Ten Words Intro: From Slavery To Freedom (Sunday’s Sermon Today)

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Have you ever been stuck?

I remember some of my more sticky situations.

Once, I was driving an older car that I didn’t know very well. I’d never really had any trouble with it, but it was hand-me-down. It was a “deluxe” Camry, and it came with a special key to unlock the spare, only I didn’t have the key. And one day, I found myself stranded on the Powhite Parkway, in rush hour, with a blown-out tire, and no way to change it. But one of my youth worked for his dad who was a mechanic, and he came with the right tool to unlock the spare, and change my tire. It would’ve been a long night, without the right key.

I remember a few times in seminary when transportation was scarce that I didn’t have a way to visit my fiancé eight hours away, but several times, I was loaned a car or given a ride. But my ‘favorite’ memory of car transportation was the time my wife visited the seminary and I was loaned a beat-up, standard pickup truck. The only problem was, I didn’t drive stick. One time, at a stop sign on a slight hill… That’s a completely different kind of stuck!

Another time, I was riding the waves at Nags Head with my dad. The surf was fierce that day, with either a storm rolling in (or just after a storm, I can’t remember). I wasn’t quite a teenager yet but I was a decent swimmer, and we liked to body surf. But that day, one wave picked me up, turned me over, and crushed me against the bottom. I ran out of air. It’s the first time I remember being in the ocean where I literally wondered if I’d die, drowning to death. And then strong hands reached in and lifted me out. My dad knew well enough not to ride it, and in the aftermath, he could pull me out.

I was working a maintenance job one summer, and while I knew I didn’t like heights or flying, I didn’t know how deeply that fear ran. I found out when I was told to climb out on a scaffolding to pressure wash some windows… and froze. I literally couldn’t get my brain to believe that I could stand up, move on the scaffolding, or operate the pressure washer. I was stuck.

One last example: I’m speeding home from work one summer, ready to return for my senior year. I was doing well over the speed limit, and I recognized those unfortunate lights in the rearview mirror that still make my stomach turn… even when I’m parked! This time, I got stuck between maintaining my speed and turning down a side street, and ended up nose to nose with a stop sign, horizontal to the street itself. Needless to say, the officer wrote me a sizable ticket that would half my summer spending. I went to court with my dad, who rode shotgun on many of my adolescent misadventures, and stood before the judge. He looked me up and down, in my dress shirt and tie, and my father at my side, knocked the several-hundred-dollar ticket down to the court fees, and told me to study hard at school. Not guilty by reason of … mercy.

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us can come up with an example of one or two times that we found ourselves up to our knees in trouble or imprisoned by something we couldn’t get out of on our own. Maybe it was a problem of our own making, like an exorbitant ticket, or maybe it was something else natural or accidental like a wave or a blowout.

For the Israelites who received the Ten Commandments, their situation isn’t figurative “stuckness”; no, their sticky situation is slavery in Egypt to a cruel race of oppressors who have long ago forgotten their mutually-encouraging relationship, and settled into dominance. But how did we get here?

The quick, thirty-second recap:

God calls Abraham out of anonymity and tells him that he will become the father of a great nation who will be God’s people. Four generations later, Joseph is appointed chief operating officer of Egypt’s storehouses of food in the midst of a drought, saving not only all of the Egyptians but also God’s people, too. Generations pass, and the Egyptians no longer remember their symbiotic relationship, enslaving the Israelites to increase Egyptian prosperity. In their slavery, the Israelites call out to God, who chooses roughneck Moses, a child of both nationalities, one by adoption and one by birth, to liberate the people of God to worship. When the Pharaoh refuses to allow them to worship God, God sends twelve plagues, the last of which causes the celebration of Passover (now the Christian church’s Last Supper) to begin. When the Israelites flee, they find themselves liberated from slavery, but they don’t know how to live or what to do.

All of the currently living Israelites are slaves, children of slaves, and grandchildren of slaves. They have no recollection of how to live in community or what it means to form a society in which they are free.

So God gathers them at Mount Sinai, and tells them: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine,  you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). God gathers them around the mountain, and he calls Moses up to the mountain to receive the boundaries that God sets up to make the people of Israel special, to set them apart, and to set them up for freedom by establishing healthy boundaries.

Rather than being a series of “thou shall nots” intent on preventing the Israelites from really enjoying life, God’s commands were to help them figure out how to live now that they were really free! Now that they weren’t “stuck,” they needed someone to direct them toward how they could really live.

But, as people have questioned over and over again, are the Ten Commandments really relevant to us today?

People seem more likely to call them the “ten suggestions” or find some way to play off the way that they were delivered. “Were they written on stone? Now they must come in IOS or Android!”

We seem to either take them lightly or…we watch the Ten Commandments become the fighting ground for people of faith and those who think faith is a myth made up to keep us subservient.

We read the newspaper and watch the news and ask what sort of mortal imperative exists when people kill, steal, covet, and lie, and that’s just in the name of good business.

And we talk about the mercy of God and the fulfillment of Jesus as a means to save people from their sins. Fresh on the follow-up to Easter, we realize that we’re learning to love Jesus but we don’t really know what it means to be community. And if Jesus came to express a new covenant, to explain to us what God meant when he spoke in the field to Abraham and called him to be a people of God, then did Jesus himself abolish the Ten Commandments?

Let’s look for a moment. From Matthew 5:17-20: “Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama…Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.”

Does that really sound like Jesus didn’t care about the Commandments? Does it really sound like Jesus did away with them? No! He said he was there to “complete” or “fulfill” them; it says he encouraged his hearers to take them seriously so that they would be acting like the kingdom of God, God’s best vision for how we should live.

We already know from Exodus 3:7-8 that God wants GOOD for his people. It says that he acted to deliver them from the slavery, and that he wanted to bring them to a place with everything they would need. God freed them from but he also wanted to bring them to.

Too often, we experience (or at least talk about) freedom from something but we don’t recognize our need to fill those holes with something better. We experience the freeing satisfaction of Easter, where God sacrificed his own son on the cross for our sins, our sins. But we don’t know how to live into that, we don’t know how to live into the grace God has provided us, so we hope that feeling of powerful joy goes away. Because it’s easier to think we could just never actually be Easter people in a Good Friday world.

It’s like the situation of Brooks, the older man who has spent most of his life imprisoned in The Shawshank Redemption. He gets out and the free world looks too scary. He writes to Red (Morgan Freeman) and tells him: “Dear fellas, I can’t believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they’re everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big hurry. The parole board got me into this halfway house called “The Brewer” and a job bagging groceries at the Foodway. It’s hard work and I try to keep up, but my hands hurt most of the time. I don’t think the store manager likes me very much. Sometimes after work, I go to the park and feed the birds. I have trouble sleepin’ at night. I have bad dreams like I’m falling. I wake up scared. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember where I am. Maybe I should get me a gun and rob the Foodway so they’d send me home. I could shoot the manager while I was at it, sort of like a bonus. I guess I’m too old for that sort of nonsense any more. I don’t like it here. I’m tired of being afraid all the time. I’ve decided not to stay. I doubt they’ll kick up any fuss. Not for an old crook like me.”

We’ve heard about prisoners struggling to re-enter society, but what about us?

Maybe we’re more like the early Israelites than we thought. We know we’ve been promised a different future, but we don’t know what it looks like for sure.

We don’t really get how we could be more loving.

We don’t understand how to make the ends meet and be more generous.

We see all of the rules, but we don’t get the grace.

So, maybe just maybe, if we really want to fully live into this whole “forgiven” thing, we need to figure out why God would make such a big deal about the Ten Commandments (they’re only called that once in the Old Testament!) that he would issue them twice.

Maybe we need to figure out that if we’re going to understand God’s covenant with us, God’s invitation to relationship, we need to understand that God’s commands for how we live are really there so that we could see how good life could be. That they’re not there to emphasize what we shouldn’t do but what we should.

That “the Ten Commandments reveal God to us,” a God who is full of love for his people, who wants to set us free and bring us to a place where we are happy and experiencing the good life (Henry McCabe).

In Deuteronomy 6:1-9, when the Commandments are recapped for the people, Moses emphasizes that these commands are given so that all of the generations of newly-freed slaves can live good lives, abundantly. No, there’s no promise of some cheap gospel where you “name it and claim it,” but a reliance on God’s love and grace.

As newly-freed slaves, Israel knew it needed leadership and direction.

As forgiven Christians, we should know we need to follow Jesus to make sure we’re headed in the right direction.

Consider Moses’ closing reminder, from Deuteronomy 6:5-9 (the Message version): “Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got! Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.”

Do you know the ten words? (That’s what the Israelites called the Ten Commandments). Do you have them written on your hearts and do you consider the way they apply to your life?

Do you notice that while we often refer to them as pejorative or constrictive, that there are no punishments listed for breaking?

What kind of ‘rules’ are those really, if there are no consequences listed?

Is it possible that maybe they are intended to steer us clear of evil, and toward community. Are they possibly good directions that we have not paid enough attention to?

If we’re honest, we may recognize that we’re stuck. If we’re really honest, we may recognize that we’re still slaves.

Slaves to our jobs, our habits, our fears, our insecurities, our addictions.

Prisoners who find it’s easier to stay stuck than to embrace real, mind-blowing freedom.

What are we slaves to? How have those things shaped us?

The Israelites were afraid of what real freedom would look like. So afraid, that they periodically wished they’d be slaves in Egypt again than free people.

What are you afraid of?

What do you need to be free from?

What would it take for you to embrace God’s promise of a new life and a new kingdom?

What would it take for you to be truly free?

I pray that we can work together, over the next ten weeks, to explore these commands God gave Israel as their foundation to be his people. That we can consider how these holy truths are calling us to be a community of faith, of truth, and of love.

Then, maybe we’ll get the story of the Exodus, and we’ll get Easter, too.

Mandisa’s song “Not Guilty” says,

I stand accused
There’s a list a mile long
Of all my sins
Of everything that I’ve done wrong
I’m so ashamed
There’s nowhere left for me to hide
This is the day
I must answer for my life

My fate is in the Judge’s hands
But then He turns to me and says

I know you
I love you
I gave My life to save you
Love paid the price for mercy
My verdict not guilty.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll see that we can’t get out of our own way. Our fear, our doubt, our sin.

We’ll see that that God freed the Israelites from slavery to Egypt, and freed us from slavery to sin by the sacrifice of Jesus.

And when we see that, then we will be truly free.

I am indebted to the work of my fellow Asbury Seminary alum, Sean Gladding, for reminding me of the beauty and necessity of the Ten Commandments in his book, Ten, available now. 

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#GetChurchRight: Easter Monday AKA Live Like You Mean It (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Another Easter is in the books. Call it a wrap.

We woke early, we ate well, we sang hymns we don’t sing nearly often enough, and we welcomed in the C & E crowd (Christmas and Easter for the uninitiated). And by “we,” I mean churches everywhere.

But that’s all ho-hum, doesn’t matter, who cares.

Let’s be clear, we celebrated the truth Paul knew, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead,” from I Corinthians 15:20. We know intellectually that it’s true if we believe it, or that we feel it if we’ve bought in.

But if we wake up on Easter+1, for the sake of the argument Monday morning, and nothing has changed, then it’s more of a “who cares?”

If we don’t let things go that we would’ve held onto before…

If we don’t move past our shame for the things we shouldn’t have done…

If we don’t sacrifice our safety and security (emotionally, mentally, physically, financially) for the good of others…

Then Easter doesn’t matter at all.

Whoa.

Paul said in I Corinthians again, “More than that [if Christ was not raised], we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.” But let’s take it a step further: if we don’t live like we believe in Easter, we’re found to be false witnesses. We’ve failed to deliver on the promise of our faith in Jesus.

Double whoa.

So, get out there, this Easter Monday, the first day of our new Easter year, and live like you mean it. Live like Jesus really was raised from the dead, and not like it’s just a historical fact or a theological posit.

Live like you mean it.

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Easter Sermon: Can You See? (Luke 24:13-35)

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

The beauty of today is this: Jesus rose from the dead, three days after he was crucified, nailed to a tree. But not everyone can see the beauty. Not everyone “gets” it.

Take these two men from our scripture today, traveling by foot from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. They are discussing how Jesus was arrested, how he was tried on trumped up charges, sentenced to death, beaten, hung on the cross, died, buried in a tomb, and resurrected. They know all the details. They’ve heard the story.

Now, as they walked, they are joined by a third man, by Jesus, but they were “kept from recognizing him.”

Seriously, what does that even mean? “Kept from recognizing him?”

We don’t know what exactly ‘kept’ them. Maybe it was their grief at Jesus’ death or excitement at the story of his return. Or maybe, just maybe, it was their own skepticism.

Brennan Manning, of the Ragamuffin Gospel who died a year and a week ago, told this story:

Four years ago in a large city in the far West, rumors spread that a certain Catholic woman was having visions of Jesus. The reports reached the archbishop. He decided to check her out. There is always a fine line between the authentic mystic and the lunatic fringe.

“Is it true, ma’am, that you have visions of Jesus?” asked the cleric.

“Yes,” the woman replied simply.

“Well, the next time you have a vision, I want you to ask Jesus to tell you the sins that I confessed in my last confession.”

The woman was stunned. “Did I hear you right, bishop? You actually want me to ask Jesus to tell me the sins of your past?”

“Exactly. Please call me if anything happens.”

Ten days later the woman notified her spiritual leader of a recent apparition. “Please come,” she said.

Within the hour the archbishop arrived. He trusted eye-to-eye contact. “You just told me on the telephone that you actually had a vision of Jesus. Did you do what I asked?”

“Yes, bishop, I asked Jesus to tell me the sins you confessed in your last confession.”

The bishop leaned forward with anticipation. His eyes narrowed.

“What did Jesus say?”

She took his hand and gazed deep into his eyes. “Bishop,” she said, “these are his exact words: I CAN’T REMEMBER.’”

Isn’t that the way it always is? We can’t believe because we can’t quite wrap our minds around it. We can’t quite get it.

But here, we have two guys walking with the real, live, historical Jesus. Not a Christ-figure or an image of Jesus. The actual Jesus.

So Jesus asks them, “so, guys, what are you talking about?”

And the first man, one named Cleopas, a translated term which means “glory to the father” (isn’t that ironic?), says, “wait, are you the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on?”

But remember, this is post-resurrection, and they’re upset. The resurrection of Jesus hasn’t actually changed anything because they don’t see the impact of the resurrection.

They know that the tomb was empty but it’s like the resurrection might as well not have happened.

Nothing is different. Nothing is better.

So they launch into this litany of what happened to Jesus. It’s all true, but it’s incomplete. Their understanding of Jesus and who he was and what he did is still too small even after his resurrection.

“We hoped he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” It’s the past tense. Jesus is dead. Risen? Gone? No longer here. And where he went or why doesn’t matter because that’s the only reality they understand to matter.

So, unrecognized Jesus confronts their attitudes, and tells them that they’re missing the point, that they can’t really see what’s going on in Jesus.

Before we get to the story’s payoff, I want to stop and consider how we miss the point. Brian McLaren wrote a book that implied that we’re having “adventures in missing the point,” how we sometimes can’t get to what God really wants us to see.

How do we miss the point?

How are we blind even when Jesus is right in front of us?

What are we failing to see about how Jesus is moving in the world, in the people around us, in us ourselves, in the situations that we find ourselves in?

Is it possible that we’re failing to see the importance of the resurrection? Is it possible that all of the stuff and all of the busyness and all of the worries that are crowding in on us is blinding us to the way that God really loves us and wants us to love him? Is it possible that all of the stuff that we’re struggling with, all of the things we’ve done, all the people we’ve hurt, keeps us from recognizing exactly how awesome life could be if we’d let it?

Brennan Manning wrote:

“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands, I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last “trick”, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

“But how?” we ask.

Then the voice says, “They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” There they are. There we are – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”

Is it possible that we have eternal life all wrong? That rather than playing for the next life, we’re supposed to be playing for this one? Not for ourselves, but in the name of Jesus?

Back to our friend Cleopas and Fred (we don’t know his name, sorry), as they round the corner to Emmaus and begin to part ways with Jesus. They invite him in, asking him to have dinner with them.

There at the table, in the place where he shared the first communion, the last and first supper of the kingdom of God, it says their eyes were opened and they recognized him. In that moment, in that gesture, the one they’d seen before:

“This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

And then, they remember. Then, they see. Then, they know.

Can you see?

Do you recognize?

This Easter, I hope you’ll see that the resurrection matters. It means that death is not the final word. That sin has no power over you. That shame, and guilt, and anger, and hurt no longer have you stuck.

That Jesus is right in front of you. In the person next to you. In the child or parent you need to call after lunch today. In the coworker you need to forgive before work on Monday. In the bully that told you that your life didn’t matter.

Jesus is risen. The kingdom has come. Rise up to go out and be the kingdom in a world that thinks it’s still Good Friday.

Friends, “death doesn’t ruin the story” (Erin Wathen). Death isn’t the end, but the speed bump on the way to Emmaus, the minor detour before the grand adventure. It’s the place where we change venues.

But if we’re really ready to see, in the hear and now, Jesus is risen and the whole story is already changed.

If we’d only open our eyes.

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Spiritual Misfit: Love Is Enough (Book Review)

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Ever think that you’re the only one in church who has doubts? Ever wonder if there’s a safe place to express them? Ever thought about asking those questions in church?

Michelle DeRusha, one-time Catholic and current Lutheran, takes her writing expertise from the Lincoln Journal Star and her own blog, and turns it into a strong opening salvo on exploring faith. Well before I tripped over her quote, “a path and a little light to see by,” I was reflecting on the time I spent with Anne Lamott in 2007, and how DeRusha reminded me of her. [The fact that she references Blue Like Jazz only makes it sweeter.]

It’s fair to say that the woman who opens with a vignette about stealing a necklace and wearing a scapula to make up for it, and will later share her stories on birthing her first child, is a wide-open candidate to follow Lamott’s path toward full spiritual disclosure. While the scapula story sets up the point that our signs of faith actually have to be an outward sign of our inward faith, it also shows off how clever (funny, sarcastic) DeRusha can be as a writer.

When she writes that “I have always liked a precisely ordered universe. I crave order and structure, love the rational, and have an unflagging zest for control” as a reason why she struggled with the immensity of an out-of-control, overwhelming God, DeRusha shows me that she gets it. Stuck between people like her husband and mother who have an overwhelming “that’s just the way it is” faith and having no faith at all, she lays out her journey from ‘faking it’ to ‘leaving it’ to ‘finding it’ in a way that I think most readers (of faith and otherwise) will find engaging.

Along the way, DeRusha explains how it was just expected that ‘everyone is a Christian’ in some of the communities she lived, outlining the social experience of religion; she’ll also share her own (false) expectations about church that if it didn’t look the way it had in the past, then it wasn’t in fact church! Her willingness to critique starts with herself, and in the process, it makes for a much better read. Because we trust her point of view.

One of the points DeRusha makes, and not necessarily as a major one to her, is the emphasis that some denominations put on the devil, on evil, and on sin. It’s as if the threat of the ‘other’ darkness must be stressed to guilt/threaten/fear/shame someone into grace. Which of course takes grace out of the equation. But we find, as DeRusha does, that Jesus and God’s love are so fantastic that it doesn’t matter what the other side is, that love is enough.

Ultimately, the author comes to a point where she embraces that faith in God is about head and heart, knowing and feeling, thinking and doing. It’s a beautiful synchronism that is what we all want when we pursue faith, but we don’t get there at the same time or in the same way. It’s the wonder of grace, and DeRusha delivers her story so that maybe we can experience more of it, too.

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Heaven Is For Real: Not Giving Up The Lion (Movie Review)

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

“If heaven is for real, we’d all lead different lives.”–Todd Burpo

Heaven is For Real explores the experience of Pastor Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) and his family, as his son Colton (Connor Corum) has a vision while he’s undergoing an emergency appendectomy. His four-year-old son comes back with stories about a miscarried sister, his deceased grandfather he never met, and more details about God in heaven. The reactions to the little boy run the spectrum, from full belief to absolute skepticism. The most important question is this: what will you believe?

In the opening voiceover, Burpo asks, “Is heaven a hope? Or as real as the earth and sky?” Honestly, what you believe about heaven will probably impact how you view and receive the film. Colton’s heaven seems pretty magical, like Narnia when Aslan has returned to make all things right, but it’s also far away, not the kind of ‘heaven coming to Earth’ or the renewal of this world. (Your view of the film may also be impacted by your view of four-year-olds!) But Colton’s message, his dissemination of truth, impacts his dad and those around in him in ways that have to be considered miraculous.

Directed by Randall Wallace (Braveheart) and aided by a top-notch cast, the film has more gravitas than you’d expect given the pretty direct, straight-on Christian bent of the flick. (For the record, Wallace is a Duke Divinity grad!) You’re not getting a fuzzy film aimed at taking down straw men (here’s looking at you God’s Not Dead) or a controversial, change-the-notes look at Scripture (the epic Noah!) But this is indeed a film that will raise questions for some folks.

Honestly, I’m not at all interested in wrestling with whether or not this is ‘real’ or not. I know some folks will want to jump all over that, and maybe I’ll look at that down the road. For right now, I’d rather pull out the pieces of the film that spoke to me. And there were quite a few.

The Best that Church can be. When Colton seems to be struggling in surgery, the church and those around the Burpos in the community rally in prayer, believing that God will respond. When Colton experiences heaven, he does so by way of his image of heaven: the church. He’s a kid who enjoys church, but shows that church can speak to children, and fill them with a power of love that crosses many divides.

The Pastor isn’t perfect, but he’s not a creep. Watching the softball game, I thought about all the times that church league softball looks like any group of overweight, testosterone-driven men playing sports: mean, overly competitive, aggressive. (Quite frankly, I thought of myself, and the way softball brings out the worst in me.) At the same time, the pastor played by Kinnear seems willing to show (heck, he wrote the book the movie is based on) that the pastor tries to be who he he’s supposed to be but he often fails, because he’s human. He cries out to God in anger when Colton struggles; he seeks the guidance of a psychiatrist when Colton’s visions seem too radical to be true.

Heaven is attractive on paper, but it isn’t always liberating. Heaven represents some of the characters’ hopes, dreams, and deepest pains. Who will they see in heaven? What if heaven isn’t real? What if when you die, that’s it? Those are all doubts characterized in people in the Burpos’ story, primarily in Margo Martindale’s character. Too often, we don’t acknowledge that things like heaven, hell, Christmas(!), Mother’s Day, etc. can actually be un-joyous occasions for some. Seriously, isn’t one of the main questions in HiFR about why Colton gets healed and comes back with a vision, and some people… just die? Maybe we need to recognize that it’s not heaven that’s liberating, but it’s the relationship that does.

Faith is not one-size-fits-all. Colton has a ‘beatific vision’ that shakes things up, especially in his father’s life. The ability to ask questions, to be real with each other becomes a crucial part of the film. It blends the knowledge about the medical team who cared for Colton with the Scriptural things that we discuss in church. Not everyone can wrap their minds around Colton’s story; not everyone wants to. Burpo’s wife says that half the church wants to “stop feeling and start thinking, and the other half wants the opposite.” It’s the way we grow, isn’t it? To wrestle with the space in between. In the film, she’s the character who represents faithfulness with disbelief toward Colton’s vision, highlighting that in community, not everyone hears the message from God the same way (didn’t we see this in Noah?)

Stories of fathers and sons (and mothers and daughters) matter. Todd and Colton have a terrific relationship, one where even the father can learn from his son. Colton tells his dad, “as long as I’m with you, I’m not afraid.” (Burpo’s wife tells him that she read that people’s concept of God comes from their understanding of their fathers, and that if everyone grew up with him as a father, the world would be better.) The strength of their relationship lets them work through the ups and downs of the story’s translation, acceptance, rejection, and transitions. It’s beautiful, really. 

Whether you’ve read the book or not, the film stands on its own as a story about one man’s faith and one little boy’s story. Like The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis’ book referenced early on in a sermon here, Burpo comes to a place where he ‘refuses to give up the lion,’ and claims his faith even if he doesn’t completely understand everything. He and his family rally to accept that life is different, that the truth of heaven may be different for them now, and what happens moving forward makes for a hilarious, heartbreaking, touching, and memorable story that will leave you wrestling with what you believe.

Heaven is for real. What that looks like? I don’t know. But if heaven became a reality that we lived into, it would change us, our world, and the people around us.

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Jesus & The Court Of Public Opinion (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Palm Sunday is already a distant memory as we roll on toward Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, right? Seems like it usually is easily forgotten for another year. Yesterday, we celebrated how the people called out their praise, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in God’s name! Yes! The King of Israel!” (Msg, Jn 12:12-15) But by Friday, the same people will be chanting his name, and this time, it’ll be for completely different reasons.

It’s incredible to consider the way the mob mentality works. Jesus is The Messiah, not just because of how we read the Easter story but that’s what these people actually think one Sunday when they spread out their cloaks for him to ride over. There were probably people who weren’t sure about all of this who moved along with the praise. And then on Friday, with a few well-placed whispers by the religious leaders and a couple of disappointed souls who were upset Jesus didn’t prove to be the armed Messiah to save them from Rome, these same people chose Jesus to be executed over a terrorist.

It’s insanity, isn’t it?

Actually, we do it to Jesus all the time. We miss the point of what it means to be church, and we crucify the new, the reforming, the prophetic, the Christlike all the time. We do it when we show up for church and spend the rest of the week complaining about everything we don’t like about church to our unchurched friends. We do it when we give lip service to the love of God and then walk out judging gays, the tattooed, the ‘other’ denomination, the ‘those people.’

But it’s not just what we do outside of the church. Just a few weeks ago, I walked out of a Bible study where we’d discussed this very thing and into a buzz saw of epic mob mentality, a list of complaints about what everyone else wasn’t doing right in church. One minute, I’m the theological leader of the church and the next, I’m the idiot that can make everyone do what everyone at church should be doing. (Note, I don’t think I’m Jesus, but it didn’t even take me from Sunday to Friday!) You can’t have it both ways: your theological leader can’t also be your kicking can.

Here me out though: the Easter week doesn’t end on Thursday. Or Friday. Or Saturday. It ends and begins on Sunday. The day after the week ends. It begins with a new beginning, a new opportunity, to be resurrected and to be like Jesus. It means that our screw-ups throughout the week, our betrayals (seriously, check out Peter’s denial and reinstatement), our crucifixions of Christ, they don’t have the last word or the word after that. 

No matter what the mob does, Jesus rises. And if we keep our eyes on Jesus, if we’re all in on what it means to love the Lord your God with your whole heart (and love your neighbor as yourself), we rise, too.

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Easter Sunrise Sermon: Gone Fishing (John 21:1-14)

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I won’t be preaching this Sunday, so here’s the early (7:30 a.m.) service message for Easter morning, April 20.

Easter morning is one of those times when everyone in the church is experiencing one of those highs. The high of Christmas with the birth of Jesus; the high of Easter with the resurrection of Christ. We celebrate, we throw a party– in a few minutes, we’ll eat quite the breakfast spread!

But on that first Easter morning, there was more of a sense of despair. They never understood or expected that Jesus’ words about being resurrected meant he’d actually come back! They thought the guy whom they had followed for years was simply lost to them. They clung to his words and held to his promises, but they didn’t understand many of them.

And then he appeared, and the word spread that he had come back. That he’d share the gift of the Holy Spirit with them in Jerusalem. Everyone rejoiced, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Remember the last time we saw Peter? Back in John 18, we saw Peter as he denied Jesus not once, twice, or three times. We saw Jesus’ best friend deny that he even knew Jesus, let alone had felt any kinship to him, or followed him for three years.

There’s a lot of brokenness there, right? Jesus died on the cross and he came back from the grave, but that doesn’t mean that he and Peter’s relationship was fixed or made right, does it?

Of course not.

Even though Jesus had prayed on the cross that he urged God to forgive those who had persecuted him, even those who stood by and watched him die, Peter was left with that overwhelming betrayal. He didn’t quite know what to do. He’d betrayed Jesus, he’d seen the evidence of the empty tomb, but he’d never been able to speak to Jesus. So he did what he did best: he went fishing.

Back on the Sea of Galilee, where this all started, when Jesus had called Peter and Andrew, James and John, to become “fishers of men.” Peter went back to what he was before Jesus, to try and sort out what he was feeling and thinking, about three years of following Jesus and three times of denial.

Peter went to his happy place, to get it straight, to get it worked out. He didn’t go to talk; he went to fish. And his heart was echoed in the other disciples, even those who weren’t fishermen. There must’ve been something that felt right about being together, about being out on the water.

But, you’ve heard this before, after an all night fishing outing, they’d caught nothing. But when morning came, as the sun was just coming up, there appeared a figure on the shore.

The man called out, “friends, haven’t you caught anything?”

No, they dully answered.

And then the man did one of those things that only Jesus seemed to know how and when to do. He told them to throw their nets ‘over there,’ to the right side, where they would ‘find’ the fish. Like they hadn’t been ‘looking’ for them before. Like they didn’t really know what they were doing but needed someone else to point it out to them. 

And suddenly, they were overwhelmed by the number of fish that they couldn’t even comprehend. Suddenly, the fishermen who couldn’t fish were catching fish thanks to the man who didn’t have a net.

John, who wrote the book of John, said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” It is Jesus.

This may be one of my favorite declarations of faith in the whole Bible.

Immediately, it says. Right away, it says. Without haste, it says. Peter wrapped his cloak back on him, because he’d taken it off to fish, and jumped in the water. Peter recognized in this moment that he wasn’t coming back to the boat. If Jesus was there, then Peter didn’t want to be here anymore.

Peter recognized, in this post-Easter moment, that to be with Jesus, even if Jesus was unhappy with him, was better than being without Jesus. The rock band Disciple sang,

“This was my hell living with out you here, Even heaven is hell if somehow you were not there. Lord, I need to breathe you, drink you, dream you. Nothing ever will compare. Need to breathe you, drink you, dream you, need you.”

Those might as well be Peter’s words. Even knowing that Jesus had risen from the dead wasn’t good enough. Peter needed to be with Jesus, to make things right again.

The Scripture says that the other disciples came in the boat behind them, dragging the net full of fish. We know that the other disciples were coming to see Jesus, that they wanted to be with Jesus, too, but their urgency wasn’t the same as Peter’s. So Peter is the first to arrive, to discover that Jesus already knew they’d catch fish, because he had the fire burning already.

None of the disciples asked who the man on the shore was. Even though they hadn’t seen Jesus, even though they knew he’d died, they believed it was him. They had no doubts. This first century witnesses knew Jesus and knew this man was Jesus.

When they were done eating, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

It’s not hard to figure why Jesus asked three times. It was like holding Peter up to a mirror of his three denials! Normally, we’d think Jesus, if Jesus was like us, was throwing his frustration, his anger, his sense of betrayal, right back into Peter’s face. But this is Jesus, this is the same person who says that Peter was the Rock on which he would build his church. This is Jesus who died for people like Peter, for you and me.

And so, instead of pounding Peter with frustration and vindictiveness, Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.” He tells Peter to follow him. He lets Peter know in one simple, post-fishing trip breakfast, that he’s forgiven, that Jesus’ resurrection makes everything right. That the beauty of Easter is that we don’t need to be afraid, ashamed, guilty, ‘stuck,’ anymore.

Easter morning isn’t just for “thank goodness, Lent is over!” or hanging out at Grandma’s house. Easter morning is about recognizing that Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection changes everything.

You don’t have to hold onto that (whatever that is for you) anymore. You don’t have to be alone and afraid anymore. You can forgive because you’ve been forgiven. You can be a rock on which Jesus builds the church. You matter, you belong, you’re loved by the great God of the universe.

Give thanks this Easter morning for forgiveness and for second chances.

Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed!

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Crucifixes & Empty Tombs (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Have you ever wondered why the cross is the symbol of Christianity and not the empty tomb?

I’ve considered this throughout Lent this year, and find myself laughing at the absurdity of decorating oneself with the means of torture and death. (That’s not funny haha but tragicomedy.) The empty tomb on the other hand, the element of resurrection captured in what is not here rather than what is, seems to be a glorious element of the Christian faith which we’ll celebrate in less than two weeks.

Surely, there’s historical reasons, the banishing of evil by the presentation of the cross, that merits some digging. But one has to wonder if it’s not more ingrained in a theological undertone.

The empty tomb symbolizes new life, and to a broad Christian swathe, the finish line. The cross symbolizes death to sin, death to one’s self, and death (ultimately) to death. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” It’s a mark of discipleship, of becoming dusty with the dirt kicked up by the master, Jesus, rather than grasping onto the glory of the resurrection.

The cross reminds us that we were saved, paid for, brought back, ransomed, healed, etc. by the actual suffering and death of a man who was also fully God. The cross unites us in the suffering.

This Lent, I have thought more about the cross and less about the empty tomb. The cross or crucifix (if you prefer Jesus body to still hang on the cross) serves as a reminder that while, yes, the victory has been won, there is still that minor detail of living it out in a true fashion that honors the one who died for us. It strikes me that the early designers of the cross as a symbol of our faith knew that the cross need remind us that we cannot trade the empty tomb by way of cheap grace, but that it was won with a great cost.

While I believe in the empty tomb, and will no doubt celebrate it with great joy in two weeks, I am reminded that the cross is the only way the empty tomb matters. That some natural or accidental death would not have rendered the same response, but that “by his wounds, we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). This cost something. The death of the Son, the death of sin.

And only one came back.

So I will glory in the cross, and count its shame among many others to be the mark of grace, forgiveness, and victory. It is no longer the reminder of a brutal murder but the broken end of death made powerless by the resurrection of the Son.

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Captain America, Winter Soldier: Man Out Of Time (Movie Review)

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I almost didn’t go. The trailer looked that lame. And yet, there was something that seemed un-comicbook geek of me to not go. So I went.

And Captain America: Winter Soldier was everything I could’ve asked for in a superhero film, staying true to the spirit of Ed Brubaker’s run and committing fully to a world where the Avengers, Thor, etc. can all co-exist. Full of action, backstory, new characters, humor, and social commentary, the latest in Marvel’s universe may be my favorite (gasp!) to date.

Ironically, the title for this review is from Mark Waid’s (not Brubaker’s) use of the phrase, but the phrase describes how the previously frozen Cap (Chris Evans) fights to establish how he fits into a world that’s dominated by technology, government espionage, and S.H.I.E.L.D. He’s ideologically opposed to his boss, Nic Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and differently skilled than his coworker, spy/assassin Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). But how he operates and why he takes the risks he does, are exactly what this latest Marvel film is all about.

You’ll probably see some of the ‘hooks’ built into the storyline, but I’ll try to leave them for your viewing. The main plot revolves around the U.S. government’s movement toward initiating Project Insight, a Minority Report-like program that would allow S.H.I.E.L.D. to eliminate potential threats prior to any actual violence taking place. Of course, any plan like that has flaws right? The flaw in this plan is HYDRA and its secret weapon, the titular Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). For the initiated, Hydra’s moto is “Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place!” You know Cap is going to need some help…

And Anthony Mackie’s Falcon is that spectacular help. I wasn’t sure they could deliver the power and coolness of Sam Wilson’s character, both in and out of the suit, or the battles between Cap and the Winter Soldier. But the Arrested Development directors, the Russo brothers, deliver a film that’s less reliant on CGI than most, especially when it comes to the action scenes. This is a world we can believe exists, one that peels back from the Avengers/Thor universe and centers on a humanity-based problem. It’s a world we live in since 9/11.

There are several issues that are interesting in the plot lines of the film. There’s the question about how a man who’s from World War II can handle all of the changes that occurred since he ‘died,’ especially when it comes to the ‘Big Brother’ decisions that the government makes in regards to a citizen’s privacy and the government’s right to know. There’s the struggle between pre-emptive violence and just cause that both Philip K. Dick’s story and this one engage. There’s the matter of friendship, and how far a person would or should go to save a friend who is in too deep.

Captain America, no, Steve Rogers struggles to reach a friend. At one point, his friend is so blinded to the truth, the reality of the situation, that he sees Rogers as the enemy. Rogers even stands in, taking blow after blow, and says, “You can keep hitting me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m in this for the long haul.” It’s an intervention, an act of love, the Christological narrative of incarnation (“God is with us”) that shows up in these superhero films. Because superheroes have to do what most of us wouldn’t do: superheroes sacrifice themselves on behalf of others.

Up until this moment, when Rogers refuses to put his own life before friendship, I’m enjoying the film, seeing the psycho-political elements from Brubaker to the Russo’s script. But at this moment, I am reminded that at the end of the day, Captain America is a weakling teenager who was given the chance to be great, is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, and he truly believes in the best humanity can be. Folks, that is some incarnational stuff right there! And it makes for a better movie in my book than a bunch of aliens getting clobbered by Hulk and Thor. Just saying.

So count me in for 2016. We already know where this is going. Between Michael Grillo’s charred body, HYDRA, and the Winter Soldier, it’s going to be a wild ride.

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Noah: One-On-One With Screenwriter Ari Handel (Interview)

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I don’t think I’ve been this nervous for an interview in awhile. I’ve asked questions of the designer of the 2012 Olympic medals, well-known musicians, professional athletes, authors, and others. But to get time with Ari Handel, screenwriting partner of Darren Aronofsky and author of Noah, was a proposition that thrilled (and terrified) me all at the same time. Noah has grossed $50 million dollars in less than a week, but it’s also polarized people of faith (those who’ve seen it and those who haven’t). What could Handel’s inside look tell me about the story and our exploration of the themes in the film?

Why do you think that the story of Noah matters to so many people, from such different backgrounds and perspectives?

AH: The flood narratives are everywhere. There’s something iconic and mythical about the whole world being nearly destroyed and then we’re given a second chance. Maybe we deserve [a second chance] but we’ve got to work for it.

If Noah was alive today, what might he tell us about wickedness versus righteousness?

AH:That’s a good question. There’s a direct parallel between making sure we have dominion which we know we have over the earth and also being good stewards. We’re supposed to tend to everything and keep the garden. We’re living in the second chance that the world received through Noah. 

I’ve been reading up on the midrash after seeing some interviews you’ve done about your exploration of the story. What did you hope that we’d hear or see in the version of the Noah story that you’ve written?

AH: Well, we want people to be entertained, I mean, it IS a movie. But if they come away asking questions about the movie and themselves, if they’re in dialogue with each other, and thinking about the subject matter and what it means for their lives, then I think we succeeded. We wanted them to be engaged.

I’ve seen in the production notes that you used the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, in addition to the Book of Genesis. How do you prioritize what works for your story when it comes to things that don’t agree?

AH: Well, we started with Genesis, and set out to not do anything that contradicted Genesis. The commentaries are there to draw on to take themes and questions that people have been asking about the Noah story for hundreds and thousands of years. Genesis wrestles with these big questions [about destruction and second chances] and we wanted to humanize those issues and make the audience empathize with them. We wanted people to grapple with these issues.

I’ve seen The Wrestler and Black Swan and their exploration of an obsession that can be for good or bad. How did you find and develop that in the story of Noah?

AH: Noah is given an almost unsurmountable job, to go build this giant ark. How could he do that? To do that and let everyone else die. What kind of power of will? What strength of purpose would you need? What weight would he have to carry? Those are things we wanted to convey through the story.

Watching the film and discussing it with my wife, we talked about how Noah gets the vision of what he believes the Creator wants him to do but he can’t fulfill it without his wife, Naameh. How did you decide on that relationship as key, especially when it came to working out justice and mercy?

AH: Look, we’re trying to find the relationship that would allow us to figure out who Noah is. We know they live in this time where Enoch walked with God and was taken up; it’s living memory. Noah is righteous. Naameh believes God has spoken to Noah and has complete faith in him. She’s the humanistic family foil. It’s not about a sense of right and wrong. It’s not justice or mercy.

So what is righteousness in the context of the story?

AH: Righteousness is the correct balance of justice and mercy. We don’t read that story and normally think about those who don’t survive. For all we know Na’el [Ham’s momentary love interest] might’ve been righteous. She might have been wicked. There’s wickedness in all of us. But Ham made the connection, so we care. 

It grieved God’s heart- we know, because it says it right there in the Scripture- he didn’t lightly take the lives of all of those people. There was a baby born that day that didn’t make it onto the ark. It’s not black and white. God was prepared to let people who moved his heart to not be saved because that’s what needed to happen.

Last question: I read a few years ago that all stories boil back to a relationship between fathers and sons. How does that work in the context of the Creator and Noah, and Noah and his kids and grandkids?

AH: Well, fathers and sons, and mothers and daughters. Noah’s Genesis story starts and ends with a genealogy. We see at the end what his sons went off to do in the patriarchal system. It’s embedded in the patriarchal line passing down traditions. 

You can view God as father, humanity as the child. What do you do when you’re raising a kid and he steals candy from the store? Do you punish him or not? If you punish him too sharply, you destroy his spirit. If you show too much mercy, then the kid grows up with no moral fiber. 

You have to find the right balance of justice and mercy. And you see in Noah this deep deep love yet a feeling a need for destruction. That’s what’s so emotionally powerful in the story: God created everything, but for its best interests, he had to destroy almost everything he loved. 

For further thoughts on Ari Handel and Darren Aronofsky’s film, Noah, you can check out my first and second reviews.

This interview was initially published at http://www.HollywoodJesus.com.

 

 

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