Luke 4:16-21

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 These were some of the first proclamations that Jesus made when he started his three year ministry.
Isn’t it interesting that the first group he targets are the poor and those with disabilities. It is actions like these that make it hard for some of us to try and live our lives in a Christ like way. We, especially in the United States, have completely marginalized these two groups of people and here Jesus is telling us to put them “front and center”.

The words to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor have pretty much lost their meaning nowadays. But in Jesus’ day that meant Jubilee and that was a time for the rich to forgive the debts of the poor. Can we even imagine that happening in today’s world. Living as a disciple of Jesus Christ means more than just saying the words. We have to, as they say, “walk the walk”. If you are a complete novice at showing your compassion for the poor then seek out a local Christian homeless shelter or soup kitchen and do some volunteer work. It will change your life forever. And, given the circumstances today there are many opportunities about.

As you can see from the last few posts I have been somewhat down the last few weeks.

I have always found that reading Beatitudes is able to pull me up when I am down. I prefer Luke’s version to that Matthew’s. So, here goes:

Luke 6:20-22

Looking at his disciples, he said:

Here is another impromptu post related to a discussion I recently had with another Christian. First of all I am a regular supporter, both with my time and money, of a local Christian shelter and soup kitchen. During my discussions with my Christian friend I mentioned that the support of our church to this mission has almost dried up in the recent months. I have tried numerous way to spur support but to no avail. My friend made the statement that maybe we should not ask people to support things like this during these tough times. My friend said many families are struggling with bills and our congregation needs more money to pay higher utility bills and other unexpected expenses.

This got me to thinking, does Jesus give us a pass for being our brother’s keeper when we hit a rough patch in the road? The more I think about this the more upset I seem to get. In my mind it is exactly in these type of times when our brothers need us the most. I don’t know anyone in my church who is homeless or in deep financial distress. Yes, many probably have cut back on some unnecessary items but is that enough of a reason to step back from giving to the least of these?

Is it ok to be a fair weather Christian? Did Jesus draw a line in the sand as to when personal needs outweigh Christian giving? As usual I am full of questions about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

I imagine everyone has heard the term “you reap what you sow”. There is a lot of reaping and sowing going on in the Bible but I have not been able to find this reference in any of them. Are some of the bad things that happen in our lives a result of our unchristian behavior? Some of the red letters around this theme are:

 John 9:2-5

His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

Jesus clearly says that at least this person’s misfortunes are not a result of sin. He seems to be saying that God made this person blind so that what he does in the name of God will be displayed in his life for others to notice. So, does God make people blind, deaf, paraplegics, or other seemingly random disabilities in order for them to show God’s love or does he sometimes do it to punish people, or is it just that “stuff” (I would use another “s” word here in private company) happens? I don’t know? Another example would be that some people die quickly and go to meet their maker and some linger for years and years in nursing homes or with Alzheimer’s before they reach their next chapter. What is the story behind that? For personal reasons I have been thinking about this lately.

 I don’t know how many of you have read President Obama’s talk at the National Prayer Breakfast a few weeks ago. In that talk he told us how he came to faith in spite of not being raised in the active Christian household. And , no he was never a Muslim. Yes, his estranged father was at one time a Muslim before he became an atheist. Here is his account of why he came to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

 I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I’ve ever known. She was the one who taught me as a child to love, and to understand, and to do unto others as I would want done.

 I didn’t become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck – no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God’s spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose – His purpose.

 I don’t believe that his conversion was anything out of the ordinary for many of his generation. They grew up with people who they perceived as trying to shove Jesus down their throats. So many of them had become numb to the old style of outreach by these shallow encounters. It was only by Christians acts of kindness over an extended period of time that made them understand the true love or our Lord. I don’t have any statistics but I believe that is probably how most conversions happen today. In other words they are most affected by Christians who show the Lord’s love in their lives in very practical ways and do so on a day-by-day basis. Christianity is not a spectator religion but is instead an action filled call to follow the paths of Jesus Christ. So, lets all get off the couch and start living our faith.

Since I have been doing book reviews for a while I wanted to break it up with something I have been pondering lately. Is there such a thing as a “couch potato Christians”? Of course there are, so maybe I should say “should there be such a thing? A verse from Ephesians is used frequently by many denominations to show us our salvation is a total gift and has nothing to do with what we do.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast. Eph 2:8-9

While I 100% agree with Paul’s statement I take exception to those who think that therefore we have nothing to do but wait to die and then proceed to heaven. As I have said before I think Christianity is a call to action, not a sit back and wait religion. As the Lord said when you come to faith you throw off your old life to take on a completely new and radically different one. That is hard to do when your butt is glued to a sofa!

I think the “do nothing” attitude is one of the stumbling blocks to many who seek God. They see some Christians saying “all you have to do is accept Jesus as your savior and nothing else matters”. Of course we have all grown up with the sayings “you get what you pay for” and “nothing is free”. So they carry that thought to those Christians words. Then they look as Judaism and Islam with all their rules and daily requirements and think which one is real. The something for nothing religion or the work your butt off religion? If only we Christians could make it clear that becoming a true believer in Jesus Christ CHANGES EVERYTHING!! Jesus tells us to completely, and he means completely, throw off our old life of selfishness and greed and take on a new one of humility and servitude. If we could only get this point across we would do better at making disciples for Christ. It is hard to explain that no we don’t earn our salvation through these actions but they are just a much a part of our conversion as eating and breathing. We need to figure out how to do a better job of that. Our friends, neighbors, and even some family members eternity depends on it! But then we have to face the controversy over “works” which so many evangelicals stumble on.

This is a follow up of a recent post about eliminating hunger in the world. I’m sure there are some, and probably many, Christian organizations who say “No, no, we must spend our money preaching the Word and not ministering to physical needs. After all our spiritual life is for eternity and hunger is only of this earth”. While I don’t totally disagree with the intent of this, I believe it is very wrong headed and off the mark. There are well known basic human needs that must be met before higher level needs can occur. For instance, if a person is spending 15 hours a day trying to scavenge enough food for his family to exist he will not spend much time thinking about spiritual matters. We must feed the body before we can nourish the soul. Most Christian organizations are attuned to this since they have “feed the poor” missions throughout the world. Although funding for these organization is a challenge within the individual congregations who many times are fixated on their own needs (a bigger church, paving the parking lot, giving the staff a raise). Even Jesus made sure that people had enough to eat when they came in mass to him. Unfortunately we cannot feed thousands with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread so we need to work much harder at it. The very sad thing about the starvation in the world today is that it is totally preventable. We have the resources to eliminate it. It is just selfishness and politics that get in the way!

 For those of us who grew up with MAD magazine the title of this posting is very familiar. Alfred E. Neuman the main character in the magazine was constantly captioned to say that. I know I am giving my age away with this knowledge since Mad magazine was published in the 1950′s and that was ages ago for many bloggers. I regularly spent my 35 cent weekly allowance for a copy of Mad Magazine! If you are interested in learning more about Alfred go to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_e_newman

 Little did I know then that there was a biblical basis for Alfred’s words. Let’s study them here:

Matt 6:25-34

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life ? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

  So Jesus tells us that Alfred E. Neuman had it right all along. And my parents didn’t believe I would get anything useful from that magazine. My wife is a constant worrier. She even worries that she is not worrying enough! Me on the other hand, Alfred taught me well growing up so I don’t worry about too much. But then again, fortunately I have not had a lot of occasions in my life where I really needed to worry.

Getting back to a serious tone here, if you truly believe that Jesus is your Lord then you must take his words to heart and believe that He will take care of you in any circumstances. So, even though there is a lot to worry about in today’s world lets turn most of that over to Jesus and live the words “What, me worry”.

It’s time to get back on to the red letters so here goes:

Luke 12:48

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

There are hard words for us in the first world countries, especially us in the United States. Some say these words only refer to spiritual matters but I don’t buy that at all! We spend more on our Starbucks coffee in a year than most third world people earn. How can so many of us ignore the needs in so much of the world? We have been blessed by God to not have to worry about much of the daily matters of life. Even with our current economic problems for the most part all of us have a nice home, plenty to eat (probably too much given the obesity prevalent in our societies). Even thoough it has been constantly shrinking in the last decade we have a safety net under us if, God forbid, we should lose our jobs or tragedy should strike.

 I know you have heard me say this so many times but I am going to say it again (and again). There are almost 30,000 people per day dying in third world countries due to starvation and inadequate drinking water! That is ten World Trade Centers in deaths every day! Shame on us for allowing this to continue; we have the ability to solve this today if only our hearts weren’t hardened, or at least numbed, to the need. Yes there are many organizations working on this problem but for the most part they are drastically underfunded. Many of the more successful organization depend on private donations. One close to my heart is “Bread for the World”. As they say on their website http://www.bread.org/

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. By changing policies, programs and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, we provide help and opportunity far beyond the communities in which we live.

  There are also organizations with most Christian denominations that help feed third world countries. So there are no excuses for us not doing this. Some of the first words Jesus used to open his ministry was that he was bringing the good news to the poor. Let us follow His lead and bring the good news and some food to a family desperately in need. One who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. That includes almost all of us in first world countries. Let’s give up a cup of Starbucks coffee and instead send the money to feed an entire family for that day.

This is a continuation of the last post where I covered George Washington’s religious beliefs. I will conclude this topic by talking about Thomas Jefferson.

 Thomas Jefferson — Jefferson was undoubtedly the strongest advocate for religious freedom of the Founding Fathers. This was quite evident when he composed the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777. Jefferson was definitely raised in a Christian household. He seemed to have also been brought up in the rituals and customs of the Anglican Church as it existed in colonial Virginia which was much less a high church institution than its England counterpart. He later took up the Deist mantle as was the dominant theology among intellectuals in the English speaking world at the time. Jefferson’s revolving attitudes toward religion was one of the driving forces behind his staunch beliefs in freedom of religion.

In his later years, that is after his presidency, he spent quite some time thinking about his faith. During that time he he went back to his Christian roots but rejected the Trinitarian concept of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost saying it was Platonic mysticism. From his many letters to John Adams it is evident that he took to heart the “doctrine that flowed from the lips of Jesus himself” and wrote extensively about the “Morals of Jesus”. He wrote two books during this period about his faith. The Philosophy of Jesus and The Life and Morals of Jesus. Many Christians today don’t know that he even wrote his own version of the New Testament. In that work he systematically eliminated all references to miracles and the supernatural saying they were unnecessarily added to the actual accounts. He believed that these and other distortions, took the simple message of Jesus and unnecessarily complicated it. He believed this fault was not due to the simple fisherman who were for the most part his apostles. He instead blamed the sophisticated, well educated including and most obviously Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul). He obviously did not include any of St. Paul’s writings in his version of the New Testament.

So it is true to say that the person who wrote our Declaration of Independence began and ended his life as a Christian. But, he was very much unlike any Christians we run across today. 
 Another very interesting person also covered in the book was Benjamin Franklin. He also had a very interesting concept of religion. I will leave it to those more curious to get the book and read about him. I will conclude here by paraphrasing what President Obama has been saying lately. We in the United States are not unique because we are a Christian nation but instead we are unique because of our diversity of religious views and tolerance. The diversity of our founding fathers beliefs were pretty much as we are as a country today.