Guilty All the Same

To Throw the Stone     John 8:1-11 (The Message)

8 ^1-2 Jesus went across to Mount Olives, but he was soon back in the Temple again. Swarms of people came to him. He sat down and taught them.

^3-6 The religion scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him.

^6-8 Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.

^9-10 Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?”

¹¹ “No one, Master.”

“Neither do I,” said Jesus. “Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.”

I lived my adolescent years through young adulthood in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. I guess I would be what is classified as a Generation X-er.  Basically, what that means is that I grew up with the most innovative, alternative, unplugged, heart on your sleeve, full-out grunge and punk, shout your pain and your wry sarcasm music ever written.  Hands down, don’t argue with me.  Other generations wish they had my music, but it is mine.

You can imagine how elated I was to discover last month, that amid all of the Rianna and Justin Beiber stations, up popped  (and let me shamelessly plug it) 95.3.  It’s pretty much music from my high school and college days with some new stuff thrown in.  Last night I heard a familiar sound from my college days, but didn’t know the song.  It was called “Guilty All the Same” and sang by a band called “Linken Park” that debuted in the 90’s but hit their stride around 2003.  Bunch of raging punks.  They weren’t my “style” of music at the time or now, but these lyrics of their newest song grabbed me.

"You're guilty all the same
Too sick to be ashamed
You want to point your finger
But there's no one else to blame"

In the song, they are basically shaming all of society, from the church to the big music labels.  But the chorus has stuck with me because… it’s the truth.  The people of the church are guilty of the same. Guilty of greed. Guilty of lust. Guilty being hypocritical. Guilty of being judgmental. Guilty of presenting a pretty face to the public and then being ugly to our families. Guilty of sin. Hands up, we are guilty, guilty, guilty Linken Park! 

Are we too sick to be ashamed?  I don’t know about that one.  Perhaps that is how it appears to the world, but I believe we are ashamed.  We are eaten up inside by our sin and the contradictions that our lives are to what we profess to believe. 

Perhaps that is why we point fingers so vigorously at others. Maybe it’s why we have an unspoken sin rating system.  We can feel a little better about our sin if others have committed “bigger” sins. We can shout loudly about the sins that we know we would never commit. No we would never murder. We would never have an abortion.  We would never…cheat?   Lie?  Gossip?  Throw stones?

We all learned in elementary school not to point the finger at someone else because you have three more pointing back at you when you do. The same is true for Christians.  The difference is that we don’t have to exist in a state of darkness and sin.  We have forgiveness. We have forgiveness, not a “get out of jail free” card.  That is what Bonhoeffer would call “cheap grace”.  We are not a “Not perfect, just forgiven” bumper sticker.  No, what we have is a costly release from the bondage of our sins and the opportunity to live differently. A new life paid for with a life. We don’t have to be the same sinner we’ve always been.  That doesn’t have to be our identity.  We are free to go and sin no more.

Yes, we are guilty, but through forgiveness, we are free to change. We are free to live differently, to love differently, to try to be more like Jesus, who was not “guilty of the same”.

Prayer: Holy God, help us not to point but to love.  Help us to "go and sin no more". Help us to be more like you. Amen.

A World of Bobs

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 1 Peter 5:6-7

The children’s show “Bob the Builder” went off air in 2010, but it still remains popular through the magic of Netflix.  The show usually revolves around some dilemma that has happened previously that Bob is called to help with, or a problem that one of Bob’s team of trucks, tractors and backhoes have caused themselves.  Bob always comes to the rescue with the construction equipment-rallying cry of “Can we fix it? Yes we can!”  No problem too big or too small can’t be fixed in twenty-one minutes.

Twenty-one minutes or less.  That’s the average television show’s time without commercials.  Family rifts, illnesses, and crimes can be solved in that time.  But for us, we don’t have the benefit of time lapse or suspended disbelief.  We have real life, with real hurts, real people and real messes.  And yet, we still have the “Bob” mentality that somehow we can fix it, yes we can!

There is a certain arrogance about us that often refuses to bring our troubles to the Lord.  Whether it is conscious or not, often we try to handle the situation ourselves before we hand it over to God in a fit of desperation.  Why is God and prayer so often our last resort?  Jesus modeled a deeply prayerful life for us. In fact, one of the last things that Jesus did on earth was pray “father forgive them for they know not what they do”. 

Without prayer, we send God the message of either “I can handle this” or equally wrong the message of “you don’t have time for this.”  The truth is no, we cannot handle this life without God’s guiding presence and none of our problems are too small or menial for him to give attention to.  Jesus wants to be Lord of our Lives, not just lord of our Sundays. He wants all of our good times and our bad times. He wants our laughter and our tears, our hurts and hang-ups.  He wants them all because we are his children and he loves us. Period. And sometimes the answers to our prayers are hard and sometimes they take a long time coming but in the meantime, we can trust in him knowing that in His time we will find the the answers we need.

Can he fix it? Yes he can!

Prayer: Father forgive me when I forget you.  Help me to seek you through petition and prayer everyday knowing that no one loves us more than you. Amen.

Sparkle

Matthew 5:16

Contemporary English Version (CEV)

16 Make your light shine, so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven.

In my third year of seminary, I moved into a house with two art majors and another seminarian.  It was an old row house with pocket doors and vintage light fixtures. This house was truly "community" living.  It had been so long since the floors were refinished that in places,you could actually see between the boards to the basement.  When the basement roommate (whom I never actually saw...ever) smoked in his room, our house smelled like cigarettes.  When one of the roommates in the apartment upstairs was going through a breakup, we all knew it because he would play the same sad Damien Rice song again and again. 

My room was a living room that had been divided in half by pocket doors that served as a wall.  My roommate Amanda and I kept the doors open most of the time.  Amanda is like a human firecracker. She is bright, effervescent and makes the world a more beautiful place through the love that she so freely gives to everyone with whom she comes in contact.  I'm pretty sure that she only slept about four hours a day.  When I expressed concern about this fact she told me "Beca, you can sleep when you're dead."    

To give you an idea about Amanda's personality, she told me the true story that one day, when she was around eight years old, she came to her parents in tears.  When asked what was wrong, she said her name was too "normal". Amanda comes from a large family. She has five siblings with names like Rhodes, Gentry, Logan and a mom named Willow. Her dad asked her what she wanted her name to be and she said "Sparkle".  Her dad told her he would be glad to change her name when she was eighteen if she still wanted to change it then, in the meantime he called her sparkle at home from that day onward.  Amanda did not change her name to sparkle, but she brought it to our lives.

Amanda taught me a lot about love. Mainly that you can't wait for people to come to you.  When people say you have to break out of your shell to reach people for Jesus, Amanda had no problem because she had no shell. I did. I had been hurt and I had judgement and walls in my life.  That year I became friends with more beautiful, warm,loving, unchurched people than I ever had in my life.  But it took Amanda modeling a love that knew no strangers to show me how to love like Jesus.

It is not the words of the Gospel alone that will win souls to Christ, it is Christians like Amanda, and you, and me whose lives are a living testimony to the Gospel that will move people to know our Jesus.  The Word of God has power to transform lives, but first, we must sparkle brightly with love in a dark world to show the lost the way to the cross. If we can't be a firecracker, we can at least be the flashlight that points the way.

Prayer:  Thank you Jesus for the people who show us what it means to shine with your love.  Help me to point others to your saving grace by living the Gospel with my whole life. -Amen

Instant Human

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his 

life for his friends. John 15:12

America is the most unrested and sleep deprived nation in the world. That is a fact. On average 50-70 million Americans report some sort of sleep deprivation. 54% of Americans over 18 drink a cup of coffee everyday and 18 billion dollars are spent on average each year on "specialty coffees" to keep ourselves awake and alert each day. We are tired, and why wouldn’t we be with so much to do!  We are the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, “put your big girl pants on”, “work hard to play hard”, “weekend warriors”, country.  Weakness is not an option, working through the pain is celebrated, and rest is often considered laziness. 

But the one thing that really kills us is the “I’ll just do it myself” mentality. Not only does it make life harder, but human beings were created to live and work in community.  It didn’t take God long after he made Adam, to see the need for Eve.  What was Jesus’ first task when beginning his adult ministry?  It was recruiting disciples, the people who would be his community and partners in ministry.  When Jesus says, “love one another as I have loved you”, he means to love in community.  There were very few places that Jesus went alone.  So many of the gospel stories begin with a variation of this sentence “As Jesus and His disciples were traveling together”.  Jesus chose community, because we cannot do life alone.  To love as Jesus loves, we have to be willing to lay down our lives for our friends, so wouldn’t it make sense to have friends? Friends. True friends. Not acquaintances.

It is a challenge to live in community, and sometimes it is easier to do something ourselves, but often it sacrifices much time and community in the “lone wolf" process.  Today, who do you need to connect with?  Do you need to trust God and trust others more? This week, have your coffee with a friend. Life is too hard and too long a road to travel alone.

Prayer: Jesus you know what it means to live and love in community.  You depended on others for prayer, friendship and a place to lay your head.  Help us not to be so self-sufficient that we risk relationships that could enrich our lives and our faith.  

The Wand

John 3:16-17

English Standard Version (ESV)

For God So Loved the World

16 “For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

My father is a dentist, and when I was young, he used to come home with hilarious stories of the things that Mrs. Brenda, one of his assistants would say.  One day, the topic of the Tooth Fairy came up and Mrs. Brenda went into great detail about how much she would love to have the Tooth Fairy’s wand, and the things she would do with it.  Letting the air out of the tires of people who had been rude to her at the mall, or making annoying people mute for a while,were just a few of the options offered. We were all limp with laughter when dad finished telling us about the conversation.  

A wand. Wouldn’t we all love to have one?  Can you imagine being able to exact anonymous revenge on the people who deserve it? Putin and Kim Jong Un would have some serious zaps coming their way!  How many of us would use our wands for what we would call “divine retribution”.  I’m pretty sure that every time a Duke player took a flop or Krzyzewski dropped a four letter bomb on the court, I’d have to go pretty heavy handed on the zappage!

Aren’t we glad that Jesus didn’t have that same mentality? In John 3:17 we read “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  Jesus had so much and still has so much to “zap” us for, and yet he would rather use his power to focus on forgiveness and not condemnation. 

Is there someone in your life that you need to use your power to forgive and not condemn?  The thing about condemnation is that it takes its toll on those who are dishing it out.  It forces you to look at the worst of people again, and again, and again. That’s a dark place to live. Forgiveness, on the other hand, allows the injured party  freedom to move on from their “hurts” and allows the “guilty” party to move on from the wrong into a new life of redemption.

The wand is a fun idea, but in the end, I wouldn’t really want that kind of power.  I’d rather leave judgment to the one who came to save and not to condemn.

Prayer:  Jesus, the beauty of your forgiveness seems all the more evident in contrast to our natural tendency toward retribution.  Thank you for your grace in the face of our sin. -Amen