Jesus and Giving

When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ - John 6:12

I attended the ELCA GLobal Mission Event in Baltimore this past weekend. It was a very good event - I highly recommend the experience. I am still processing what I learned from it, but one thing that stood out from the beginning was the persistent challenge to think about giving, receiving, and sharing in radical terms. Here are a few examples:

- From an African theologian, I learned a good definition of sharing. Sharing is not "I don’t need it, you can have it". Sharing is "I need it, but I see you need it too – let’s share".

- From the Director of ELCA Global Mission, I learned that mission is about restoring community. It’s not about us vs. them. It’s about taking a good look at your community and realizing that it is wanting, needing, missing, broken. That a broken community realizes it can only be made whole again by going out and restoring.

- From a couple of young adult missionaries to Argentina for a year, I learned that that being away from everything that made your life comfortable means that you understand more than ever that God is in control, that you must live on your faith alone, that you will learn and receive more than you can give and that it is the journey with others that is important.

- From an ELCA Mission Director, I learned that "If God wants you to do something, God has already given you what you need to get started".

Jesus and Perseverance

In Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, he describes one of his aha moments vis-à-vis a lecture he attended about the power of metaphor. The example the professor starts out with is cancer. When we think about cancer, we think about war metaphors like battling cancer or fighting cancer. Apparently this has an unhealthy affect on cancer patients who can feel more burdened and frightened than they should because they feel "that they have been thrust into a deadly war… because of the war metaphor, the professor said, we are more likely to fear cancer when, actually most people survive the disease."

I think the war metaphor is also overused in the context of Christianity. Last week we heard about from Ephesians 6:16-17 to "take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." How about the lyrics "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war". And don’t even get me started on the anti/pro language thrashing around out there.

My problem with the war metaphor is two-fold. First, I find it frightening and not at all appealing. But what I want to focus on here is that it implies winners and losers. This week the transformation journal theme is Jesus and Perseverance. So, it’s not about winning a war, it’s about staying the course, doing your best, moving forward. It’s not about defense or offense, it’s about humility, leading by example, learning. And while there is a prize to strive for, it is not at the expense of someone else nor is it exclusive - it's available to everyone.

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained."

- Philippians 3:10-16

Jesus and Temptation

I've recently finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It is a very good read.

The theme of the transformation journal this week is Jesus and Temptation. Here are a couple of quotes from Blue Like Jazz on how we get tempted to turn our back on God.

"If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe. Passion is tricky, though, because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something."

"Here is the trick... Satan, who I believe exists as much as I believe Jesus exists, wants us to believe meaningless things for meaningless reasons. Can you imagine if Christians actually believed that God was trying to rescue us from the pit of our own self-addition? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what Americans would do if they understood over half the world was living in poverty? Do you think they would change the way they live, the products they purchase, and the politicians they elect? If we believed the right things, the true things, there wouldn't be very many problems on earth."