This week I watched Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of Christ” for the third time.  It was shown at the downtown State Theatre and was followed by a panel discussion.  I was on the panel.  I remember when it first came out, Lynn and I talked about the movie becoming a Good Friday family tradition.  I have to be honest, after seeing it the second time, I wasn’t sure I would ever watch it again.

It is difficult to watch.  Disturbing.  From a scourging that seems to last an eternity to the beating, spitting and taunting.  Before a nail was driven it was violent, but crucifixion was not a pg-13 reality.

All four Gospels record the passion of Jesus, providing significant detail about the enormous suffering and torture He endured.  Other Christian, Jewish, and Roman sources provide additional insight about scourging and execution on a cross. Those who study the details recognize that Mel Gibson may have been right when in one interview he said, “I did hold back.”

Crucifixion, which probably began with the Persians, was perfected by the Romans as a form of torture designed to produce a slow death with maximal pain and suffering.  It was one of the most humiliating and cruel forms of execution. Roman law protected Roman citizens from crucifixion, except perhaps in the case of the desertion of a soldier.  Cicero wrote, “The mere idea of the cross should never come near the bodies of Roman citizens.  It should never pass through their thoughts, eyes or ears.”

It was not until the 4th century that the cross became a symbol of faith.  As C.S. Lewis points out, “The crucifixion did not become common in art until all who had seen a real one had died off.”  When people complain that the Bible does not go into the same depth of description as Gibson’s movie, they don’t realize that the people in Jesus day didn’t need a description.  If you had seen one you would never forget it.

Watching “The Passion of Christ” restored my vision of the cross.  We have sanitized the cross… made it into a geometric shape that holds diamonds and hangs around our necks.  Crosses are everywhere, we’re surrounded by crosses — silver and sanitized — but to really understand the hope of the Easter season, we need to regain our vision of the cross as it was before Christ.  It was a symbol of hatred, cruelty, and human failure.  For a Christian to wear a cross, should be like a Jew wearing a swastika or a someone from Japan wearing a symbol of a mushroom cloud.  The cross in Jesus’ day was a symbol of sin and hate and death.

It is understandable that many in the world cannot fathom a worshipful obsession with the cross.  It is understandable that outsiders would cry out, “Why not focus on his good deeds, instead of his horrific death?”  It is understandable until you see the cross through the eyes of love and sacrifice and it hits you… he did this for me.

This is grace.  It is the overwhelming generosity and love of God that transforms a tool of horrific hatred into a symbol of awesome love.  This is grace.

So back to the story of prodigal grace.  If you haven’t read it — click Luke 15:11-32. I’ve been thinking a lot about the older brother.  When the prodigal son came back home, the father ran to meet him, embraced him, welcomed him, and called for a celebration party.  That’s grace in action.

Here’s the deal when that kind of grace flows, somebody is bound to be uncomfortable, perhaps even offended.  In this case it’s the older brother… read this and picture the look on his face and the texture of his heart…

So they began to celebrate. ²⁵“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

So I have no wondrous grace story to share with you, just a question.  Where are you practicing older brother living?  See..

• – The older brother thought he had to…and could earn his father’s blessing.
• – The older brother was dutiful, but he saw himself as a slave not a son.
• – The older brother was filled with envy — dismissing the grace extended towards him and disliking the grace extended toward others.
• – The older brother was more focused on rules and regulations than relationships.
• – The older brother missed the party, because he couldn’t celebrate extravagant grace.

I will occasionally hear the questions like, “Is Calvary soft on sin?  Do we sugarcoat the truth so that it doesn’t offend prodigals away from home?”  I hate sin.  I hate what it does to people.  I hate the sin that is easily recognized as the bad stuff we do, and even more I hate the sin that is easily ignored as the good stuff we fail to do.  I do not believe we sugarcoat the truth — but I do believe in the truth of grace.  And I do believe that the sins of the older brother are as damaging to one’s soul as the sins of the prodigal son.

I am okay if we offend older brothers when we offer extravagant grace to prodigal sons.  I want to keep offending the older brother in me, till he becomes more like the gracious father.

You understand, it is neither the prodigal son, nor the obedient brother who are the heroes of this story.  It is the gracious father.

May Amazing Grace always be our song.

So back to this story of prodigal grace in Luke 15 and the question, “Which character do you identify with?”  Jesus is telling the story and he says…

There was a man who had two sons.  And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.  Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.   And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.  So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.  And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

“Where do you want to live?” the father asks us.  He doesn’t force us.  In fact in some ways you could say that he makes it possible for us to choose life in the “far country.” Are you living life in the far country?  When I’m in a far country, God is not often on my mind.  I don’t want to be reminded that my actions might be hurting his heart and building walls around mine.   When I’m in a far country, I find that more and more my focus is on my self.  I’m not a very good friend because my primary passion is my personal pleasure.  Sin is increasingly attractive… like gossip if it makes someone else like me; or sex if it makes me like myself.  In the far country, reckless extravagance is my hope.  Perhaps more stuff will fill the holes in my heart.  But it doesn’t.

And do you realize that it was not just the prodigal who was living in a far country?  The elder brother was just as far from his father as his prodigal brother.  Sure the older brother remained in his father’s house, but his heart had left home long ago.  Proximity does not equal intimacy.  You can go to church all your life and never allow God to be your father.  When I’m the older brother living in the far country, life is full of comparisons and judgments.  I compare what I’m doing to what others are doing.  I compare morality and achievements.  Life in the far country is about earning love.

Let me stop for a moment and speak to those of you who identify with the older brother.  We know who we are. When we identify with the older brother, we want to make excuses for him.  Secretly we think he’s the hero of the story and we sympathize with him when he decides not to go into the party.  We call it tough love or being brutally honest.

And you know what?  It’s easy for the church to take advantage of people living in the older-brother mold.  They are good workers.  They will stay in the field all day long trying to earn love.  But here’s the problem, trying to earn love leads you on a journey to a far country.

Both prodigal sons and older brothers live in the far country.  When it comes to grace, the one has come to realize how desperately he needs it, the other is offended when someone else receives it.

May Amazing Grace always be our song.

As I’ve been doing this series of blog-posts on grace — my mind has been drawn to Jesus story of prodigal grace.   It might be his most well-known story.  Charles Dickens, the great English author, called it  the greatest story ever told.   Often known as The Story of the Prodigal Son it captures the essence of the Christian faith and sums up the core message of the Bible.  It is a story about walls we build and the life we can find beyond them.  It is a story of scandalous grace and unconditional love.

If you want to be embraced by the full wonder of the story you have to jump in.  Begin by placing yourself in the moment when Jesus is first telling the story.  In Luke 15:1 it says that all the tax-collectors and sinners kept coming to Jesus and Jesus was hanging out with them.  Now let me bring that picture into better focus for us today.   Tax-collectors in those days were rich slime.  They made their money by cheating and oppressing their neighbors.  “Sinners” — well that was anyone that religious people looked down on.

So picture this…Jesus is hanging out at the Rathskeller or a local frat house or the Phyrst.  He’s just playing darts or pool.  Eating pizza and wings, talking and laughing because he likes to be with people.  And no matter where he is, people want to be close to him.  Whether they are partiers, or girls who’ve embraced “the walk of shame,” men who have crossed every ethical line to cash in, or people who carry heart wounds and doubt there even is a God.  They all want to be close to Jesus.

Can I tell you what they have in common?  They all have walls around their hearts.   No matter where he is, people who are looking for life beyond the walls, gather around Jesus.  There’s just something about him.  Something kind and passionate; something in his eyes and his words that draws them.  Everywhere he goes, they come.

So Jesus is leaving the Rathskeller and the religious people — in those days they were called Pharisees and scribes — in the story Jesus will call them, “the older brother.”  They were hanging around outside the door, because there was no way they would go in.  When Jesus comes out, they grab him, they are upset, hey thought he was one of them, and they said, ‘Jesus, why are you hanging out with people like this.   By this time there is a crowd outside, it’s a mixed crowd.  Religious people and regular people.  Jesus says, “Gather around.  I want to tell you all a story.”

So if you have a moment go to Luke 15:11-31 (just click the link).  Listen to the story and ask yourself this question.  Which of the three characters in the story do I identify with the most?  Which of the three characters do I want to hang out with?  Why?

My Amazing Grace always be our song!

Liz Curtis Higgs was one of the best-known disc jockeys in America, and she lived quite a wild life.  In fact one day Howard Stern said to Liz, “You know, you need to clean up your act…or something bad’s gonna happen.”  Seriously something is wrong when Howard Stearn is functioning as your conscience.   Liz was going hard to the well of success and wild parties…to quench her soul-thirst.

That kind of life brought it’s share of hurts.  Liz had been burned by so many guys…her heart had been broken and hurt by so many men, she became a militant feminist.  But a girlfriend kept inviting her to church.  So one day
after a long, long time, she said, “Okay, I will go to church one time and ONE TIME ONLY.”  So she went to church one time with her friend.  And that week, the pastor just happened to be teaching on the Bible verse that says “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands.”  Not exactly a great verse to start with a militant feminist, okay?  She got a little uptight and a little ticked, but she
continued to listen and she actually heard the second part of the verse, which most people never talk about, “…and husbands – you sacrifice yourself; you give yourself for your wives just as Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for the church and died for her.”

Well, when Liz heard that part, she leaned over to her friend and said with a little cynicism, and said, “Shoot, I’d gladly give myself to any man if I knew he would die for me.”  Her friend leaned over and said, “Liz, there is man who loved you enough to die for you.  His name is Jesus Christ.  That’s how much He loves you.”

Hearing those words, was like waking up from a bad dream.  Liz began to see her life for what it was, an unfulfilled search to satisfy her thirst — for God.  Not long after that Liz surrendered her life to God’s love and started living the life of her dreams.

The Apostle Paul once said, “It’s the kindness of God that lead us to repentance.”  That’s grace.  It flows when we surrender.  It leads us to surrender.  Grace is not merely a second chance — unlimited do-overs.  It is not less than a second chance, but it is far more than forgiveness.  Grace changes us.

May Amazing Grace always be our song.

I think sometimes, when it comes to grace, perhaps our range of vision and understanding is simply to narrow.  We typically stop at forgiveness.  Grace = forgiveness = a second chance.  But grace actually goes well beyond forgiveness.  Paul says that it is by grace that we are saved — and “saved” actually goes well beyond, “I made it into heaven.”  Being saved is the process of becoming more and more like Jesus.  So grace goes beyond forgiveness and saved goes beyond hell-insurance.

In other words, God not only forgives us by grace, he redeems us and transforms us by grace. In Malachi 3, it is stated this way,  

Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the LORD Almighty. “But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal… He will sit and judge like a refiner of silver, watching closely as the dross is burned away.

When God comes close, do not expect it to be an entirely comfortable experience.  You may be unable to stand.  It may burn.  He is a refiner’s fire.  Burning away the garbage in our hearts. It’s not optional so, we have to decide, when God comes close will I let the fire burn?

A lady once went to watch a silversmith.  She actually wanted to have a better understanding of what it means that God is like a blazing fire, a refiner of silver.  The silversmith held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.  Did it ever feel to you like you were being held in the fire?  Not just the edges, but the very hottest spot?  Like God just wouldn’t let you go no matter how much it burned?

The silversmith went on to describe how the refining of silver took his full attention.  He had to sit right there holding the silver…watching it the entire time it was in the fire… left even a moment too long in the flames it would be destroyed.  At just the right moment he would bring the silver out of the fire…the dross… the impurities would rise to the top and he would skim it out.  Over and over again…he would do this till the silver was fully refined.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silver smith, how do you know when the silver is fully refined? He smiled and answered, “Oh, that’s easy –when I
look in the silver and see the reflection of my face.  I know it’s fully refined.”

God will not stop refining us till he sees his reflection in our hearts.  This is his grace.

May Amazing Grace ever be our song.

Every Saturday, when Ann Lee walks to the end of her driveway to get the mail she finds an envelope with the same return address:Harrison County Jail.  Inside is always a $1 check with the memo: “For causing the death of your daughter Whitney.”  It was Super Bowl Sunday, 1995.  Ann strapped her 4 year old daughter Whitney into her car seat and set out for a supermarket near home.  Brandon Blendon, 17, was driving behind them, a beer between his legs and two more on the front seat.  When she stopped, he didn’t.  The pickup slammed into the car, crushing Whitney.  She was in a coma for 49 hours before she died.

In the fall of 1996 Judge Whitefield made certain Brandon wouldn’t soon forget his past.  He sentenced him to 20 years and ordered him to pay $520 dollars in restitution — $1/week for 10 years.  He should’ve sent the last check about 3 years ago.

Can you imagine that burden of guilt? Can’t you just picture pain flowing from pen to check to mother…each week…week after week.  Few would question the justice in such a sentence.  Only the foolish would think there should be no consequences for our actions.   But let me ask you?

Will it be enough?  How many years and how many payments would it take to pay for the life of a 4 year old daughter?  How many $1 reminders will it take to bring peace to Brandon or Ann or her husband Jack?

What’s your picture of God? Is He your Judge Whitefield?  Do you imagine God keeping track of your every offense — every failure; big ones, little ones, secret ones — and He’s gonna make you pay, remind you every day, that you don’t measure up.  Or maybe He’s your Ann Lee and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to do enough to make it up to Him, for what you’ve done.

Read what Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:18-19:

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.  For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.

Did you catch that?  Go ahead and linger there for a moment.   Did you know that “in Christ” God doesn’t count your sins against you?  Isn’t that incredible?  God does not count our trespasses against us.  He’s not keeping track.  Do you understand?   Your biggest sin, your greatest failure, your deepest regrets –past, present, even future, they are covered by the riches of God’s grace.  Do you know why?  Because the price we could never pay…He paid.

I love how Joe Garlington said it,

If people don’t think that what we are telling them is too good to be true…then we aren’t telling them the good news.

If it sounds too good to be true, it just might be the gospel and this is the message that Jesus has commissioned us to take global.

May Amazing Grace always be our song.

Every  once in awhile I hear somebody question our commitment, or maybe it’s just my commitment to be against sin.  The questions arise from a variety of sources in a variety of forms.  Sometimes the questions come like this, “Is Calvary way too heavy on Grace?  Have we given up preaching truth?  Are we lukewarm?  Do we shy away from challenging people because we are afraid to offend them?  Have we become so seeker friendly that we are sin-friendly?”  Sometimes I don’t hear questions, I just hear statements.  “We want to go somewhere that teaches more on foundational topics like sin, the holiness of God, and hell.”

So I’ve been thinking about this lately — thought I would put some semi-random thoughts down in print.

1) I will always take it as a compliment when someone wonders if Calvary is too heavy on grace.  I love grace.  I live for and by grace.  I love the fact that there were people in Paul’s day (as in Apostle Paul) who thought he was too heavy on grace.  I grew up in a church that was light on grace and heavy on laws and the traditions of men.  That’s not Calvary.  Calvary is called to be a safe place for people to seek God, a people who will celebrate the fact that mercy overcomes justice.

2) At the same time I do not believe in cheap grace.  Read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book “The Cost of Discipleship.”  It’s one of my favorite books on living by grace.  He says words like,

“cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

“costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

You’ve heard me sound the call for costly grace lately when I have said things like, “You cannot follow Jesus without leaving something behind.”  It’s also behind the call to seek a “holy calling instead of a hallow calling.”  It is a motive behind every call to generosity.

3) I am convinced that our greatest sins are not the sins of commission, they are the sins of omission.  Our greatest sins may be less the bad deeds we do and more the good deeds we fail to do.  My preaching reflects that.  In the parable of the talents Jesus called the man who buried his talents and did nothing — wicked.

4) If you are not familiar with true Christianity, this may come as a shock to you, but..
True Christianity is not simply an invitation to become a better person.  It is not primarily a program for cultural reformation.   It is not a political party.  Nor is it simply a get out of hell free card.  It’s an invitation to live the life you’ve been
seeking by connecting with Jesus and receiving his grace.

5) I do believe in truth.  Grace is one of the truths in which I believe.  I do believe that sin is bad, but I also believe that mercy overcomes justice and the kindness of God leads us to repentance.  I believe that the only way we can be truly seeker-friendly is by becoming an enemy of sin and a champion of grace.  I love to challenge people with truth to be known as a people of radical love.

May Amazing Grace ever be our song.

I went to Avatar a week or so ago.  I know I’m a little late.  I’m a big sci-fi/fantasy fan, but not a big 3-D fan.  So it took me a while to go.  I think what finally put me past the tipping point was listening to a bit of Mark Driscoll’s Avatar evaluation (Mark is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle – big church).  Now granted if you know anything about Mark Driscoll — some call him the cussing pastor — you know that he likes to speak his mind and he enjoys a bit of controversy.

Anyway Pastor Driscoll called Avatar “the most demonic, satanic movie I’ve ever seen.” He called it “demonic paganism” with a portrayal of a “false Jesus,” a “false resurrection” and a “false heaven.”  Driscoll remarked, “That any Christian could watch that without seeing the overt demonism is beyond me.”  Such remarks coming from a professed fan of ultimate fighting — I decided I needed to see for myself this most demonic, satanic film.

So here are a few thoughts —

1) I thought the 3-D was actually quite good.  The glasses made the movie a little dark, but this was not your father’s 3-D experience.

2) The movie most definitely has a pantheistic (god is in everything, everything is god) worldview, but that has been one of Hollywood’s preferred world-views for years.  We might as well say that Star Wars and the Lion King were demonic movies (both were also quite pantheistic).

3) On the other hand there were some significant connectors to the true story of life — the gospel story — watching the movie you sensed the embrace of things like unconditional love, self-sacrifice, resurrection, incarnation, and even the restoration of creation.  C.S. Lewis suggested that story themes like this can awaken our sehnsucht — an innate sense that we were made for something we are missing.

4) Finally I like the dichotomy that John Ortberg points out in a Leadership Journal article.  He writes,

…the qualities in the heroes (of the movie Avatar) are remarkably consistent with many of the words listed by church leaders (in their description of mature Christians): courageous, loving, giving, loyal, generous. What it means to be a good person has been embedded by God pretty deeply into human consciousness.  How we get there is another matter.  Then I’ll ask this question: do you think the average unchurched person in America thinks of these characteristics when they hear the word “Christian”? Not so much.

If you go to Avatar, enjoy it through the lens of a good Biblical world-view.  It is pantheistic, but it also reminds me that there are elements of the gospel — at least reminders of a hunger for the gospel planted within all people.  I would encourage you to go with someone who is not a Jesus-follower and have a good conversation about their world-view and your world-view.  But just a head’s up — I wouldn’t start with the words — “that was the most demonic, satanic movie I’ve ever seen.”  I statement like that tends to be a conversation stopper.

So what do Icebergs, Ducks and the Kingdom of God have in common?

Last Sunday after the Midtown Gathering, a man was sharing with me some of the issues, ideas, and ponderings that he has been wrestling with lately.  At one point he asked me something like this…  “So do you think the church is getting it?”  I’ll be honest I don’t always even know what “it” is, but it’s a great question that has many different forms.  Are we getting the “church without walls” vision?  Are figuring out how to “leave a gospel mark” on the world?  Are taking seriously the charge to be more like Jesus?  Are we changing in a positive direction?

So I’ve been thinking about that — are we and am I getting it?

Alan Webber, a business journalist, former editor at Harvard Business Review has a blog called “Rules of Thumb.”  Yesterday’s blog was entitled “Icebergs and Ducks.”  What do icebergs and ducks have in common?  With both icebergs and ducks you can’t get the full picture unless you look below the surface.  Ever since the movie the Titanic we have known that 80% of an iceberg is below the surface.  Same with ducks, if you look at a duck floating on the water, everything looks calm, placid and passive, but below the surface, those little feet are paddling like crazy.  It’s all below the surface.

It’s no different in the Kingdom of God.  In order to know if I or we “are getting it,” we have to look below the surface.  This is true for the church and for us as individuals.  In fact Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  The very wellspring of life is below the surface.

But where do we look to determine how we are doing?  We tend to look surface level.  It’s easier, quicker, more quantifiable.  Is the church getting “it?”  Well the offerings are increasing, the number of people coming to our gatherings are increasing, the number of complaints we are getting is decreasing — yep we are getting it.  But if “it” is below the surface — surface level looks don’t really answer the question.

I’m not saying we’ll never see the changes above the surface, of course we will, but we need to be students of what is below the surface.  So I’m looking and listening for below surface stories of heart change:  Transformation, freedom from addiction, relational reconciliation, people focusing more on what I can give than on what I need to get, movement from consumer-oriented church-shopping to community-oriented teammates working together for the cause of Christ.

There is a parable coming up in our study of Mark that says, “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.”  The mustard seed is such a tiny seed but it grows above the surface into a might tree.  But the change, the growth, the life, started below the surface.

So what’s going on below the surface in you?