The Servant King

Last week I began a sermon series in church called All Hail King Jesus! We're poking around Jesus' Passion Week in John's Gospel looking at dimensions of Jesus' kingship. Jesus is no ordinary king. As He walked on the earth Jesus lived in no palace, wore no crown, had no money, employed no servants, owned no land, collected no taxes, had no horse and carriage to ride around in. Jesus was a poor man who walked everywhere he went. And Jesus was more the servant than the served. He said as much to His disciples: “The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). Jesus is a servant King. Few stories capture that part of Jesus' kingship like the time He washed the disciples' feet the night of His betrayal. I wonder if Simon Peter's retelling of that event might sound something like this …

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I can be a little thick-headed at times. I’ve never been all that good at interpreting signs and symbols. I’m a straight-forward man. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Don’t speak in riddles. Don’t beat around the bush. Don’t dress it up with 20-dollar words and a bunch of poetry. Just say it. Be clear. Be blunt. Just say it. Whether chasing fish on the Sea of Galilee, bartering for the best price at the market, or hashing out things with my wife, straight talk has always served me well.

When I left my fishing business to be a disciple of Jesus, straight talk paved the way. “Follow me,” said Jesus. It doesn’t get much clearer than that—“Follow me.” I know what that means: Jesus is the leader, I’m the follower, I go where He goes, and I do what He tells me. “Follow me.” I can understand that.

But there were times when Jesus didn’t talk so straight and when He wasn’t easy to understand. The story you heard in the Scripture this morning is one of those times.

Though we didn’t grasp it in the moment, Jesus was just a day away from being nailed to a cross. We were in Jerusalem for the Passover and had gathered in the evening for a meal. It had been a tense week. The week began on a high note with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to the cheers of an admiring crowd. The week had spiraled down from there. Opposition to Jesus seemed to be growing larger and bolder. Most of us sensed we were at some kind of turning point here but none of us could put our finger on it. You could just sort of feel the tension in the room that night as we ate our meal. Conversation was limited and Jesus seemed lost in his thoughts.

And that’s when Jesus did a very strange thing. He got up from the table. Every head craned to see what He was up to. Strangely, Jesus took off his robe, draped it across a chair, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around his waist. Caught off guard by this strange behavior, none of us said a word. When He got the towel squared away, Jesus took hold of a pitcher and poured the water into a large basin. I thought to myself, “Surely He’s not going to do what I think He’s going to do. Not Jesus. Not the Master. Not for us.”

But that’s exactly what He did. He knelt down and began to wash our feet—patiently, carefully, tenderly, individually. Messiah Jesus was washing our feet.

Our feet! Feet are rarely one’s most distinctive feature. I’ve seen them all—hammer toe, corns, bunions, fungus, crooked toes, missing toenails, toenails a half-inch thick, crusty, callused, filthy, stinking feet. You walk our dusty, muddy roads in sandals, and you are going to have foot issues. I don’t even like washing my own feet let alone anybody else’s. Yet King Jesus knelt down to wash our feet.

The men were in shock. And why wouldn’t we be? Most people washed their own feet. Washing feet was about as low as it gets. The task of foot-washing was so menial that even Jewish slaves were exempt. That job was kept for Gentiles. Foot-washing was a degrading and lowly task. When done by a wife for her husband, a child for her parents, a student for his teacher, it was viewed as an act of extreme devotion. But I’ll tell you what never happened in regard to washing feet: never did persons with a higher status wash the feet of those beneath them. Well, anyway it never happened until that night in the upper room when King Jesus washed our feet.

We were in shock all right. Nobody said a word as Jesus worked His way around the table. One would look at another and just sort of shrug his shoulders. What are you going to do?

Well, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to refuse. My brother disciples may stand for such a thing, but I won’t. Jesus is better than this. He’s certainly better than me. “Lord, you wash my feet?”

“I know it seems strange to you now, Simon, but you’ll understand it later.”

And as I pulled my feet away from Him and up underneath me, I said, “Understand it later or not, you will never wash my feet.”

Jesus sighed (I heard that a lot in our relationship). “Simon, if I don’t wash you, then you won’t belong to me.”

Hmm. That shed a different light on things. I didn’t know exactly what He meant at the time, but I couldn’t bear not to be one of His. So I thrust my feet toward Him, bowed my head and extended my hands: “Lord, then don’t stop with my feet. Wash my hands and my head as well.”

“That’s not necessary,” Jesus replied. “A person who has bathed already only needs to wash his feet to be completely clean. And you are clean—well, all of you except one.” (I realized later the unclean one was Judas—but that’s another story. Jesus washed Judas’ feet too, by the way.)

But back to Jesus’ conversation, and if His words sound a bit confusing to you, it’s because they were confusing to me. Like I said before, I prefer straight talk, and Jesus was talking in riddles here. But He was right. I did understand it later—as in after the cross and the resurrection. That’s when it became clear. Jesus wasn’t talking about hygiene here; He was talking about holiness. His washing our feet was a picture of a greater thing, a greater, deeper cleansing. Only that cleansing wouldn’t come from a stooped over Jesus holding a basin and a towel; it would come from a stretched out Jesus nailed up on a cross. Jesus washing our feet with water was a picture of Jesus washing our souls with His blood. When He washed our feet, I didn’t think He could stoop any lower than that. I was wrong. The cross was lower, much lower. And Jesus stooped that low so He could wash more than our feet; He could wash out the stubborn stains of our sin and set us in relationship with Him—make it so we belong to Him. I shudder when I think that my pride almost got in the way of receiving Jesus’ gracious gift. What was I thinking?

Like I said, I prefer straight talk, and that’s what came next. When Jesus finished, He left us with our thoughts while He washed his hands, put his robe back on, and took His place again at the table. Once He was settled He said, “Do you understand what I have done to you?”

We looked at one another thinking, “Honestly, no.”

“You call me Teacher and Lord,” Jesus explained. “You’re right, that’s who I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, wash your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. Look, I’m trying to set an example for you here. As I’ve done for you, you do for others. No servant is greater than his master; no messenger is greater than the one who sent him. So now that you know these things, do them … and you’ll be blessed.”

Now that I could understand! Straight talk—it sounded a lot like “Follow me!” The whole mystery of the cross bound up in Jesus’ washing of our feet was beyond me at the time, but this “do for one another as I’ve done for you” I could understand. I still found it strange. It broke pattern with foot-washing’s social standards, etiquette, and customs. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do. Jesus was asking us to stoop awfully low to serve one another—washing feet of all things—not my deal. But King Jesus is greater than us. And if He would humble himself to serve us in this way, how can I think myself too great to follow His example? It doesn’t seem very kingly, but Jesus is no ordinary king. He is a servant King, willing to get His hands dirty and do the lowest task to grace His people with His love.

And since I like straight talk, I’ll give it to you straight: as Jesus did for us, He wants you and me to do for one another. We can’t die on the cross for anyone, but we can serve others in humble love and in so doing, we can help them experience something of the touch of the Servant King Jesus. And Jesus can work with that to do greater things than we can imagine. So humble yourselves, and serve one another in Jesus’ name.

The Lowly King

I’m calling my Easter sermon series All Hail King Jesus! We’re using the four Sundays leading into Easter to consider various dimensions of the kingship of Jesus. As part of my research for this series, I asked our crowd at a Wednesday night Bible study to do a little word association game with me. I asked them to tell me the first word that came to their mind when they heard the word king. Here are some of the responses: royalty, throne, crown, power, Jesus, sovereign, palace, wealth, queen, and majesty. All of those are dead on. And other than the word Jesus, those are the same words I’d have heard if I asked the question at the mall instead of at a Bible study. None of those word associations is a surprise. I’m likewise not surprised at the words I didn’t hear: meek, humble, lowly. Any king those words describe is ripe for overthrow. And yet those words describe King Jesus.

Each week in the series we’ll be considering a dimension of Jesus’ kingship and we’re doing it, in part, by hearing the story from someone who was there. We looked first at Jesus the lowly king. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday captured the lowliness and humility of King Jesus. And the disciple John tells us about that event.

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I was there, you know … on the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey colt. We’d been to Jerusalem before, but we never made an entrance like this.

We had just come from Bethany and there was still quite a buzz about what Jesus did there. He raised a man from the dead. The man’s name is Lazarus. He and his sisters Mary and Martha are friends of Jesus. Lazarus got sick and died. We got word of his sickness, but Jesus just sort of blew it off and took his sweet time getting to Bethany. Lazarus didn’t have that time. His sickness got the best of him and he died.

We got there too late. We even missed the funeral. By the time we arrived, Lazarus was four-days-dead, wrapped in burial clothes, and laid out in a tomb. Lots of mourners were still there. And nobody seemed particularly happy to see Jesus. First Martha and then Mary got in their little dig at Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” The crowd got into the act too saying, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept Lazarus from dying?” It was pretty tense. They didn’t need Jesus now that Lazarus was dead and all Jesus could do was pay His respects.

But Jesus didn’t come to pay His respects; Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the dead. And that’s exactly what He did. “Move the stone away from the grave,” Jesus said.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Martha replied. “The odor is going to stink to high heaven.”

“Wait till you smell the fragrance of the glory of God,” countered Jesus. “Now somebody move the stone!”

The stone was moved. The smell was bad. Everybody covered their noses except Jesus. Jesus did two things. The first thing He did was talk to God. The second thing He did was talk to Lazarus. Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out of that tomb.” Guess what—Lazarus came out. He was wrapped up like a mummy. He walked out stiff-legged, but he walked out alive. And Jesus said, “Unwrap the man and let him go.”

A lot of the people who saw it believed in Jesus on the spot. But the religious leaders did not. They got their heads together and said, “Jesus has to die. If we let him go on like this everyone is going to believe in him. It will create chaos. Rome will come down and take away what little freedom we have left. It’s going to get ugly around here.” The high priest Caiaphas piped up and said, “It is better that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” Caiaphas was dead on, but in a different way than he thought.

So word got out that Jesus was a wanted man. We pulled back to a more wilderness area for a short time to let things cool a bit.

But things didn’t cool much. People were still buzzing over Lazarus’ resurrection. And now it was Passover time. Jesus wanted to celebrate it in Jerusalem, so we headed back to Bethany on route. Lazarus, Martha, and Mary threw a big thank you dinner for Jesus. Mary got so carried away she ended up anointing Jesus’ feet with about a year’s salary worth of nard. Leave it to Judas to raise a stink in a room that smelled like flowers. “The woman’s crazy,” he said. “That’s a lot of help we could have given to the poor.” Don’t believe Judas for a second. He didn’t care about the poor; he was the keeper of our purse and sometimes he even helped himself to the proceeds.

Judas didn’t like what Mary did, but Jesus liked it a lot. He said that she had anointed Him for burial. Huh? Burial? We had no idea at the time what Jesus was talking about. But it wouldn’t take long till we’d know exactly what he was talking about.

The next day was Sunday. The Passover was this week. It was time to go to Jerusalem, and we went. We didn’t go alone. You wouldn’t believe the crowd that came along and the crowd that was there to greet us. It seems that everybody had heard about Lazarus and wanted to see for themselves this man who raised him from the dead. That miracle was such a crowd-pleaser that the religious leaders said, “We better not stop at killing Jesus. We need to kill Lazarus too”—you know, get rid of the evidence, so to speak. But they made no move in that direction on that Sunday.

How could they? There were too many people in a crowd that was Jesus-friendly. If they tried to take Jesus or Lazarus that day, they would have instigated the very riot they were trying to avoid. So they had to sit back and watch with everyone else.

It was quite a parade really. I admit that I don’t tell the story with the detail of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They explained how Jesus got the donkey’s colt on which he rode. I chose to cut to the chase. I did mention the donkey. That’s important. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, by choosing a donkey’s colt Jesus was fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy: “Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.”

That whole processional was both glorious and bizarre. It was glorious because with knives gleaming in the sun, people were cutting palm fronds from trees along the trail. They were waving those palm fronds and laying them in Jesus’ path. You roll out the red carpet; we laid down palm branches. And the people were shouting phrases right out of the messianic psalms: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Hosanna means save us now. Those were big words, big praises and prayers. I know what the crowd was thinking—probably the same thing we disciples were thinking: is this the signal that Messiah Jesus is going run those pagan Romans out of town? It was glorious. It was like worship. It was like a royal procession.

And believe me, we knew all about royal processions: kings or generals making their grand entrance into the city mounted on bleached chargers, surrounded by soldiers and guards with their swords and their spears and their shields, people lined up along the route shouting and cheering the heroic conqueror. Such processions were a common occurrence.

And that’s why Jesus’ procession was also a bit bizarre. He sat not upon a great stallion but upon a donkey’s colt. Those who surrounded him were not soldiers armed to the teeth but the poor and the peasant and the common and the weak. If Jesus was trying to make a political statement here, He failed miserably. If He was trying to stir fear in the hearts of the occupying Romans, the best he got from them was a chuckle. If He was trying to signal Jerusalem that King Messiah had finally arrived, well, He sure didn’t enter like the Messiah they were expecting. Jesus was sending a signal all right, but not one of us picked up on at the time.

But still the people loved Him. They loved Him that day anyway. The religious leaders didn’t. They were up in arms: “What are we going to do now?” they said to one another. “He’s got the whole world eating out of the palm of His hand.” None of us—not us disciples nor the religious leaders—had clue one that by the end of the week this city, this crowd, would turn on Jesus like a rabid dog on its master. People wouldn’t be eating out of the palm of His hands any longer; the Romans would be driving nails into those palms instead.

Hmm … not exactly what you’d expect … from a king.

Unless that King is Jesus.

I Gave It Up for Lent

Okay, I admit it: I don’t know a whole heck of a lot about Lent. I’m a fairly non-liturgical Baptist. And even though I grew up in a Presbyterian church I don’t remember hearing much about Lent. I do know a little, however. I know it begins with Ash Wednesday, a day to reflect on our own mortality. You know, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” All of us are going to die. We should think about that and live a life and find the faith that prepares us for our eventual appointment with death. Lent then proceeds for 40 days (excluding Sundays) until Holy Saturday the day before Easter. Lent is a time to reflect on the sufferings of Jesus and all that He sacrificed for us. It’s somber time, a reflective time, a holy time. And somewhere along the way, this idea of giving up something for Lent was introduced to the church.

So every year I hear some of the things people are giving up for Lent. My experience with such things indicates that most of the giving up tends to be either dietary or media-based. People give up chocolate or sweets or Cokes or booze or fried food. Others give up certain television shows or going to the movies. A few determine to give up something like smoking or cussing or another bad habit that may or may not even be a sin. And it seems like the popular give-up this Lenten season is Facebook. I read some posts from my Facebook friends last Wednesday that said something to the effect of, “If you need to contact me, call or email because I’m giving up Facebook for Lent. I’ll be back on in 40 days.”

This whole thing has always intrigued me. It’s like a 40-day attempt to do something Jesus calls us to do 365 days a year. You remember when He said, “If anyone comes after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk. 9:23). I guess Lent is a way of trying to do the first of these three actions: self-denial. And if it is, it seems to me that folks ought to consider giving up something important enough that they don’t plan on taking it right back up again when the 40 days are past. Shouldn’t self-denial run a bit deeper than that?

Self-denial is one of the most difficult things Jesus calls us to do. It’s not natural. We learn from birth to exalt the self. A baby’s wet or hungry and what does she do? Does she say, “Oh mother, pardon my intrusion. How selfish of me! You get your sleep first, then I’ll get mine.” Is that what a baby does? Yeah, right. The baby’s going to scream her lungs out until somebody tends to her needs.

Or take a toddler. Suppose your toddler wants something. It doesn’t matter what it is—it could be anything—a little attention, some crackers and juice, his sister’s toy, or to get up from his nap too early—anything. And suppose you’re busy. Does the toddler say, “I’m sorry, mother. I didn’t know you were busy. Please take your time in tending to my wants. Finish your phone call. Wait till your program is over. Finish the chapter. I’m really in no hurry.” Is that what toddlers do? No way! They’ll fuss and whine until you either make them quit or give them what they want.

We tend to be self-centered by nature. It shows up in our lives from birth to death. We want what we want when we want it. Age and reality usually tempers our ability to get it, but it doesn’t stop many of us from trying. Look at credit card debt. Look at chronic overeating. Look at all the addictions. Look at the number of divorces caused by self-centeredness. Look at parents who neglect their kids to satisfy their own wants. Even adults have a hard time saying no to themselves. When Jesus calls us to deny self, He is asking us to go against the flow, to cut across the grain of human nature. So we resist.

And our culture doesn’t make it any easier. Put a drop of self-centeredness in the Petri dish of American culture and it will grow like a fungus. American culture does not treat us as persons but as consumers. Thus, ad after ad to whet our appetite for more, people counseling us to go get ours, and all the “I deserve it” and “I’m entitled” mantras that shout to us through a megaphone of selfishness. And as if that’s not enough, even many of today’s churches treat us as consumers too: “Come check out our programs tailored just for you. We're the home of only seven commandments—you choose. Home of the 3% tithe.” It’s tough to say no to oneself. Even the church isn’t always a lot of help. And yet Jesus calls us to do it: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself ….”

I wonder if the key is not just learning to say no to self but yes to Christ. In Matthew 12 Jesus tells a story about a man who swept his life clean from one evil spirit. But because he didn’t fill the void with Christ, seven spirits worse than the first came back and moved right in. See what I mean: denying self is more than saying no to self, it’s saying yes to Christ. And if we can get that in perspective, it might make giving up something for Lent more meaningful than a 40-day change in one’s eating habits or Facebook usage. What if we picked on bigger things? What if we determined to say no to old grudges and yes to offering forgiveness to those who have hurt us? What if we say no to a certain level of media addiction and say yes to filling up that time reading God’s word or a good Christian book or a little time in prayer and reflection? What if we say no to a relationship that is moving us away from Christ and say yes to relationships that draw us toward Him? What if we said no to spending so much on ourselves and said yes to giving more to the things that are close to God’s heart: things like the church or charities that serve the poor and the wounded? No to self doesn’t mean all that much unless we say yes to Christ.

But then again, what do I know about Lent? I’m a Baptist for crying out loud. I’ll be the first to admit that Lent is a bit of foreign ground for me. But at the same time, I do know this: Jesus didn’t just say, “If anyone come after me, let him deny himself for forty days between Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday.” The full verse says, “If anyone come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” That looks like no to self and yes to Christ to me—a no and a yes that Jesus will give you the strength to accomplish as you lean into Him.

Oh, and one other thing: taking this path might help us make for some significant change that lasts a lot longer than forty measly days.

A Valentine Story

So, it’s Valentine’s Day—that holiday has never been at the top of my favorite holiday list. Labor and Memorial Day—good, relaxing, do-nothing, chill out days. Thanksgiving—good food, get to see the kids, Cowboys football, nice. Christmas—a lot like Thanksgiving without the Cowboys football, and you get to add seasonal music, presents, and a Christmas Eve service. But Valentine’s Day—a lot risk there, a lot of chances to mess things up. What if I don’t get Dayna the right present or what if Walmart sells out of flowers before I get there? There’s a lot on the line. Just never much liked Valentine’s Day.

It probably stems from my childhood. You remember those days in grammar school when you exchanged Valentines with your classmates. Your mom bought you a box of those little bitty Valentines to sign and give away. You took an old shoe box in art class, decorated it with construction paper and crayons, and cut a slit in the top so that the rest of the class could slip a Valentine in your box. I hated that day in art class. Did you know that one of the chief differences between monkeys and humans is that monkeys do not have opposable thumbs? Well, when it comes to art projects, I don’t have opposable thumbs either—never did—so my Valentine box looked like a monkey made it.

But hey, we all have our gifts, and I could pop my armpit better than anybody in my class. So what if I stunk at classic art projects; is there not a certain artistry to popping one’s pit in ways that could make all the classic sounds of flatulence? But I digress.

Anyway, in spite of my pathetic Valentine’s box, my fifth-grade Valentine’s Day held the potential to be a big day for me. And here’s why: Anne Wilcox. I was some kind of sweet on Anne Wilcox—this pretty little blue-eyed, blonde-haired cutie. When I first saw her, Cupid didn’t just shoot me with one arrow; he emptied the whole quiver right into my heart. You see, I’d recently moved to Branson from Arkansas; she’d just moved to Branson from Mississippi; we were the only two in class that had yet to learn that the Civil War was over and that the North had won. She was a fifth-grade southern belle. And you know what the Beach Boys were singing about southern girls: “And the southern girls with the way they kiss / they keep their boyfriends warm at night.” I was in love, smitten. She was Juliet to my Romeo, Cleopatra to my Antony, Bonnie to my Clyde. There was just one problem. According to fifth-grade etiquette in that day, I dare not tell her. At best I could tell only a couple of my people who would talk to a couple of her people and see if she liked me back. That process was still in the works. I had yet to receive word back from my spies. It was all quiet on the Southern front. So I was banking on Valentine’s Day to give me my answer.

It was zero hour. Kids went around the room dropping their Valentine’s into the slots on the other kids’ boxes. And then it was time to open the Valentines. I tore the lid off my box, shuffling through those Valentine envelopes with the speed and dexterity of a 100-word-a-minute typist, looking for the one that said “Anne.” What? Huh? None of them said “Anne.” Then it dawned on me: all of them said “John.” Duh! What was I thinking? Fifth-graders don’t put return addresses on classroom Valentines, you moron. But I shook it off and got my head back in the game. I took the first Valentine from the box, then the next, and the next, picking up speed like a racehorse on the home stretch, searching, searching, searching, for the Valentine from Anne. And then, pay-dirt! I pulled just enough of that Valentine from the envelope to see Anne’s name. So I just stopped right there to enjoy the moment. I held it to my nose to see if she had laced the envelope with perfume. She had not. I retrieved the Valentine from the envelope, careful not to tear it. Wow! It was a great Valentine, a cut out of some flop-eared dog, as I recall, and a message that was sheer poetry—so simple, yet so profound and so personal I’m a little embarrassed to share it even after all these years. You want to hear what it said? “Happy Valentine's Day!” There was only one conclusion to draw: she loves me! She really loves me!

I dared not make eye contact with her in that tender moment, however. But I had to tell someone. So I leaned over to one of my spies, “Look at the Valentine Anne gave me.” He took it from me, looked at it. I was desperate for a second opinion, to see if he saw in it what I saw in it. “What do you think?” I said.

And he said, “I think she gave me the same one.” Wah, wah, wah, wahhhhh. That wasn’t glass my classmates heard breaking in that moment; it was my heart. There would be no Anne for me.

Okay, I admit it: the crush was real; I made up the story. It would be a few more years before I would find my true Valentine, and I’m still holding on to her today. Her name is Dayna and for almost 35 years her last name has been McCallum. And when I give her a valentine, I don’t give the same one to anyone else.

So let me go on record and say, “Thank you, God, for my valentine, Dayna—just one more indication that you treat me better than I deserve. Help me to treat her heart the way you treat ours—with love, understanding, respect, patience, and grace. And no matter how many years you give us together, may I love her even more at the end than I did at the beginning. Amen.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

This Is the Day

I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, said it, or sung it, but I still have problems getting its truth from my head to my heart, from my worries to my faith, from tomorrow to today. It’s Psalm 118:24 — “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” In our “get-on-to-the-next-thing” culture that is dominated more by the watch than the calendar, more by “next” than “now,” this truth is hard to practice.

For some reason God wants us to pay attention to today. It’s okay to look back, and it's okay to look forward but not if it costs us today. That’s too high a price to pay. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The psalmist is not the only one to shine the spotlight on “today.” Didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”? Didn’t the apostle Paul tell the Ephesians and us to “redeem the time,” that is, make the most of every opportunity we have? And that always begins with today.

Though I’m better at doing this now than I was in my younger years, it’s still a struggle for me. That’s why every now and then I pull a little story from my files to remind me to claim the day. The story, parable, or whatever you want to call it was written by Robert Hastings a number of years ago. It’s called The Station.

Tucked away in our subconscious minds is a vision—an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent. We’re traveling by train and, from our windows, we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of cattle grazing in distant pastures, of smoke pouring from power plants, of row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of city skylines and village halls.

But uppermost in our conscious minds is our final destination—for on a certain hour and on a given day, our train will pull into the station with bells ringing, flags waving, and bands playing. And once that day comes, so many wonderful dreams will come true, and all the jagged pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. So restlessly, we pace the aisles and count the miles, peering ahead, cursing the minutes for loitering, waiting, waiting, waiting for the station …

“Yes, when we reach the station, that will be it,” we cry. “When we’re eighteen! When we buy that new Mercedes Benz! When we put the last kid through college! When we earn that promotion! When we pay off the mortgage! When we retire!” Yes, from that day on … we will all live happily ever after.

Sooner or later, however, we must realize that there is no station, no one place to arrive once and for all. The joy is in the journey.

The station is an illusion—it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday’s a memory; tomorrow’s a dream. Yesterday’s a fading sunset; tomorrow’s a faint sunrise. So, shut the door on yesterday and throw the key away, for only today is there light enough to live and love. It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. Rather, it’s regrets over yesterday and fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are the twin thieves who would rob us of that golden treasure we call today, this tiny strip of light between two nights.

“Relish the moment,” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars. Laugh more and cry less. Go barefoot oftener. Eat more ice cream. Ride more merry-go-rounds. Watch more sunsets. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.

Yes it will. So in the meantime enjoy, survive, endure, and/or relish the moments day by day. There’s God’s wisdom in that. But don’t miss this important distinction. It is not, “Live for today”—as if there were no tomorrow. It is simply: “Live today.” As someone once put it so well, “The past is history; the future is mystery; today is a gift—that’s why we call it the present.”

Do yourself a favor and open that present today.

I Love the Church

During the month of January I’ve been preaching a series of sermons called Loving Well. In the second of those sermons, I preached on loving the church well. The church is not in good report with many in our day, even many who claim to follow Jesus. “I love Jesus,” some say, “but I can’t stand the church.” If, as the New Testament teaches, the church is both the body and bride of Christ, how a person can love Jesus and refuse to be part of the church. Can an arm say to the body, “I don’t need you; I’ll go it on my own”? And that arm would go on its own to its death. Would a wife say to her husband just before they’re married, “Okay, here’s the deal: I want to marry you, but I want to live my own life. I want to be free to date around and only come home when I feel like it.” Ridiculous! And yet some Christians say such things to the church.

I know the church has problems. It’s far from perfect and never will be this side of heaven. But I can’t help it—I love the church. And I stated so in my sermon on loving the church well. I had enough folks comment on it that I thought I’d post that testimony in my blog. Here it is:

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And can I just go on record this morning by saying that I love the church—the church in general and this church in particular. The church has always been a part of my life. I can’t remember when I was not connected to the church—worship, Sunday School, Bible School, pot-luck suppers, choir, youth group, college group, camps and retreats. As a kid I didn’t always find it interesting and I haven’t always loved every minute I’ve been involved, but I always knew I was loved, I knew I belonged there among that particular group of people at that particular time.

I love the church. It was the church that introduced me to the exploits of these larger than life characters named Abraham and Moses and David and Elijah and Peter and Paul. They told me that somehow they were in my family tree. It was the church that taught me that I was part of something larger than myself and my town and my country; I was a citizen in the kingdom of God that stretches around the whole wide world and from here to eternity.

I love the church. That’s where I first saw a cross and learned about a Savior who loved me and died for me and rose from the dead for me too. That’s the one place I could be assured that even if I hadn’t given God much thought on Monday through Saturday, my attention would be brought back to Him on Sunday with words as simple as “Let’s pray … open your Bible … hear the Word of the Lord.”

I love the church. It was the church that gave me my song and taught me to sing it:

• Amazing grace, how sweet the sound / that saved a wretch like me
• Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty / God in three persons, blessed Trinity
• A mighty fortress is our God / a bulwark never failing
• Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nations / Son of God and Son of Man
• All the way my Savior leads me / what have I to ask beside / Can I doubt his tender mercy who through life has been my guide?
• We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord / And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
• Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine
• At the cross, at the cross / where I first saw the light
• Up from the grave he arose / with a mighty triumph o'er his foes
• When we all get to heaven / what a day of rejoicing that will be

How many times have the songs I learned from the church gave voice to my praise, words to my sorrow, hope to my fear, faith to my doubts, and carried me when I was weak!

I love the church. The church has helped me see the world—and not to see it with the eyes of a tourist, but with the eyes of God: eyes of compassion and love, eyes of concern for the lost and the poor and the people on the edges. And the church has helped me do my part in sharing God's love with the nations.

I love the church. When my family fell apart, the church was there. When I went off to college, the church was there. When my kids were born, the church was there. When there’s been sickness or surgery, the church was there. When my parents died, the church was there. In good times and bad, in times of rejoicing and times of grief, the church has been there for me. Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything and a season for everything under the sun, and the church has been there for me in every time and every season.

I love the church. That’s not to say that the church hasn’t broken my heart along the way, that the church has never let me down, or that the church has always lived up to my expectations. But that’s okay: I don’t love a perfect church and never have. I don’t love the church as I wish her to be; I love the church as she is—with her warts and her wrinkles, with her saints and her sinners, with her allies and her critics. I love the church when she’s swung and missed and when she’s knocked it out of the park, when she’s soared like an eagle and when she’s limped like a cripple. Someone once likened the church to Noah's ark: if it weren’t for the storm without, you could never stand the smell within. But in spite of the fact that the church stinks it up from time to time, I love the church.

I love the church because the church has always love me and because Christ has loved me through His church. Christ has always loved me enough to challenge me and forgive me and encourage me and stick with me no matter what. And Christ does just that through His church. I love the church.

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Do you love the church? If not, let me encourage you to give her a first try or another try if she somehow hurt you in the past. Like it or not, Jesus dwells in the midst of His church. I encourage you to meet Him there.

1 Man Against the Machine

On this 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I want to tell the story I first heard just a few months ago of one man against the machine. I’m not talking about Martin Luther King, Jr.; I’m talking about a man King inspired. His name is Darrell Brown from the little town of Horatio in southwest Arkansas. Darrell is a black man, and in the fall of 1965 he headed up Highway 71 to Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas. There were only a few black students on campus in those days, and there were zero black students in the university’s athletic programs. (I’m not picking on the University here. You know how I love my alma mater. But what was true of Arkansas at the time was true of the entire Southwest Conference, Southeast Conference, and Atlantic Coast Conference. Blacks were not welcome in those athletic programs. That was the reality of that era of our history.) And Brown, who had heard Martin Luther King encourage black folks in the south to do their part, decided that his part would be to break the racial barrier in the Razorback football program—to be one man against the machine.

Having attended a poor black-only school near Horatio, Brown had never played organized football in school. But he had the body for it: 5’11” and 190 pounds—which was pretty good size for college football players in that era. So when it was time for walk-ons to report, Brown showed up to get his uniform. The equipment manager didn’t know what to do when Brown stood before him, so he told Brown to come back the next day. Brown did and got a uniform. But that’s about all he got. He got no playbook and he got no respect. And other than getting an earful of racial slurs, he was given the silent treatment by the team. A couple of assistant coaches showed minor support, but the head coach never met Brown or said one word to him.

On the first day of practice, the coach sent Brown back to return a kickoff, and it didn’t dawn on Brown until the ball was in the air that he had no blockers. It was less like football and more like the playground game called kill the man with ball. And that’s what the eleven did. “They were good at gang-tackling,” said Brown. This happened over and over. Brown felt like he was essentially a tackling dummy on the team. It was obvious that his coaches and teammates were trying to wear him out and run him off. But Brown followed the encouragement of his hero, Martin Luther King, Jr., and hung in there, taking a beating nearly every day. In those days, freshman were ineligible to play for the varsity, and in spite of having no playbook, Brown did play a few plays in the freshman games—which is pretty amazing in its own right.

He endured the season and though no one told him when the reporting day was for the next season, Brown showed up. Aside from finding a friend or two, Brown was treated the same in season two that he had been in season one. During practice in season two, Brown sustained serious hand and knee injuries for which he was offered no attention from the trainers or medical staff. He had to limp off the field by himself and drag himself to the student infirmary to receive care. That was that for Brown’s football playing days at the University of Arkansas. But it was his injuries, not his guts or a lack of determination, that kept him from returning to the field. Brown’s attempt to be a one-man integration movement for southern college football was over.

Brown didn’t give up on his studies, however. He graduated from the University and also completed law school. He served as a lawyer until his retirement a few years ago. After the treatment Brown received during his days at the University, he held a grudge for a very long time. During football season he couldn’t even root for his home state team and alma mater. But that has mellowed over the years, in part because his daughter received a track scholarship and his son attended law school there. Brown witnessed the changes across the years at the University that created widening opportunities for blacks. And something else factored into his change of heart: “You know where the Bible says, ‘Love your enemy” or ‘Pray for your enemy’?” Brown says. “It took me a long time to understand what that meant. You don’t have to love them. You do have to appreciate God’s creation. And you can pray their ways can change because you impacted them. So my hatred took a back seat to that.” Brown began to forgive and he started reconnecting with the University once again. In fact, this past October, Darrell Brown was honored in the center of Razorback Stadium (the scene of so much previous abuse) during halftime of the Auburn game when he was named the University of Arkansas Football Trailblazer.

In 1970, Jon Richardson from Little Rock was the first black Razorback recruit in the school’s history. I remember that very well, and that’s a distinction that belongs only to Richardson. But Darrell Brown was the first black man to wear the uniform.

And on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I want you to hear his story and give thanks for the opportunities created and progress made for blacks and other minorities in our society. And I also want to remind you that those opportunities and progress sadly came at the great cost of heroic pioneers like the famous Martin Luther King, Jr. and a young man you’ve never heard of named Darrell Brown from tiny Horatio, Arkansas, who dared to be one man against the machine.

If you want to read much more about Brown’s story, you can find it her in a story by Dan Wetzel on Yahoo Sports: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-wetzel_brown_arkansas_football_trailblazer100711