Tag: Embody the Gospel

Striving To Be For All

As a Christian in the YMCA, I strive everyday to live out our mission in a way that honors Christ and builds up others in spirit, mind and body.

One of the things I love about the Y is their commitment to be “for all.” That’s not an easy promise to keep, but it’s the right thing to do.

In getting to know more staff and members of the Y, I’m impressed at how many strive everyday to be “for all”. I appreciate the honesty from those who are on the journey to learn how to be for all.

There are always more people to be for, and it takes a lot of humility, patience, wisdom, and compassion to learn how to be for others.

It means a lot to me to have this kind of support from the Y as they gently, methodically, and persistently explore how to be for all in a way that embodies our Christian principles, builds spirit, mind, body for all, and strengthens the foundations of our community.

Because this is such personal work that requires inner transformation, as a Christian my striving to be for all is sourced in Christ.

He is both an example of how to be for the world – a beautiful but often horribly broken world- and be a savior of people – beautifully but also tragically broken people.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Christian writing around the same time the YMCA was being established in Britain, North America, and the world. His writings have been helpful to me in striving to live Christianly in a way that is caring, honest, respectful, and responsible.

His quote below has helped me reflect on how Christ helps me be for all.

I’m not always a very good Christian, and I’m not always very good at being for all.

But I appreciate what Kierkegaard is getting at here for Christians.

My take on the quote: Being saved from our sins should keep us humble and full of unending compassion for others, and when we fail at that, we are reminded of how much humble compassion Christ has towards us, which prompts us to repent and renew our striving to be humble and compassionate, with the help of Christ himself as our teacher and savior.

“It must be firmly maintained that Christ did not come to the world only to set an example for us. 

If that were the case we would have law and works-righteousness again.

He comes to save us and in this way be our example. 

His very example should humble us, teach us how infinitely far away we are from resembling him.

When we humble ourselves, then Christ is pure compassion. 

And in our striving to approach him, he is again our very help.

It alternates: when we are striving, then he is our example; and when we stumble, lose courage, then he is the love that helps us up.

And then he is our example again.”

~ Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, pg 223

This writing from Kierkegaard helps me frame how I strive to “love my neighbor as myself” which is how I try to be for all.

Don’t Trip Over Miracles

Maybe you’re like some of my friends who seek the truth, respect science, try to see the world as it really is, and thus are skeptical of all the miracles in the Bible. For a variety of reasons, the seeming centrality of miracles in the Bible keeps them from believing it to be a trustworthy source of wisdom and revelation. I sympathize with them.

I used to pray for miracles. When my youngest brother Ben was 13 he went blind due to a small brain tumor, and then died later that summer. We begged God to heal him. My dad was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor a few years ago. We begged God for a miracle. We didn’t get the one we prayed for. I admit I was angry and disillusioned.

These are two ways I have tripped over miracles. We trip over miracles when we make them a bigger deal than they really are – both in the Bible and in our modern life. We trip over miracles when they become the object of our attention instead of their context. I think there are healthier ways to put miracles (of the Bible and the ones we beg for these days) in perspective.

For example, in the gospel Mark writes about two stories where Jesus heals a man who is deaf and mute, and then feeds four thousand people with a few pieces of bread and fish. In our scientific era, it’s easy to react skeptically to this account. It’s also a spiritualist era, and we can too easily focus on the miracles as proof of the divine. But this is tripping over the miracles and missing the point.

In this story, Jesus was approached by friends who begged him to heal their deaf, mute pal. Because of compassion, Jesus took him aside, away from the crowd, and healed him – and then “commanded them not to tell anyone.” What kind of ruler does that? If Jesus was a typical Israelite or Roman or American king, when he healed someone or fed four thousand people with a few pieces of bread and fish, he would make a grand speech demanding loyalty, making more exorbitant promises, and leveraging the crowd’s energy for political power.

That is not King Jesus does with his power. When he heals and feeds people, it’s out of compassion, it is to embody the gospel, to inspire and empower people to join in this power-full mission of healing and flourishing. What kind of king would do that with such power today? It’d be a miracle if they did….

I’m not saying that God doesn’t do miracles anymore. I’m just reflecting on the gospel and reminding myself not to trip over the miracles. I’m not asking skeptics to believe in miracles. But I am inviting you, when you read the gospel, to not focus on “miracles” but instead on the compassion that generated the healings and feeding, and how King Jesus leveraged that power. If you don’t trip, you’ll see that this is the bigger miracle.

If you do believe in miracles, and pray for them, and have witnessed them, and benefitted from them, don’t trip over them. Don’t set your heart on miracles at the expense of setting your heart on Jesus. Not getting the miracles we beg for can trip us into resentment and bitterness towards God. We then miss the real point of the miracles: Jesus demonstrating to his followers – heal with the power you have been given, feed with the resources you have received.

We might think we don’t have much to offer, but then we are missing the point of the story: it was trust in God and compassion for humanity that drove the work of Jesus, which was also the source of his power. This is what we are saved to do, in Jesus’ name.

The real miracle is not that we are healed or fed, but that we become more love-full and actually do the work of alleviating hunger and sorrow in our community amidst our ongoing struggles Even while are ill or under-resourced, or busy or anxious.

When Jesus inspires you to do that, we won’t be tripping over miracles.

Persistence That Heals

It’s hard to stay focused. There is so much to distract our attention. Even when you set your mind to a task, there seem to be ever increasing temptations to stray. Whether with personal goals, workplace initiatives, or community aspirations, it takes enormous efforts to persist.

Sometimes what undermines our persistence is the unpreparedness for the distractions or obstacles. We knew that it wouldn’t be easy, but we weren’t ready for how hard or how long it would take. Other times our desires get diluted for the goal we had set to achieve. Or, we question the worthiness of the original goal we set.

Persistence is the secret sauce of success. Seneca defined it as “constancy of purpose.” To persist is not sexy or convenient. It often makes you unpopular because you always have to say “no” to others who mean well but would otherwise undermine your commitment. Or it wears you out, especially fighting the temptation to take the wider road more often taken. To persist is grinding it out, feet on the ground, every day showing up, resolving to stay at it.

Jesus had to persist. Sometimes we think that because Jesus was God, everything was easy for him. That somehow because God is all-powerful, Jesus effortlessly stayed the course. In the gospel according to Mark, we have a story of Jesus hiding in a house across the Israelite border in Syrian-Phoenicia. He had confronted the Pharisees and convicted the crowds and felt the need to get out of the country and let things cool off for a bit. Persisting in his mission led to conflict and the need to get away to reflect on what to do next.

Jesus came as the King of Israel with a mission to deliver his people from slavery, to proclaim forgiveness of their sins to those that would repent of their rebellion towards God. Jesus came with the power of God to bring about the salvation of God’s people, to bring healing to their broken hearts and hope to their sin-wrecked lives.

So when a Greek woman from Syrian-Phonecia discovers him hiding in her village, she seeks him out and asks him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Jesus essentially says no. That’s not what he came to do – he came first to set Israel free from the evil one. She was asking him to deviate from his mission, and he resisted her request. But nevertheless, she persisted. She didn’t take no for an answer from the King of Israel. As a mother, she couldn’t do anything else but persist for a yes. Jesus was deeply moved by her persistence and healed her daughter.

The persistence of Jesus in his mission almost caused him to say no to a healing opportunity of a little girl from an enemy nation. The persistence of a distraught mother overcame Jesus’ resistance to deviate from his mission to Israel. Jesus didn’t heal many non-Israelites. He rarely left Israel. But to those that asked, he would say yes. Why? The mission of Jesus was to restore the mission of Israel: to be a people that leverage their power in the world for the healing of the nations. As God’s people, they were to persevere in the ways of justice and mercy, a source of light amidst the dark empires of the world.

Her persistence expanded Jesus mission of healing. Jesus persisted in his mission of healing, including women, the poor, outcasts, and outsiders. And now Jesus persists with you. There are more mothers out there pleading for their daughters to be healed due to the ravages of evil. There are more fathers begging for their sons to be rescued from death. And Jesus is calling you to leverage your power, the power of our community, the power of your workplace to persist in the healing of the wounded.

What’s your purpose in the world? What is God calling you to do? May you join in with the expanded mission of Jesus to heal what has been maimed, abused, neglected, and corrupted. The world needs more healers who persist.