Pastor Judy's Blog

Yesterday Julia Styles, forwarded the rest of the UMin staff an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal entitled, 10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You, by Charles Wheelan, who is an economist, a professor and the author of the book Naked Economics. Wheelan is successful by just about anybody’s standards. He has lived a life of significance and service, yet the advice he gives in the article is not your classic rah-rah graduation speech urging students on to greatness.

He says, “I've found that the saccharine and over-optimistic words of the typical commencement address hold few of the lessons young people really need to hear about what lies ahead.” And so instead Charles Wheelan offers some of the advice he wishes someone would have told him at his own graduation. You canread the article here.

The number two piece of advice on Wheelan’s top ten is “Some of your worst days lie ahead.” I don’t know if I would say it exactly that way; I’m perhaps a bit more optimistic by nature. I would say, however, that graduation isn’t a ticket to smooth sailing. Knowing that to be true I would like to offer my own bit of advice for the life that is ahead for all of us, whether we are graduating, transferring, working, marrying, continuing to teach or administrate, staying here or going there. You’ll find this bit of advice in Matthew 14. There are three stories found in this chapter. The beheading of John the Baptist is first. I don’t have a ton of advice about that beyond, ‘Try not to get your head served on a platter’ or perhaps ‘Stay true to who God made you to be even if it gets your head on a platter.’ The second story is the miracle of the loaves and the fishes where Jesus takes the five loaves of bread and two fish that the disciples bring to him and multiplies them to feed the masses. I imagine you know my advice about that, ‘Place what you have in this world into the hands of Jesus and see if he doesn’t do some crazy stuff with the meager resources you have to offer.’ Jesus works miracles with minutia and so get your small stuff into his miraculous hands.

The third story begins at v22 and it is a story about a group of disciples who find themselves in a small boat on a stormy sea. Jesus has pushed his disciples away from shore and out into deep water, which is most often how he operates. In fact, I’ve never known Jesus to be a shallow-end kind of guy. Shortly after Jesus’ push, a storm kicks up and batters the boat of disciples. This is a good reminder that just because Jesus sends us out doesn’t mean that it will all be smooth sailing.

It’s one of the biggest deceptions that we face at any stage of life, that if God sends us out it should all go smoothly. It didn’t go so smoothly for John the Baptist. The Bible mentions him by name as someone who was specifically sent. We follow a crucified Christ, so I’m not sure why we fall for this deception and believe we should be an exception to the rule.

Our passage says the boat full of disciples was buffeted by the waves and battered by the wind that was working against them. The Greek word that is used here for ‘buffeted’ is basanizo. It can mean tossed or battered or harassed by the waves, but basanizo can also mean more than that as it is also the word that is used for a type of stone that is used to test the purity of gold or silver. Basanizo is the word for a touchstone that reveals the purity of the treasure in your hand when you take your piece of metal and rub it against the stone.

The wind and the waves that buffet us can serve a purpose if we allow them to be our basanizo, our touchstone that tests the purity of our faith and the conviction of our call. This is why I believe that Jesus doesn’t always swoop in when the wind first picks up because, “the testing of your faith produces perseverance”(James 1:3).

Jesus knew that his disciples were going to face trials and he said as much in John 16:33, “in this world you will have trouble.” You and I and every follower of Jesus Christ, the one who was despised, rejected, homeless, disowned, and crucified need a faith that can survive a bit of trouble. Jesus lets the wind pick up and the waves start rolling. He lets the disciples feel the strain in their arms as they pull against the storm they are facing. Jesus knows that his disciples need to know how to row in a storm.

Jesus does eventually rescue them but he doesn’t do so immediately. In fact, it says he stays on the shore until 3am which seems like an awful long time to leave the disciples rowing in the dark. But if you notice it also says he stayed there praying. Now we don’t know the content of his prayers, but I have to believe that the little boat and the disciples that filled it crossed his mind more than a few times when the wind began to pick up. When the wind and the waves of your life are testing you, remind yourself that Jesus was on the shore praying.

Jesus wasn’t sleeping, busy working on other priorities or indifferent to the struggle of his disciples. Jesus was talking to his Father in heaven, his father who said to the water, in Job 38:11 “This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.” This Jesus is still praying for the waves that cause us so much worry in our lives as it says in Romans 8 “Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

Or wind or waves…
or loneliness or a lack of a job
or a breakup or a bad grade
or a crazy coworker, or a quirky family member
or a small paycheck or a painful sickness
or a hard home life or the continual struggle with a bad habit….
Or a just plain stormy season….
can it separate you from the love of Christ?

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:34b-35, 37-39)

A Faithful Life

About a month ago I was preparing to speak at a conference. I was nervous about the event because the other speakers that I would be joining in the line-up all seemed so professional when I read through their bios and blogs. My bio on the other hand listed no books written, no non-profits started, and no mega-church that had come into existence under my leadership. My bio simply says, “It is my day to day desire to walk intimately with Jesus and intentionally into the lives of others”. While the statement is true it hardly seemed substantial next to the amazing archive of achievements that followed the names of my fellow speakers.

The morning of the conference I woke up early and while I was still somewhere between sleeping and waking I uttered my first prayer of the day. “God, would you be faithful today so that I can be great.” I knew when I prayed the prayer that there was something a bit off, but I was still in the midst of waking where often my thoughts think me, so I was unable to correct myself before I prayed it again with even more fervor, “Yes Lord, would you be faithful today so that I can be great!”

I’m not sure if you have experienced God rolling his eyes at you, but that is the sensation that followed. It felt like the look that an exasperated professor gives to a student when at the end of the semester the student asks a question that reveals they haven’t been paying attention for a really long time. If I were to put words to the expression it would have been, “Really?”

Feeling a bit deflated by God’s lack of understanding that I needed a bit of help to be great that day, I sat up and shook my head back and forth to get the sleep out of my brain. It was then that I heard God’s gracious correction. “How about this instead…you be faithful and I’ll be great.” Tears of relief came to my eyes as I realized I didn’t have to be great at all, I only had to be faithful and God would be great.

The pressure was off and the joy returned when I placed God back into his rightful position and stepped back into my own.

The pressure to perform is so great in this world. We are told “This is it!”, “Don’t screw it up”, “Break a leg”, “It’s all up to you,” and “Don’t let the team down.” It’s a lot of pressure and it makes sense that it would lead us to desperately pray the prayer, “God would you be faithful today so that I can be great.” The truth is that God doesn’t need you and I to be great; he just needs us to be faithful with the work he has entrusted into our hands.

On their own, the countless small tasks that make up a faithful life may not make it into any archive of world achievements. They are not unnoticed, however, by the God who knows when even a sparrow falls (Matt 10:29) or a Savior who sees fit to use a little boy’s lunch to feed five thousand (John 6:9). God will take up the responsibility of being great if we will simply make the commitment to being faithful with ministries that make up our lives. Notice the one who sits alone, extend grace to the one who doesn’t seem to get it, feed the forgotten, teach well all the way to the end, be kind to your coworkers and perhaps offer your own loaves and fish to help the masses and I’m confident that God will be great.

Homeostasis

A few weeks ago a young woman sat in my office detailing a myriad of things that were messed up. I listened intently for the first half of the meeting all the while attempting to put the pieces together so that I could join God in his rebuilding efforts. After about twenty minutes of verbal output and ten minutes that included a torrent of tears, (from the young woman not from myself, although I too felt a bit overwhelmed) I asked her simply, "If you were going to diagnose yourself what would your diagnosis be?" Through intermittent sobs she said very clearly, "I lack homeostasis".

One of the brilliant pieces of working at a University is the depth and breadth of classroom insight I gain second-hand through our students, but because I am admittedly rusty in my biology I asked the young woman if she could clarify.

"Homeostasis," she said "is a living organism's ability to maintain a stable environment in the face of changing circumstances. It is a biological process like maintaining body temperature in a warm-blooded animal. When the external temperature drops the body shivers to keep itself warm and when the external temperature rises it sweats to cool itself down. Homeostasis is the body's ability to regulate itself and keep constant no matter what the weather's like." She concluded her comments by saying, "I don't have that. I don't have a constant self. I just fluctuate according to my environment."

It was a powerful diagnosis and it is a spiritual sickness that many of us struggle with, the inability to know who we are no matter where we are or with what or whom we are dealing. All too often our circumstances push and pull us, surround and stretch us, bend and batter us until a myriad of things feel messed up and we forget who we are and what we are meant to be doing. It doesn't have to be a crisis. It can just be a continual barrage of small things, the one-after-another details of the day to day that so often seem to rob us of our ability to regulate our internal life.

In Luke 24:13-35 the disciples are also lacking homeostasis. The leader they believed would be king has been crucified and the path they thought they were on has taken a sharp turn onto an unexpected path. Walking along the road to Emmaus trying to get their internal life to catch up with their circumstances, Jesus appears to them, but they do not recognize him. Perhaps their heads were hanging down or their eyes filled with tears or quite possibly their circumstances clouded their ability to see God walking next to them.

After listening to a long and detailed discussion of their circumstances, Jesus reveals to them a behind the scenes assessment of what God has really been up to. Intrigued by the interpretation they invite Jesus to stay for a while longer so that they might share a meal with him. It is then, in the breaking of the bread, that they come to recognize that it is God who has been walking with them all the while. And it is at that moment of recognition that they also remember who they are and they get up and return to Jerusalem and to the mission that did not change even when their circumstances seem to have said otherwise.

Homeostasis in an autonomic process in living organisms, a process that happens without conscious thought, heartbeats and cell regulation, hormones and gland secretion require no work on our part to keep working. But spiritual homeostasis is different and as humans we are not able to maintain a stable spiritual environment in the face of changing circumstances without some effort on our part. For us to maintain a constant mission and stable spirit we have to open ourselves up to God's interpretation of our circumstances, we must make the bold move to invite Jesus to stay a little longer and we must let him remind us who we are no matter what unfolding all around us.

The Power of the Possible Mission

The lectionary text for this coming Sunday is John 20:19-31. Some of you might remember that this is one of my favorite passages because it declares so powerfully that Jesus’ mission is meant to move forward even through fearful disciples. Jesus, after having been crucified, buried and raised from the dead, goes and seeks those who fear the good news had come to an end when he was crucified. He locates the disciples behind a locked door because they were afraid that they are also going to be crucified. But locked doors are no problem for the resurrected Christ and he simply breaks through the barrier and presents himself to them, alive and in the flesh saying, “Peace be with you.”

Jesus shows them his hands and his side, the wounds that have been inflicted upon him so that they might be healed. The disciples are overjoyed to see Jesus but I often wonder if they remained overjoyed when Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." Standing there with a hole in his side and wounds where the nails had entered his flesh, Jesus says, “Don’t freak out, but I’m sending you to be like me.”

I don’t mind thinking about being sent to feed the poor, welcome the children, teach the good news and heal the sick. In fact, I am drawn to this kind of mission. I think most are drawn to this kind of mission which is why we see people of all faiths and of no faith at all starting non-profits, fighting for freedom, educating our children and binding up the wounds of the world. Jesus doesn’t commission his disciples to simply heal the wounds of the world, but to be willing to be crucified on behalf of the world. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

The evidence that we are not just good people but in fact followers of the Crucified One is that we ourselves have experienced crucifixion. “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.” (Romans 6:6-7)

For us to move beyond being good to becoming gospel we must make a decision to be done with our sin, to nail it to the cross and let it die so that we are ready to be sent in the same way that the Father sent Jesus. Oswald Chambers says it this way, “it is a great moment in my life when I do decide that just as Jesus Christ died for the sin of the world, so sin must die out in me, not be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified.” And so I ask you today, “Are you ready to be put the sin in your life to death so that you can be sent out into the mission of God that brings death to life?”

For scripture promises that, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like him…if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” (Romans 6:5, 8). It is only when we make the decision to identify with Jesus’ death by crucifying the sins of our flesh that the resurrection life of Jesus can invade our body. For we are not being sent to simply be good people, but to be God’s people. And the only way that this will be possible is if we put to death our sin so that the Spirit of God can invade every corner of our lives.

After Jesus let the disciples examine his wounds and made clear that he was sending them out in a similar way, “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22) What good news it is that Jesus never expected his disciples to live like him without the Spirit of Him flowing through their bodies. And so I ask you again, “Are you ready to put the sin in your life to death once and for all, so that you can receive the power that makes possible the mission?”

So many mission minded people lack the power to make the mission possible. That’s because it’s not about identifying the need and creating a budget line, but rather it’s about identifying with Christ’s death by crucifying our sins so that we might create space for the Holy Spirit to invade every corner of our lives. It is only with this invasion of the Spirit that we will have the power to make living like Jesus possible. The resurrected life only follows the crucified one and the mission only flows out because we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Purposeful Flesh

There is a long history in some church traditions, my own evangelical tradition included, of shying away from getting involved in the real fleshy stuff of the Kingdom of God; fleshly stuff like setting real prisoners free, focusing on the real physical hunger, digging into the deep implications of systemic injustice or working on the stuff of the skin, like race, preference, power, privilege. Instead some traditions have preferred to focus on the next life and the spirit, rather than the now life and the actual body.

The teaching and preaching in these traditions has pushed into being set apart from the world, focusing only on a devotional life with Jesus, believing that this world and everything in it will just pass away. As a result they do not store up for themselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But rather store up treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. It's biblical and found in Matthew 6:18-20.

For those that focus heavily on the spirit rather than the body, the incarnation, God putting on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ served two primary purposes. One was to empathize (understand, commiserate, relate to, identify) with humans so that we would know that he knew and he knows what our life is like and that "We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses". (Hebrews 4:15)

The second reason Jesus chose to put on flesh was so that he could die on the cross as a physical sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins. His fleshly, bodily life served as the Passover Lamb, the lamb that was sacrificed by the Israelites so that the plague of death would Passover their home. And his death on the cross served as a sacrifice of atonement, a Jewish ritual sacrifice that God instituted in the Old Testament that said simply, "If you sin bring me an animal sacrifice and because of that sacrifice I will know you are serious about your repentance (that you're sorry for your sins) and the blood of the animal will take the place of your blood." (Leviticus 16, 23) Jesus put on flesh, "to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" to atone for our sins (John 1:29). His blood poured out on our behalf.

For those who focus primarily on the spirit these are the two most important reasons Jesus put on flesh. To empathize with us, so we could know we are understood by God and to die for our sins. I believe this is true, but I do not believe that Jesus lived in a body just to be empathetic and just to forgive my personal sins so that my spirit could be at rest. It seems to me that Jesus' life and death was so much bigger and better than that, that it was also about the setting right of all things that separate us from the work of the Kingdom of God. Jesus' life and death was not meant to be merely empathetic but to be paradigmatic, meaning he wants us to live out in our bodies the same work that he lived out in his.

The way Jesus lived is meant to be a paradigm for our living not just for our dying, for our bodies and not just for our souls. And the reason I am so confident of this fact is that the Scriptures say that after Jesus lived a life that brought the Kingdom of God near and died a death that brought people fully into that kingdom by forgiving their sins that Jesus was then raised from the dead in bodily form.

This is what we celebrate this Sunday on Easter, that Jesus who died on the cross and was buried for three days rose from the dead and walked out of the tomb in a redeemed and restored body. He didn't scrap the body, leaving it in the tomb to come out as only a Spirit in essence saying, "The spirit is all that ever mattered anyway." No, Jesus's body was raised from the dead and it says in all four gospels that this is true.

Jesus kept his body and after Jesus came out of the tomb people touched him, people held on to him, and he ate fish with them. I believe it is because the body was never meant to be discarded in exchange for a sole focus on the spirit. Jesus was raised from the dead in bodily form and that means something. Jesus kept his body after the resurrection which means Jesus putting on flesh was not just empathetic it was paradigmatic for in the Kingdom of God.

God has never been interested in just the spirit and it is the resurrection that proves this to be true. From the beginning God built bodies to bear his image. He told people to be good stewards of their bodies and to not let them be wasted. He commissioned them to take care of their own flesh as if it were the very temple of God and sent them feed and defend the bodies of those around them, bodies that were often kicked to the curb. And then he put on a body to show us how it is best done; he heard, he saw, he touched, he ate with, he advocated for, he set free, he fought for and he forgave, he went beyond tolerance to true love and was moved with compassion every time for every person. He set an example of good fleshed out ministry and rose from the dead and said, "Look...I'm still in skin! In the same way I am sending you to be workers in the world of flesh of blood, skin and gender, race and class. I'm sending you into this world. Where the harvest is plentiful but where those who want to work with me, like me, breaking down all barriers, are so few.

So will you go? Will you be one of the fleshed out workers Jesus' prayed for; a worker who will work towards redeeming and restoring both the spirit and the body because you follow the One who was raised from the dead still wearing skin.

One In Mind and Spirit

Over the past decade I have thought a lot about fertility. My original focus on fertility came about during my husband's and my quest to have children. As our hopes miscarried time after time, I was compelled to dig deeper and deeper into my understanding of what God really wants reproduced in this world. Is God's focus really on the family?

Throughout that season, a season of fertility that never came to fruition, pastors and friends all prayed for us and encouraged us to read the stories of Sarah, Hannah and Rachel and to trust in God's faithfulness to bring about fertility among his people. In the beginning these stories were helpful because they kept me hopeful, but as time went on and the and losses continued these stories only left me feeling left out of God's plans for God's people.

I faithfully continued to pastor and preach, witness and disciple and I saw an increasing amount of fruit in my ministry, but all the while the church had a funny way of making me feel as though these things were a consolation prize because I was unable to birth a child. Until one day, in the midst of grieving another life lost, God's Spirit revealed to me the real biblical facts about fruit bearing.

In the beginning when God said, "be fruitful and multiply", God meant have sex and have babies. Being fruitful and multiplying was not an analogy or a metaphor; God was not speaking in parables or weaving in a deeper meaning to be dug up at a later date. God wanted people to fill the earth and enjoy and steward the good and very good things he had created. To do that people would have to have sex and have babies.

When God first calls Abraham, a childless man, the man he plans to use to birth a kingdom, the good news that he gives him is that his offspring will be like the stars of the sky and so he tells Abraham to keep having sex until he has babies. At that time God makes it clear that only Abraham's offspring will be counted as God's people and that to be an Israelite one must be born of an Israelite, which explains why God always granted the request of an Israelite woman who had been unable to birth a child. To leave a woman with an empty womb would have been to waste an opportunity to grow the number of God's people on God's planet. Fertility in the Old Testament was the physical evidence that God was at work increasing his witness in the world.

Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, is the last person in the Biblical text that battles infertility and is granted a child in old age. It is the only story found in the New Testament that focuses on God's blessing revealed through biological fertility. In fact, after Jesus comes on the scene biological fertility seems to fade into the background as evidence of God's work among God's people. In the new Kingdom the one in which Jesus is King, membership is not acquired through ancestry but by being "born again." In fact, New Testament fruit bearing has nothing at all to do with biological fertility but rather shifts to using one's whole life to make disciples out of the offspring of all nations.

There is a shocking story in the Old Testament, found in Genesis 38, where a man named Onan refuses to produce offspring and instead spills his seed upon the ground. It is seen as such a wicked act that God strikes him dead. Shocking. In the New Testament in Act 5, there is another shocking story about a couple that is struck dead when they hold back resources that God wanted to use for his witness in this world. They have just sold their property and have given most of the proceeds to the apostles for the work of the kingdom but have kept some back for themselves. Soon after their withholding of resources they find themselves dead. Shocking, but less so if we understand that among the earliest followers of Jesus there was an agreement that every bit of one's life was meant to be used to bear fruit for the Kingdom of Jesus.

"All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need."- Acts 4:32-35

New Testament fertility is not about having sex and having babies. New Testament fertility is about using every bit of your life's resources for the producing of fruit in the Kingdom of God; helping people be born again, making disciple of all nations and sharing everything you have so that there are no more needy people among us. This is God's plan for his people. Whether or not one is able to bear biological children has nothing to do with the blessing of fertility in the Kingdom that Jesus came to advance.

What it means to be Mary

Growing up in church and attending Sunday school I heard several stories about women in the Bible; there was Eve, the one who messed things up, Sarah and Hannah, who were broken because they could not have babies, Rahab, the harlot who helped God's people escape, Esther, the beauty queen who saved the Jews and Ruth, who obediently followed God and as a reward found her husband. I did hear about Jesus interacting with women, but all the women that were mentioned were either broken and needing healing or sexually sinful and needing to be offered grace. As far back as I can remember the only two women that I heard about that didn't have some huge issues were Mary and Martha.

At least once a year the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) was preached from the pulpit and the congregation was exhorted to "be a Mary" rather than a "Martha". I'm sure many of you remember the story and its exhortation. Jesus is traveling with his disciples and comes to the home of these two women who open their door to him. Martha hurries to offer the necessary hospitality and becomes busy with the details of having houseguests while Mary sits down at Jesus' feet to listen to what he has to say. Martha gets mad that her sister isn't helping with the work and Jesus responds by telling her that Mary has actually "chosen what is better". The sermon always ended with a call to "be a Mary" who devoted to Jesus and to be careful not become "a Martha" who is consumed by the cares of the world.

Last week when I was reading this story in its sequential context I began to realize for the first time that these women have far more to teach us. Luke 10 begins with Jesus sending out 72 disciples telling them that "the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few" and that they are being sent out to join in God's work of finding more workers. Jesus sends them out with the instruction to enter into homes where their "peace rests" upon someone and to announce to them that "the Kingdom of God has come near to you." Finding a person of peace will be their indication that God is at work with that person and that they should enlist this person in God's Kingdom work. The 72 then go out on their mission and return rejoicing that even the demons are responding.

The sending of the 72 is followed up by a joyful comment from Jesus that the Kingdom of God is being revealed not to the wise and learned but to those no one could have anticipated. He then tells the story of the Good Samaritan and makes it clear that the workers that God will use will transcend previously constructed categories of race, class and culture. Jesus and his disciples then travel to the town where Mary and Martha live. Jesus enters into their home, following his own instructions to enter into a home where he sees God already at work.

It is a scandalous story to assert that God would have been at work among these two women, just as scandalous as asserting that Samaritans were going to be part of God's Kingdom work. Neither the secular or religious cultures surrounding Jesus and his disciples believed that women would be included among the workers that God would raise up for this Kingdom mission. Women were made for "women's work" and were considered far too sinful to be entrusted with the teachings of God. And yet the doors to Mary and Martha's house were opened and Jesus affirms that it is a place of peace by entering their home and goes on to reveal that his plans for them are not that they remain in the roles that the culture has prescribed for them but that they would join the workforce.

As the story unfolds Mary is found at Jesus' feet listening to his words. To sit at the feet of the Rabbi was to assume the position of a disciple in training. It is a radically counter-cultural move for Mary to presume such a place and her sister Martha recognizes the scandal and quickly corrects Mary by asking Jesus to make her return to her assigned place in the kitchen. But Jesus does no such thing. In fact, Jesus says to Martha, "Quit worrying. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Lk 10-:41-42)

Apparently, when Jesus comes into your "house" he changes your identity so that you are no longer just who everybody else thinks you are, nor are you just what you have always believed you would be. When the Kingdom of God is near, everyone is called out of their prescribed stereotype and invited to sit at the feet of Jesus so that He might bring new definition to everyone's life.

And so from now on when someone asks you if you are a "Mary or a Martha" I invite you to consider the true implications of this text. Are you someone who continues to live according to cultural stereotypes and are you someone who prefers people to stay in their proper place as well, are you a "Martha"? Or are you someone who is living into their calling and calling others to do so as well, in spite of the feathers that are being ruffled all around you, are you a "Mary"? I exhort you, as every preacher has exhorted me, "to be a Mary". But not just so that you can have a good devotional life with Jesus but rather so that you would become a worker for the Kingdom in which the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

May God call you out of your "kitchen" this very day!

The Gospel in Women

This Wednesday marks the first Wednesday in Women’s History Month and in sitting with the theme I have come to realize that I have issues with women in ministry. Probably a majority of us have issues with women in ministry. I’m not saying that all of our issues are transgressions; transgressions are defiant, intentional, relationship breaking sins. I don’t believe that most of us are actively thinking about ways to keep women out of ministry. But I do think that we all have some iniquity surrounding the issue of women in ministry.

Iniquity is the biblical word used for the things that did not grow as they were intended to grow, primarily because of the environment they were grown in. Like a bit of crookedness in the trunk of a tree, a tree that was designed to grow straight toward the sun but that has become twisted because of the environment in which it has grown; a dry season, a barrier, a storm, or a lack of sunlight is the tree’s reality and its environment withers its roots or blocks its path or twists its efforts and the tree simply does not flourish or grow into its intended shape. That’s iniquity and I do believe we all have a bit of iniquity around the issue of women in ministry.

I grew up in an Evangelical Covenant Church. I started attending the Covenant Church in 1975 when I was 5 years old. It was the year after the denomination began ordaining women to preach and pastor in their churches. I attended that church until I graduated from high school and returned there several times a year as a young adult. And until the Sunday I was invited to preach there, I had never once heard a woman preach from that pulpit, not in 23 years.

I never imagined that this had caused a bit of iniquity in me, a bit of a twist in my trunk and I never realized how it had influenced me until I was getting ready to graduate from seminary. Although I was a woman graduating from seminary, preparing to be a pastor, I began to realize that I was much more comfortable listening to men in the pulpit. It was what I used to. It was the way I had been trained to listen and I had always thought about it as simply a preference. I had never thought to think it might be an iniquity, a twist in the intended design.

For the past 14 years when I have been invited to speak around the country, I have told myself that it didn’t matter that often I was offered a music stand instead of the pulpit, it didn’t matter that they called my sermons “sharing”, and that it didn’t matter that some of the men at some of the churches got up to leave when I got up to preach. I told myself that it was alright because I believed it was better not to make any waves because women who make waves are rarely invited back and I have so wanted to be invited back. And so I stood behind the music stand and kept my critiques to myself and I truly never thought twice about how twisted this made me.

Last year four young men asked me to disciple them. I told them that women should disciple women and men should disciple men. I told them this because this is what I was taught by the man who discipled me. Don’t you think it’s funny that I taught that principle for 10 years, “that men should disciple men and women should disciple women” without even thinking about the fact that the one who discipled me was a man. Thankfully the four young men came back and told me that I had issues with women in ministry. “We don’t think of you as a woman.” they said, “We just think of you as our pastor and want you to disciple us.” Sometimes even as women we need others to help us identify the truth that we have issues with women in ministry, issues that have left us twisted and therefore not growing toward the sun and not attaining our intended shape.

I have said more times that I can count, “I don’t want ‘women in ministry’ to be my issue. I just want to preach the good news.” How is it that I, a woman in ministry, forgot that the good news is that in the church of Jesus Christ there are women in ministry. And this is good news because it is evidence that Jesus has reversed the curse and righted wrong relationships, has poured out his Spirit on all flesh so that sons and daughters will prophesy, has made us all one “in Him” so that there will no longer be divisions among us and has so graciously become the Head of the church so that none of us will be tempted to rule over one another when we gather together. This is good news and if the church of Jesus Christ doesn’t deal with its iniquity and begin to live into this gospel I’m telling you that we will waste a fair bit of our witness.

Jesus Is Lord

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend speaking at a high school retreat playing games and singing songs, giving hugs and just hanging out. Like most of the retreats I have spoken at in the past 14 years the retreat included four sessions during the weekend with the Saturday night session reserved for the altar call. I am familiar with the pattern because for the past 14 years the Saturday night session has been the place where I have preached the good news that Jesus wants to rescue people from power of sin, from the threat of death and from the harassment of the devil.

At the Saturday night sessions I have preached sermons that are summed up by the statements that Jesus seeks after you, loves you no matter what, invites you to come as you are and welcomes sinners home. And for the past 14 years at almost all of these Saturday sessions I have made clear that most of all what Jesus wants is to rescue and save you. I have offered this salvation message faithfully and at almost all of the retreat weekends at which I have spoken people have responded to this good news. After all, who doesn’t want to be saved, to be rescued and to be pulled out a pit and welcomed home?

Because I have grown up and been raised up in an evangelical tradition this has always felt good and normal to me; good to have people come forward and receive Jesus as their Savior and normal to spread the good news of eternal life. But in recent years I have wondered about my ministry? Is it as effective as Jesus wants it to be? Am I seeing the fruit that the Bible says will grow? When people come into a saving relationship with Jesus are their lives really changed? Do they truly do an about face and turn in another direction? Do they become disciples? Do they leave the retreat and begin to follow Jesus or do they just leave thankful that he has saved them and go back to life as normal until the next altar call?

So last week I switched it up a bit. Instead of a message about a Savior I spoke boldly about a Lord and Master who wants our entire lives in his hands. I told them that I didn’t want to invite people to be “believers” anymore because I had read in the Bible that even the demons believe in Jesus. Instead, I was looking for some new servants for my Lord. I told these high school students that God had plans for them, big plans, and if they wanted to experience his plans it would be good for them to make him the boss of their life so that he could direct them, and point them, and instruct them about how to go about fulfilling those plans. And you know what happened…. about 120 out of the 140 students at the retreat responded to this call.

I went to bed that night amazed that God would move in such a mighty way when something wasn’t sugar coated or soft sold or warm and fuzzy. But I woke up the next morning freaking out. My evangelical self was scolding me from the moment I woke up. “Now what if they believe that they are saved by works and not by grace?” “What if you screwed them up for life?” “Maybe you turned some people off by telling them about Jesus as Lord and not leading them to Jesus as Savior.” I was completely freaked out that I might have messed them up and so I went to God all flustered and looking for counsel.

Let me share with you what I felt God communicated to me when I went to him. “Calm down Judy. Take a deep breath. Remember what husband Jeff asks you after you preach when you’re freaking out? Did you tell the truth? Did you use the Bible? Did you tell them about Jesus? And if you answer yes to all three questions what does husband Jeff say? He says, “it will be fine.”

But then this is what I felt God went on to say, “I am not freaked out by what you said. I am their Savior, but if the only relationship they have with me is as their Savior, the moment they are not saved from their present circumstances, the moment they are not rescued from their current crisis they will begin to believe one of three things, that they are not good enough to be loved or that I’m not loving enough to be good, or that I’m simply not God. If all they know of me is that I am their Savior, when they are not saved from their circumstances the circumstances will rob them of a continued relationship with me.”

At that moment I began to realize that the reason husband Jeff and I have made it through the last eight years and a total of 11 miscarriages, made it through with our relationship with God intact, is because even though he didn’t save us or rescue us from the losses we have been acutely aware that he led us through them as our Lord.

As we continue to pursue our good God during this Lenten season I invite you to raise the bar a bit for yourself and to see if letting God be Lord of your life and not just Savior of your soul doesn’t provide a much firmer foundation for this journey through the circumstances of your life.

No TOV to Waste

In the beginning God created the world and everything in it and he called it TOV, which we translate as good, but which really means much more than just good. TOV means that things are beautiful and working the way they are supposed to work. TOV is creation running on all cylinders, beautiful by design and with not a piece of it going to waste. In the beginning God created everything good and very good. God created everything TOV and it was his desire that everything would remain TOV.

Although everything in the good garden of God was TOV there was something in the garden that God said was not designed for humans and that they should not eat it because if they did things would become unTOV. But in Genesis 3 the Bible says that sin snuck in like a snake and said to the humans,

“I have something TOV for you. It’s true that God told you it was off limits, but that’s just because God was keeping something from you and holding out on you.”

And from that moment the snake made that one thing that was off-limits shinier and seemingly more desirable than all the abundance of TOV that surrounded the humans. And it says, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good (TOV) for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” (Gen 3:6)

Don’t you just hate it when that snake sneaks up on you and tricks you by telling you something is TOV for you when that something is not meant for you and isn’t it crazy how that one thing that God says is not for you seems so much more desirable than all the good gifts around you.

Sin snuck in like a snake and wrapped itself in TOV and pulled the life right out from under the humans, robbing them of God’s good gift of TOV and as a result the original plans that God had for Adam and Eve got wasted. But the breaking of TOV in the garden was not the end of the story but only the beginning. And since that very moment when the man and the woman by their own choice, picked a path that was unTOV for them God has been on a mission to repair what got broken, heal what got hurt and find what got lost. God has been on a mission to counteract the lie of the enemy that said from the beginning that God is keeping what was good from us and making boundaries so that we would miss out.

During this Lenten season we invite you to let go of the unTOV things of your life and return to a life that is good, beautiful and working by God’s design.