Tag Archives: Gospel of Luke

Jesus Calls You to Be Selfish

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I confess, that title may be slightly misleading.

But only slightly.

All or Nothing

There is a common belief that anything less than absolute altruism somehow clashes with pure religion. While I understand the sentiment, how is anyone less than Mother Teresa expected to take even a step forward if this is true?

Desiring God (Piper)I believe the answer lies in “Christian hedonism“, a provocative phrase coined by John Piper in his 1986 book “Desiring God”.

If one can get past the shock of binding the terms “Christian” and “hedonism”, a wonderfully disorienting teaching awaits.

In one sentence, Piper lays it out like this: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  Jeremy Taylor, a 17th-century Anglican cleric once said that “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.” The concept has also been linked to Blaise Pascal, C.S. Lewis, and Jonathan Edwards, among others.

Tuck away the historical figures that you may or may not care about. This post’s title suggested that Jesus himself promotes such a teaching. Is that true?

14-biltmoreMusical Chairs

Luke 14 depicts Jesus giving seating advice after observing wedding guests eagerly jockeying for the seats of honour. A surface reading would suggest that Jesus was teaching them how to be more effective in their selfish pursuits, as if to say, “If you really want to sit at the head table, let me show you a trick that you may have missed with your small-scoped view.”

This is where the “purity police” show up. If the driving motive behind an act is a desire to receive reward or get ahead, doesn’t that undercut the act’s honour from the get-go?

I think Jesus would say, “No.”

And here’s why.

“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” (Ps 103:13-14)

stock-footage-old-stopwatch-clock-gears-mechanism-with-tick-tick-soundOur Maker knows how we tick.

He is not shocked to learn that we are hardly altruistic. In fact, I will be hard-pressed to have one such moment this week, maybe even today.  Most would agree that a will to survive or succeed appears to be our first nature.

Even more certain is this fact: God wants to lead me. He wants to direct my life and form me into a man more centered upon Him than upon myself. How to do this?

Harnessing our Selfishness

I believe God taps our self-centeredness as a tool toward redemption. It would not be the first time that God has used something lesser for something greater.

If this rubs you wrong, the key truth to remember here is that this hardly makes obedience any easier.  It is not as if God lowers the bar by allowing us to “function selfishly”.

In treating my self-seeking nature as His classroom, God requires a leap of faith so great that most will never draw near to its edge.

Invisible > Visible

I can only pursue unseen treasure if I am willing to release what appears to be already in my grasp. The promise of rewards for goodness–either in an afterlife or in due time–has no power to motivate those who prefer “living for today”. This is delayed gratification to its max. Putting money away for retirement, saving sex until marriage, reading books rather than watching movies–these, and a thousand other examples, highlight the intense struggle humanity has with delayed gratification. To imagine faith as an ignoble pursuit because it contains offers of unseen and untouched reward–this is out of touch with the challenge of the spiritual life.  Such a critic has never tried to live by faith.

Following Christ’s call requires unbelievable guts. Most cannot muster them. It demands a constant loosening of one’s grip and a willingness to settle on rewards that often uncertain and counter-intuitive.

That is the life of faith: Crushingly costly and richly rewarding all at once.

Be Ready

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dark_countryside_by_themagilla-d4vkqxm

They are up late.

The countryside was dark hours ago, and the chores are complete. On any other night, they would have headed to bed shortly after sunset, but tonight is no average night.

The master is expected to return.  He has sent word, and they will be ready for him.

This imagery is common to several portions of Jesus’ teachings. Luke 12:40 clarifies the point that lies just beyond the scene imagined above: “You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect.”

Any combination of “Son of Man” and “coming” quickly turn heads toward the end of time, the final coming.

And rightfully so.

However, it dawned on me recently that there is a message that resonates in another way as well.

Just as Christ’s final return is unknown, so too is every move of God.

  • A season of stripping off layers.
  • A time of trial.
  • A green pasture of rest.
  • A wilderness of discipline.
  • An unimagined opportunity.

Such pages of life are not bookmarked in advance. They arrive unannounced, just like the master to his household.  But when they do arrive, the readied heart can open the door to them, confident that the Creator comes with them, that He is eager to dance the upcoming steps with us, to fill us with His life-giving rhythms to the extent that we take His hand and engage with His movements.

But one must be ready.

It is oh-so-easy to live with eyes blinded to anything beyond the immediate, failing to even consider where the Infinite One is seeking to infiltrate our grocery-getting, rugrat-raising, marriage-managing, schedule-surfing lives.

But that’s the importance of being ready.

To tie readiness to Christ’s final coming is to suggest that there is one day when being ill-prepared would be costly.

Truth be told, there is cost in every moment that we press forward with eyes closed and hearts hard to the Constant Companion.

Today as you lay your plans, top the list with this: Be Ready.

Be ready to listen up.

Be ready to speak up.

Be ready to step up.

Your day will not be a rat-race of randomness. Your Master has mixed up its ingredients, and He reveals His presence and plans on His own schedule.

So be ready.

You Can Make Jesus Marvel!

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It’s all been done; that’s what we are told.

And most days, we believe it.

Living in an age of accessible information and technological wonder, placed in a society of privilege and plenty, we are slow to be shocked. Skeptical and cynical, we salt everything. Amazement is nearly an extinct response, as extreme entertainment and non-stop stimulation have stolen such wonder from us.

Surely Jesus, one who had tasted heaven’s glory firsthand felt some such struggle as well.  Yet Luke 7 tells us of an incident that made Jesus marvel.

CenturionThe chapter opens with story of a Roman centurion. One of his dear servants was deathly ill. Having heard rumblings of a wonder-worker named Jesus, the centurion asked the Jewish elders of his community to approach the healer on his behalf. The Jews were quick to respond, as the Roman had constructed their local synagogue in a display of his affection toward the Jewish people and their way of life.

Jesus agreed to come.

But as he neared the house, he was intercepted by friends of the centurion. They carried a simple message: “Do not trouble yourself in coming, for I am not worthy to have you in my home. This is why I did not presume to come myself. Rather, say the word and healing will take place. I know how authority works as I serve under leaders, and soldiers serve under me. Commands are given, and action is executed. Please wield your power kindly toward me and my servant.”

And this made Jesus marvel.

One can almost imagine him stopping in stride. Smiling a sly grin and slightly shaking his head as he closed his eyes.

This was understanding. This profession of faith, from an outsider nonetheless, was profoundly insightful.

It carried conviction that Jesus was more than a tricky physician, who healed the insides by touching the outside. Rather this declaration professed a belief that Jesus was a spiritual power-broker, a mover and a shaker in the invisible realms. Every type spirit and force knelt before him, and a domain existed–even here and now–where his command was beyond question.

The centurion foresaw an answer to the prayer, “May Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” He could see that such a kingdom was already at hand, and he was pleading humbly and honorably with Jesus to let it break into his life in great and gracious ways.

I want to make Jesus marvel just like that.

Lent is a Wilderness Season

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Early in Luke’s gospel, he details the rise of John the Baptist’s public ministry.  His third chapter begins by rooting John in time by surrounding him with the “vital statistics” of his day:

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Most of these names mean little to today’s reader; most of these places are unknown. But in John’s (and Jesus’) day, these were the high rollers in the power centers. These were the figures writing the rules and making the waves.

And fascinatingly, God uses them as the background music for the scene that He is unfolding.

Into this time and place, God’s word arrived.

His message would inaugurate His move. And that word was delivered to a no-man in the no-man’s land: John in the wilderness.

Judean Wilderness

The wilderness of Scripture is the academy of the saints.

It was the scene of Moses’ leadership course in Midian, as Yahweh transformed an angry murderer into a surrendered deliverer. It was the venue for Israel’s forty-year shaping, which cost them an entire generation, on how to live as freed people in the Promised Land. It was also the setting for Jesus to be tested by the Adversary, ahead of his public ministry.

Luke depicts John the Baptist, also in the wilderness, seeking and listening.  The human eye can quickly glaze over at the vastness and blankness of the wilderness, and one small man in its midst can seem like dust.

Yet Luke, having sketched all the people and places where logic might expect Divinity to deliver His message, is explicit that this word is addressed to the simple one in the silent place: “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Lent is a wilderness season.

It drives us into modes of reflection and recounting. We agree with God on the terms of full access that He might search us and freely reveal—even rebuke—whatever that He finds.  The wilderness, by its nature, is a refining environment. It swallows those who ill-equipped to dwell there. It silently pushes people toward precipices, where survival is uncertain.

Lent, by its nature, is the seeking of such an environment.  As did John, we place ourselves in a wilderness setting—via fasting or forgiving, reflecting or repenting—because we know that people who are at the ends of themselves, dwelling on the ends of the earth, are often those upon whom the life-giving word of God falls first.