Superhero Jesus

A friend of mine has a four-year-old named Richard, and apparently Richard recently surprised his Dad by telling him, "I wish I was Jesus." My friend thinks that Richard wants to be Jesus because he thinks Jesus is a superhero with special powers. That's understandable, since four-year-old boys see plenty of stuff about superheroes, then when they're at church, they hear stories about Jesus healing sick people, making dead people come back to life, stopping storms, walking on water, turning a sack lunch into enough food for thousands of people to eat, and coming back from the dead himself. Pretty superhero-ish stuff.

But being a good dad, my friend wanted Richard to understand that Jesus is different from the superheroes on the cartoons. Something about putting Jesus in the same category as Spiderman or the Incredible Hulk seemed too sacrilegious to accept, so my friend told Richard that instead of pretending to be Jesus (like we do with superheroes), he should try to be like Jesus.

But that wasn't good enough for Richard. He responded, "No. I'm just going to pretend to be Jesus and do the cool stuff he did."

I think I'm going to try and see if Richard can preach some weekend soon at our church, because regardless of how much of it he gets as a four-year-old, there's some pretty good theology there. The desire to be like Jesus can take us to some good places in the spiritual life, but it alone can't take us as far as we're meant to go.

Gary Moon helped me realize the difference in a great blog post for Conversations Journal. To translate part of what he wrote there to my experience: My sports hero in high school and college was David Robinson. I really wanted to be like him, and tried to find any ways I could to do so. I played his sport and chose his number 50 to wear with the teams I played for, but that's really about as far as any similarities could be drawn. Anything beyond those things displayed obvious differences: He had huge muscles, was incredibly quick for his size, could seemingly jump over opponents, and led the league in scoring, once scoring 71 points in a single game. I was skin and bones, couldn't run, couldn't jump, and in college averaged double points for the season (as in 2 points per game). But at least I wore his number.

Moon points out similarities and differences between the ways that we imitate our sports heroes (his was John McEnroe) and our imitation of Jesus as Christians. There's an important similarity in that, to be like them, we must imitate their overall everyday lifestyles if we have any hope of being able to do some of the things they did. But then he points out a really important difference: ”There is a distinct advantage for those who want to live like Christ instead of play tennis like McEnroe. Christ will actually step into your flesh (incarnate you) and show you how to play—from the inside out.”

Long ago, I worked hard at being a basketball player. Yet however hard I worked, there certainly was no David Robinson stepping into my flesh and teaching me to play from the inside out. College basketball was evidence to me that I had gone as far as my body would ever take me in the sport. I wanted to be like David Robinson, which certainly helped me toward being a better player, but there was never any David Robinson in me.

Yet at the heart of the gospel of Jesus is the opportunity we are given, in very livable and practical ways, to welcome him into us as we also are welcomed to live in him. There is a lot about this that's a bit mystical and mysterious, but at the same time it's stuff that gets played out in our tangible, everyday lives. If, out of our desire to be like Jesus, we generally order our lives as he did, doing the kinds of things he did in order to become the kind of person he was, the testimony of his best friends through the ages is that we will discover him there right beside us in the process, even in us, teaching us how to live from the inside out.

Then it's no longer just about us wanting to be like Jesus, but it's about Christ in us.

I'm pretty sure that's what Richard was trying to say, in a four-year-old kind of way.

Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore, #16

[This post is one of a series of potential Christian plaques that we would never find at a Christian bookstore. See the rest of the list here.]

This plaque comes from the life of that old friend of God, Moses. There could certainly be enough of these plaques from his life to fill a warehouse of these unmarketable items, but perhaps this is one of the most interesting. Moses is certainly a hero of the Scriptures, and is described as someone who "spoke to God face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." Well, I've never had a friend say this to me, face to face or otherwise:

What Lent Isn't and What Lent Is

Two items caught my attention as Lent started this year, which reflected confusion about what it is. First, the picture above: Perhaps I've never enjoyed looking at a sign at a gas pump as much as I enjoyed this one. Promoted there, alongside the Marlboros and breakfast burritos, is, supposedly, an opportunity to repent and hear a first-century Jewish rabbi's call to deny ourselves, take up our own crosses, and follow him as he walked the road into his own unjust death.

Hey that sounds good. Oh, and let me grab a bag of Doritos to go with my three Lenten cheese enchiladas. As long as they're not meat-flavored, I think the man upstairs is pretty happy with me today!

The other attention-grabber was an article about churches offering drive-thru Ash Wednesday services. There are some good things that happen when churches begin to think beyond the way they've always done things, and much of the beginnings of my own Methodist heritage is based on how John Wesley was determined to preach in places that weren't normal. But still...

 "From dust you came and to dust you will return. Repent and believe the gospel... Yes ma'am, that means changing the entire course of your life... No ma'am, getting out of the car isn't required to do so.... Say, is that Lady Gaga you have on the radio?... Okay, have a nice day [living exactly as you always have.]"

In their defense, there's probably at least someone who has had an encounter with God right there in their car because of these churches doing this who wouldn't have otherwise. And I'm sure that I don't know the whole story here, so I'm not offering criticism of these specific churches since I'm not there trying to figure out how to minister in their context as they are doing.

But, in general, the thing that came to mind for me as I read about it was this: our methods of ministering to people in the name of Jesus Christ aren't neutral and independent of the message we seek to communicate. Instead, our methods are part of the training people are going through in what it means to follow him. So, in what kind of training are we involving people when we encourage them to begin Lent without even bothering to get out of the car? Or, to put it another way, what percentage of people receiving an imposition of ashes while continuing to sit behind their steering wheel do we honestly expect to continue, for the rest of their lives, down the road of being whole-hearted, full-throttle students of Jesus? Again, there may be some example of someone to whom that has happened, for which I'm grateful. But is such a case a natural, predictable result of the way we do things with God, or are they just strange exceptions to the rule?

This kind of thing matters all of the time, but it really matters in Lent. Lent is the period of forty days leading up to Easter, not counting Sundays, and Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. Lent is a time for house-cleaning our souls, so that when we come to Holy Week and Easter Sunday, we're prepared for the resurrection of the crucified Messiah to take more of its intended effect upon us. It's a time to pay attention to how dis-oriented we have become in the ways that we have lived our everyday lives and to find ways that we can re-orient ourselves to the one who said,

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

So if you and I got into the drive-thru line for our ashes to begin Lent this year, or picked up our Lenten enchiladas at the gas station, or whatever else it is that we may have done during this annual period of repentance and re-orientation, are the things that we're doing of the type that naturally help us, by God's grace, to become more likely and more able to follow Jesus with our own crosses in tow? Or are they things that just help us to feel religious while leaving the houses of our souls exactly as messy and disoriented as they were last Lent, and the one before, and the one before, etc.?

Book Review: Our Favorite Sins by Todd Hunter

You probably think you know what this book is about. You're probably wrong. In Our Favorite Sins: The Sins We Commit & How You Can Quit, Todd Hunter examines what new research by the Barna Group says are Americans' favorite sins and he offers a way out. The first surprise in the book is that the things most of us would think would show up front and center in a book like this (sins generally of the sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll variety) don't even make the list. Rather, the sins addressed hit much closer to home, so that practically every reader will read and think, "Yikes, that's me." In fact, the sins that show up at the top of Barna's research are each pretty socially acceptable- even in the strictest Christian circles. (In other words, your pastor could have an obvious struggle with any or all of them, and you might not think anything about it.) So what are they?: anxiety, procrastination, over-eating, media addiction, and laziness.

Thankfully, Hunter's goal in writing the book wasn't to incur guilt on a widespread audience by addressing things that apply to all of us, but he very much wants to help us leave these sins behind. This is where the second big surprise of the book comes in: his remedy has nothing to do with exerting all of the willpower we can muster up, then urging us to do it all over again when we fall off the wagon. Rather, the remedy hangs on the premise of the entire book: that something is tempting to us when an opportunity comes along that matches a disordered desire already in place within us, and that reordering our desires by cooperating with God's grace is the key to being freed from these sins.

The reason this is surprising is because we normally seek to beat a bad habit by tackling it head on, but if we'll admit it, we know ourselves well enough to know how ineffective this is. No one beats anxiety by demanding themselves to become an un-anxious person. Rather than this direct approach, Hunter's key is indirection. This is why he doesn't spend all that much time delving in to each of these top five sins in all of their nasty but common detail, but instead goes to quite an effort to point out what's common between them and every other temptation: our disordered desires. So, it doesn't matter if your besetting sin isn't even on the list, because Hunter's goal is to expose the common root of all kinds of sin and point us toward the well-tested and tried way out.

Rather than depending on willpower to free us from our sins, Hunter suggests that we make changes in the other parts of who we are (thoughts, feelings, body, and social context) and then our will/desires follow along. He gets very practical in suggesting ways to do so, primarily by intentionally putting habits into our lives that open us to God's grace and help to free us from "the tyranny of what we want" [in our disordered desires]. If you're unfamiliar with Hunter's story, these habits will likely be a third surprise of the book, as he suggests the practices of praying liturgical prayers, receiving the sacraments of baptism and holy communion, and reading the Scriptures following a lectionary.

Much in this book could be delved into more deeply, but Hunter does a terrific job of making a historic Christian approach to sin accessible to any reader today.

Disclosure of Material Connection:

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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Defining Ministry Success

I was in full-time Christian ministry for 11 years (9 of them in churches) and felt successful at very little of what I did. And I'm not entirely basing this on feelings. Though I did have some times where the implicit criteria for success was something like, "Well, Daniel, all buildings and children are still standing, so it looks like you're doing a great job!", in the times when it was anything more defined than that, my report cards usually weren't very good. Sure, there were some highlights along the way, but for the most part, I set a lot of goals and accomplished very, very few of them. If you analyze the paragraph above, you can see a partial definition of success: the ability to set good goals and achieve them. I don't have any problem with that, but it reveals the tremendous importance of being wise about the goals that we set.

As I think about the 11 years in full-time ministry (particularly the 9 in churches more so than the 2 as a missionary), I don't think many goals were set wisely, and since I accomplished so few of them, it's easy to see why I felt so unsuccessful at the time (and why I don't really carry any guilt about those report cards).

The tricky part is that every goal I ever set was something good. It's not like I ever had a goal of intentionally doing anything damaging or that would lead to a waste of people's resources and time. ("By next January I'd like to decrease participants' involvement by 50%, and put undue stress on those helping me.") No, of course every goal was something that if you looked at it, you'd say, "It would be good if that happened."

Yet those good things I wrote as goals almost never came to pass. It wasn't because I went through the process poorly. (For those of you familiar with such processes, I could BHAG and SMART with the best of them.) It wasn't because I was unwilling to work hard to accomplish things. There was a lack of talent for some of the things I tried to do, but that's not enough to explain how rarely I accomplished the SMART BHAGs I wrote down.

So what was the issue?

For me, the entire process was flawed because it seemingly had to start with a poor idea of success, which almost always boiled down to making something bigger and (of secondary importance) better. From this point on in any ministry efforts, I've decided to never again feel like adopting the bigger/better premise is the only option available.

As is often the case, this paradigm shift is due to running across a simple statement from Dallas Willard. In a 2010 interview in Leadership Journal, he said,

Success in ministry is to develop a vital relationship with God and the capacity to pass it on to others.

I have been part of a lot of goal-setting processes, but never one that implicitly or explicitly began there.

How would your church be different if every staff person and volunteer viewed success in their role through that statement?

If a staff member resolved to define success in this way, what resistance might they encounter?

Would this view of success bring up fears in anyone? What would they be, and what does that tell us about ourselves?

What kinds of goals could someone write down based on this framework of success? Do you believe those are worth a person's whole-hearted pursuit, really? Would the culture of your church/ministry allow it?

How to Become Like the People We Admire

[This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.]

In the previous post about my Dad, I mentioned how a couple of years ago, I had noticed myself becoming less like him and more hurried. I also mentioned how I'm grateful now to notice myself being more like him in the way I go about things, which certainly includes being less hurried. So, practically, what brought about the change? It's something that isn't necessarily easy, but it is simple, and it applies far beyond my Dad and me:

I'm doing more of the things that he did, in order to become more of the kind of person he was.

Because part of what I now do for work is to manage his small farm and ranch business, there are plenty of opportunities for me to do more of the things he did. I sit at his desk, I use his tools, I drive where he drove, I deal with people he dealt with, I feed the herd of cattle that he fed, I walk where he walked, and after a year and a half of doing more of the things he did, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm living more like he would have lived.

That certainly doesn't mean that my life is a carbon copy of his. I'm trying some things in the business that he never tried, and some characteristics of my life remain very different from his. That's fine, because only he could live his life and only I can live mine, but that doesn't negate the deep need I feel to allow much of the character and qualities of the kind of person he was to grow in me, and the most helpful way that I've found to do so is by doing more of the things he did, in order to become more of the kind of person he was.

Some application beyond the two of us: John Wesley is one of my heroes, and in Dallas Willard's outstanding book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, he points to Wesley and Methodists of today as a clear example of our tendency to admire a person and praise who they were without ever taking the simple step of doing the things they did, resulting in us not becoming the kind of person they were. It takes very little observation of the lives of the vast majority of those of us who call ourselves Methodists today to see that the way most of us arrange our lives has very little similarity to how Wesley did so, and there is a noticeable gap between the general characteristics of Methodists today from Wesley's day.

We simply haven't committed ourselves to doing the kinds of things he did...

• like having a rhythm of regular time alone with God and time in company with others; or the other practices he engaged in and encouraged in his early Methodists, such as
• living distinct lifestyles from the culture around us so that we do no harm to anyone;
• always seeking to be involved in doing good for others, always to meet their physical needs, and when the opportunity arises to meet spiritual needs as well;
• searching the Scriptures by reading short passages every day and allowing them to sink deeply in to our hearts and minds;
• praying, particularly through a method such as Wesley's practice of morning and evening prayer (or fixed-hour prayer) in order to become the kind of person he was;
• fasting (Wesley was serious about this one for himself and his early Methodists, but today we're almost clueless about it);
• "Christian Conferencing" (intentionally arranging your lifestyle around Wesley's firm conviction that we cannot be spiritually healthy individuals apart from spiritually healthy community;
• etc.

...and therefore we don't regularly turn into the kind of person that he was.

And of course, as much as I admire my Dad and John Wesley, neither of them are the ultimate one to imitate in order to become the kind of people they were. What were things that Jesus did? How can I do more of the things that he did, in order to become more of the kind of person he was? For starters:

• I can learn to practice a weekly day of Sabbath rest in a way that's good for everyone involved rather than about keeping a bunch of rules.
• I can have a rhythm of going back and forth between plenty of time alone with God and plenty of time unhurriedly engaging with people.
• As he would have done as an ancient Jew, I can pray at set times of the day .
• I can let the Scriptures sink in deeply.

Perhaps you can think of others. This is tremendously important... we talk about taking up our cross daily and following him, and for good reason. But I've come to believe that when my cross shows up, I won't be the kind of person who is even able to follow him by taking it up if I haven't also been following him by practicing Sabbath, having a rhythm of solitude/community, saying morning and evening prayers, allowing the Scriptures to sink in, etc. Yet if I have done those things, picking up that cross and continuing to follow will seem like a much more natural thing to do, because I will have become more of the kind of person he was in the course of doing more of the things that he did.

A Wesleyan Approach to the Lord's Supper

Since I had fun writing the recent post on baptism and it started some good discussions, I though I'd also work on a post about the Lord's Supper. (Plus I'm teaching on it this weekend, so any time that writing a blog post can double as preparing something else that I'm working on, it's a bonus.)

Few things in my adult Christian life have increased in meaning for me as much as receiving the Lord's Supper. For almost all Christians, it's a regular part of what we do, but for me it wasn't until I had already been participating in the practice for decades that I began to count it as an essential part of growing in my life in Christ. Although some things grow in meaning gradually over time, my experience of growing in appreciation for the practice of receiving the Lord's Supper wasn't one of those experiences, but rather was sparked by something very specific: learning what John Wesley and the early Methodists believed and taught about the practice.

In his great book, Recapturing the Wesleys' Vision, Wesley scholar Paul Chilcote notes:

Most Methodists do not realize that the Wesleyan revival was both evangelical (a rediscovery of the importance of the Word) and eucharistic (a rediscovery of the importance of Holy Communion). The Wesleys and the early Methodists held both together, firmly convinced that both were necessary for proper guidance in the Christian faith and walk. Sacramental grace and evangelical experience were viewed as necessary counterparts of a balanced Christian life. The enthusiasm for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper among the early Methodists was the result of zeal kindled in the hearts of the people by the flaming message of God's love.  And so the combination of pulpit and table was like a two-edged sword; the conjunction was a potent agent in the spread of the revival.

In the Wesleys' view there could be no suggestion of setting the preaching of the gospel over against the celebration of the sacrament. It was impossible to think about the spoken word (preaching) apart from the Word made visible (Eucharist). Hardly a new discovery in the life of the church, this essential connection of Word and sacrament has been the hallmark of virtually every movement of Christian renewal.

I can identify with what he says, because even though he's describing the widespread Methodist revival of almost 300 years ago, this is also a good description of my experience of allowing the Scriptures to sink in more deeply together with receiving the Lord's Supper.

Wesley clearly taught about the Lord's Supper, particularly in sermons such as "The Means of Grace" and "The Duty of Constant Communion." Yet there isn't one singular place in his writings where we can get a comprehensive view of all that he believed and taught regarding the Lord's Supper, so I'll summarize here from a very helpful resource: Steve Harper's workbook, Devotional Life in the Wesleyan Tradition:

• Holy Communion is a memorial meal. As we partake of the bread and the cup, we do so as a visual, taste-able, sense-able, reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made in his death. Yet in doing so, the point is not just to bring to mind something that happened 2,000 years ago. Rather, Harper says that the remembrance Jesus taught us to observe when we "do this is remembrance of [him]" is in a Hebrew sense of "recalling an event so thoroughly that it comes alive in the present." That fascinates me- that we can re-member Jesus' offer of his own body and blood in this act and be aware that what Jesus expressed to his friends as they shared this meal on their last night together is also true for us today.
• The Lord's Supper is a pledge of future glory. Not only do we look to the past when we celebrate Holy Communion, but it also foreshadows the future when, as God recreates earth and heaven, and they will be joined together forever and celebrated in a way that Scripture describes as akin to a great wedding feast.
• Christ is truly present each time we receive the Lord's Supper. While, on one extreme, Wesley did not accept the Roman Catholic belief that the elements change into actually being the body and blood of Jesus, neither did he believe that in receiving them, we are doing nothing more than taking bread and juice/wine into our bodies. Rather, he believed that the Lord chooses to be present in a real way whenever we receive Holy Communion. It isn't that his presence is somehow in the materials, but the act of taking those materials into our bodies is a physical way for us to open the deepest spiritual parts of who we are to Christ's abiding presence.
• We are commanded by Christ to partake of the Lord's Supper. I have been in churches where the only teaching that ever took place on Holy Communion was that, every time it was offered, the pastor would read without comment from Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 11:23-29 not to eat the bread or drink the cup "in an unworthy manner," lest we be guilty of "sinning against the body and blood of the Lord" and therefore eat and drink judgment on ourselves. Yikes. If that's the only thing I had ever learned about the Lord's Supper, I would opt to stay in my seat just to play it safe, which is exactly what a lot of people in that church did. Unfortunately, that pastor never taught on the surrounding verses in that passage, which make clear that Paul was addressing the "unworthy manner" in which the Corinthian church had been practicing the Lord's Supper (some partaking so much that they filled their stomachs and even became intoxicated while others were left with absolutely nothing to receive), not that any individual person had been sinful and therefore unworthy to participate. If worthiness as an individual was the qualification- who could participate? This grace-filled meal is meant precisely for those of us who are unworthy to receive it.
• Proper preparation begins with a repentant heart. Wesley often began on Thursdays to prepare his heart for receiving the Lord's Supper on Sunday. He realized this wasn't always possible and  that nothing like it was a prerequisite for participating. Yet it remains true that when we receive the Lord's Supper having prepared our hearts through repentance, we are more open and able to receive God's grace so abundantly offered to us in this meal.
• Since it is a means of grace, we are wise to receive the Lord's Supper as often as we can. In Wesley's day, many of the churches around him had gone to only offering Holy Communion two to four times per year, yet he urged his Methodists to practice this means of grace at every opportunity, making the case that the more frequently we practice Holy Communion, the more likely we would be to enjoy a "constant communion" with God.

And one other point that has become very meaningful to me, though not specifically mentioned in this list by Harper:

• Receiving the Lord's Supper is something we never do alone, but in relationship with God and others. The Lord's Supper is not one of the devotional practices that we are encouraged to make part of our daily, individual practices alone in homes. Rather, Holy Communion is always celebrated in communion with others. It's a way of increasing our communion with God, as we contemplate Jesus' sacrifice and, in his presence, open the deepest places of ourselves to him. It's a way of increasing our communion with others, as we do things together in order to receive it. The method may vary in your church, but we typically get up out of our seats in worship, go forward together, and regardless of our situation or station in life, receive Christ's body and blood together. Finally, it's a way of increasing our communion with "the communion of saints." Every time that we receive the bread and the cup, we are doing so, in a very real sense, together with all other followers of Jesus, both around the world today and throughout history. It's a practice that crosses every cultural barrier, and even though I cannot meet John Wesley, Martin Luther, St. Augustine, St. John, nor millions of other Christ followers whose names will never be known beyond their own context, every time that you and I receive the Lord's Supper, we do so together with them, as those who do so in remembrance of him.