storiesofvalue

Have Mercy 

Jesus once told a parable about two servants.  The first servant owed a king the enormous sum of 10,000 talents, which translates into billions of dollars today.  It is inconceivable anyone could repay this kind of debt, let alone a servant, which is exactly the point Jesus wanted to make.  The king commanded the servant’s family and possessions be sold to settle his account.  Everything he had worked for would be taken away and the people he loved most would be treated like property by strangers.  His heart crushed, the servant fell on his knees and begged for mercy, and incredibly, the king relented and forgave his debt.  It is hard to imagine a happier ending.  It is also hard to believe what happened next.

The servant who had been shown grace was also owed a debt by a second servant.  It was an inconsequential debt compared to his, but that didn’t seem to matter.  He grabbed the servant by the throat, choked him and demanded payment.  When the second servant begged for mercy, the first servant had him thrown into prison.  Things might have ended there if it hadn’t been for some other servants who witnessed everything and reported the incident to the king.  The king was outraged!  He confronted the first servant with his wrong: “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had on you?”  Then he turned the first servant over to his jailers to be tortured until he was able to pay back the debt he had been forgiven, virtually insuring he would suffer forever.

This parable illustrates Jesus’ fifth Beatitude perfectly: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).  It came in response to a question by Peter, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?  Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21).  Jesus answered, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times!”  Then He told this parable.

What do you suppose Peter thought about Jesus’ answer before he heard the parable?  Did he run the numbers in his head and try to paint a mental picture of what it might mean to forgive someone seventy-seven times?  Or did he hear Jesus’ real message?  Mercy wasn’t about numbers.  It was about treating others as God treats us and learning to forgive our brothers from the heart (Matthew 18:35).  Our ability to embrace this principle will greatly impact our posture toward others, especially when we feel offended.  It will also define our relationship with God.  This latter point is the biggest reason to make sure we live lives of mercy.

Of course, when it comes to good spiritual nutrition we are still left to determine what constitutes “Jesus food.”  This discernment takes work, which is why we can only succeed when we take responsibility for our diet.  We will flourish is we feast on these biblical points: 1) the things Jesus did, 2) the things Jesus said, and 3) the things other people said about what Jesus did and said.  In this way we plant spiritual truths in our hearts and reinforce them by modeling our Savior’s perfect example.

We also rely on the Holy Spirit and His sanctifying work in our hearts.  He is the One who created the Word that communicates the pure Jesus we seek to follow.  The Holy Spirit helps us process spiritual food and convert it into a life of worship.

As we follow Jesus’ example and His teachings, and the Holy Spirit transforms us from within, we devour the grace that pours from Calvary.  This is our eternal food, even our salvation, which guarantees the removal of sin through the sacrifice of blood and eternal life by the resurrection from the dead.

If you hunger and thirst, you will be filled.  Give Jesus His rightful place at the table and you will always have access to the righteousness that brings lasting joy.

From yesterday – We live in a paradoxical time in church ministry.  There is a place for excellence because the people we are trying to reach for Christ are picky eaters.  It is important that we humble ourselves as believers and not grow frustrated with those whose view of righteousness has been skewed by the Deceiver.  The table we set in worship and in any other expression of our faith will influence whether or not those who don’t know the Lord bother to come back for another helping.  But in this, we who know there is more must keep our perspectives.  The moment we begin to put our product over God’s presence and the spiritual hunger and thirst that draws others to Him, is the moment we strip our message of its nutritional value.

This paradox reveals an ironic conflict in the quest for spiritual fulfillment.  We will not pursue God with passion unless we are truly hungry and thirsty, but our hearty appetite can also lure us into sinful practices or the self-righteous attitude of the Pharisees.  When we are starved, it all looks good and we must find a way to center our hearts God.

The right appetite leads to lasting fulfillment

I am old enough to remember a time when food packages didn’t have nutrition labels.  Something called the “Fair Packaging and Labeling Act” came along in 1965 and now we have immediate access to calorie, fat and sodium counts.  Gone are the days when we stuff anything in our mouths just because we are hungry.  We want to be full, but we also want to be healthy.

Unfortunately, everything our soul consumes isn’t labeled.  This requires a greater sense of responsibility on our part as we navigate a toxic world.  We know we want to avoid selfish ambition and bitter envy because they destroy our relationships and leave us emptier than before.  We also want to reject self-righteousness because it fools us into thinking we are filled, even as we starve to death.  But where do we go for the meal God has prepared, and how do we make sure we feast on and reflect 100% Jesus?

The answer to this question might seem over-simplistic, but it is rooted in the old adage, “you are what you eat.”  Since we don’t always have time to scrutinize every decision in our lives, we adopt broad principles that help us make choices that lead to spiritual fulfillment.  In the case of righteousness, if we want to reflect Jesus, we must eat and drink Jesus.  Does this sound weird?

It seemed downright bizarre to some people Jesus was addressing in the city of Capernaum.  They followed Him after His feeding of the five thousand and believed Him to be the prophet who was “to come into the world” (John 6:14).  Then Jesus said something so strange it must have left His audience grimacing and shaking their heads in disbelief: “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him” (John 6:55-56).  We are told, from that time on many of Jesus’ disciples stopped following Him.  Can you blame them?  Who wants to follow a nut?

But in reality, Jesus was merely trying to show His disciples the organic nature of faith.  You don’t find God by piling on human additives or using spiritual pursuits as a vehicle to feed your ego.  Instead, you arrive at the place God wants you to be by feeding on His Son.  The label of selfishness and self-righteousness has been replaced with a simple category: “Jesus – 100%”.

It all looks good     

It’s funny how we become less finicky when we are truly hungry and thirsty, and in turn how much more full we feel when we learn to appreciate what is put before us.  My grandfather and I used to pack a light lunch when we worked his tobacco fields together.  If you have ever spent a morning in a tobacco field you know the job is sweaty, sticky and exhausting.  When lunchtime rolled around we found some shade under an old hackberry tree and pulled some bologna sandwiches out of a Tupperware container.  The sandwiches were mushy and warm, but in our famished state it didn’t matter.

Since I live in an area surrounded by a number of military bases, people in our church family frequently deploy to dangerous locations around the world.  During their time away they take advantage of group Bible studies and worship services provided in their base compounds, but they really miss their church family back home.  Sometimes tragic events on the battlefield make their time away nearly unbearable and they survive with true grit and the prayers and encouragement of others.  When they finally arrive home, and walk through the doors of our church building for worship, they grin from ear to ear.  A few weep.  From the stage those of us leading ministry are concerned we might mess up.  From the spot our returning military personnel are standing, it is impossible for anyone to make a mistake, unless one of us fails to appreciate the presence of the Lord.

We live in a paradoxical time in church ministry.  There is a place for excellence because the people we are trying to reach for Christ are picky eaters.  It is important that we humble ourselves as believers and not grow frustrated with those whose view of righteousness has been skewed by the Deceiver.  The table we set in worship and in any other expression of our faith will influence whether or not those who don’t know the Lord bother to come back for another helping.  But in this, we who know there is more must keep our perspectives.  The moment we begin to put our product over God’s presence and the spiritual hunger and thirst that draws others to Him, is the moment we strip our message of its nutritional value.

It seems we are prone to compartmentalize our various appetites in life and relegate the spiritual kind to an optional status.  As long as people are eating and drinking, we aren’t alarmed if they don’t seem to be seeking God.  Even if we believe it is important that they know God, we are willing to give them time and are reluctant to raise serious concerns.  But if they pursue God, and become so obsessed with the journey they enter a season of fasting or some other intense form of spiritual discipline, we get nervous.  We don’t want to stand by and watch people we care about go off the religious deep end.

Before you label me a nut, I must tell you I am not prone to extremes in spiritual disciplines.  I would be concerned about someone engaged in an open-ended fast with no clear motivation or objective.  My point is merely that we have established priorities, spoken or unspoken, and making sure our spiritual lives don’t die on the vine isn’t always at the top of the list.  I propose it should be.

This doesn’t mean our physical life isn’t vitally important, or that we should disregard the physical in order to attain the spiritual.  If God didn’t care about our physical bodies and have a purpose for them He might have created us in a disembodied state.  Instead, He chose to bring us into the world through a physical process and endow us with gifts and aptitudes to manage the rest of creation.

Still, as the Bible reminds us, we are all going to die physically and our bodies return to the earth.  Our souls, on the other hand, will survive, and the spiritual choices we make while we are on earth will determine whether we are in God’s presence for eternity or forever separated from Him in hell.  Once when Jesus was preparing His disciples to share His kingdom with a hostile world He said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).  The temporary suffering inflicted on our human bodies is nothing compared to the tragedy of losing our souls.

Why am I spending so much time talking about the need for a spiritual appetite instead of focusing on the things that fulfill us?  After all, if we learn how fulfilling the feast of righteousness can be won’t our hunger and thirst increase?  I am aware we are more willing to eat and drink when our favorite foods and beverages are placed before us.  The only problem is, in our spiritual walk, if what God has put before us is unappealing at the time, we might turn up our nose and walk away.  I am convinced we must hunger and thirst because we are sure we will die spiritually if we don’t, and ultimately die a second death in eternity.  When our spiritual appetite wanes we should sound the alarm, because we know if we don’t, we will die.

Isn’t all bread important for life?  In our culture of mega food marts it is easy to forget about impoverished people for whom a meager allotment of rice or grain truly is a matter of life and death.  Since people need food to survive, we can easily receive Jesus’ self-designation as a metaphor.  Indeed, Jesus is the food we eat, just as He is the air we breathe.  Without Him we could not find the strength to continue.

Yet, this bread is more than an inspiring figure of speech.  Jesus isn’t just similar to the food that keeps our bodies from wasting away.  He is life itself.  In the beginning, as an eternal member of the Godhead, He breathed into our ancestor Adam’s nostrils, and he became a living being.  Then He formed Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs and she became the mother of all who would come afterward.  The scriptures suggest Gnostic elements in the early church attempted to undermine Jesus’ role in creation and relegate Him to something less.  In response the Apostle Paul wrote, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17)

If, hypothetically, Jesus were to cease to exist, so would we.  So would everything.  Since the notion of eternity would disappear with Him, so would our past and future.  There would be no way, no truth and no life.  There would be no “be” for all reality would end.

I don’t mean to suggest Jesus’ role as our “bread of life” is limited to physical life, but we must understand the scope of the matter.  His place in our life begins with life itself.  Once we grasp the significance of this truth it makes more sense to speak of spiritual life and death and the hunger and thirst for righteousness that draws us to it.

Finding Fulfillment

I try to stay away from appetizers.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have no trouble devouring a large fried onion or a heaping bowl of chips with salsa.  But if I overdo things, I can easily fill up before the main course is delivered.

Still, it’s a challenge.  It’s hard to wait for something more nutritious when a waiter is pushing the quick fix.  After an order of wings or some bread sticks I can pretty much guarantee I will be taking half of my meal home in a Styrofoam box.

This is not an indictment on appetizers.  In fact, as they relate to the spiritual realm, a lot of people find their way to the deeper things of God after they have their appetites whetted by something less substantial.  Maybe you found salvation as a result of some relationships you formed on a church softball team or a youth event that involved water balloons and hot dogs.  You may have continued to attend a church because you enjoyed the worship band’s “vibe” or the preacher’s sense of humor (I am obviously speaking hypothetically…right?).  These things may be lean on the substance of the gospel, but if they are presented in the proper context they reflect Christ’s love and draw people closer to the cross.

Sooner or later, though, we want to be filled and we must ask where we can find lasting fulfillment.  To get there, it is important to think in terms of a living process instead of a single serving.  We must also remember the process begins with the Life-Giver.  Jesus described this very dynamic when He said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).

The Hunger and Thirst 

Hunger and thirst are so common to our existence we instinctively assign them certain behaviors.  The logic is pretty simple: If we are hungry, we eat.  If we are thirsty, we drink.  But the closer we look at the process of hungering and thirsting the more fascinated we are by their design.

Did you know our sense of smell is responsible for 80% of the things we taste?  The human tongue can recognize the basic sensations of saltiness, bitterness, sweet and sour, but the nose is necessary for anything more complex.  This is why, when we have a head cold, hardly anything tastes good.

If the sensation of taste is not confined to buds on our tongue, then we shouldn’t be surprised if spiritual hunger and thirst exhibit similar complexities. Spiritual sense begins with some basic human needs: the need to be at peace with ourselves and in community with God and others.  Adam and Eve weren’t spiritually hungry or thirsty before they sinned, since their relationship with God was complete and unsoiled.  But when they fell, their perfect peace was destroyed and a dark void invaded their hearts.

For centuries humans have attempted to fill this void in two inadequate ways.  First, they have immersed themselves in selfish ambition and self-gratification, hoping to find peace through pleasure, fortune and fame.  These pursuits can make one happy, but only for a short time.  Trophies tarnish, records are broken and earthly pleasure is momentary.

The second way humans have tried to find peace is through self-righteousness.  Some have masked the true nature of their relationship with God by creating a code of goodness and awarding themselves a passing grade.  This was how the Pharisees in Jesus’ day managed their spiritual emptiness.  They emphasized the rules they were good at keeping and used their personal standard as a litmus test to judge others.  Unfortunately, just as ambition and self-gratification are temporary, self-righteousness is hollow.  One might even say righteousness that is defined by man is not righteousness at all.

In truth, the only way to restore true peace in our hearts, and make things right with God is to hunger and thirst after Him.  We must pursue Him passionately, discover His will for our lives, and allow Him to guide, teach and even chastise us.  Graciously, God has established a means of peace through the blood of His Son Jesus.  When we accept Him by faith, we begin anew and experience a peace that surpasses anything this world has to offer.

Is Religion the same as Righteousness?

Religion and righteousness are not exclusive of one another.  It is possible to be religious and righteous or righteous and religious.  But before we explore these relationships, it might be helpful to consider some differences between the two.

Religion or religious behavior is focused on human behavior.  It would seem strange to speak of a religious God, but we think nothing of referring to a righteous one.  We can presume this is because it would be absurd to think God needs to practice the qualities that make up His perfect nature.  Religion is usually reserved for a human act or lifestyle indicating the earthly working out of faith.

Righteousness can be an act or a lifestyle as well, but it is also an imputed state, owing its origin to the blood of Jesus poured out on the cross.  As believers, we have been made righteous, and as a result pursue a righteous life and perform righteous deeds.  This last form, “deeds”, is what most of us think of when we think of religion.  It is the focus of James’ letter when he wrote, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).

In the negative, the absence of righteous actions might very well indicate one is not in the right relationship with God.  If we see righteous acts and religious acts as close relatives, we might also say those who are undisciplined or irreligious in their faith also need to examine their walk with God.  But another negative line of reasoning also reminds us religion is not the same as imputed righteousness, which can only be given by grace, and any notion we can be declared righteous by God based merely on our actions is erroneous.

Yes, religion can be a barometer of righteousness.  But, no, we cannot attain righteousness through the practice of religion.  This means if we are to hunger and thirst after righteousness, we must first focus our attention on the state of our hearts, and allow religion to take its rightful place as a “pure and faultless” expression of our love for God.  When we figure out this dynamic the religious life we live will be a sincere reflection of righteousness.

Living Religiously

In the Appalachian Mountains where my father grew up, when people turned from a life of sin to follow Jesus, it was said they “got religion.”  “Getting” religion involved more than a mere profession of faith.  New believers put aside sinful practices, rededicated themselves to their loved ones and joined with a church family.

I am not certain when the word “religious” fell out of favor with Christians and non-Christians alike.  It is now common to find churches publicly disavowing “religion”.  Some will say, “We are here to tell you about a relationship, not religion.”  Not long ago I saw an Internet post that read, “Why I hate religion, but love Jesus.”

But wait!  Is it possible for any follower of Jesus to make the claim he is not religious, with any sense of honesty?  Religion, after all, is a set of beliefs and a form for expressing those beliefs in our daily lives.  If we believe in the Word of God and the good news of Jesus, we are religious.  If we try to follow Jesus’ teachings in our conversation and walk, we are religious.  Perhaps the only thing really non-religious about Christians telling people they are not religious is that they are breaking God’s command about bearing false witness (Exodus 20:16).

Alright, I’ll admit I am playing the devil’s advocate.  While I am confident nothing I have said here is untrue, I also realize it is impossible to miss an important nuance in the subject of religion.  Religion can be misguided and devoid of value.  In the same chapter we find Jesus’ directive to “hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6) we also find this strong judgment: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).  The Pharisees had turned religion into a vehicle through which they had proclaimed themselves righteous and condemned others who failed to live up to their expectations.

I will leave it up to sociologists to determine when our culture developed its current mainstream distaste for religion, but I feel very certain the cause of this development is akin to the error of the Pharisees.  Today, religion is seen primarily as a vehicle through which Christians promote themselves, or a personal cause.  Whether these perceptions are completely fair or accurate is beside the point.  They have become reality in the minds of the people we are seeking to reach for Jesus.

As a result of these developments, we must bring definition to Jesus directive to hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Surely, it is possible to allow God to use us for his purposes in this process, and avoid the trap of religious opportunism.