Joe Fontenot's Blog, page 4
February 11, 2019
Everything you can fake
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: As my kids get older, what do I hope for them?
How do I help them understand for themselves: here’s what to avoid, and here’s stuff that doesn’t matter as much?
The only conclusion I can think of is what I’ve been learning myself.
It goes like this: Everything that can be faked is a variable.
Whether it’s dress, social niceties, or weird piercings (though, thankfully, we’re not there yet), it doesn’t matter.
What’s left are the things Paul talks about in Colossians 3.
Compassion (even on those who hate you). Humility (to see ourselves as we are). And an utterly undeserved unity with the rest of the believers.
These are the things that only come from the Holy Spirit living and moving inside of us.
So, I think, if I have to pick, I’m willing to let everything else slide.
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February 8, 2019
An interesting parallel to Judas’ payment
“What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?”
And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.
(Matthew 26:14-16)
Thirty pieces of silver—the amount Judas was paid to betray Jesus—was also the amount an ox owner in the Old Testament (Exodus 21:32) was required to pay if his ox killed the servant of another.
In other words, the 30 pieces were compensation for a loss of property.
I’m not sure if it’s intentional or a coincidence, but Judas was paid as an owner who lost property.
In this case, following that parallel, Jesus was the property.
We give Judas a hard time, betraying Jesus and all.
And, I should add, rightly so.
But how many of us treat Jesus just the same, like an asset or a tool to use? Prayers, logged like divine work orders.
Perhaps Judas wasn’t that far away from where many of us are today.
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February 7, 2019
Jesus: the priority is not the poor
“For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”
– Jesus (Matthew 26:11)
Indignant, they asked: why the waste? as the woman poured a luxury perfume on Jesus.
The waste in question, by the way, cost nearly a year’s salary, and in today’s terms we could ballpark that anywhere around $20,000 dollars and up.
Gone, just like that.
The guise, or disguise (some think it was Judas who raised the objection), was that: we could have sold that, and given it to the poor.
Which sounds noble, indeed.
Jesus’ response: there will always be more money and more poor. “But you will not always have me.”
Our lesson: how we define waste comes with how we think about Jesus.
If he’s first—really first—then the answers to all of the problems we find are solved by doubling down on him.
But if he’s not, then indignant is the least we should be.
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February 6, 2019
The righteous will answer
“The righteous will answer,” Jesus said, “when did we do [that] to you?” (Matthew 25:37-39).
Jesus explains something significant here about the character of the righteous.
He tells them: you took care of me when I was sick. You fed me, and you clothed me.
They, of course, were confused by this. When did we do this to you? was the response.
Whenever you “did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
The reason the righteous missed this, was because of their character.
The righteous are not the saints we’ve put on pedestals. They are anyone who desires God’s spirit to live in them and make them more like him. They are, in a word, us.
What makes this episode especially interesting is the object: ‘the least of these.’
It’s easy to fool others (and ourselves), by helping the valuable ones. The king, the prince, and all the rest.
But here Jesus shows us the essence of the righteous. They, he says, cater to the ‘least.’
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February 5, 2019
“Stay awake”
“Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”
– Jesus (Matthew 24:42)
Jesus, teaching his followers about how to act after his crucifixion and resurrection, gives them this singular advice: “stay awake.”
But why ‘stake awake’?
If we’re not paying attention, will we miss the boat? As in, not go to heaven?
And, regardless of that, what does ’staying awake’ even look like?
The answer comes not when we look at this life but the next. Because what we do here affects what we do there.
This becomes clear as Jesus goes on to illustrate with the story of the servants given assets to invest.
Two do just that, they invest and when the owner comes back, he’s happy. But the third doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t do anything. It’s as if he was never given anything at all. The owner was, understandably, upset with the third (Matthew 25:14-30).
‘Stay awake’ does not mean stay on edge and never rest. And it doesn’t mean that only those watching will somehow get to heaven.
Instead, ‘stay awake’ means we’re to think of this life like it matters. Like it will inform the next.
Because, after all, it does.
Jesus said, “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:20-21).
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February 4, 2019
The dip
Some traditions focus on the good.
God’s grace. The love and joy he pours out on us. And all of the effervescence that goes with that.
Others get stuck on the bad.
Namely, us and our sin. Repentance. Mercy.
But in their own way, both paths wrong.
Because the challenge is not picking the right one, but instead believing them both, simultaneously.
Seth Godin has a book called The Dip. In it, he talks about having to go down before you can go up. The dip.
He does a good job of explaining it. But it’s hardly original. In fact, it’s a part of the story of every follower of Jesus.
My friend and mentor, Jack, said in her sermon Sunday, “Confess your failures to the one person in the entire world who has the authority to say to repentant sinners, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go from here and sin no more.’”
There’s a lot packed into those few words.
A full relationship with God is about both the bad (who we really are) and the good (who we’ve really become).
We know when we get here, because awe is the feeling we can’t quite shake.
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February 1, 2019
Prophesies
in Matthew 24:1-14, Jesus predicts the terrible fall of Jerusalem.
Partly, it was because his disciples brought it up. But the other part was for the same reason that we have any prophesy at all.
Prophesies are so that we will know, but not fixate. They are so that when we look back we can understand who God is, and trust him, without becoming consumed about what will come.
So Jesus didn’t describe in great detail things like the mass suicides at Masada, or the overwhelming rage of the Romans that would cause them to sink untold amounts of money into leveling Jerusalem.
But he did say it would be bad.
He was specific enough to be accurate, but no so much that we’d stop living today and think only about tomorrow.
The future will always be difficult. But that’s irrelevant. We don’t have the future. We don’t work in the future (or the past for that matter). We only have and work in the present.
That’s where we’re called to be.
The point of prophesies is to learn about God, not about us.
And that, I think, is an encouragement.
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January 31, 2019
More things happen when…
He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.
– Matthew 14:29
An observation: More things happen when we step first.
When I’m praying about something and then take a step–even if I don’t know yet that it’s the right step–that’s often when I see God stepping in.
On some level, this feels like a lack of faith. If I trusted God, I could comfortably wait on him to go first.
But really, I’ve seen the opposite.
It was my lack of faith that kept me fearful, afraid to move. When I move forward and deal with stuff, it’s as if God’s looking at my attempts and saying, that’s my boy.
Of course, it’s always hard to image what would have happened if things were different. But I’m old enough now–34–to have tried enough paths and seen the patterns.
One of those patterns, I’m happy to report, is that my spiritual life grows when I make choices. When I take actions.
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January 30, 2019
The path to greatness
In the last week of his ministry, just days before he was crucified, Jesus spent a lot of time making sure the people understood which kinds of leaders were legit (and which weren’t).
In one story he compares how to be great with how most of the religious leaders then were doing it.
He says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).
Common. We know.
But when we see this, we’re often seeing it happen wrong.
The question is not: Who can I find who’s lowly and then toss praise on them?
The question Jesus was really driving at is: How can I find that person and make them truly excel?
The first has this awkward way of showing everyone that I’m the obvious benefactor.
The second is different. With the second, I…disappear.
And that’s a lot harder.
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January 29, 2019
Jesus’ advice on hypocritical teaching
“Do it,” he said.
If they—the teachers—are teaching the right thing (but not doing it themselves), what’s that to you? That’s their problem, to which they’ll have to answer.
Jesus said, “practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do” (Matthew 23:2).
In other words, if the advice is good, then don’t miss out just because they’re a hypocrite. This applies to everyone from fallen TV preachers to cheating mentors.
If you throw out the good advice just because it came with a bad messenger, then everyone loses.
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