God's mandate and measure of maturity

I preached this past week on Micah 6:8, justice and mercy as God's mandate and measure of our maturity. We had a follow-up discussion on the sermon in which someone asked, "Are you equating justice with fairness, that is, equal distribution of resources?" Not really. Justice is more "right(eous) judgment." When King Solomon met 2 mothers in his hall of justice, one lost her child to death's cold grip as she accidentally smothered or crushed the baby in the night during sleep, but she tried to claim the other woman's child as her own. Solomon did NOT say, well, life has been cruel and unfair, let's give this grieving woman this healthy and living child. Nor did he cut the baby in half so that everyone received an equal portion (though he wisely presented that as the way of finding out the true mother of the living child). He made a right judgment, finding out and then finding favor on the real mother. We don't necessarily divide our paycheck in half and share it with the first person who stretches their hand out. But we make a righteous judgment. That might be that we give food or a listening ear and prayer.

That being said, the Bible does say that the poor have a claim upon the time, favor, and resources of the wealthy. That might be that we give them our whole paycheck. The ancient church father John Chrysostom the golden tongue said (paraphrase) that if we withold help from the poor, when we have enough for ourselves, then we are essentially robbing them. The reason is two-fold. One is that we are all made in God's image and God's example and command to us is to open our hands to satisfy the needs of every living creature. Our money, time, etc is His money which means it is at His disposal to help someone else. The second is that anyone we meet who is in need of mercy is a reflection of us, the redeemed. For we were and always are in need of the mercy of Christ, so we who have been shown matchless and mighty mercy from God's throne of grace are compelled to show mercy to others. I was the homeless man. I was the prostitute. I was the orphan. I was the impoverished and imprisoned. God clothed me, fed me, forgave me, released me, and welcomed me into his home. Mercy begets mercy.

We will not ever be "good Samaritans" (Luke 10) if we don't first see ourselves as first needing a "good Samaritan" to first heal us, bind up our wounds, pay for our way and stay. Only if we see ourselves as the wounded, beaten, and bloodied man in the ditch, the one in NEED of mercy from Christ, the good Samaritan, will we ever and always be willing to extend our hand and heart to others in need.

We are not called to just give out money to any who asks, but we are bound to give mercy to all who need. We give and we live wisely, not miserly. We let mercy limit mercy. We do not withhold help because it is undeserved or would eat into our comfort or safety or happiness. We only withold help if it is the wisest and most merciful thing to do in a given situation.

My closing thought is this: God loves justice, delights in justice, does justice daily. We are called to act justly and love mercy. Do we love justice and mercy? Do we even do either? Surely believers and unbelievers alike THINK about justice and mercy. We can't escape the needs all around us that confront us and interrogate us: will you help the helpless or hopeless, the down-and-out and undeserving? Surely we think about justice and mercy, and probably, we think that we're pretty good people, doing our part? But do we truly DO justice and mercy? Is that characteristic of us any given week? At all this past year? And beyond doing, do we delight, do we love mercy? Paul taught us that if we show mercy, we must do it cheerfully.

Wrath and tears

I mentioned in my sermon this past week that Paul calls imitations, imposters "children of disobedience" rather than children of God, and that God's wrath is on them and they will have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God.

Our betraying each other and God is not something he will allow to fester and spread against His good creation and against people made in His image and against His own throne. His wrath is the settled, consistent, and righteous opposition to the absurd arrogance and atrocious apathy that we assume when we thoughtlessly trample God's name, his ways, and his people.

It is a hard word, but I spoke it with tears.

A good sermon by Jonathan Edwards that I've condensed and modernized into brief headings and paragraphs: visit www.BethelCC.net, Bethel UC, Resources, and scroll to the bottom, "God Just in Punishing Sinners." (sorry, hyperlink function not working today)

Imitate Him, not Imitations

This Sunday Aug 31, 2008, I preached Ephesians 5:1-14, http://bethelcc.net/sermon_archive.php?targetPage=73 on being imitators of God, rather than being imposter imitations of the world's shame or just some external religious sham. We had a good discussion Sunday night at the Ellis' home on how to really be light to such a hard and dark world with headlines in our own neighborhood that make us shudder.

Whether my neighbor the landlord who was burned to death last week, or the kid across the street who was arrested the very next day for dragging, stripping, and beating another kid who came from a few blocks down to our block, whether the young mother of four who aborted another child and is trying to raise her children while the two fathers of her children are incarcerated, or the two men who stood across the street for an hour last weekend till past midnight having a rap battle using the most loud, perverted, and violent language you wouldn't want to imagine, while the kids who come to our kid's ministry literally rolled in the middle of the street with laughter...

It could almost seem hopeless. But the call of Isaiah echoed in Paul in Ephesians 5 is
"Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
This is not just a gentle reminder that breakfast is on the table and we should roll out of bed. This is the voice of God that thunders, shakes the forests, and wakes the dead. This is the prophetic voice calling to the four winds and the Spirit of God rushing upon dead bones in dry valley to assemble a living army and produce a flowing river teeming with life.

This is a command that provides what it requires, giving sleepers the call to come out from the covers of darkness, giving corpses the command to walk out of their coffins, giving all of us who live in darkness, the hope of the light of Christ, the light of life.

And we are not just living in the light of Christ, but the light of Christ is in us, we are children of light, begotten of His light, and Paul even says in this text that we ARE LIGHT in the Lord. Kind of hard to escape holiness and evangelism when Paul puts it like this. How can we go on sinning? He doesn't just say, "The light shines on you to expose your sin" (though he does), but "You ARE light" (what place does darkness even have in you, what business could it possibly have at the doorstep of your mind?). How can we keep our lives and mouths from proclaiming His marvelous light when we ARE light in Him?

We MUST imitate God, for we ARE His children. We must shine His light in our dark world, for we ARE His light.

A minor bloggage in a major artery

I've been thinking about starting a blog, mainly for my friends, friends, and my church family to be informed and to interact together on life and ministry in the city. The city that is broken but being re-glued by grace. The city that is dirty, but being cleansed by the washing with water of the Word. Most of all, I hope that this blog will encourage those of us who are working for the transformation of this city into the New City, by remembering that we in a real sense ARE the City, we are the Bride, the New Jerusalem, the Holy City. We work to remove the broken bottles and filthy litter from these streets and lives of this grown-over garden knowing that we are not only working in hope and laboring in love for Eden to return in more glory than the original story, but that we are also the Lord's garden, the planting of His hand, for His splendor.

So I'll consider this a minor conversation within a small circle amid the swirling mass of information cluttering the airwaves of the bloggosphere. A minor bloggage in a major artery.