Runaway Bride

"Runaway Bride"

Jeremiah 2:1-3, 13, 31-32

I want to start out this message with a risky venture.  I am going to try and share some of my pain with you.

We’re all pretty private out here on the high plains.  At least we think we are.  We think we get to hold our cards pressed up against our chest and never give a peak.  Then we find out everyone knew what our cards were already.  It’s one of those ironic myths we live by in our small towns.  Nobody knows, and at the same time everybody knows.

There may be times when you feel like you need to talk to someone about your stuff.  You try to figure out who you can talk to, and who you can’t or won’t talk to.  Maybe I will be one of those people on your short list, if you have something you need to work through.  It’s a risky thing, I realize for people to come see me and talk through their struggles about life.  It usually takes a congregation and pastor a few years to build up that level of trust.  Well, I’ve been around for 5 1/2 years now, so I’m going to take a risk and share a little more of my story.  See if we can increase our level of trust with each other.

Back in 2006, when I was living in Bakersfield, I got engaged to a woman.  We had been dating for over 3 years.  We had what I thought was a good relationship.  We were both excited about our life and future together.  We were to be married in the middle of July that year.

Everyone in the church I was serving was so excited for me.  They were so happy that love had come around for us both.  She’s a wonderful Christian woman with a great heart.  Even though she was not a member at the church I served, she had grown up in Bakersfield.  Her father owned several restaurants in town that were really popular, and most people knew her.  The closer we got to our wedding date, the more the excitement was getting ramped up.  All the plans had been made, and all we had to do was anxiously wait for the date to come.

Two and a half weeks before the wedding, she walked away--from the wedding and the relationship.  She said she felt like God was telling her she shouldn’t be married or even thinking about marriage.  That’s all she’d say.  I asked her why the (hell) God didn’t tell her that a year, two years, even three years earlier.  She had no answer.

She cut off all communication and left me to deal with the feelings of personal devastation and rejection.  I was angry at her for using God as an out.  Basically, I was just really angry.  What can you do when someone plays the God card?  It trumps all other cards.  The God card is usually played in order to end all conversation.  “It’s the way it has to be.”  “It’s ordained by the Almighty.”  I was angry at God, because if God was really behind this, I wanted to know why.  I felt I deserved an explanation from either her or God.  I have received none.  Which deepened my sense of emotional and theological trauma.

People in my congregation were literally coming up to me in tears, grasping me and telling me how sorry they were, and how badly they felt for me.  I didn’t know how to handle it.  I didn’t know how to handle all their grief.  I didn’t even know, exactly, how to handle mine.  I certainly didn’t handle it very well.  I stuffed my feelings and told everyone I was fine.  We were getting a new senior pastor the next month, and I felt like I had to put on a strong face to help everyone get ready for that transition.  There was too much going on at church, and I didn’t want my personal stuff to derail any of that, or flatten the mood as we began to launch a new senior pastor as well as our new Fall programs.  So I just pretended I was OK.

And then I crashed and burned.  As I said, I didn’t handle my grief very well.  I didn’t choose a healthy way to cope.  Which is ironic in that I consider myself an expert on grief and grief care.  It is one of my specialities.  It is what I help people do best--get through their traumatic times.  I, who know so much about grief care, didn’t take very good care of myself.  If I would have come to myself and said, “Steve, what should I do? How should I handle this?” I could have given myself some pretty good advice.  I had done it for hundreds of people through out my ministry.  But I didn’t for myself.  I played a role I thought everyone expected me to play as Minister of Pastoral Care--that is, the role of the strong pastor who sucks it up and moves on, continuing to take care of others even if it meant not taking care of myself. 

A year later, the woman who walked away, leaving me at the altar so-to-speak, feeling God didn’t want her to be married, got married to a doctor in town, whom she had just met and whom she hardly knew.  And that made me angrier.

I’ve put a lot of distance, geographically and emotionally and theologically from that chapter of my life.  I’ve spent a lot of hours in therapy trying to finally understand and deal with what happened, both in the rejection and how I cratered personally, in making some really poor choices in the aftermath of it all.  I am past it, for the most part.  And you have all had an embracing hand in helping me get back on my feet and feel good about myself again—unbeknownst to you.  For that I will always be grateful.

I tell you all this not so you can feel sorry for me or whatever it is that you may be feeling as you hear about this piece of my past.  I tell you mainly so you can hopefully, through my experience, see an illustration of, and get a glimpse into the heart of God.  Jeremiah is trying to give us the beginning peek into God’s heart in this second chapter.  Part of what we see there is the pain of being “left at the altar” by his people, not just once, but on a continual basis.

Jeremiah starts out by describing the wedding of God and God’s bride--the people whom God has called his own.  “I remember your youthful loyalty, our love as newlyweds...” God sings.  But by verse 32, that song of wedded love has turned mournful:

“Brides don’t show up without their veils, do they?

But my people forget me,

Day after day after day they never give me a thought.”

How does God do it?  That’s what I wonder.  I know what it feels like because of not one, but two incidences of marital abandonment.  I know what was going on in my heart.  I know how angry and rejected I felt.  I know the hurt of being walked away from with no discussion, no say, no power.  How does God deal with it, “day after day after day?”

My people have walked out on me... (God laments)

Have I let you down, Israel?

Am I nothing but a dead-end street?

Those are very real feelings and emotions that God is displaying.  If you don’t think God should have feelings, you better not read Jeremiah.  You’ll find in these pages the picture of God who feels things deeply.  

I know those feelings.  Some of you may know those feelings.  You begin to wonder, “What did I do?”  “Should I blame myself?” God wonders.  “Could I have done something different, more, or better?”  That’s the triple threat combination when you’re in the midst of a disintegrating relationship, that sends you into a self-destructive spiral.  If only...  If only I did something different.  If only I did something more.  If only I did something better.  If only...then all this nightmare wouldn’t have happened.

But God, like many of us, came to the realization that it wouldn’t have mattered.  It wouldn’t have mattered if God had done more, better or different.  The people would still have abandoned God.  That’s their nature, not Gods.  That’s OUR nature.

Why do my people say, “Good riddance!

From now on we’re on our own”?

...My people forget me...

How does God do it?  God cries out.  But to whom does God cry?  We all cry out to God.  Who does God have to cry out to?  We may be tempted to counsel God, telling God to just forget those people.  Let them go.  They aren’t worth it.  Just get on with life; move on.  But those people are us.  There are other people who won’t abandon you, we tell God.  And we think we are in that company, not the former losers.  There are other fish in the ocean, we say, and we think we are those other fish.  But the hard reality that we all must start with, that Jeremiah starts with, is that we are all runaway brides.  We are all the ones who skip, sulk, run, crawl, or back away from the altar.  God is waiting for us as we, at one point, came down the middle aisle.  God was waiting to proclaim his love for us.  God was waiting to hear us proclaim our love for God.  And then God watched, dumbfounded, as we all turned tail and walked, nay, ran away.

The question that God then keeps coming back to, the question that is the question behind all the “if onlys...”, the question that is behind all of God’s questions to his people is this:  “What am I supposed to do with all this love?”  God is saying, “I have loved you, and I have loved you deeply and well.  What am I supposed to do with all that now that you have walked away?"

I recently rewatched the movie, “Blind Side."  Has anyone seen it?  It’s based on a true story about a white family in Tennessee who takes in and adopts an abandoned, black, high school boy.  The kid is huge.  His grades are all D’s and F’s.  But in going through his records, they discover a psychological evaluation on which he scored in the 98th percentile in “protective instincts.”  He has run away a lot, previously, from the foster homes he was stuck in.  Every time he runs away, he tries to find the mother who abandoned him.  She is a crack head.  A drug addicted piece of work, who doesn’t care for any of her 12 children, and has no idea who the father is of any of them.  She doesn’t care where her kids are or how they’re doing.  To her, her children are out-of-sight-out-of-mind.  Given the chance to meet him, to meet her son, she refuses.

But this boy keeps trying to find her, protect her, if not from the world, at least from herself.  He has this love for his mother that he won’t let go of, no matter how messed up she is, no matter how invisible she tries to make herself from him.  Even though she doesn’t want to be found, and doesn’t want to be a part of his life in any way, he is still driven to keep searching her out.  “Why?” is what I asked myself, as I watched the movie.  And, “Why?” is what I ask God as I read this second chapter of Jeremiah.

That’s the same glimpse into the heart of God that Jeremiah is trying to show us.  We are these wayward, piece of work human beings.  We probably don’t deserve the ways and lengths God goes to to keep searching us out, keep protecting us, keep loving us.  “What am I supposed to do with all this love?” God keeps asking himself.  Even when we people put ourselves out of God’s reach, and don’t want to be found; even when we totally forget about God and treat God as if there were no God, or with uncaring indifference; even when we abandon God at the altar as runaway brides; even when we say, “good riddance,” why does God keep searching?  Why does God keep coming around?

God says that he and his love is like a spring.  God says that our love is like cisterns.  You know the difference between a cistern and a spring, right?  A spring is a gift.  It’s grace in the form of water.  You can’t make a spring happen.  It does it on its own.  It is a constant flow of clear, clean water.

A cistern, on the other hand, is a technique for trapping water.  Especially rain water.  A cistern could be small, to catch rain water off your roof; or like large hand dug, bell-shaped, wells.  If you had your choice, where would you get your water?  Out of a stagnant cistern, or out of a running spring?  You get water each way, but they aren’t quite the same, are they?

And that is exactly God’s point.  Given the choice between the spring:  sacrament, gift, grace, devotion, ever-faithful love; or the cistern:  technique, the search for love in all the wrong places, draining emptiness--what do people choose?  Sadly we choose the cistern rather than the spring.

One of the qualities of Jeremiah’s words that we will constantly have to pay attention to is not just the words or the imaginative images behind the words:  the bride and groom; the cistern and the spring.  What we must pay attention to most is the emotion, the pathos, the feelings that Jeremiah is trying to describe with those words and images.

Imagine, then, the feelings of God behind these images.  The feelings God must have as his bride runs away from the altar; as the bride runs away from his spring water love; as the bride turns to others thinking they have the key to her ultimate happiness; as the bride pledges her love to those who cannot and will not fulfill her love; as the bride tries empty technique after empty technique in some vain attempt to gain the sacramental love she deeply longs for; as the bride continually says to God, “No, you’re not the One”; as the bride turns her back on the spring so close to her in order to dip and drink water from a stagnant cistern.  Imagine.  Imagine how God must feel, Jeremiah is saying, when we simply refuse to be in love with God.  Because that is all it takes.

Heroes Welcome

"Heroes Welcome"

Jeremiah 1:1-10

I ran across a website this week that was really encouraging.  The name of the website is “My Hero”  (www.myhero.com).  It is a website dedicated to the everyday people who do things that serve others in selfless ways.  People can log onto the website and nominate people who have been their hero.  The stories you find there are what we might think of as simple acts, but meant so much to those who received from these heroes.

For example, there is Claudia Martinez, who with bright elastic bands and simple care is smoothing the edges of suffering for earthquake victims.  The 31-year-old Dominican tends to dozens of hospital patients who have made it across the border to her country, tenderly combing and braiding their hair for free.

Carrying a basket filled with colored elastic bands and a comb, Martinez comes every day to Santo Domingo's Dario Contreras hospital where injured people with broken bones and shattered lives come for healing.

Her task may seem trivial, but she believes restoring a bit of beauty and humanity to people who have lost everything and survived deplorable conditions is important.  Martinez says she just wants to make people feel "clean and a little bit better."

Or, there’s the story of Clara Hale, who in 1940 faced the most tragic thing in her life. Her husband died, leaving her with her two children. Desperate to find the resources to take care of her children, she got a job as a babysitter for children with mothers too busy to take care of their own children. She soon learned that she could become a licensed foster mother..

During the next 25 years, she was a foster mother to over 40 children, all with unique and different backgrounds and religions. Many of them were children whose mothers were drug addicts, or children who had contracted AIDs from their mothers.  Clara’s goal was to take in all of these children which no one wanted, and she accomplished that goal very well. Clara was a loving, generous mother to over 800 children in her life. She dedicated her whole life to these unwanted children. Her life ended with a great feeling in her heart that she had changed people's lives.

With so many scandals being reported in the news lately, we could easily be led to believe there are no heroes any more.  There are no great personalities that are being held up for others to emulate.  Only narcissistic, self-indulgent entertainers and politicians whose lives seem constantly out of control.

In a Time magazine article about the Millennials, one section had the heading which read, “Leaders:  Heroes Are Hard To Find.”  Listen to a portion of that section:

Today’s potential leaders seem unable to maintain their stature.  They have a way of either self-destructing or being decimated in the press, which trumpets their faults and foibles.  Says Christina Chinn, a 21 year old from Denver, “Now you get role models like our presidential candidates…--no one with real ideals.”

I have felt for a long time the need that the twenty-something generation is now beginning to articulate on a large scale:  the need for more heroes.  But the more I thought about trying to hone what I mean by a hero, the more I begin to fumble.  Once, the poet Robert Frost was asked, “What is poetry?”  His answer was classic.  “Poetry,” he said, “is something poets write.”  We may have to answer in the same way about the hero.  A hero is someone who does the heroic.  But then we’re right back where we started:  What does it meant to be heroic?

The inability to pin down a clear definition is compounded with the problem that the Time magazine article highlighted.  Many of the people who have been put forward as positive role models, even heroes, have self-destructed, or have not stood the scrutiny of the public eye.

That seems to be a reality that we would have to deal with in trying to figure out a definition of a hero or positive role model.  None will be found who will come out squeaky clean.  The Bible is unashamedly clear on this point.  All of it’s characters are real people with chinks in their heroic armor.  And those chinks aren’t just little spaces here and there, but large openings of vulnerability.  Abraham lied to save his own skin.  Jacob was a first class cheat.  Moses was a murderer and whiner.  David committed adultery, and then lead a cover-up that included murder.  Peter blasphemed and denied he ever had anything to do with Jesus.  Paul was a murderer and torturer of Christians.  And on and on.

Oliver Cromwell, once lord protector of England, Ireland and Scotland, was having a portrait of himself painted.  He never looked at it until it was done.  When he saw the finished work, he was quick to realize that the artist had left off several facial warts.  Cromwell then stormed those now famous words, “I want the portrait redone, warts and all.”

The significant characters in Scripture, we are also quick to realize, are all fashioned from the same clay as the rest of us.  Scripture portrays them “warts and all.’’  So, our definition of hero, if we are honest, can not include flawless character.  Perfection is not a part of what it’s going to mean to be heroic, or on a lesser scale, a good role model.

Another problem I run into when thinking about society’s need for some heroic personalities is in the form of a question:  What kind of living do heroes inspire?  What kind of living should they inspire?  It seems to me what happens most often is, instead of learning heroic behavior, we simply succumb to hero worship.  Rather than trying to forge a similar kind of positive lifestyle using the building blocks of what it means to be heroic, we more often just become worshippers of the positive.  We dress like the heroic, we talk like the heroic, but deep down there has been no significant change.  Instead of becoming people of more depth and character, we become simple coat tail riders.  We miss the fact that maybe we are supposed to assert ourselves toward being positive role models.

The real goal of having a role model, it seems to me, is not to be just like them, but instead to inspire us to find ways in which we can also be exemplary people given our individual characteristics and unique situations.

The role that God asked Jeremiah to model was that of truth speaker.  Jeremiah is someone who speaks the truth with passion.  There is an alarm in his voice.  He will tell us unflinchingly, as we look at his words in the coming Sundays, where we have fallen our faces.  He will warn us, honestly, where the traps are hidden along the way that seek to slow us down or sidetrack our devotion.

As a truth teller, Jeremiah’s words are not easy to listen to.  Not many model for us such utter honesty.  God gave Jeremiah a very difficult role to play.  God touches Jeremiah’s mouth and says,

"Behold, I have put My words in your mouth

See, I have appointed you this day

over nations and over the kingdoms,

To pluck up and to break down,

To destroy and to overthrow,

To build and to plant." (Jeremiah 1:9-10)

God gives Jeremiah the role, through his words, to pull down people’s lives so that God can rebuild them.

In our dedication to God, the truth is, we are either in the process of become less or more.  Certainly God desires that we would constantly become more, not less.  Jeremiah, if we let him play his role in our lives, will give us the truth we need:  tearing down or building up.  It may be a little of both.

Eugene Peterson wrote:

A prophet wakes us up from our sleepy complacency . . . and then pushes us onto the stage playing our parts whether we think we are ready or not.  A prophet angers us by rejecting and ripping off our disguises, then dragging our heartless attitudes and selfish motives out into the open where everyone sees them for what they are.  A prophet makes it difficult to continue with a sloppy or selfish life.

As we shall see, Jeremiah was a reluctant role model.  Time after time he complained to God about the role he felt he’d been forced into.  But yet, Jeremiah pushed on.  Jeremiah had such a heart for the people he spoke truth to, that at times it hurt his feelings more than the feelings of those he had to speak to.  That was the burden of the role he had to play.

Jeremiah becomes the kind of reluctant hero that surfaces in all imaginative literature.  In these kinds of stories the hero is often the person you would least expect.  In the legend of King Arthur, for example, the boy Arthur pulls the sword from the stone after all the champions--the expected heroes--have tried their hardest and failed.

In the imaginative tales of J.R.R. Tolkein, in The Lord Of The Rings, the heroes are characters who have no quality of the heroic about them.  There is nothing that would distinguish them as models of high morality or daring do.  Instead, Tolkein’s main characters are a couple of Hobbits named Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.  They are stick-at-home kind of creatures who would rather just sit in their easy chair, smoke their pipes, read good books, and eat good food.

What makes both Bilbo and Frodo heroic role models, eventually, is that they are called to go on a quest of great and grave importance.  Their success or failure would determine the future of their people forever.  Both, in their turn, accepts the challenge.  In their quiet, simple, yet bumbling ways, they slip unnoticed into and conquer the threatening powers of evil.

As I said before, there is nothing about Bilbo or Frodo that would give you the impression that you were in the presence of greatness.  They were both normal, everyday characters who were called upon to accept a challenge that was larger than anything they had faced before.  It was simply in their willingness to accept the challenge that elevated Bilbo and Frodo into the level of the role model, even the hero.  It is one of the main themes of that set of books.

So, let’s put together what we’ve got so far concerning our definition of a role model and hero.  First, a hero is a real person, imperfect in some ways, and who must definitely be taken warts and all.  We will be disillusioned if we expect otherwise.

Secondly, a hero or role model, is someone we are not to worship or copy in a second-hand way.

And thirdly, heroes are the role models they are because they rise to the occasion when it is presented to them.  They use the talents they have--even their weaknesses--for the cause of God’s good.

That’s the kind of person Jeremiah the prophet was.  Jeremiah is a person we can look up to, someone we would unflinchingly call a positive role model.  Jeremiah is so, because he has a passion more for God than for himself.

It is this prophet and this prophet’s message that we will be focusing our attention upon in the coming weeks.  He is the kind of role model who is universal to time and culture because his message and his personality speak truth loud and clear to the excesses as well as the measly ways people choose to live.  He is the kind of role model who will challenge you to live a God-centered life.  He will make you squirm in his challenges.  He is a true hero in that he refuses to let us live life on his, or anyone’s coattails.  Instead he calls us to honestly live faithfully and creatively in our unique situations.

He is also a person not without some quirks and glitches.  We’ll have to accept those along the way.  As we move through Jeremiah, it is my hope that we will not just be imitators of him, but instead discover for ourselves, what it means to be faithfully heroic.

Faith On The Cruel Edges Of The World

"Faith On The Cruel Edges Of The World"

Hebrews 11:29--12:2

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, got into trouble again with some off-hand comments about a middle-eastern couple, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention about their son, who had given his life as an American soldier by protecting the lives of his unit.  The week went on with Trump and the Khan family throwing statements back and forth at each other.  It was yet another sad week in the presidential election race.

The Kahn's son, Captain Humayun Khan, is buried in Arlington Cemetery.  Has anyone been there?  It is a sad and profound experience to look out over those thousands of uniform rows of white grave markers, and think of all the young men and women whose lives were ended in a war.   Viewing Arlington Cemetery had a silencing, and profound effect on me.  Thousands of young men and women, lying under the grass and trees, lives ended tragically in a time of war.

It’s a hard reality for me to grasp, totally.  Such a sacrifice.  Such a loss.  Men and women like Captain Khan who died for the value of freedom around the world.  18, 19, and 20 year olds.  What direction would human history have taken without the rows and rows of those grave markers?  Their deaths have a direct link with the history we are living today.

This is also especially true of the history of the church.  Our place as the people of God, followers of Jesus around the world, is a place that stands on the grave sites of Christian martyrs who gave their lives simply because they believed.

I want us to listen to a few of these stories of the martyrdom of the saints, and be sobered into profound silence at what they faced, what they endured, what they sacrificed, so we can sit here today, and worship.

James And Other Disciples

Somehow, perhaps because of his strict observance of the Law, the Pharisees thought they could get James, the brother of Jesus, (called, "James The Lesser") to discourage the people from believing. They asked him to stand at the pinnacle of the temple on Passover and speak.  Apparently, James agreed.

They brought him to the top of the temple, and they shouted to him from below:  "Oh, righteous one, in whom we are able to place great confidence; the people are led astray after Jesus, the crucified one. So declare to us, what is this way, Jesus?"  Obviously, this wasn't a very wise thing for them to do. James was ready to take full advantage of such a wonderful opportunity as this!

His words are memorable:  “Why do you ask me about Jesus, the Son of Man? He sits in heaven at the right hand of the great Power, and he will soon come on the clouds of heaven!”

The Pharisees were horrified, but the people were not. The believers began shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David!"  The Pharisees, realizing the awful mistake they'd made, began crying out, "Oh! Oh! The righteous one is also in error!"  This had little effect on the crowd.

So the next obvious thing to do was to push James down from the temple, letting the people know exactly what happens to those who dare to believe in Jesus.  As the people shouted, the Pharisees threw James from the pinnacle of the temple.

It didn't kill him.  He crawled to his knees and began to pray for them. "I beg of you, Lord God our Father, forgive them! They do not know what they are doing."  This would not do! The Pharisees began to stone him as he prayed, while those from the roof rushed down to join the execution.

One of the priests shouted, "Stop! What are you doing! The righteous one is praying for you."  It was too late. A laundryman took out one of the clubs that he used to beat clothes and smashed James on the head, killing him with one blow.

Other of the apostles and disciples were martyred--most by crucifixion.  Mark, the Gospel writer, had a rope tied around his neck and was dragged through the streets until he was dead.  Bartholomew was flayed alive and then crucified.  John the Evangelist was cooked in boiling oil.  All these were killed, simply because they believed in Jesus Christ and sought to spread the Good News.

If you had an angry mob come up to you, an anti-Christ mob, and they said, “We’re going to put a rope around your neck and drag you through the streets of Pratt until you’re dead,” what would you do?  Would you start moon-walking backwards, and say something like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa; where did you get the idea I was one of those Jesus freaks?”

If the authorities captured you and tied you to a stake in the middle of town, and started cutting a slit down the middle of your naked chest, while saying, “You’re one of the Jesus believers, aren’t you?” what are you going to do.

Thank God we don’t have to live under that kind of duress and fear and cruelty.  But some of our fellow believers in the past, beginning with the time right after Jesus’ death and Resurrection, did face that.  They had to make supernatural decisions in moments of immense pain and in the face of cruel death.

We decorate their graves today; and when we place our flowers upon their graves we thank God we didn’t have to live back then and face death like they did, simply because they chose to remain steadfast to the Savior.

Justin Martyr

Rusticus shrugged. "Let's get right to what matters, then. You've been brought here to offer sacrifice, all of you together, to the Emperor and all the gods."

Justin wasn't interested. "No one in their right mind leaves godliness to take up ungodliness."

"You're aware that unless you obey, you will be mercilessly punished?" Rusticus sneered.

Justin answered, "Through prayer we can be saved because of our Lord Jesus Christ, even after we have been punished. This will become salvation and confidence to us at the much more fearful and universal judgment of our Lord and Savior."

The other martyrs echoed his sentiment. "Do whatever you want. We are Christians, and we don't sacrifice to idols."

Rusticus was uncaring. He had done his duty.  Rusticus stood to make his pronouncement. "Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the command of the emperor be scourged, then let them be led away to be beheaded, according to the laws."

Justin and the others, having glorified God, were taken to the customary place, and their heads were chopped off.

All they had to do was burn a little incense to the Emperor at his shrine and say, “Caesar is lord.”  That’s it.  And that, only once a year.  Doesn’t seem like that big of deal.  Just burn the incense, say a few words, and do what you want, worship Christ the rest of the year.  And, by the way, save your life.  Doesn’t your life seem that much more valuable than making this little annual compromise to what you really believe?  Just think how many more people you can serve, in the name of Christ, if you are alive.  Certainly God would understand.

But that’s not how Justin and many others saw it.  They weren’t willing to compromise their beliefs, even in this little way.  They were willing to die, rather than give lip service to the emperor, and by so doing accept standards of belief that are undesirable to God.

How do these men and women hold on to their beliefs so strongly that they aren’t willing to give an inch, and are willing to put their lives on the line rather than move that inch?  And why do we so easily compromise our faith every day without a second thought?

We decorate their graves this day; and when we place a wreath for them we wonder by which standards we have lived: With the Justin's, or those of the Rusticus’ of the world?

Jim Elliot And Four Other Men

Five men with Wycliff Bible Translators went to Ecuador in 1952 as missionaries.  They wanted to make contact with the Auca tribe, a fierce people who lived deep in the jungles of Ecuador.  After about two months of flying over the Auca village with gifts, the missionaries decided it was time to land on a little beach beside the river, close to where the Aucas lived. They would build themselves a tree house to live in, and try to talk to the Aucas.

There were five men altogether: Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Pete Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Ed McCully. They prayed and talked with their wives for a long time before they made the decision to move into the Auca’s country. All of them knew very well that it was dangerous. But they loved God and knew that they belonged to Him.

So they landed their plane beside the river and built a house in a tall tree. Some of the men flew over the Auca village again, calling: “Come down to the river! We want to visit you there!” Then they camped and waited.

On the third day, the men were sitting in their camp, when suddenly they heard a shout from across the river! Their hearts jumped as they turned to look. Three Aucas were stepping out of the woods: a man and two women. Calling out, “Welcome! Welcome!” in the Auca language; Jim waded across to meet them. He took their hands and helped them back across to the missionaries’ camp. The five missionaries tried hard to show the Aucas that they wanted to be friends. They gave them food and gifts, and smiled and talked.

They soon nicknamed the Auca man “George”, and when “George” asked for a ride in the plane, they were happy to give him one! They flew the plane low over the Auca village once more, and George laughed with delight as he recognized his home. He leaned out to wave and yell at the other Aucas.  When the plane landed back at camp, the five missionaries gave thanks to God out loud, looking up toward the sky so that the three Aucas could see what they were doing.

That night the three Aucas returned to their village. They did not invite the missionaries to come with them, so Jim and his friends stayed at their camp. That was on Friday. On Sunday, Nate called his wife on the radio to say that a big group of Auca men were coming. “Just in time for a church service!” he told her excitedly. “This is the big day! I’ll call you back this afternoon and let you know what happens!”

So the missionaries’ wives waited eagerly that afternoon. They were hoping to find out if the men had been able to visit the Auca’s village. But the afternoon passed, and the men did not call as they had promised. Night came on and the women began to worry. What could have happened? Were the missionaries safe?

The next day more men took another plane and flew over the camp. They brought back sad news: Jim and Nate and their friends were all dead. The Auca Indians had killed them with their spears!

The five missionaries had guns with them in their camp, but they did not use them to fight the Indians. When the Auca men came toward them with their spears, they did not shoot back with their guns. They knew that if they would shoot the Indians, they could probably save their own lives. But then they would never be able to teach the Aucas about Jesus! So they chose to let themselves be killed, and let the Aucas have another chance to become Christians.

The Aucas always remembered those five strange white men who had been so kind to them and had not tried to kill them. And so a year later when more missionaries tried again to speak to the Aucas about Jesus, they were ready to listen.

Several of the Auca men who had killed Jim and his friends eventually became Christians.

After their deaths, Elisabeth Elliot went to Ecuador with her children, to live with the Auca tribe, and continue the work of her martyred husband and the four other men.

A movie has been made of these 5 men’s bold venture to talk to and communicate the love of God to this Auca tribe.  The book and movie has moved countless numbers of people to explore further the Good News of Jesus; and the book and movie has moved countless Christians to raise the level of their Christian witness.

Here were five men, five Christian men, who were armed and could have fought back, and saved their lives.  It was self-defense.  Even the Bible allows for killing another human being if it is in self-defense or in the defense of a loved one.

But the five men made a choice about using ultimate force.  To do so would have compromised both what they believed in, and what they were trying to demonstrate to the Auca tribe about Jesus Christ.  Self-defense morality was on a lower level of importance compared to portraying the selflessness and self-sacrifice of their Savior and Lord.

Elisabeth Elliot’s decision to put herself and her children in harms way may have sounded equally immoral and tremendously unwise, if not foolish.  But she and her husband believed in a Lord who showed another way that doesn’t make sense to morality and simple prudence.

We decorate their graves today; and when we place the wreath of peace for them, we think about the difficult people we face in life that come at us with spears of hatred, and we wonder if we could put our guns down, catching a vision for that other way.

Ri Hyon Ok

In June 2009, Ri Hyon Ok, a 33 year old woman, was executed in North Korea for giving out Bibles.  Ri's husband, three children, and parents were sent to a political prison on June 17, 2009, a day after she was executed in Ryongchon.   They have not been heard from since.

Just for giving out Bibles!  It boggles my mind about how, for so little a Christian work, people are executed.  I have two shelves of Bibles.  I had more, but I gave a bunch away before I moved.  I can go to just about any bookstore and buy ten more if I wanted.  I have the freedom to do that.  Evidently not in North Korea.  Evidently, people die in North Korea, and in other places on our globe, simply for having a Bible, let alone, giving them away.  Amazing.

We decorate her grave today; and when we place a Bible for her there, we think of the many freedoms we take for granted and treat so nonchalantly.

I agree with the writer of the book of Hebrews.  In talking about these followers of Jesus who didn’t give up or didn’t give in, the writer of Hebrews states, “...the world doesn’t deserve them.”  He describes these followers as those “...making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.”

Those statements both sadden and encourage me.  Maybe they do you too.  Maybe we in the world don’t deserve them.  But we urgently need them.  We need people like them, making such an ultimate sacrifice, simply because they are followers of Jesus.  We need to see, by their example, how we have tried to make our Christian journey so easy when in truth it is not.

But there’s another line from this eleventh chapter of Hebrews that catches my attention even more.  It is the last line of the chapter.

God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.

Do you understand what he’s saying?  He’s saying that we are the reason those believers made the ultimate choices they did.  I remember a line from the movie, "Amistad":  The main character said, “I am the reason my ancestors existed at all.”  That statement is true genetically, and biologically.  We are the generational product of our ancestors.

But we are also the faith ancestors of those who came before us.  We are not isolated from our past, the history of Christian believers, and the sacrifices they made so we could be sitting here in worship today.  Most of you got up this morning and had the decision of sleeping in or coming to worship.  Many of our ancestors of the faith woke up one day and had to decide between life and death, simply because they had the audacity to be a follower of Jesus.

And we are the reason our people of the faith in the future exist.  When I was living out in Leoti, I worked part time in the church there while also working as a special education para.  I was sitting in the grade school cafeteria.  In came the kindergartners to eat.  Then the first graders.  Then the second graders.  And I sat there watching all their little excited faces, snarfing down corn dogs many of them waving to me, “Hey Mr. Wing!”  I saw these children’s faces, and I knew that my faith, and these children’s one-day-faith must also come together, and I must do my part now, whatever that part is, no matter how ultimate it might become, so that they too can become part of God’s future wholeness.

All Of It?

"All Of It?"

Luke 12:32-34

“What, in God’s name, are all the boxes doing in the garage?” Mark asked as he came into the kitchen through the garage door.  “I couldn’t even get my car parked in there.”

“Exactly,” his wife, Karen, replied.

“Exactly, what?” he asked, reaching for a can of diet Pepsi from the fridge.

“Exactly in God’s name,” said Karen.

“What!?”

“The boxes are there in God’s name,” she smiled.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said.  “Let me start over.  I’ll try to talk a little slower.  What—-are—-all—-those—-boxes—-doing—-in—-the—-garage?”

“Getting ready for the big sale,” she said, as if he should have already known the answer.

“Oh, we’re having a garage sale?  That’s a good idea.  We could stand to sell a few things around here.  I have a some shirts I haven’t worn in years.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“No, really,” Mark said.  “Remember that pink golf shirt with the green pinstripes?  That’s one of…”

“I don’t mean your shirts,” she interrupted.  “I mean it’s not exactly a garage sale.  It’s going to be more than that.”

“Oh, like a multi-family sale.  Who’s going in on it with us—Babs and Larry down the street?”

“No, it’s not a multi-family sale.  It’s just us.  Just our sale.”

“Well…” Mark spoke hesitantly, “…what exactly are you planning on selling?”

“Umm, just about everything we own,” Karen said leaning into the oven, checking the roast.

“What!!??” Mark said with a spray of diet Pepsi.  “You’re thinking about selling everything we own!?” he said wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“Not thinking about it, dear; I’m going to do it.”

“Which of those women’s magazines did you get that hair-brained idea from?  How about instead of selling everything, we just cancel the subscriptions to all those magazines and throw out all the back issues?”

“I didn’t read about this in a ‘woman’s magazine’,” she said making quote marks in the air, and mimicking his voice.  “I read it in the Bible.”

“The Bible,” he repeated.

“The Holy Bible,” she said shaking her head up and down.

“OK; uh, yeah,” Mark stammered.

Karen started pealing the potatoes, acting as if the discussion was over and that Mark totally understood.

“Uhhh.  I’m totally lost here.  What the heck is really going on, Karen?  Are you moving out?  Do you want a divorce?  (louder)  Are you having an emotional breakdown?”

“No; no; and no, Mark.  I’m OK.  You’re OK.  I love you.  You’re blowing this way out of proportion.  Jesus just told me that we have way too much stuff, so we’re going to sell it.  All of it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“Jesus?  Jesus told you?  When did this conversation with Jesus take place—like 3 a.m. this morning while you were dreaming?  Or later when you were hallucinating?”

“No, silly,” Karen said smiling.  “This morning, yes, but while I was doing my devotions—reading the Bible and praying.”

“Jesus spoke to you during devotions?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you to sell everything we own?”

“Mmmm, Hmmm.”

“I think you’ve been watching too much Oprah.  Let’s see her sell everything she owns!” Mark said with his pointer finger in the air.

“This has nothing to do with Oprah.  It’s in the Bible.  Look it up yourself, if you remember where the Gospel of Luke is.”

“Oh, now we’re into sarcasm, are we?  Is that what Jesus told you to do this morning also, is slam your husband when he came home from work?”

“No, and I’m sorry, dear.  It’s just that I don’t understand why you don’t understand.”

“That’s because I don’t understand!” Mark said a little too loudly.  He stomped away toward their bedroom.  Then he was back, Bible in hand.  “Show me,” he demanded, plunking his Bible on the counter next to the sink where she was working.

Karen dried her hands on her apron, then looked up Luke 12:32-34.  She read him the three verses, closed the Bible, handed it to him and said, “See?”  She turned back to the sink and continued pealing the potatoes.

Mark scratched his head, looked up the verses again and read them for himself.  “You don’t think Jesus meant us, do you?” he finally asked.  “Look, it says he was talking to his little group of disciples.  They were special.  They were supposed to do stuff like that.  Take a vow of poverty or something like that.  That’s not for us normal kinds of believers.”

“So you’re saying you aren’t a disciple?” Karen asked him.

“Of course I’m a disciple,” Mark replied.  “Just not a disciple disciple; you know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t; a disciple is a disciple, Mark.  There aren’t different levels of discipleship.  You either are or you aren’t.  And if you are a disciple then you do what Jesus said.  Do we only get to do the easy things Jesus said to do?  Right there in your hand it says that Jesus said to sell everything.”

“It doesn’t exactly say, ‘everything’,” Mark stated.  “It just says to sell what you have.  And certainly the disciples didn’t have that much to sell like we do.  They aren’t giving up that much.”

“Well, what all do we have that isn’t everything?” Karen asked.  “Just take a walk through the house.  I did this morning, after I read that in the Bible.  Walk through our house, Mark.  Look at all the stuff we have.  When you look at it, ask yourself the question, How much of this do we really need to live?  Ask yourself that question, and answer it honestly.  How much of this stuff do we really need to live?”

Mark sucked in a couple of lungs full of air and exhaled it all through his nose.

“Go on,” she prodded, pointed the potato peeler at the kitchen door.  “Go on a hike.  Through the house, I mean.”

Mark shuffled off like a kid who was being sent to his room for time-out.  He went into the living room, did a u-turn, and then was back in the kitchen.

“OK, so we have a few extra things,” he conceded.

“No, Mark.  You weren’t gone long enough.  Go through every room in the house.  Look at everything.  When you look at each thing, ask yourself, Do we need that to live?”

He exhaled again, let his shoulders droop, and went off on his expedition of their home.  In the time it took Karen to get water boiling, peal and slice the potatoes, plop them into the boiling water, and wash up a few dishes, he was back.

“So, what do you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Karen,” he said as he sat at the kitchen table.  I can kind of see your point, but the thought of selling everything makes me really nervous.  I guess the good thing is that at least we’d have the money from the sale.”

“Not really,” Karen said.

“What do you mean, not really?” he retorted.

“Don’t you remember?  Jesus said to sell your possessions, and give the money from the sale to the poor.”

“What!!??  That’s too much!” Mark said loudly.  “I’m sure Jesus was just talking to people who were going into the priesthood.  That’s what they’re supposed to do.  Not us.  Not our kind of disciples.  How can Jesus expect us to live with nothing?  How can Jesus expect us to sell all the nice things we have worked so hard for?  We do have a lot of really nice stuff, Karen.  Most of it, you bought.  Most of it is stuff, at one time or another, you said we had to have.  Now you want to get rid of it all in some altruistic whim?  I’m sorry.  I’m just as religious as the next guy, but this idea of selling everything, and then not even getting to keep any of the money is too much!”  He stopped talking and crossed his arms across his chest as he leaned back in the kitchen chair.

“I know what you’re saying, dear,” Karen spoke up after a bit of a pause.  “It is a scary thing.  I’ve just been thinking about Jesus’ words all day long.  I keep asking myself questions like, How much is enough?  How much of this stuff do we need to have to live happily?  How simply can we live?  Do we own these possessions or do they possess us?”

Karen stopped and let those questions sink in to Mark’s mind.  Then she started again.  “What’s more important to have, possessions or the kingdom of heaven, like it says Father God want’s to give us?  And if we have the kingdom of heaven, what more do we really need?  It appears from Jesus’ statement, you can’t have both at the same time.  That’s the way we’d like it—a both/and, rather than an either/or.  We’d like to have all our possessions and heaven’s treasure as well.”

“Don’t you think,” Mark interjected, “that Jesus really doesn’t mean to sell everything?  Don’t you think what he really means is that we’re supposed to keep our priorities straight?  Don’t you think he simply means to keep him our top priority?”

“Of course.  That’s part of it,” Karen answered.  “But as long as we have all this stuff, that’s where our heart will be.  Our lives will be all wrapped up in protecting it, holding on to it, keeping it up.  We’ll look at all this stuff and think that it determines who we are in life.  It makes us think we are somebody because we have all these possessions.  We even determine our status level by how much and what kinds of things we own.  God doesn’t care about that kind of status.  As long as we have all these things, they lure our hearts away from the kingdom of heaven.  It’s so subtle, we don’t even realize it’s happening.  Without all this stuff, our hearts get to be someplace else, captivated by a different treasure.  That’s got to be our Father God and the kingdom of heaven.  Where is our treasure, Mark?  And where, really, are our hearts?”

Mark stared at the salt and pepper shakers on the table where he sat and said, quietly, “I don’t know.  But do we have to box everything up tonight?  I need more time to think about this.  Let’s take a little more time and think it through, OK?”

“And pray about it,” Karen added.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “We’ll pray about it.  Can I set the table; are we ready to eat?”

“I just need to mash the potatoes.  Sure, you can set the table.”

“Which set of our dishes would you like me to use?” he asked her, looking at her with a wry smile.