Parable Of A Rich Man - 3rd Saturday In Lent

Today's devotion brought to you by Beth:

“Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Luke 12:13-21

What does it mean to be “rich toward God?” Do you give all your money to church? Perhaps you sell all your clothes and go barefoot in the streets. Maybe you eat only what you find, and call nothing your own. There are certainly people who serve God this way.
What is it to be poor toward God? Do you own mansions and exploit people? Maybe you refuse to give away anything, and buy everything to heal or conceal a private pain. Perhaps poverty to God is when you pour your heart and soul into getting the biggest house with the best yard and the nicest swimming pool that nobody but nobody is getting into.
I think the line is finer than these extremes. We can be rich towards God with all we have, and we can be poor towards God while having nothing. God tells us His word that “man looks at outward appearances, but the Lord looks at the heart.” We can never look at a rich man and know that he has been poor towards God, or a poor man and know He has been rich to God. What we do know is that with God in our hearts, we are filled with His joy. It doesn't come through stuff. It's the joy of being with people you love. It's in the first breath of spring, and the taste of frost in winter. It is in His presence, and in being His child. It is in the act of forgiveness that brought you to Him, and continues to hold you safe.

Challenge:
Are there things you have been poor towards God in? Whether it is in time, money, trust or anything else, take time to ask Him to show you true richness there, and act on it.

Gospel for the Poor - 2nd Wednesday Of Lent

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3

It's amazing how the 2000 year old words of Jesus stay current. Back in Jesus' day a lot of wealthy folks and religious folks had gotten together and these guys ended up deciding that their high position and easy lives were God's reward. They believed and taught that if good things happened to them it was because they deserved it. If bad things happened to anyone it was because God was giving them what they deserved. The Bible does not endorse this view but in every generation the wealthy still explain their wealth as a mark of God's approval. In medieval Europe this idea was called the “Divine Right of Kings” and in early America it was the “Gospel of Wealth.”

Jesus never preached that the downtrodden deserved their trials. He promised relief for all who came to him no matter where they came from. While the rich and powerful told the poor and mourning that they deserved what they'd gotten, Jesus preached a different message. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the rich man is left to suffer, and told, “In your lifetime you received your good things” but Lazarus, who suffered through life found comfort with God.

Challenge:

Are you one of the wealthy or one of the poor? If you live in the US, have enough to eat, and can read these words, then you're one of the most blessed people on earth. Do you act like you deserve it? If you do then it's time to repent. God loves you too much to let you live like you don't need Him.

Merry Christmas OR God's Blessings and Rationality

Assume every human is acting in in their own self interest, or at least what they perceive to be their self interest. I find this is a frustrating and disillusioning assumption because it allows kindness and cruelty to be motivated by identical desires and emotions. For example a person may shoplift, soldier, or parent out of a desire to feel powerful. Fathers may abuse or nurture their kids because of a desire for their kids' to not turn out like them. A person who acts in their own self-interest is said to be, rational. Assume Jesus is rational, and consider the following:

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20:35)

I believe there are two plausible reasons for a rational Jesus to say such a thing. One painful explanation for his claim, that it is better to give that to receive, is that Jesus was lying. Like many cult leaders Jesus could use his influence over peoples moral beliefs in order to profit from “enlightening” their point of view. It's not so far fetched; people have used Jesus' word to do exactly that for centuries. The scandal of the thing would be a lot of fun to write about, but I'm afraid no one got rich off of the Christian religion until after Christ was dead.

The other explanation I come up with is that Jesus actually believes that giving serves his interests better than receiving. If that is that case then we can assume that he would do everything in his power to give, and that scripture would record little of him receiving. The only instances of Jesus receiving anything that I can recall are times when he took meals from a host, when he took a donkey into Jerusalem, and when the “sinful” woman anointed him with perfume. That's not a lot of receiving when compared to the rest of Jesus' life. Jesus' life was characterized by constant giving, the giving of cures, the giving of food, the giving of dead relatives back to their families, of teachings, blessings, fish, of time, affection, and attention. The best example is the giving of his life on the cross.

If this is how God's son conducted himself on earth, it seems reasonable to conclude that a life of sacrifice is in fact the most profitable way a person can conduct themselves. That may sound like an evil reason for living generously; however, it is sensible that the God who determined the rules of the universe would make virtuous living beneficial if he actually wanted anyone to try it.

Now assume God is, has, and always will act in his own interest; please remember that he knows giving to be more blessed than receiving. God's motivations become clearer. God's action of creating the world, allowing the Fall, delivering Israel from slavery, giving the law of Moses, sending his son, sending his Holy Spirit, and every other divine act recorded and unrecorded is an instance of God giving. God gave Adam his breath, and he gives us his son.

God has created a universe where we, the created beings, have no concrete means of giving to our God. We have nothing that we haven't received (1 Corinthians 4:7). We cannot even work or earn our way into our God's presence or good will. We receive those things as a gift.

When God gives, he doesn't do it so that we can owe him something. God doesn't give gifts to win our favor. God doesn't give to be an example of generosity (although He is a good example). God doesn't give begrudgingly or reluctantly. God gives because it's more blessed to give than to receive.

I don't believe that our relationship to God is at all like that of a beggar or a freeloader. I believe that God wants and likes to give. I believe that God is delighted on levels we cannot comprehend when he gives his gifts to us. Our earth, breaths, longings, passions, arts, food, days, nights, hopes, and selves are his gifts to us, and each gift we receive from him blesses the Lord.

Bless the Lord by enjoying his gifts, material and immaterial, and enjoying deeply the holy blessing that it is to give. Merry freak'n Christmas .

An Insecurity Articulated

I want, with desperate passion, to matter. I want my life to mean something. I want to change the course of my neighbor's life by helping her get custody of her grandchild. I want to write and publish books before I turn 30. I want to be a teacher so that I can change the lives of my students by illuminating their minds, iron-cladding their confidence and unleashing their passions and potentials upon a world that expects ordinary. I fear and hate the idea of being remembered as ordinary, of being forgotten, of not building something that will still be around in 100 years. I crave significance like a smoker craves nicotine. I revel in the thought that I've improved the world. I find exhilaration in knowing I've been instrumental in preventing at least one suicide. I am deflated again by the memory of a suicide I could not prevent.

In school I never wanted to be an exemplary student because the students who focused on achievement were too busy to effect their environments. I always thought that the most studious, hard working students were being duped into irrelevance by allowing their self-worth to be attached to the points of a rubric. I always did my best to learn everything I could from a class without studying to pass someone else's test. I wanted to be smarter than the smartest students, and I wanted to show it by NOT getting A's, joining honor societies, or making Dean's lists. I wanted to show it by saving lives, enriching souls, and freeing spirits.

Whatever the best possible pursuit is, that is what I want to put my hand to. I want to master Tai Chi so that I can have a calm, powerful mind to counsel with, and a quiet power with which to defend the weak. I want to cook with the inspiration and cunning of James Beard, because I know that food is a universal language and I secretly hope that a perfect cup of coffee can change the direction of a man, family, or nation.

I have a friend who's story I have promised in writing never to publish. Though she goes unnamed, I will say that she brought the written word to a nation that had never known it, and brought a tribe of cannibals into the kingdom of God by putting the New testament into their language.

She is the most significant person I can imagine, and I strive to not live in the fear of being nothing like her. I fear insignificance. I fear an impotent life. I also know that a life of fear is likely to be a powerless, self-destructive life. I am therefore left to ask myself, what mindset can I take on, what cause will I champion, what is of real importance that I can pursue fearlessly and without insecurity? What should I be? The Pastor? The literature teacher? The Youth Minister? The Father? The brother? Author, business owner, CEO, lawyer, warrior, poet, counselor . . .

The people who have had the greatest shaping and illuminating impact on me are a Bible translator, several literature teachers, a youth minister, a Boy scout leader, a Tai Chi instructor, two parents, and a handful of authors.

What unifies these individuals is that they all performed their role as a service and worship to God, with the exception of one teacher and a few authors who glorified God inadvertently through their wisdom, integrity, and generosity.

My prayer is that God makes me like them. I want to speak with the words of God; I want to illuminate the world. I do not know how best to do it, what role to take or job to hold, but I rest assured in my [very Lutheran] belief that God will accomplish his work in spite of me. My role is to yield to the Holy Spirit's movement, to fall deeper in love with the God of love and to gush that love every day of my life until it kills me. Dead to my own ambitions, I can live without fear, knowing that my significance shall be eternal, and no consequence of my own action as Christ shows through me and carries unto completion the work began in me.