Brandon C. Jones's Blog, page 17

On Baptism

What is baptism?
According to our church’s statement of beliefs, “Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20).”
Why be baptized?
·      Jesus commanded baptism: He told his followers to make fellow followers by baptizing them and by teaching them (Matt 28:18-20).
·      Baptism is an expected response to the gospel message: The Apostles preached the gospel to all peoples, prompting them to respond favorably by believing in Jesus and being baptized in his name (Acts 2:37-41; 8:12-13, 36-39; 9:17-19; 10:47-48; 16:13-15, 31-34; 18:7-8; 19:1-7).
·      Baptism confirms someone has faith in Christ and is now a Christian: The Apostles spoke of being baptized as a shorthand way of saying someone has become a Christian (Rom 6:3-4; 1 Cor 6:11; 12:13; Gal 3:26-29; Col 2:11-12; 1 Pet 3:18-22).
What does it mean to be baptized?
·      Baptized followers are confirmed followers of Christ: Water baptism is the only method Jesus told his followers to use to confirm that someone is now a Christian (Matt 28:18-20). Baptism symbolizes one’s identification with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection (Rom 6:3-5). Through baptism you proclaim before many people that you are no longer following Satan and his ways and are now following Christ. Being baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit confirms that the Triune God is your God and that you are his follower.
·      Baptism marks entry into the church of Christ: Jesus commanded that his followers make disciples by baptizing others in his name, so you cannot baptize yourself. Jesus chose for his church to play an integral role in welcoming and confirming that people have come to believe in him. When you are baptized in the name of Jesus, you are baptized into his body, the church (Eph 4:5; 1 Cor 12:13).
·      Through baptism, God strengthens one’s consciousness of salvation: God does something through baptism, namely he confirms that he has taken hold of you. Likewise, you confirm before God and his people, the church, that you have taken hold of them. God has covenanted with his people through Christ and uses baptism as a special way of telling everyone that you are now a part of what he is doing through Christ. Baptism confirms you now have all the privileges as well as the duties of being one of God’s people as a member of his church. Baptism also confirms God’s pledge to you, through the actions of his church, to accept you and raise you to new life. In times of trial Scripture prompts us to think of our baptism and what it means (Rom 6:1-14).

The Getting and Giving of Eternal Life

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
What kind of life is eternal life? Some people mistakenly think it is pretty much the same thing as our ordinary lives here and now, but the difference will be instead of ending at death it will go on forever. When Jesus and the authors of Holy Scripture talk about “eternal life,” though, they have something else in mind—a life that shares God’s own life. In other words, if we want to think about the meaning of eternal life, we must begin with the meaning of God’s own life. For God’s own life is what we look forward to sharing in Christ’s kingdom and what we strive to share in limited ways here and now as we live with God’s Spirit within us.
Whatever God’s life is like, we know it will be different than the ordinary living we have today that is marred by sin and its ugly consequence of death. Ordinary life is steeped in fear because ordinary life thinks in terms of possession and ownership. We think we own our own lives. Likewise, we think we own our possessions. And we fear losing either or both. But God’s life isn’t that way at all.
Long ago God’s people fought long and hard over what Christians should believe about the God who spoke through Jesus Christ. Some people argued god must be independent, above all else. They could not imagine a god worthy of human worship who could sully itself with limited beings or things like humans and the created universe. No. The independent god must also be the alone god. Were god to interact with us mere mortals it would only do so indirectly through some created agent who represented its interests. This god could never share himself. This god could never give of himself.
As reasonable as a god like this might be, God’s people concluded that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is also the God of Jesus Christ has revealed himself to be different in his Holy Scripture. Although there is just one God, this same God has revealed himself to be Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus says that just “as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Or as John opens his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Jesus revealed that God indeed shares his own life. God is at his very core a giver. And he gives of himself.
The early church concluded that Jesus’ promise of the gift of eternal life offers us the same kind of life Jesus has. “What he is by nature, we are by grace,” they would say. If Jesus’ life is one of sharing and giving, then our eternal life in him is also one of sharing and giving. No longer are we to be steeped in fear of losing what we think is “ours.” No longer do we approach life as our own possession that is intended to get more possessions. Life itself is no longer about what we can get, because eternal life is about what we can give. Arthur McGill says, “That is why a person’s turning to Jesus has been called a ‘birth,’ since it is believed to involve his entering a new life and not simply his enhancing the life that he already possesses. And because the new life is God’s own, this birth makes him a ‘child of God’ in a very precise sense. Now he is not only made by God, like other creatures, as a vase is made by the artisan, but he is made alive by God’s own vitality, as a child is informed by the life of his parents.”
God gives. God’s mission is to share his own life with humans made in his image by graciously saving them from sin, death, and the Devil through the good news of Jesus Christ. God’s people, his church, are to share in his mission and give of themselves in doing so. They are not to be focused on what they can get, because what they got was eternal life—the giving kind of life.

Messages from My Father

Dad worked a lot. He didn’t like sports that much, except for the Indy 500 race. He could throw a sidearm sinker pitch when we played catch that I could never get into my ball glove no matter how old I got. People who were acquainted with him might have called him loud, obnoxious, and the life of the party, but those of us who knew him best remember the quiet man who was content to eat while lying on the floor by himself. He once called himself a shy fat man.
Dad taught me plenty of things, even if I never mastered his sinker pitch. On any project he would slowly and meticulously unpack and inventory everything before starting to piece things together. “That way,” he would say, “you know if something is missing before you need it.” Dad was also a fan of making sure he laid things on the ground or the floor, because “nothing can fall off the floor.” When I started working he taught me about tithing. When my Mom was away, he taught me how to be a romantic. He devoted hours to coming up with thoughtful poems, scavenger hunts, and games to show Mom she was missed. Yet, he would always be one of those guys at jewelry counters just before the department store would close on Christmas Eve.
Dad loved watching westerns and musicals, which means that “Paint Your Wagon,” a movie that has Clint Eastwood as a singing cowboy, was one of his favorites. He also never outgrew children’s programming. Countless Sundays he would delay our weekly trip to church by getting caught up with Looney Toons on television. One of his favorite movies was Hook, even if he’d never admit it out loud.
Dad was a musician who once played the piano and could sing high—freakishly high. He enjoyed most kinds of music, and I used to love sharing new finds with him. Of course, like just about every other American, he always preferred music from his adolescence, making him a sucker for Elvis and the Beach Boys. It is hard to imagine that one day soon Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins will be old fogey music to my kids.
Dad was strong and patient, and it makes sense that those two things went together. No matter what life hurled at him he always had his strength, until one day he didn’t. The dying process has an ugly way of robbing people of that which defines them. But Dad’s patience never ran out. He did not mind waiting. He stuck with jobs in which he would wait in cars, waiting rooms, and lobbies. I suppose it gave him time to observe and think—and use the drinking fountain—that man could never pass up an opportunity to use a drinking fountain.
Dad was never one for heart-to-heart talks. He preferred to lead by example. When I was a young adult he bore my unwise, foolish, and downright reckless decisions, hoping, I suppose, that I would eventually turn out okay. And I did. Because of Dad I knew the weight of fatherhood—the weight of providing for others the moment you say “I do” and especially the moment someone lays a whelping baby in your arms. Because of Dad I knew my capacity to love my family would never run dry. Because of Dad I knew to take time to have fun and enjoy life with others, even if that means doing what your kids want to do instead of what you would rather do on your own. Because of Dad, I know that it matters how I slog through each day. What I spend time doing will hammer into my children what I value and what I wish for them to value too. I ended up valuing the same things that mattered to Dad. I got his message.
Calvin Trillin, reflecting on his own father’s life, once wrote, “I’ve always thought of my father as having accomplished what he set out to do, but, of course, children go through life seeing their parents in terms of themselves: he accomplished what he set out to do for Sukey [Calvin’s sister] and me. I suppose someone could add up the facts of my father’s life and come to the conclusion that he was an unfulfilled man. [. . .]. He was happy in his family but he never had the pleasure of work that truly satisfied him. He never had a crack at California. I’d like to believe, though, that he didn’t think in those terms. I’d like to believe that he thought more in terms of what Rabbi Hadas called a sense of continuity. I’ve felt his presence most intensely at those landmarks of continuity—on the day, for instance, when each of my daughters graduated from Yale. But I can often hear his voice in mine, and not just when I’m asking for a translation of ‘The left-handed lizard climbed up the eucalyptus tree and ate a persimmon.’ I hope my daughters can hear it, too.”
I often hear my father’s voice in mine as well, and not just when I tell my kids we are having barbecue barf on a bun for supper, but mostly when I lay down with them and talk about life. Dad would often listen. I’d like to think he still listens today.

Five steps to build loving relationships in your church

Does your church need some remodeling? I don't mean the building, but the people. Here are some of Paul's instructions on how to renovate the relationships among your church family members.
1. Tear down before you try to build
The first part of any construction project is demolishing and tearing down, and inasmuch as our lives as Christ-followers is a work in progress, we too must tear down before we can build back up. In Ephesians 2 Paul reminds the church that in Christ God has demolished every barrier sin has put between God and humans as well as every barrier we humans have wrongfully built up between each other (e.g. race, gender, social status, etc.). Christ has brought peace to the world by tearing down these barriers. How could he bring peace to your life or your church’s life when you refuse to tear down hostile barriers? Before Paul discusses specific behaviors he first gives the basic instruction in Ephesians 4:20-24 to put off our former ways of living in order to make room to put on Christ's new righteous way of living.
2. Be honest, but not angry
The first specific behavior Paul mentions in Ephesians 4 is lying. He says, “each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Eph 4:25). We must stop lying to each other and start speaking truthfully. I doubt many churches are filled with people speaking lies to each other, but falsehood takes hold in other ways. Like Israel’s response to the prophet Malachi, we might ask “When? When have we lied to each other?” We lie to each other when we refuse to be vulnerable and let others bear our burdens. We especially lie to each other when we pretend we have no burdens to bear or when we tell ourselves it is good not to be a burden to others. We lie to each other when we fail to confess our sins. We lie to each other when we fail to say out loud, “Jesus loves you” and “God forgives you.” We lie to each other when we wrongly think and act as if our behavior will neither help nor hurt our church, which Paul reminds us is just one body with many members—including you and me.
Of course, one reason people refuse to speak truthfully to each other is that tensions can rise and give way to anger. Paul knows this tendency and immediately says, “In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Eph 4:26-27). Anger whispers in our ear that we have been wronged and deserve an apology. Anger ensures that we forget how to forgive each other. Anger spreads like wildfire as we badmouth each other to anyone and everyone who will hear us. And, according to Paul, the devil does not need much to gain a foothold. It just takes him one evening. That’s it. Fallen people in a fallen world have a tendency to get angry at each other, and Paul knows that. He assumes there will be anger among church members, so his instruction is to not sin in our anger and not to let it fester for very long—not even one single day.
3. Do not steal, but be generous
The next thing Paul says is, “Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need” (Eph 4:28). Like lying, once again we may ask ourselves, “When? When have we been stealing?” If worship is about what we bring rather than what we can get, perhaps we have several thieves in our churches. Thieves take what is not theirs. Thieves never bring anything of their own to share at the table. While our churches hopefully do not have people lifting church property or embezzling church funds, might we have thieves in our midst? Do we have people who do not even bring themselves to us in worship or anything else for that matter? Do we have people who come to worship with us, but bring nothing of their own, whether its nothing in their hearts, no joy, no energy, no singing, no compassion, no kindness, no forgiveness, and (okay, I’ll mention it) no financial gifts. Even worse, do we have people who are wrongfully taking what is not theirs? Are there people who wrongfully intimidate or quench others who wish to bring joy, energy, song, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and encouragement to our church bodies?
Paul tells thieves to stop stealing, but not to stop there. In God’s economy it is not enough merely to take care of yourself and leave everyone else alone. Instead of stealing, former thieves must do something useful with themselves for the purpose of sharing with those in need. What does your community need? Does it need encouragement? Do something useful with yourself for the purpose of encouraging those who need encouragement. Does it need joy? Does it need forgiveness? Does it need compassion? You get the point. Instead of being a den of thieves, our churches are to be generous bodies that work hard to share with those in need around them. Christ claims that we will find him in the least among us—the very people in need.
4. Stop trash-talking, so you can build others up with what you say
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Eph 4:29). Paul was not concerned here with ensuring that all of us avoid using colorful words that might make our grandmothers blush. What really matters here is rotten, unwholesome, bad speech; the kind of talk that wipes smiles right of people’s faces. The kind of talk that mimics what everyone else outside the church likes to say, putting our trust in pleasure, money, politics, and so on. The kind of talk that might as well begin with phrases such as, “there is no God”; “God does not love you”; “there is no salvation”; “there is no grace”; and that most dubious of all extra-biblical sayings, “God helps those who help themselves.”
Just like stealing, it is not enough merely to avoid saying unwholesome things. Paul reminds us that speech is a gift God shares with us for the benefit of the listener, not ourselves. We must purposely look for ways to build up others with what we say and how we say it. Paul links our approach to speech with how well or how poorly we grieve the Holy Spirit. Paul links our approach to speech with how much bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, and malice (wishing ill on others) influence our individual lives and our life together as churches. Paul links our approach to speech with our expressions of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness to one another.
If you want kind, compassionate, and forgiving churches, it all starts with what comes out of people’s mouths. But it does not end there either.
5. Follow God’s example with your actions
“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:1-2). There are many reasons why it was fitting that God sent his Son to take on our human nature and live among us, and one of them is to provide us an example so we can do as God does, not just as he says. Jesus was morally upright, morally pure, and humble instead of greedy. As his people, we are called to put on Christ and do the same by following his example. We must be careful how we live and be filled with the Holy Spirit, which will overflow out of us by way of our uncontrollable desire to speak “to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 5:19-20). Spirit-filled people are joyful people. Spirit-filled people are thankful people. Spirit-filled people come together to form Spirit-filled churches. Let there be no doubt, Spirit-filled churches will be marked by loving relationships.

Camping at Home

Last week our family camped for the first time in a few years. We enjoyed many things about it, even if we were the only ones braving the fierce Dakota winds in a tent rather than a fancy camper with running water and electricity. I camped a lot as a kid while in Boy Scouts, but as an adult I find it hard to feel at ease in a tent. The wind blows loudly, the ground feels hard, and you are just not home. Of course, that’s entirely the point—you camp away from home.
It wouldn’t make much sense to camp at home, needlessly packing and unpacking things. Yet our roots as God’s people begin with a family who had to camp at home. Hebrews 11:9-10 says, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.” God promised Abraham a large land full of natural resources and beauty, but other people lived there at the time. Abraham didn’t. Instead, Abraham toured the land and setup tents constantly as he journeyed about. His children and grandchildren did so too.
Despite God’s rich promises to Abraham, he only bought a burial plot for his wife and nothing more. He never owned much of the land promised to him. Instead, he camped at his promised home for years. Why? Hebrews gives us the answer, “For he [Abraham] was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (11:10).
Just before the Book of Genesis introduces us to Abraham, we first read about some people who set out to make a great name for themselves. They settle on a fruited plain to build a great city named Babel, which would have as its center a great tower reaching up to heaven itself. They thought everyone in the world would be amazed and impressed at their city and its tower. Only God wasn’t very impressed. He confused the builders’ language and scattered them far away. The tower remained unfinished. Then we meet Abraham, who is quite ordinary. He was just a man from a tiny family with no children of his own. Yet, one of God’s first promises to Abraham was that he would have a great name for himself. But it wouldn’t come by way of Babel. In fact, it wouldn’t come through anything Abraham did for himself. And it wouldn’t come quickly. Abraham had to wait years for it—long years. And wait he did by living like a stranger in his own country—tents and all.
Abraham had plenty of time to rethink God’s promises. He could have gone back to his former homeland several times, since he had the opportunity to do so. But he trusted God and sought something better than a bunch of land, security, and riches today—he sought the Anti-Babel—that is, a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God himself. Hebrews tells us that Abraham died without receiving the promise, but he was still living by faith when he died. It is not as if God left Abraham without any inkling of what was promised, though, because Hebrews says that Abraham and others saw the things promised “from a distance, admitting they were foreigners and strangers on earth” and “longing for a better county—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them” (11:13-16).
Instead of being ashamed of Abraham, God often introduces himself as Abraham’s God. He is not ashamed to be our God either, provided we have the same kind of faith Abraham had—one that trusts in the God who always delivers his promises, even if we have to wait patiently for them. In the meantime, God does give us glimpses of his kingdom. When Abraham asked God for confirmation of God’s promises, God had Abraham offer an animal sacrifice as a token that God covenanted with him. When we ask God for confirmation, likewise God has left us tokens of his covenant with us in Christ – his Word, his baptism, and his supper. Through all of these God gives us a taste of his kingdom while we continue to live as strangers in tents on earth. It gives our Father great pleasure to give us the earth—but not yet. For there are no shortcuts to having a great name or being part of a great city; just ask the makers of Babel.

Christians Can’t Do Math

This Sunday is traditionally known as Trinity Sunday, and sadly most Christians today are not quite sure how to understand, let alone explain, the Christian doctrine of the Triune God. What was once central to our Christian faith, because it had directly to do with the salvation of humans from sin and death, has now become an afterthought that many people are strangely comfortable being ignorant about. Sure, people who grow up in churches know to say that there are three distinct divine Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and yet there are not three gods because there is just one God. But when it comes to why it matters to say God is this way and not another way or how to explain that it is the case God is this way, Christians are often silent or accidentally fallback to ideas about God that the church roundly rejected centuries ago (e.g. the Trinity is like a clover, like water, or like a human family). The historical conversations that brought about the doctrine of the Trinity, though, were never more about the math of the Trinity, than they were about a deeply religious problem about the nature of the God who has offered salvation to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Once we rightly link the Trinity with who God is and how God saves us, then it ought to become something we think about at least once in our Christian lives.
When the church discussed the relationship between Jesus Christ and us, namely how his death and resurrection has meaning for our sins and eternal life, the church concluded from Scripture that Jesus was able to defeat sin, death, and the devil because he was more than merely human. Were he merely human like the rest of us, then how could his death be any different than the deaths of so many other humans? Jesus’ death was different, so he must have been different in some way too. But he could not be so different that he was not really human like all of us are, because he had to be truly human to save the rest of us humans. After all, we humans were the ones responsible for sin and death. How could God deal with our sin and its curse of death without one of us, a human, representing us by acting rightly? Thus, the church concluded that for Jesus to save us humans he too had to be truly human, just like we are, but he could not be merely human like the rest of us. Concluding that Jesus needed to be “more” than merely human, the church for a few centuries struggled explaining what that “more” was, according to what the Scriptures say about Jesus. This struggle uncovered an underlying issue, which was that, however we are to understand the “more” of Jesus Christ, how does that “more” relate to God the Father and God the Spirit? In other words, the historical problem behind the Trinity was what kind of God do Christians worship?
There were several possible answers to these questions. Some people thought God the Father put on a mask, like an actor, to play the part of Jesus Christ (and likewise the part of God the Spirit), but whatever Jesus said and did was really God the Father working in and through him. The church rejected this answer because it did not fit what Jesus himself says about his relationship to the Father because Jesus prays to the Father and the Father even speaks to him audibly at his baptism. So much for that answer, are there any others?
Yes, some other people thought God, as God, by definition had to be completely independent to be worthy of our worship. God could never share who he is with anyone else, so Jesus must be a creature of some sort through which God interacts with the world. In this way Jesus and the Father are distinct beings (explaining how Jesus prayed to the Father and how the Father could speak to Jesus audibly), but Jesus is an intermediary agent through which the real God does things. Jesus himself, as the Son of God, could never be the real God, for the real God is the Son of no one or no thing. In this way Jesus is still more than merely human, because God created the Son first and created everything else—even humans—through the Son who would later take on human flesh as Jesus Christ.

The church also rejected this answer because it undermined everyone’s salvation. Instead of God himself dealing with our sins, this answer has God sending an agent to do his work on his behalf, leaving us distant and apart from the real God when all is said and done. Besides, the church also wondered what people would make of Jesus’ claims in Scripture that he is no mere agent who represents the real God, but rather that the real God is one with him? Even more, what would we make of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, and the God of Jesus Christ who never seems to reveal himself to be completely independent, absolute, and unable to share? So much for that answer, are there any others?
Yes, the church settled on the answer we now know as the Trinity. This answer, when you get to the heart of it, is really about the God we Christians worship. After all the questions and answers were considered, what the church ended up endorsing is that the God who spoke long ago to Israel’s patriarchs and through her prophets has also spoken through Jesus Christ—and that God reveals himself to be love. Love, by definition, must be shared, so God is a sharer too. And God the Son, even though he is dependent on God the Father, is still just as divine as the Father himself. The Son is no mere created agent who represents God. Rather, the Son is God himself (and the Spirit too).
When the church approached the idea of which God is worthy of its worship, an absolute and independent and unsharing god, or the God of love, the church sided with love. The loving God generates, shares, and creates out of overflowing energy, while the absolute god would be barren. The loving God enjoys others and looks out for others, while the absolute god would seal himself off from others by creating agents to deal with them on his behalf.
On Trinity Sunday do not worry about explaining the math, because that never was the focus. Instead, remember that we Christians worship a God who is love. He has lovingly shared himself and will keep on doing so for all time in his kingdom. We have the privilege of sharing his own life through Christ, and what a privilege that is considering Christ is no agent of God but God himself!

What does this mean? Pentecost for today

Sunday marks our celebration of Pentecost, when the earliest followers of Jesus received the power of the Holy Spirit. Luke tells us that they were all together in one place when something unexpected happened: “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:3-4). Since Pentecost was one of the three annual feasts that attracted God-fearing Jews from all over the known world, a crowd quickly gathered around Jesus’ first followers. Luke says that members of the crowd were amazed because a group of Galileans was speaking, but everyone was hearing their own native languages—even from places as far away as Africa and Italy. “Amazed and perplexed,” Luke says, “they asked one another, ‘What does this mean?’”
Some people quickly assumed that all this spectacle meant was that some people were hitting the alcohol a little too early in the morning, but Peter steps up to offer a better explanation—God has poured out his Spirit on all people. Building on what Peter says, Pentecost means at least three things for God’s people today: Christ has not left us as orphans, God empowers us—all of us, and our witness demands a response.
Christ has not left us as orphans
Jesus warned his followers about a time when he would leave them. He warned them repeatedly not to let their hearts be troubled by his absence. He explained that he would come to them again, but in a different way. He will ask his Father to send the Spirit of truth to them to live with them and be in them. He calls this Spirit a paraclete, literally someone who comes alongside a crying child. Building on this word picture, Jesus tells his followers: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
On Pentecost Jesus’ followers must have recalled his promise that he would not leave them as orphans. Orphans get used to crying with no one responding to their calls. Orphans get used to living with no parents and fighting for attention, love, nourishment, and rest—things our children all take for granted. Jesus told his followers to wait patiently in Jerusalem, promising them that they would not be orphans—he would come to them. On Pentecost he came, and he hasn’t left us since.
God empowers us—all of us
Peter’s explanation of the strange events at Pentecost drew him to Joel’s prophecy when God promised to pour his Spirit out on all people. The bystanders that day were amazed that seemingly ordinary Galileans were speaking in such diverse languages. Peter, though, rightly brought up God’s promises that one day God would pour out his Spirit, empowering all kinds of people—sons, daughters, young men, old men, male servants, female servants. Even the skies and land will act as witnesses to God’s work on that day.
Peter ends his thought by saying, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21). God will hear anyone who calls on his name, not just certain privileged people—anyone and everyone—and empower all of them. No matter what race you are, what gender you are, how rich you are, or how smart you are, God empowers you.
Sometimes we narrow the Spirit’s power to flashy and showy things like what happened on the first Pentecost, but Paul reminds us that wherever Jesus is magnified the Spirit is right there providing all the energy (1 Cor 12:3). Does your church magnify Jesus? The Spirit is there. Does your church sing praises to God? The Spirit is there. Does your church pray? The Spirit is there. Does your church proclaim God’s Word? The Spirit is there. Does your church make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; teaching them all things Jesus commanded? The Spirit is there. Does your church gather around the Lord’s table, proclaiming his death through bread and wine until he comes again? The Spirit is there.
Likewise, do you magnify Jesus? The Spirit is in you. Do you sing praises to God? The Spirit is in you. Do you pray? The Spirit is in you, sometimes articulating your prayers to God when you cannot come up with your own words (cf. Rom 8:26-27). Do you speak the truth in love? The Spirit is in you.
Our witness demands a response
After Peter explained what the miraculous gift of tongues meant, he immediately told everyone about Jesus of Nazareth, a man whom, despite being accredited by God as his Messiah, was handed over to be crucified. But God raised him from the dead, making him both Messiah and Lord. When the audience heard this news, they were cut to the heart and asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).
The sign of tongues got the crowd’s attention, prompting speculation that perhaps Jesus’ followers were drunk that morning. But Peter’s explanation, pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ, demanded their response. When we share the gospel, brothers and sisters, the Spirit is there too and it demands a response from whoever hears it.
What does this mean? It means you are never alone. Jesus has not left you as an orphan. His Spirit is with you and in you, empowering you to carry on what he started long ago. Pentecost was only the beginning. What a privilege to carry on what started there.

Why Ascension

Today we gather with our brothers and sisters around the world and remember when the earliest church spent an afternoon outside looking at nothing. On this day so many years ago Jesus’ first disciples “were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:10-11).
Jesus had already told him that it would be better for everyone that he goes back to his Father and their Father. But they couldn’t help but stare into the sky and rethink all that. They had already lost Jesus once for a few days, now they were losing him again and have no idea for how long. And they are supposed to think they are now better off for it?
They had to wait a bit for it, but on the day of Pentecost Jesus empowered them by pouring out his Spirit onto each one of them. As Augustine says to Jesus, “You ascended from before our eyes, and we turned back to grieving, only to find you in our hearts.” Jesus still lives on earth in and through his church. As Philip Yancey writes, “The church is where God lives. What Jesus brought to a few—healing, grace, the good-news message of God’s love—the church can now bring to all.”
Of course, Yancey finds this connection between Jesus and his church a little troublesome. Looking back on the history of the church, with all its ups and downs, how can it really be true that we are better off with him ascended up in heaven? Yancey refers to the ascension as his “greatest struggle of faith—not whether it happened, but why. [. . .]. I find it much easier to accept the fact of God incarnating in Jesus of Nazareth than in the people who attend my local church—and in me. Yet that is what we are asked to believe; that is how we are asked to live.”
Yancey concludes that what really troubles him about the ascension is that it makes it easy for Jesus to be forgotten. It is up to Jesus' church and each member within it to look for him among the poor and needy among them. It is up to Jesus' church and each member within it to carry on his message and good news in his name. And most days we do not seem very good at this. But Jesus himself chose followers who were not very good at it either, and he loved them fiercely—even on the night one of them betrayed him. He loves us too and will be with us always—even until the end of the age when he will return again up in the sky.
This same Jesus who has been taken from us will come back to set things aright. May he find us faithful in the meantime by treating the least among us as if they were really him--as if they actually mattered.

Psalm 67: Blessed to be a Blessing

The unknown author of Psalm 67 writes:
“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us—so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.
May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy,for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you.
The land yields its harvest; God, our God, blesses us. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.”
This psalm tells us three things that are just as important today as they were for ancient Israel:
1. God blesses his people for a specific purpose.
The psalmist quotes God himself when he asks God to “be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us.” In Numbers 6:22-27 God tells Israel’s priests to bless his people by saying the same thing. God then promises to put his name on his people in such a way that his identity and reputation are tied to how his people behave—what they say, what they fear, how they live, and how they die. Lastly, God promises to bless his people in that passage in Numbers, but Psalm 67 gives the purpose behind it.
God blesses his people, so they will make his ways known on the earth, namely his salvation among all nations. God does not go through the trouble of identifying himself with his people and blessing them, so they can misconstrue what kind of God he is. According to Will Willimon, the church in America has found itself abandoning Jesus’ call for his people to be salt and light in the world, so it can instead be “sweet syrup to enable the world’s solutions to go down easier” for anxiously affluent Americans who expect nothing more out of their pastor than to care for them and their family and nothing more out of their church than to provide therapy for coping with a thoroughly self-centered consumerist way of life.
But our psalmist rejects such an idolatrous substitute for true faithfulness to God. Instead, he calls God’s people to remember that the whole purpose of their being blessed is to make God’s ways and salvation known on earth. A fair question to ask, then, is How can we tell we are making God’s ways and salvation known?
2. Wherever there is joy, God’s ways and salvation are made known.
When we get sick, we focus on symptoms that will hopefully disclose what underlying condition is producing them. The psalmist says loud, obnoxious, joyful, glad singing is a symptom of praise to God. In other words, wherever you see people doing singing gladly, you know there is praise. It is nearly impossible to sing gladly when there is no underlying praise to produce it. In contrast wherever there is quiet, timid, depressed, muted silence at a gathering of God’s people, one would wonder what underlying condition is producing such a grim symptom among them? Have they no praise to sing? Maybe they have forgotten God’s ways and salvation.
Certainly they have forgotten the benefits of being God’s people, which, according to David in Psalm 103, include God forgiving all our sins, healing all our diseases, buying us back from a deadly pit, crowning us with love and compassion, satisfying our desires with good things, renewing our youth like that of an eagle, working righteousness and justice for all the oppressed, and so on. God’s ways, salvation, and blessings should produce one symptom—Joy!
3. God’s blessings include your stuff, so share it generously.
By the end of the psalm we read again about God’s blessings. But this time one particular blessing is listed: “The land yields its harvest; God, our God, blesses us. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.” God’s blessings include our stuff and the things we use to obtain it.
In the four Gospels Jesus talks about money more than he talks about heaven and hell combined. One out of every four of Jesus’ parables is about money. One out of every seven verses in the Gospel of Luke are about money. Jesus certainly had much to say about our stuff and the money we use to get it, and he is clear that any blessings attached to our money and positions come from the opportunity God gave us to be generous with others. A blessed person is not only a joyful person, but also a generous person.
As we have discussed here before, there are plenty of ways to make God’s ways and salvation known, but the psalmist and Jesus himself both recommend being generous with our stuff. Helping others should be a joyful privilege for us, because it befits the help we all receive from God—help we could never give out by ourselves but that we can point to by being generous.
Blessed to be a blessing
Sadly, a cliché among Christians is that we are “blessed to be a blessing.” There is nothing but truth in that statement, but we have safely gutted it of any significant meaning for us. Being a Christian should have a clear purpose to it—to make God’s ways known to the ends of the earth. Being a Christian should mean being a joyful person, for joy is the symptom of praise to God. Being a Christian should mean sharing your stuff generously, so that all the ends of the earth will fear God.
G. K. Chesterton once said that among the hardest things for Christians to believe is that every person actually matters. Stephen Holmes, drawing from Chesterton’s insight, wonders what the world would be like if churches everywhere were groups of people that focused on giving everyone around them (both inside and outside the church) a taste of God’s kingdom by treating each person as if they actually mattered. How would your church be different if each member resolved to be a person who joyfully accepts whoever happens to be among them—as if each person mattered?
Read Psalm 67 every day for a week. Pray its words in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. Most importantly, live it by doing what it says. As Augustine wrote about this psalm, “both to preach the truth is nothing, if the heart dissents from the tongue, and to hear the truth is nothing, if fruit does not follow the hearing.” How have you shown others that God has blessed you?

Three Steps to Praying Every Day

Paul tells the church in Thessalonica to “pray continually,” and throughout its history Christ’s church has often tried to do exactly that. Christians who take on holy orders meet several times a day to pray. Many of them also pray each hour—on the hour—alone. In Russia, one of the most popular books among Christians for the past two hundred years is The Way of a Pilgrim, which is an account of a man who strives to do what Paul says—pray continually. He learns to pray thousands of times a day. He learns to pray as much as he breathes. He even tries to pray as much as his heart beats. He repeats one prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” The book gives an account of the power of this little prayer not only in the life of one pilgrim, but also in the lives of several people he meets along his way.
In 1857 a large revival within churches in America started in one of the unlikeliest of places: Wall Street, New York. A single businessman began a series of prayer meetings during the middle of the business day. Within a year thousands of people in New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. were meeting regularly to pray. Businesses would close during the mid-day and hang a sign saying, “We will re-open at the close of the prayer meeting.”
Most Christians do not need to be convinced about the power of prayer. We affirm it because we know we are supposed to affirm it. But despite the rich heritage of prayer in our churches, many of us never get into the habit of prayer. As a result, we do not pray very much when we are by ourselves or when we are together. And we miss out on a lot. Our families, friends, neighbors, and enemies miss out too. Most importantly, God misses out too, having so many children who are too busy or too distracted for him. Without prayer, our relationship with him suffers as we become little different than teenagers who refuse to communicate with their parents except for the times they need something. But there is hope. Prayer is always just one breath away, and there are three steps toward praying more regularly:
Step One: Unlearn Bad Ideas about Prayer
For every good idea about prayer, there must be about nine bad ones. One person I knew would resort to archaic English, like the kind you come across in the King James Version of the Bible, in his prayers. I used to attend a church that made much ado about who would pray during the service. The unwritten rule there was that you had to be male and wear a tie to pray. Once I caught on to that, I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about being male, so I was sure never to wear a tie whenever I joined in worship.
Many people think there is a specific formula to follow in order to have an official prayer: you bow your head, close your eyes, fold your hands (optional), begin by saying, “our Father,” and end by saying, “in Jesus’ name, Amen.” We also have certain phrases that mindlessly show up in our prayers, such as saying “Lord” after every noun we use, asking him to “be with” people, places, or things, and requesting “traveling mercies,” despite never using that phrase anywhere else.
Most destructively, we often limit the content of our prayers to other people’s physical problems. We may have numerous requests for others to pray with us for Great Aunt Eustace’s gout (and I am not discouraging that we care about and pray for other people’s physical needs), but we never invite our church family to pray on our behalf for things that really weigh on our hearts. If we are not asking others to pray for such things, chances are we are not praying for them ourselves either.
At the root of a lot of these ideas are good intentions behind them, but what ties them all together is the notion that prayer is a performance. Our children do not consider their conversations on our laps to be performances, and we welcome them all the same because they just want to be with us and talk to us. You cannot be “good” or “bad” at praying anymore than a child is “good” or “bad” at giving you a hug. Prayer is a symptom of a family relationship between God and you, which is why it is a shame that one of the most intimate aspects of our family relationship has become so cold and infrequent for so many people. If you want to change that, the first step is to unlearn that prayer is a performance.
Step Two: Relearn Good Ideas about Prayer
Jesus’ disciples learned much from him, and one thing they explicitly asked for was for him to teach them how to pray. And he did. Famously, he said that when they prayed they were to say: “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:2-4).
What does this tell us? God is our Father, so we should approach him as such. We should desire good things for God for his sake. Of course, good things for him are also the best things for us humans (the exact opposite of sin). God provides for us each day, and we should ask of him and thank him each day. We are sinners who ask for God’s forgiveness, and we show everyone that we know we are forgiven sinners when we forgive others. When we are tempted we have God’s enemies and ourselves to blame; we can trust that God will never lead us into such places.
Jesus’ instructions do not stop at what to pray. He also tells his disciples a story about a person who bugs his friend for stuff late at night. The friend is not in the mood to disturb his entire house to help this person right away, but because he had the audacity to ask at such an unreasonable hour—not because of the friendship itself—this person will end up getting what he needs from his friend. If this holds true for imperfect humans, how much more will it hold true for the perfect God who already wants to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
Jesus’ disciples needed to learn the right things about prayer, not only what kinds of things to say, but also how to say them. They had to be reassured that they could come to God anytime, anywhere, with anything, knowing that God would welcome them.
Step Three: Use a System
Unfortunately, prayer is not only viewed as a performance, but—even worse—a necessarily spontaneous performance. When people talk about not being “good” at prayer, I think what they really mean is that they do not do well thinking on their feet. They remove themselves from situations in which they would be called upon to pray, and perhaps they even pray less and less frequently by themselves.
There is good news for people who struggle coming up with spontaneous prayers, because the Scriptures and the heritage of the Christian church point toward having systems for our prayers. Most every Psalm in our Bibles were crafted carefully, not spontaneously. Many Psalms portray poetry in their original language (e.g. Psalm 119 is an alphabetic acrostic poem). Many prayers handed down in the Scriptures were also crafted carefully, from Mary’s Magnificat to Paul’s doxology in Romans. If people like David, Asaph, Mary, and Paul crafted their prayers to God, why shouldn’t we? Have you ever tried to write out your prayers? Perhaps you should set aside one time a week to write out a prayer to God. See what comes to mind. See if your focus, which seems so elusive when you try to pray during the day, is solid when you set pen to paper. If you have trouble writing something out, write out one of the Psalms and pray through it.
Another barrier to habitual prayer is the bad idea that our prayers must be lengthy. I have even heard people apologize for their short prayers. But nowhere does God command us to pray long prayers. In fact, Scripture has quite a few short prayers. Paul uses a one-word (maybe two-word) prayer to end 1 Corinthians, when he says, “Come, Lord!” Ancient Christians developed short prayers to say throughout the day. I already mentioned the Jesus prayer that was popular in Russia, but an even more helpful resource comes from John Chrysostom, a church leader from modern-day Turkey. He had one short prayer for each hour of the day. In order to get back in the habit of praying continually, print this list out, post it in your office, post it in your bathroom, magnetize it to your fridge, put it in your car, and place it in your bedroom (cf. Deut 6:4-9). Memorize this list, so whenever you look at a clock or a watch you will pray:
12AM. O Lord, do not deprive me of your heavenly blessings.1AM.   O Lord, deliver me from eternal torment.2AM.   O Lord, if I have sinned in my mind or thought, in word or deed, forgive me.3AM.   O Lord, deliver me from every ignorance and heedlessness, from pettiness of the soul and stony hardness of the heart.4AM.   O Lord, deliver me from every temptation.5AM.   O Lord, enlighten my heart darkened by evil desires.6AM.   O Lord, I, being a human being, have sinned; do you, being God, forgive me in your lovingkindness, for you know the weakness of my soul.7AM.   O Lord, send down your grace to help me, that I may glorify your holy name.8AM.   O Lord Jesus Christ, inscribe me, your servant, in the Book of Life, and grant me a blessed end.9AM.   O Lord my God, even if I have done nothing good in your sight, yet grant me, according to your grace, that I may make a start in doing good.10AM. O Lord, sprinkle on my heart the dew of your grace.11AM. O Lord of heaven and earth, remember me, your sinful servant, cold of heart and impure, in your kingdom.12PM.  O Lord, receive me in repentance.1PM.    O Lord, don’t leave me.2PM.    O Lord, save me from temptation.3PM.    O Lord, grant me pure thoughts.4PM.    O Lord, grant me tears of repentance, remembrance of death, and the sense of peace.5PM.    O Lord, grant me mindfulness to confess my sins.6PM.    O Lord, grant me humility, charity, and obedience.7PM.    O Lord, grant me tolerance, magnanimity, and gentleness.8PM.    O Lord, implant in me the root of all blessings: the fear of you in my heart.9PM.    O Lord, vouchsafe that I may love you with all my heart and soul, and that I may obey in all things your will.10PM.  O Lord, shield me from evil persons and devils and passions and all other lawless matters.11PM.  O Lord, who knows your creation and that which you have willed for it, may your will also be fulfilled in me, a sinner, for you are blessed forevermore. Amen.
If you have found it hard to get in the habit of praying without a system, why not try these hourly prayers? It’s not even a big deal if you miss the hours while you sleep.
Lastly, it is okay to have some formulaic elements to your prayers, but we should never take anything we say to God for granted. When we call God our Father, we are recognizing our adoption into his family through Jesus Christ. When we pray in Jesus’ name, we are recognizing Jesus’ exclusive claim that no one can approach the Father but through him. His name is powerful, giving us by grace what he already is by nature—the Son of God. When we say “Amen,” we are saying “yes, may it be so,” already having faith that God has heard us and will respond. When we close our eyes, not even looking up toward heaven, we are mimicking the posture of a tax collector whom Jesus contrasted with a proud Pharisee. All the tax collector could say, without being able to look up to heaven, was “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus says that everyone who humbles themselves like the tax collector will be exalted, but people with proud prayers will be humbled, like the Pharisee who bragged to God about how greatly he served God, unlike evil people like that poor schlub the tax collector next to him.
God hears. God responds. God speaks. When we pray to him we recognize that we have been adopted into the family of the living God who wants to hear our prayers. Why not get into the habit of praying to him regularly?