Got Love?

I think it would take a major mental shift for today’s Christian culture to grasp Paul’s meaning in those first verses of 1 Corinthians 13:

“If I pound it out from the pulpit in words that bring them pouring down the aisles… If I become a sought-after Bible teacher, and am flooded with letters of gratitude from people who finally grasp truth that always eluded them… If I’m the one everyone asks to pray for them, because God always seems to answer my prayers… If my church sends me out as a missionary, and I leave everything behind, and them suffer persecution in a foreign land and end up a martyr… If I do any of these kinds of things, but lack love, I haven’t done anything!”

Of course, if you’re like me you don’t qualify for any of those heroic scenarios. I’m no preacher or Bible teacher or prayer giant or missionary. But the question is for us, too. Whatever we’ve done for God, what has the motive been? What the overall attitude? How many of us have worked so hard for so many years – but really haven’t done anything out of real love? Duty, maybe, or habit or selfish satisfaction or desire for recognition or trying to earn our way into God’s good graces. But authentic, God-given love?

Methinks there’s a lot of clanging and clashing going on in the larger Christian church today, and it’s the sound of service without love. There are a lot of gongs and cymbals announcing the implementation of gifts without genuine consideration for the rest of the body. Let’s make sure we aren’t adding to the commotion.

It might mean sitting down with the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to reassess our work for Him, and our motives. Our home life, our work life, our social life, our ministry for Him - all areas. According to the Apostle Paul, there is only one ingredient that will prevent our efforts in each area from falling into oblivion, from being counted as worthless. That ingredient is Love.

Got love?

When I was a kid, our family used to put jigsaw puzzles together. We followed a sort of system: first we’d look for all the straight-edged pieces, and build the frame. Next one of us might piece together the blue sky while another tackled the patch of flowers in the lower left corner… Finally it would all start to come together, and what a celebration it was to fit the last piece into the puzzle, and admire the finished creation.

In fact, it got to be such a coveted honor to insert that final piece, that one of us would often hide a puzzle piece in order to insure that we were the one to complete the picture.

Does it seem sometimes (when Pastor John is lobbying for children’s workers or the Internal Impact team is looking for Sunday morning greeters or…) that somebody is sitting on a puzzle piece at FAC… hoarding what the body of Christ needs to make it complete and healthy?

There are no high honors for the one who holds out the longest! Those of us sitting on our puzzle pieces are losing the joy of fitting into the right place, completing our part of the puzzle, connecting people with God and each other, giving a true picture of Christ to our community and the world.

Or have you looked and looked, and still can’t see where your spiritual gift fits in? Maybe you should try what we did as children building that puzzle, and hold out that spiritual gift and say, “Here’s what I have. Help me find where it fits in at FAC.” Another set of eyes might spy exactly where your gift should be exercised.

So get it out. Hold it up. Fit it in. And let the celebration begin!

A Lesson in Gratitude

My family always exchanged Christmas gifts with my aunt and her family. I clearly remember the year that we gave my cousin, young Nathan, some model train tracks.

It was a great gift - an accessory to the train set his parents had bought him for Christmas. This extension set would enlarge the track and make it lots more fun to play. The only problem was, my aunt’s family hadn’t opened their gifts yet.

I don’t think anyone had thought about this at the time… until Nathan unwrapped his present. He looked at the track extensions - lonely, useless little pieces - and smiled and politely thanked us for the gift. He didn’t appear to have any idea what they were for, and even if he had, he couldn’t have done anything with them at all! I just wonder if he didn’t wish (until Christmas at least) that we’d asked him what he’d like, or at least come up with something a little more brilliant… But I have to give him credit – he didn’t turn up his nose or turn down the gift. He didn’t look around and whine for his brother’s gift instead. He accepted the puzzling, perhaps disappointing present he’d been given.

If only we could always do so well. Pastor Ben reminded us that the Holy Spirit has given gifts to each believer. But isn’t it often a lot like Nathan’s predicament? We struggle to identify the gift God has given us – What is it? And then we struggle to figure out what to do with it! Where does this fit in? Is something missing? Isn’t it all a mistake? Couldn’t God have come up with something more fun, more useful, more exciting…

I think from Nathan we can learn that God’s gifts are really great – we just need to be grateful even when we don’t see their purpose or yet understand just what we’re supposed to do with them. We need to accept them and hang on to them (even work to develop them while we’re waiting), watching for the opportunity to pull them out and put them in use.

Because they’ll snap into place as surely as Nathan’s train tracks did, a few days later. And the Body of Christ around us will be enlarged and encouraged when that happens.

Holy Mysterion

Here at FAC, the first Sunday of every month is an invitation to mystery. The mystery of Holy Communion.

For nearly two thousand years, theologians have tried to solve it. Some insist the bread and cup become the actual body and blood of Christ. Others term it a “spiritual feeding” on Christ. Still others say He is simply present in an unusual way as we remember His death for us. The church has been trying to lay it all out in black and white for nearly two thousand years, but the case remains unsolved.

No wonder. The Greek word used in the early church for sacrament is mysterion, usually translated mystery. It indicates that through sacraments, God discloses things that are beyond human capacity to know through reason alone (gbod.org). In a way we can’t fully understand, He uses communion as a “means of grace” to help open us up to Himself and His work.

So as for what exactly happens at Holy Communion…it seems we ought to let it be a mystery. God’s ways can be hard to define. Sometimes only a mind as large as His can fully understand what He’s doing.

Instead, the next time the plate of bread is coming our way and the tray of juice is passed… we might do better to shiver at the inexplicable: Someone is present; Something is happening. Christ is attending by His Spirit, grace is flowing, the ancient sacrifice is still pleading for us. And then we should take up the broken bread and the wine-red juice and, as the old Methodists said, “feed on Him in our hearts by faith.”

For it’s a mystery… a mystery that should keep us on the edge of our seats the first Sunday of every month at FAC.

Because He Stooped So Low

“It takes more grace than I can tell to play the second fiddle well.”

So goes the saying, referring to the difficulty of being subordinate to someone else – second in command, inferior in perceived status, weaker in power. No one can argue that the role does indeed require grace…

“But,” my adopted dad used to say, “the second fiddle plays the harmony.” And harmony is a beautiful thing. It takes the melody and makes a masterpiece of it. It takes the message and carries it to the heart. It embellishes and completes the efforts of the solitary first violinist.

It’s the beauty of subordination. But in our culture we’re more familiar with its opposite – insubordination. The refusal to take orders, the inability to walk in the shadow of others, the insistence on equal billing. It’s the independent/equality streak in our American mentality, gone awol. And it’s everywhere – in the schools, in the workplace, sometimes in the church (sadly), and often in the home.

Are you in a position that calls for subordination? I think, in some area or another, we all are. So where can we second fiddles find a role model? Who has done it right? Who has sung the harmony perfectly and gladly and without apology?

Jesus Christ, who, “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing… [and] humbled himself and became obedient to death” (Phil. 2:6-8 NIV). And “[because He stooped so low] God has exalted Him” (2:9 AMP). In fact, God has given Jesus a name to which every knee will one day bow and every tongue will proclaim as Lord.

Jesus made Himself nothing intentionally, premeditatedly, and without begrudging or complaining. Gethsemane tells us it wasn’t automatic or pretty or pleasant - quite the opposite. But it was worth it, for Him and for us.

As Bill Hybels wrote in Descending Into Greatness (highly recommended reading, by the way), “If we want to follow in the footsteps of the Son of God, we have to consciously move down.”

Consciously, on purpose, imitating the One Who stooped so low for us. I’m becoming more and more convinced that I don’t have to be afraid to do the same. How about you?