Luke 22:27

When the disciples have an argument about which among them was to be regarded as the greatest, Jesus gives a little illustration about a dinner, and asks them, "Who is greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves?" He answers His own question: "Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as one who serves (Luke 22:27). It is easy to think that, here, Jesus is redefining greatness; that to be really great, we need to "become as on who serves." So we Christians start trying to be great, but through obvious acts of service, rather than by trying to get to the front. It's like when you were at camp, and everyone raced for the back of the line, knowing that the counselors would say that "the last shall be first and the first shall be last." Though the route is different, it's still a race to the front.

So how can we be great if our only way there is cut off? It seems like a cruel trick: servanthood is the way to greatness, but servanthood, true, honest, and pure servanthood, turns out to be impossible. Jesus said that the one who reclines at table is greater, and He's right! And here's the kicker: I want to recline at table! I know the right answer is to serve, but sitting at the table is so much better. Left to my own devices, I don't really want to serve - I want to be served.

Thankfully, Jesus isn't giving us a new route to greatness. He's showing us that we're not great. The great have no need for a Savior, and we are in desperate need. It was on the cross, because of our inability to be great, that the Great One, Christ Jesus, was stripped of His greatness. It is in our recognition of our lack of greatness that we can clearly see the greatness of Christ, manifest in that least great of events, a public execution. The less great we find ourselves, the greater we find His gift.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Matthew 22:10

A king throws a wedding banquet for his son. He sends out the wedding invitations, probably to the best and brightest. When he sends his servants out to pick up the people he's invited, they say they don't want to come! He tells the invited guests how great the party is going to be, but they make fun of it. Some of the guests even mistreat and kill the messengers! Talk about not wanting to go to a party! The king decided that he wants a full house at the wedding party, so he sends his servants into the streets to bring in whoever they can find.

This is a great story for us. More than just being about a people who had the opportunity to accept the message of Jesus and didn't, it's about the next group of people...the ones who get the next opportunity. The original wedding guests were the sort of people who get to go to the real Hollywood power weddings. It's as if when Brad Pitt and angeline Jolie got married, no one on their guest list had accepted their invitation. Imagine if Brangelina announced their wedding, and then ended up inviting hundreds of people just off the street. I don't know what street it would have been, maybe in California or in France or in Rwanda. Anyway, that would be quite the situation, wouldn't it? Hundreds of Joe Schmoes going to the wedding of celebrities?

And we like stories like this, right? This is good news for you and me. If the A-listers don't get to go, maybe our name will eventually come up. This is the gospel: Jesus didn't come for the good, fancy people who are self-sufficient, successful, and glamorous in their own eyes. He came for the needy, the weak, the unpolished. The gospel, in other words, is for the rest of us - the street people who live our lives in perpetual fear that we'll never make it, that we'll never be invited. The gospel is for us, and Jesus is saying that we're the ones who end up inside the wedding feast.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

1 Peter 1:3-5

Can you believe the goodness of the good news? Can you believe that we're promised an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading? Never were three more beautiful words spoken. And the fact that Peter was the one who wrote them amazes me. Peter, who denied any relationship to Christ whatsoever while his innocent friend was being tortured. Peter may have been in the best position ever to believe that his inheritance had perished, been defiled, or faded. He must have been sure of it! It is only those who are convinced of their own badness who can perceive the incredible goodness of the good news.

Peter follows up these words with: "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials" (v. 6). He knows what that week between Jesus' resurrection and Jesus' appearing was like. It was full of suffering. He spent the whole time, I guarantee you, going over and over those three denials in his mind. :I do not know the man! How could I have said that! I don't believe that...what was I thinking?" He must have been sure that Jesus would show up holding the recording. Peter is imagining an eternity spent separated from this man he denied. And yet, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, when Jesus walks into the room that night after He's resurrected, He doesn't even mention it! It's as if Peter's inheritance is...could it be? Imperishable? Undefiled? Unfading? Peter might have started putting these words together in his head that very night.

We are like Peter. We are sure that our relationship with Christ has perished. That it has become defiled. That it has faded. And if our relationship with Christ is based on our performance, we'd be right. Thankfully for us, our relationship with Christ is based on His performance, His fidelity, and His love. Because His love for us is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, so is our connection to Him.

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Psalm 42:5

One of the greatest documentaries of the last several years is Murderball, the story of the United States quad rugby team, a Paralympic team of quadriplegics. A fascinating thing to watch in the film is the interplay between physical disability and mental attitude. As you might imagine, the quadriplegics who play murderball (quad rugby's nickname) are some of the most competitive and independent spirits in the world. They would kill themselves before letting anyone take pity on them. One of the players, Mark Zupan, tries to start physical altercations so that he can taunt people for not wanting to hit a wheelchair-bound man. He is trying to call attention to his self-sufficiency and strength in the face of his obvious weakness.

Of course, it's overcompensation. Feelings of weakness (the film begins with a painfully long scene of Zupan simply getting dressed) lead to professions of strength. The truth is, though, that these quadriplegics are suffering - you can see it in their faces. They live their lives in denial of it, in much the same way that we deny much of our suffering. Do we, knowing that Christ came to and for sufferers, wear the thorns in our flesh as badges of honor? It doesn't seem like it. We are more like quad rugby players, keeping our need deep beneath our surface, in the hope that Jesus won't have to come for us at all.

In a profound sense, we are just like Mark Zupan. We're spoiling for a fight. We want to be able to stand before Jesus and say, "Lord, You know we're not perfect! Look, we've suffered. Our family is broken, our self-esteem is low, we're confined to a wheelchair. It was a long, tough road, and we're a little woozy. But the important thing is, here we are." We want to think we made it ourselves. The truth is, we can't. We need Jesus.

Perhaps your life has made you aware that you're not making it. Today, remember that, though you may not be okay, Jesus gave His all for you and you are deeply loved.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,


 

1 Peter 5:8

In 2013, you couldn't search the name "Chris Tang" anywhere on the Internet without finding an attendant mention of Jeremy Lin. At the time, Tang was a Chinese American player at Virginia's Oak Hill Academy, a school famous for producing NBA talent such as Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and Rajon Rondo. he worked in total obscurity until those magical nights in the winter of 2011-2012 when "linsanity" struck New York, Tang was then labeled, for better or worse, "the next Jeremy Lin."

For the rest of his basketball life, Tang will likely be required to labor under the "next" banner. He can never just be Chris Tang, as long as There's a Jeremy Lin.

This reminds me of Peter's description of the Devil: "like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devout" (v. 8). The law of "be the next Jeremy Lin" has devoured Chris Tang, and it will continue to devour Chris Tang until he eventually surpasses Lin. But the law will not then be satisfied. It never is. It will merely morph into "be the next Chris Tang." The law is a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

But whence this lion? This can't be an infinite regression. It must have begun somewhere. Long ago, someone was the first "one you've got to be like." In basketball, it was perhaps George Mikan, the first "unstoppable force." In the world? It was God.

The reason that we all experience an irresistible desire for perfection is that God is actually perfect. His law is a reflection of that. Then the Devil comes like a lion to accuse us and to proclaim - rightly - that we in deserve condemnation.

There is, unfortunately, no cure for the law. As Martin Luther famously said, the quest for glory can never be satisfied; it can only be exterminated. And this is precisely what Jesus does with that roaring lion, Satan. He shuts his mouth, crushes him to death, and throws him into his own fire.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Ezekiel 36:26

This is how we imagine the relationship between our hearts, our wills, and our minds work: Your mind makes a decision - for instance, "I want to be in better shape." Then your will has to get involved: "I will wake up early every morning, go to the gym, and work out." It's not pleasant, so you've got to invoke the old willpower, right? And then if everything goes as planned, your heart comes around eventually: "I love working out!" So in a nutshell, we act as if the way things work is: what the mind chooses, the will works for, and the heart...well, the heart will catch up. Sound about right? That's how we live. The only problem is, about 95 percent of the time, our hearts never come around.

The things we hate to do to improve ourselves usually remain intolerable burdens. This is why so many people have bought and cancelled dozens of gym memberships over the years: they don't actually fall in love with the gym the way they thought they would. The reason is the above order of things isn't at all accurate. Here's how it really works: what the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. We all follow our hearts and then make excuses later. Paul gave this truth words when he said he did things he didn't want to do and didn't do things he wanted to do. It was his mind losing to his sinful heart.

English theologian Thomas Cranmer wrote a prayer that is perfect for today: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Today, remember that God has given you a new heart, permanently aligned with His.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

John 11:25-26

Jesus got word that a good friend was dying. Though He was a good ways away, Jesus told His disciples that the illness "is not to death" and that it was actually for God's glory. He waited with His disciples for two days before he even began the journey to see His friend. When He got there, not only was Lazarus dead, but he'd been dead for four days. In Jesus' time, people who weren't dead were declared dead all the time. After a while, they learned to wait a little before burying someone. Even as recently as the Victorian Age in England, being buried alive was so common that people were often buried with shovels, so it's not for nothing that John noted that Lazarus had been dead for four days.

Lazarus' resurrection was not just another healing. John's gospel systematically escalates Jesus' interaction with mankind. First, He baptized and preached, then He healed the sick, then He raised the dead. But we don't understand. We're like Martha, who could be paraphrased as having said, "Lord, if you'd gotten here sooner, my brother wouldn't have died." We want a Jesus who heals the sick because we don't trust Him to raise the dead. Mary and Martha thought that as long as they could get Jesus involved before things got too out of hand, everything would be okay.

Jesus is out to prove one thing: even death is "not to death." Not to Jesus. Jesus has something serious in mind. When Martha came to Jesus, He said, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die" (John 11:25). If we're honest with ourselves, Paul's description of us in Romans 3 is dead on: ruin and misery mark our ways. We're more than sick - we;re falling apart. Actually, it's even more than that. We're dead. Jesus Christ is a God who does something so much better than heal the sick. He raises the dead to new life.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,