Saturday, March 14, 2020

696 - What I Really Really Think

4:35 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #696
March 17, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What I Really Really Think
By Bob Walters

“And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20

For anyone who thinks church is only about the building, the preaching, the music, or the gathering on Sunday mornings … we’re about to find out if they are right.

Spoiler alert … they’re not.  The true church of Jesus Christ is in the human heart; the rest of it is a grace blessing that we get to share in good times and may have to adapt, adjust, and overcome in times like these.  The Christian spirit of love and peace will shine now just as surely as the mischief of Satan’s sour, divisive, glory-robbing character will attack. Pick your path, discern your conviction, choose wisely.

What we make of this Covid-19 inconvenience – and I’m talking about the procedures and the politics of it, not the virus – will govern our spiritual and mental health in the weeks (months?) to come.  Somebody said, “Don’t expect a blizzard; expect a winter.”  If that’s so, Jesus is my overcoat, galoshes, hat, scarf, gloves … and love is my snow shovel. (I just looked outside and whaddya know … it’s snowing. Seriously.)

I see America through the lens of freedom, opportunity, and hope … always hope.  We’ll be better tomorrow than we are today, even when that brightest “tomorrow” may be a ways off in eternity with Jesus.  That’s the Christian promise, but so is Christ’s promise cited above at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew: “And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.”  Everything else passes.

I was buoyed on Friday by all the online activity I saw from not just my own East 91st Street Christian Church but churches all over that were resolved and scrambling to adapt, adjust, and overcome this public-gathering shutdown.  Online services, outreach by cards and email, helping neighbors, special accommodations for the Holy Mass and Communion so critical to our Roman Catholic brethren – ideas and love in full-bloom.

We mustn’t immediately demand answers from the church for “How are you going to fix this for me?” because the healthy attitude and reality is, “I am the church.”  This is an opportunity for each of us to look in new places for peace, serving others, helping our community, and aiding our churches and staffs.  Read the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, and get creative.  If you’re angry, look at Galatians 5:19-21, noting especially “hatred and discord.”  That’s a bigger danger than the Covid-19 virus. 

My minister friend David Faust noted smartly in an e91 blog Take Five, Give Five (link) the joy we can seek in this “pause” from church business as usual.  We get to reimagine and investigate our own sense of adventure and relationship with Christ and other Christians by our actions, prayers, and creativity in what for us is this extraordinary time. 

It occurs to me early Christians were fed to lions; this isn’t that bad.

Jesus is always with us.  The Spirit is always with us.  God is always on His throne.  Out of curiosity I googled “I will always be with you” and the second thing that popped up was this link: What Does the Bible Say About I Will Always Be With You? 

Our attitude conditions our actions, and fear kills faith and unity.  Even as we are apart, it is critical that we are spiritually present for each other.  Congregate online, read your Bible, and help a neighbor.  Shine the light of Jesus; the world surely needs it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is plenty ticked about the overt, willful, agenda-driven fear-mongering of the media and political narrative. Satan wants to cancel hope.  Uh-uh.
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Monday, March 9, 2020

695 - Lifeblood

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Spirituality Column #695
March 10, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Lifeblood
By Bob Walters

“Let His blood be on us and our children.” – the Praetorium mob shouting at Roman governor Pontius Pilate after persuading him to crucify Jesus, Matthew 27:25

In our current season of enhanced public-health-obsessive but probably prudent handwashing – thanks, Coronavirus – let’s look at the most famous handwashing episode of all time: Pontius Pilate washing his hands of the blood of Jesus.

First, to be clear, the one has nothing to do with the other – Pontius Pilate and Coronavirus, we mean.  But we are a couple of weeks into the holy season of Lent leading up to Easter on April 12 moving toward that remembrance of the last days, arrest, trial, blood, cross, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Throughout Christendom, much is always said about “the blood of Jesus.”  It covers our sins, washes us, and heals us.  The blood of Jesus – and only His blood – provides for our righteousness before God because in His grace our sins and fallenness are forgiven.  Our faith in Jesus as the Son of God – that He was Who He said and showed He was – restores our divine relationship in the heavenly Kingdom.  We were created in God’s image, and our faith in the blood of Christ is our passport back home.

We realize that to non-believers, that last paragraph is gobbledygook.  But a Holy Spirit-infused faith shows us that the blood of Christ brings renewed life to humanity, though we are free to accept or dismiss the truth of the Bible.  Pilate famously washing his own hands of Jesus’s blood (Matthew 27:24), just prior to the public chorus cited above (Matthew 27:25), often confuses the hopeful message Jesus actually delivered.

Pilate was perhaps the most reluctant executioner of all time.  He knew in his soul Jesus was innocent, was of another realm, posed no imminent threat to the earthly sovereignty of the Roman empire, and himself became spiritually fearful while dealing with him.  The crowd, shouting for the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, forced Pilate’s hand as the Roman hoped to keep peace for the Passover in Jerusalem.

But Pilate had no peace, really.  The crowd shouted, Pilate washed his hands of Jesus’s blood, and then loosed upon Jesus the ugliest beating and death imaginable.

Yet, it was as it had to be.  The crowd inviting Jesus’s blood “to be on us and our children” – unbeknownst to them – was exactly as it was meant to be, but not as they ignorantly and self-righteously proclaimed.  Jesus was going to the cross indeed, but, in truth, for them and for their children so they might one day know the peace of Christ.

When we see only the violence and ugliness of the cross, and when we embrace only guilt and the apparent punishment, penalty, payment, price of our sins – it is a wholesale sign that, like the shouting crowd, we are missing the grace of Jesus’s blood.

Jesus’s blood was shed for us not in destruction and rejection, but in healing, reconciliation, love, and life.  It was poured out not “against” anyone, but “for” everyone.

The mob’s words foretold not the implied curse, but described a truth no one yet understood: that in Christ’s blood was humanity’s redemption, salvation, and eternity.

I believe heaven is an open shop for the faithful, that Jesus came for all, and that the key into the Kingdom is the gracious blood of the New Covenant of Christ.
 
So yes Lord, please, let your blood be on us; and fill all our lives with your truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is not a universalist but prays for everybody.  He is also going right now to wash his hands.

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Monday, March 2, 2020

694 - Chef's Surprise

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Spirituality Column #694
March 3, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

 Chef’s Surprise
By Bob Walters

"If you want God to give you specific results, you have to pray for specific things.” – radio preacher a couple weeks ago.

Deja vu.  That line was the theme-setting jump-in for last week’s column What I Really Really Want (2-25-2020): what we pray for vs. what results we should expect.

My reaction to that line, and it’s what I wrote, was that trusting God, I pray in Jesus’s name through the Holy Spirit for relationship more than results.  We can ask for whatever we want, but the ultimate goal, I think, is not worldly comfort but that by our faith in Jesus, loving God, and loving others – in relationship – we contribute to and participate in God’s glory.  That’s our salvation.  That’s our ticket to heaven. 

Granted, it is also a pretty general and specifics-free approach to prayer.  My church friend Dave Deane sent me a quick note about that column, citing our late, wonderful minister Russ Blowers.  “As Russ once told me,” Dave wrote, “’you don’t go into a restaurant and ask for food; you need to be specific.’”

Aha!  A great line I’d heard before and oh, if I’d just thought of it last week.  It would have fit right into that piece.  A gifted storyteller, Russ had a knack for squeezing a lot of thought in to a few, memorable words.  And I might add that when he prayed you had no doubt God was listening.  Russ was that kind of pastor, and a great friend.

Anyhow Russ, who passed in 2007, was right.  Whether in confession, questions, or requests, our prayerful details and specifics are critical.  But those specifics are critical for our sake, not God’s. God already knows; we need to examine ourselves.

It’s our sinning but caring selves who benefit in prayer by carefully thinking through the particulars of our faith, life, and concerns.  We can moan and God can murmur.  Sometimes – oftentimes – the exactitude of what we’re praying about is bigger or more mysterious than we can comprehend.  If we show up at the restaurant, take a seat and ask for food, we miss the relational experience and spiritual growth of considering all that is on that big, divine menu, and what’s going on back in the kitchen.

But don’t miss this, either.  Whether in the plainest or fanciest restaurant, unless you’re already acquainted, the chef will have no idea who you are, what you like, what you need, how hungry you are, if you can pay the bill, if you’re allergic to shellfish, or can stomach kale. It’s only about your order, not Godly nourishment and relationship.

In response to prayer, I believe God feeds us in His will and time.  In God’s restaurant the chef – He’s the chef – already knows us but delights in having us talk to Him, building our faith, trust, and relationship.  As we grow to know Him, we learn to understand how He puts 
His menu together and shows us how to order our thoughts, love, and priorities, not just how to order a meal.  He’s the chef who already knows. 

God knows the plans He has for us (Jeremiah 29:11).  Jesus personally assures us in nearly a dozen places to ask – in faith – for whatever we want (Matthew 18:19, 21:22, Mark 11:24, John 15:7, et al), and it will be done even when it’s a chef’s surprise.

Our peace is in knowing – in trusting – that the chef always sends out His best.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prefers spiritual nourishment over kale and shellfish.
PS - Last week's column is just below ... scroll down ...

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Monday, February 24, 2020

693 - What I Really Really Want

7:43 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #693
February 25, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What I Really Really Want
By Bob Walters

“Lord fill me with truth and peace, courage and strength, wisdom and compassion.” – part of my own “pray without ceasing” routine.

I heard a radio preacher last week coach his listeners, “If you want God to give you specific results, you have to pray for specific things.”

And I thought, well, there’s my next column.

We all love to pray for stuff, for good things, for healing and comfort, for relief from turmoil, and for the healing of pain and suffering for ourselves and others.  God and Jesus throughout the Bible invite us constantly to pray with sincere hearts for whatever is on our hearts with the promise that those prayers with Godly foundation in the Holy Spirit will be heard immediately and answered in God’s own timing.

I do it, you do it, we all do it all the time.  When we ask others for prayers, or they ask us, or we pray for someone … we address the needs at hand.  God is listening.

And yet … my reaction to the radio preacher talking about “praying for specific things” was realizing that in my deepest and most private and truly ongoing prayer time – my “doing life with Jesus” prayers – I almost never am asking God for results; I am praying for and about my relationship with Him.  With praise, thanks, and awe, I pray through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit for mercy, light, and truth.

I am praying usually something along the order of having eyes to see and ears to hear, or for the fruits of the Spirit – e.g. “love, joy, peace, patience forbearance, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). I see God’s wonders in my life, but I don’t keep a scorecard with God just like I don’t keep one with my wife, children, or anyone really.  Joy is in relationship, not the exchange rate.

Here’s my prayer outline reminding me who God is, who I am, and whose I am:
- Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. (Jesus prayer)
- Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)
- Father God thank you for the love of my children, the grace of our being, and the beauty of this world.  Fill me with truth and peace, courage and strength, wisdom and compassion. (my own words)
- Lord bless me, and expand my territory.  Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will feel no pain. (1 Chronicles 4:10, Prayer of Jabez)
- Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. (Psalm 51:10-12)

Sometimes I tack on the traditional Lord’s Prayer, other times I don’t get that far and focus on a specific praise, problem, person, or confession.  I don’t pray to impress God or get stuff; I pray to express the faith, hope, and love He already freely shares.

No, I truly do not believe Jesus died so I/we could ask Him for stuff; Jesus died so we would be assured forever of a loving, righteous relationship with Almighty God. 

Results are nice, but I pray for relationship.  That’s what I really really want.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has cobbled together that prayer template over many years; it’s like a tape running in his head.  It saves time and is a ready “hello” to God.

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Monday, February 17, 2020

692 - Close Call

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Spirituality Column #692
February 18, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Close Call
By Bob Walters

“They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” – Acts 2:46-47

I love this picture of the early church.

They weren’t dissecting personal problems (What about me?), railing against Roman rule (politics), denigrating the Pharisees (doctrine), dwelling on organizational protocols (churchianity), or focusing much on sins or Are you / Am I really saved?  (legalistic doubts and judgment).  They marveled at what Jesus had done.  They didn’t ask God for “stuff;” they praised Christ’s courage.  They took loving care of each other.

This early church pre-dated the “nature-of-Jesus” heresies soon to come and the navel-gazing of later theologians and philosophers.  These first worshipers likely wouldn’t recognize much of the modern church – any modern church – but would have great compassion for our distance of time from the events they experienced.

These earliest Christians were driven into sincere and loving fellowship by their witness of Christ to each other and the outside world.  They had seen Him, Jesus.  Or if they personally had not seen Jesus, in their midst likely were one or several who had.  There were eyewitnesses everywhere not only to His pain and suffering but also to His obedience and majesty, to His teaching, miracles, and passion, and to His resurrection.

It is a story of life, success, and relationship; not death, failure, and punishment.

Acts chapter 2 is thrilling in its descriptions: Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, Peter’s earliest preaching, the risen Lord, the ancient prophesies, and the direct simplicity of “church” participation – “Repent and be baptized.”  The Cross was near.

It is hard to imagine that the topics of personal needs or comfort, of politics and interpretations, of organization and actions, of “Jesus fix this for me!” – so prevalent in myriad congregations today – arose.  In that startlingly new and divine bright light of the resurrected Jesus, in their closeness to the Cross, redemption, salvation and the person of Jesus Christ, their easy fellowship was underscored by unrestrained joy and charity.
Others in culture around them noticed “and many were added to their number.”

Despite the words of the revered hymn The Old Rugged Cross, that Cross is anywhere but “On a hill far away.”  The Cross of Christ is in my life here and now and if you are reading this, likely in yours.  It is the Cross we joyously bear in our hearts that, yes, convicts us of our sin but also gloriously convinces us of the truth of Christ.  The Cross binds us in fellowship to other Christians.  The Cross invites, insists, requires sharing its promise with “glad and sincere hearts” as reflected in that earliest church. 

Jesus succeeded in His mission.  The early Christians quickly realized that the horror of the Cross and what initially was a dispiriting death and apparent failure was but a labored pass-through to resurrection and sharing the eternal glory of God’s love.

The lesson of the Cross isn’t failure, nor is it “suffering and shame” as the hymn suggests.  The lessons of the Cross are joy and truth; they are courage and purpose and obedience.  The deep message of Christ is hope and love driven by our faith in the full light of His truth – the truth – that God exists, God is with us, and God loves us.

That’s salvation, that’s our purpose, that’s the truth … and we do it together.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) hears that hymn and – shazam – another column.

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Monday, February 10, 2020

691 - Careful Whom You Criticize

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Spirituality Column #691
February 11, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Careful Whom You Criticize
By Bob Walters
“…blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” – Jesus, Matthew 12:31

You may have noticed we live in a largely criticism-driven and unforgiving culture these days.  But I think truly only the specifics – not the convention – are unique.

Jesus carried Godly truth, peace, grace, forgiveness, love, hope, and so much more into the fallen realm of mankind.  And it wasn’t just a message of those things; in Christ it was the reality of their existence, God’s existence, God’s abiding presence, and God’s saving promise.  Jesus on earth and His everlasting example of obedience, sacrifice, humility, and love were humanity’s keys to God’s Kingdom and glory. Jesus was an eternal gift of everything humanity needed to understand and join God.  Yet …

In Jesus’s own time and in His own place Pharisees had sinfully fashioned for themselves their own kingdom and their own ideas of material needs from God.  And they rejected outright the notion that this preaching carpenter from Nazareth – miracles and all – was the revealed God and saving Messiah Christ promised in the scriptures.

These Pharisees stared the revealed God in the eye and called him Satan.

Now that blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

We read this story (Matthew 12:22-37) of the Pharisees’ saying Jesus’s miracles were of “Beelzebub” and demons, not of God.  Jesus fired back with a message aimed specifically at the Pharisees that is equal parts familiar, remarkable, and confounding.

It is familiar because it contains famous catch phrases: “[a] kingdom divided against itself will not stand” (v25), “the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (v28), “he who is not with me is against me” (v30), and “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (v34).  For good measure Jesus calls the Pharisees “a brood of vipers” (v34). 

It is remarkable because Jesus 1) is so bold, 2) points out the impossibility that demons are driven out by Beelzebub because Satan cannot drive out Satan, and 3) because the parables and metaphors condemning the Pharisees flow effortlessly.

But it is confounding because of verses 31-32: “…every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come.”

Catch that?  All man’s sins will be forgiven and yes, it’s OK to blaspheme the Son Jesus.  But … blaspheme the Holy Spirit and you’re condemned forever.  What?

First, you can’t divide the Father-Son-Spirit Trinity so don’t try; you blaspheme one, you blaspheme them all.  Second, Jesus knew that not everyone would understand His salvation message, but being human He knows our temptations and being God He forgives our weaknesses.  Third, Jesus is clearly and directly addressing the Pharisees, not those who would come later, believe, be baptized, and sin again, i.e., you and me.

And fourth, the issue here isn’t common sin; it is the raw blasphemy of the Pharisees in assigning God’s miracles and message – i.e., Jesus – to Satan, not God. They denied God’s truth, ignored His nature, refused His gift, and said He was Satan.

From that vile, empty heresy there is no path to – or back to – the Spirit of God.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has been reading Athanasius again.

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Monday, February 3, 2020

690 - Getting the Picture

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Spirituality Column #690
February 4, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Getting the Picture
By Bob Walters

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed,” Jesus in John 12:24

God’s glory is a tricky, mysterious, and seemingly impossible thing. 

It never changes, but it always grows. We cannot make God’s glory greater or smaller, yet our faith in Christ is for the glory of God.  We were created in God’s image for God’s glory, but were given the freedom to pursue God’s glory or not.

The purpose of our life is to glorify God, which we accomplish by loving God and loving others.  But the ultimate demonstration and revelation of – the revealing of –God’s glory and God’s love is not the life Jesus lived but the death Jesus died.  Jesus died in obedience to the Father; but Jesus also died in a profound act of divine love so that all humanity might live.

We view our own human glory – most often – as conquest and comfort in life. Jesus lived so that God’s glory would be revealed through his own sacrifice and death.

God’s glory very truly is a life and death matter, and in Jesus we see the truest picture of why life and death matter so much.  Life matters because it is our opportunity to freely pursue God in love as we know He pursues us.  Death matters because that is where we grow into and discover perfect sinless fellowship in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t die so the Romans and Jews could be rid of His rebellion; Jesus died so all humanity could discover God’s truth and the assured hope of eternal life.  His resurrection showed us that God’s promise would bring life and what Jesus’s obedience mysteriously meant: that our own death is the doorway to God’s eternal glory.

Human glory is not nearly so mysterious.  What we see as our own glory in the course of our earthly lives will ebb and flow, shrink and grow, stumble here, succeed there and generally be entirely situational and, to paraphrase author Tom Wolfe, a bonfire of our own vanities.  It’s all about us until we lock into the visual of Christ on the Cross in His perfect obedience to/of God and eternal love for God and God’s creation.

Then we begin to catch on that the “kernel of wheat” falling into the ground, as Jesus mentions, is what transforms a static and until-then useless piece of flora into a useful, life-giving, and gloriously growing exhibition of God’s endless creativity.  The seed – Jesus, us, our faith – goes into the ground and responds with new life.  

We trod this earthly stage for a season, limited by our appetites, yearnings, fears, death, and a hooded understanding of God’s eternal reality.  But we are encouraged by our discoveries, faith, accomplishments, hopes, and loves.  We survive good days and bad; we want more comfort and less discomfort.  We want to get “more” in this life, but wisdom teaches us that joy is learning to give away that thing most valuable to us: life.

That is the single, magnificent seed of Jesus.  We needn’t ask Jesus what we get for our faith; let’s instead seek the thrill of being invited into divine life’s renewed picture.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) concedes you may well have your own answer(s) to the question, “Why are life and death important?”  He encourages you to think about it.


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