planning youth group activities--just doing whatever seemed to be needed at the time.

And despite all my insecurities, God really did bless us. I credit a lot of that to Cecile, for whom reaching out and forming relationships is as natural as breathing; I'm still convinced that most of the people who love us (and there are a lot) love us because of her. We made some wonderful friendships. We were blessed far, far beyond what I understood at the time. I was going through what most pastors will privately admit to going through, but don't feel they can share with their congregations: deep discouragement. The church wasn't moving in the direction I thought it should as fast as I thought it should. I felt my leadership being challenged. I took criticisms to heart. I felt that I might have found a better fit elsewhere. I wondered if I should be teaching instead of pastoring. I wondered if I was having any positive effect at all, on anyone.

And so I left, after 3 ½ years. I was asking God, if He wanted me to stay, to reaffirm my leadership, and if He wanted me to go, to give me something to move toward. And two opportunities presented themselves. I felt it was God's leading.

Since then, I've had the chance to return a few times, most recently last August. And every time I go back, I am blown away by the kindness and love that the people from that church have for Cecile and me. They make my wife and me feel like royalty. They lavish kind words and fond memories on us. They tell us that they recall and appreciate things I said over a decade ago. They love us, truly love us, far beyond what I had ever imagined.

When we go, we see people we had known as children and teens, now grown up and married. And one of the greatest regrets I have is having lost the opportunity to have been there to watch them grow up, to have been a part of their lives during that time. What a privilege it would have been, to have been involved in their lives for the long haul; to have been more than a memory, however pleasant. If I had to do it all over again, would I have left? Am I hairsplitting too much to say that the person I was then needed to leave, but if I knew then what I know now, I may not have?

I am now in a very similar place to the one I was in just before going up to Brimley: not in a position of formal ministry, looking for an opportunity, dealing with some roadblocks and disappointments and constraints. I truly believe that if I am ever given the opportunity to pastor again, I will do it better, with more purpose, more confidence, more wisdom. And more than anything, I hope that I will understand and appreciate the privilege that it is to invest yourself in the lives of other believers, to encourage their growth, and to have a positive influence on them. I pray that I get the chance.

Jim Martin on Being a Parent or Minister

Jim Martin writes an interesting piece: Four Critical Keys to Being a Parent (or Minister). Good stuff. Check it out.