(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Construction Lessons”, originally shared on April 1, 2021. It was the 103rd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What do Maundy Thursday, April Fools Day,
and Construction have to do with each other? More than you might think. Today,
we’re going to talk about being disciples of Christ under construction.
Target put their face masks on sale this
week. Twenty percent off. Is that a sign that things are getting better?
On the other hand, and there always seems to
be another hand, the head of the CDC shared her concern this week that we could
be facing impending doom if people don’t practice the simple things we each can
do to lower the coronavirus curve, save lives, and get our economies back on
track. Melodramatic language aside, we are facing what could now be a fourth
surge. France just went back into lockdown for four weeks. We are so anxious to
get things back on track, and so excited that people are getting their vaccines,
that many seem to have thrown caution to wind. Many others had no caution to
throw in the first place. It’s still a
time for vigilance.
Volkswagen “accidentally” released a draft
of a press release this week announcing that they were rebranding the company.
Since so many of their cars were now either hybrids or electric, it said, and
since electricity powered vehicles are the direction the company has
established, Volkswagen was changing the name of their company to “Voltswagen”.
Something may have been given away in that the press release said that the
change would take place on Thursday, April 1st.
I fell for an article claim, this morning,
that the international rules of chess were changing. It started reasonably
enough: some draws would be eliminated, stalemates would be listed as a “win”
for the dominant player, not as a draw. Then it said that players who make the
same move three times would be given the designation “CM” or Cowardly Master,
which seemed a bit punitive. Then, it said that certain behaviors would allow a
player to kick their opponent hard in the shin. Then the light went on.
April 1st, or April Fools Day, has
become a day in which pranks are pulled and fictions are told that are intent
on “fooling” someone else into believing that what is false is true.
It seems like our national polarization has
been expressed in these terms for at least the past year. What is true? And how
do we know it? The apostle Paul wrote, in his first letter to the Corinthians,
the 4th chapter, beginning at the 9th verse:
*1 Corinthians
4:9-10
I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “I’m
a fool for Christ. Whose fool are you”.
That is the question, isn’t it? Who do we
follow? And what does it mean to be a follower, a disciple, of Jesus Christ?
A recent short explanation of my
denomination’s “Future Church” initiative includes the description of its
purpose as: “Activate each of us so more people know the way of Jesus and
discover community, justice and love.”
I’m sure an explanation of what is meant by,
“the way of Jesus” will be forthcoming, but I know of no way of Jesus except
the way of the cross. That’s the event to which today, Maundy Thursday points.
The word “maundy” comes from the same Latin
word as “mandate”, and “commandment”. It gets its name from the new commandment
that Jesus gives his followers on the night before he was crucified, at his
last supper with his disciples.
Jesus removed his outer robe washed the feet
of his disciples, the job of the lowest servant in the household. He modeled
who he is and of what his disciples are to be to one another. Judas goes out to
betray Jesus to the authorities.
Then, in John 13, starting at the 34th
verse, Jesus announces that he is going somewhere that his disciples cannot
come and says:
*John 13:34-35
They respond that they don’t know the way to
where he is going. Jesus answers, in John 14, starting at the 6th
verse:
The only way to go where Jesus is going is
obedience to God, in response to and through Jesus Christ.
The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It
is the life of the disciple. It is the way of grace, the love of God unearned but
freely given, through faith. Jesus IS the way. The way of Jesus is not the way of
Lau Tzu. It is not what Jesus taught, or his moral philosophy. It is not loving
everybody and being nice to people as ends in themselves but as the natural outcome
of what it means to live in that relationship, in the faith that is God’s gift
to us.
Every religion has its wisdom and its wisdom
traditions. They are everything in some other religions. They are the least
important thing in Christianity.
C.S. Lewis wrote,
in his book “Mere Christianity”, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying
the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept
Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is
the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of
things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a
lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he
would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and
is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up
for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his
feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing
nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to
us. He did not intend to.”
The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It
is lived as an outcome of a living relationship with the one true living God.
What does that life as the disciples of
Christ look like? How do we love one another in obedience to the command of Jesus?
How do we serve one another sacrificially as Jesus did on the cross?
Here are some lessons from building construction:
We built two buildings when I served at a
congregation in San Dimas. I was there for the last almost 32 years of formal ministry
before I retired.
Among the many things I learned in those
projects, three stand out as instructive in living the life of a disciple of
Jesus Christ.
First, you can have it done well, you can
have it done fast, and you can have it done cheap. Pick any two.
If it’s done fast and well, it won’t be
cheap. If it’s done cheap and fast, it won’t be done well, and so on.
The life of the disciple of Jesus is
similar. The life of a disciple is entirely built on the work of Jesus on the
cross. We are sinners and therefore separated by Sin from the holy God. Jesus
is God in flesh and fully human at the same time. He paid the penalty for our
Sin himself. The canyon between us and God is bridged by the cross. To be a
disciple and live a Christian life isn’t cheap or fast. It took the cross. The
early Christians spent 3-years in instruction before they were welcomed as full
members of a local church. If our desire to serve involves no cross-bearing and
does not bring meaningful life transformation, it is simply a superficial nod
to Jesus. It will not be a life lived
well, and so on.
Second, everything takes longer and costs
more.
A building contractor, a member of our church on our
building committee during our worship and administration building construction,
sent me a picture of a giant yacht with a small motorboat tied behind it. The
name on the motorboat was, “Original Contract”. The name on the yacht was,
“Change Orders”.
Change orders are the changes to the
original contract that are made once work has begun. They can drive up the cost
of the project astronomically. But, sometimes, the client doesn’t know what
they want until the project has begun, and sometimes they just get a new idea.
The life of a disciple of Jesus is similar.
Sometimes, people who become disciples of Jesus don’t know what they are
getting into until God enters their true selves and their life transformation
project begins. Maybe the word “sometimes” should be changed to pretty much
“always”. God always accepts us as we are. Repentant sinners. But God never
leaves us as we are. God makes us, by God’s grace, a place that is fitting for
the one true holy God to dwell in. That involves transformation. We are
imperfect human beings. The thing about Christianity is not that God makes us
better, but that we have a Savior. Our behavior improves not from fear but from
faith, from our relationship with God. Our living relationship with God is what
produces a desire to please God.
The Christian life never ends in perfection
until the world to come. We don’t need perfection to be accepted by God. We
need a Savior, and we have one in Jesus Christ. The cost of our ticket to
heaven has been stamped “Paid in Full”, by the work on the cross by Jesus
Christ.
It often takes a while for us to realize
that in a deep and meaningful way. It’s the message of Holy Week. God pays the
ultimate price for us and calls us to live sacrificial lives in response for
the sake of the Church and of the world that God died for. We live not to get
something from God, but in response to all that God has done for us at the
cross.
Third,
anyone can hand you a bill. That doesn’t mean that you have to pay it.
We frequently had bills handed to us during construction
that we disputed. Things happened that were not our fault. Work was done that
was not contracted.
In the same way, once a person becomes a
Christian, or goes through a renewed faith and begins experiencing again a life
transformed by God, people will take notice. We are made a new creation. We are
born again.
When that happens, people will begin doing
things to irritate you just to get a rise out of you. Even when some people
find out you are a Christian, they’ll do the same things. They will try to get
you to do things that are contrary to your new life. They will throw the
“gotcha” questions, give you a demeaning nickname, distance themselves from you,
accuse you of being “holier than thou”, or of thinking that you’re better than
them. They will say they miss the old you and will try to draw you back to your
old self.
People did similar things to Jesus and
worse. All the powers that defy God defied Jesus.
The thing is that you don’t owe them
anything, neither beliefs nor behaviors. Sometimes, in fact, it takes the hand
of God for you to recognize who your friends and family truly are, who truly
wants the best for you, and who wants to build you up and point you to a better
future. Sometimes, it takes the hand of the Holy Spirit to guide us forward.
We don’t have to fall back. We don’t have to
live under anybody’s expectations but God’s, Paul writes, in his letter to the
Galatians, the 5th chapter, the 1st verse: “For
freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again
to a yoke of slavery.”
Paul says a little further on, “the only
thing that counts is faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:6b) We are
not bound by the desires or expectations of other human beings.
Holy Week gives us construction lessons, pointing
us to the construction of new lives in the Body of Christ, the Church, that is
accomplished entirely by God. Our lives as disciples are hidden to the world in
Christ. They are lived in response to the love of God and by God’s gift of
faith for God and for one another and the world in the constructive transformational
power of God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” (John
3:16)
Open your heart to the Holy Spirit to receive or renew that gift today, and experience the construction of new life in Jesus Christ.
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