I’m not afraid to admit it: chain saws scare me but can you imagine trying to cut through a log without turning the saw on? That’s exactly how many Christians feel about the Holy Spirit. Although we are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit when we become a Christian (Acts 2:38), many Christians don’t unwrap the present. It’s as if they are so excited about the bow and the fancy wrapping paper, they just put the gift on the mantle above the fireplace for everyone to see.

“My what a lovely package! What’s in it?”

How sad. Without “power” power steering and power brakes are practically useless. The Holy Spirit is our power to change. Have you ever thought about it? Why do we call the Spirit “Holy”? We rarely talk about the “Holy” Father or the “Holy” Son so why do we emphasize “Holy” Spirit?

It might be to distinguish the Holy Spirit from evil or unclean spirits but I think there is more to it than that. Just as Jesus is called the “Christ” because he is the Messiah – that’s his job; so the Spirit is called “Holy” because that is what he does.

Theologians point out how we are justified (“just-as-if-I’d never sinned”) when we become Christians. They also tell us we are continually sanctified (made holy) as we grow in Christ. How is that kind of change made possible? Through the power of the Spirit who is making us holy.

So how do we “unwrap the package?” Paul told the Romans, “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God,” (Romans 8:14). We are led by the Spirit when we follow him. That requires us to listen, trust and obey.

Raising children is not for the faint of heart. They seem to specialize in keeping us off-balance so the best advice I ever received on child rearing was to think about them like cats and dogs.

When your children are young, they are like dogs. Our little dog, Charlie, is a refugee from the pound. He’s part terrier and part dachshund with a dash of DNA from the far side of the gene pool. Be that as it may, Charlie loves me unconditionally. When I come through the door, his whole body wiggles with excitement. He barks and races around me and leads me to believe that I am the focus of his life.

Pre-schoolers can be like that too. “Daddy’s home!” Little legs pump furiously so they can wrap their tiny arms around my neck. Butterfly kisses and footy-rides make life grand but then, one day, you come home and everything has changed.

I bought a tandem bike at a garage sale and decided to pick my Junior High aged daughter, Charlotte, up from school on it. She was definitely not impressed and I don’t think she had ever forgiven me for forcing her to ride on with me on the back of it.

The advice? One day, sometime around a quarter to teen, your loving dog will turn into a cat. Cats love you but on their terms. “You may pat me now. You may feed me now. You may have the privilege of cleaning my litter box now.”

“What happened to my little girl? When was my joyful son turned into the troll who lives below the stairs?” Confusion confronts most parents until they realize their dog is now a cat. They still love you, just in a different way.

The good news is, sometime after college you cat will turn back into a dog and it will be smooth sailing again.

It was a tiny, black and yellow puffball of feathers. He was exhausted and took refuge aboard Santa Teresa, our old, wooden sailboat.

It was a perfect day for sailing. The seas were calm off Point Loma and the winds were fresh. Ryan, Derek, and Preston joined Jan and I for one of the best days sailing we’d experienced in San Diego.

The winds caught us as we unfurled our sails and we raced out to sea towards Catalina. Dolphins played around us and Santa Teresa threw up a fine white froth that streamed down the sides as we cut through a bright blue sea. We were laughing and enjoying the day and had just passed into international waters, three miles off the coast, when this tiny ball of feathers flew into the cockpit and darted through the hatch and into the cabin below.

“That was a bird!” someone shouted and just as suddenly the little bird flew out an open porthole, circled us and landed on the rail beside me. Its tiny heart was pounding as it sat there, a fugitive from the sea.

“It’s lost.”

“The wind must have blow him out to sea.”

The little bird hopped down the rail and then flew around the boat before seeking the safety of the rail again. After our feathered friend repeated this exercise several times, Jan ran below and filled a pan of cool, fresh water and re-appeared on deck with pieces of apple, crusts of bread and the pan of water. She carefully set them down on the deck beside the cabin, then stepped back and watched for our little friend to return. He did and looked long and hard at the treats Jan had prepared for him but it must have seemed too good to be true. Our little friend took off and we lost sight of him. Perhaps he hitched a ride on a better boat and made it safely to Catalina.

Later that evening, after we had put the boat away, Jan and I were talking about the little bird. Jan sadly shook her head, “All I wanted to do was help that little bird. He was so small and so desperate. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to give him some water and something tasty to eat. He could have rested and we could have given him a ride back to his friends in San Diego.”

She took another spoonful of soup and looked at me. “John, that must be how God feels. He wants to help us but sometimes we run away.  Sometimes the good news must seem too good to be true and all we do is hurt ourselves and break God’s heart.”

Little bird, please send us a postcard from Catalina. We hope you made it.

 

Thanks to Ryan Gunnells for the photograph!

I’ve always been fascinated by Luke 4:16-21. Jesus has achieved some fame as a prophet and he returns to his hometown of Nazareth. There he is invited to preach to the synagogue so he takes his place in front and chooses to read from Isaiah chapter 61. Have you ever wondered why, of all the passages Jesus could have preached from, he chose this one?

 

Jesus Rejected at Nazareth
^{Luke 4:16} And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

¹⁸         “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

¹⁹         to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

I’ll be preaching from this same text this coming Sunday at Canyon View but as I was translating the text from ancient Greek in preparation for my upcoming lesson, I came across the word thrauo, “oppressed.” This is the only place it is used in the New Testament and it literally means “to break into pieces.” Now that is a vivid image isn’t it?

Part of the ministry of Jesus (and part of our ministry as Christians) is to heal broken hearts! Unfortunately, all too often Christians are responsible for just the opposite. We can be too critical and we’re often swift to judge others.

Jesus often used humor to poke fun at this kind of hypocrisy. Do you remember when he talked about the Pharisee’s soup? “You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matthew 23:24) I can just picture a camel doing the backstroke in a bowl of chicken soup while the poor Pharisee is chasing a gnat around the dish with his spoon.

Have you heard of the “Jesus Preaching Principle”? Jesus pointed sin out to saints but he pointed sinners to God. In other words, people whose lives are in pieces already know that. They don’t need people to point out their condition; they need people to point them to a loving God who can heal them. On the other hand, sometimes people who claim to know God need to have someone point out the camel in their soup.

“Ummm, waiter! What’s this camel doing in my soup?”

“I believe it’s the breast stroke sir…”

 

 

 

There is a delightful old joke about a monk who took a vow of silence. He was only allowed to speak to the head of the monastery once a year. At the end of the first year, he was asked, “Brother, do you have anything to say?” to which he answered, “The beds are hard!”

Another year passed and he was asked, “Brother, do you have anything to say?” to which he answered, “The food is bad!”

Finally, another year passed and he was asked, “Brother, do you have anything to say?” to which he answered, “I quit!”

The head of the order shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Well, I’m not surprised. All you’ve done since you got here is complain.”

A week has passed and I still can’t speak. I have a terrible sore throat and I’ve hardly gotten out of bed. I’ve even resorted to channel surfing. I’ve watched more TV in the last week than I have in the last five years. I’m afraid I might become a “Swamp People” addict! (That’s a television show about hunting alligators in the swamps of Louisiana where the main characters are Cajuns who race around in boats shouting, “Choot ’im! Choot ’im!”)

It’s been an interesting experience. For example, people will shout from across the house, “John, do you want anything?” That’s really nice but I can’t shout back “I’d love a Fudgsicle!” Or, it’s natural when I whisper, people whisper back to me like we’re keeping some great secret.

It’s a great challenge for a preacher to lose his voice! Imagine what it would be like, if suddenly all of the preachers lost their voices? Before you add that to your prayer list, my dear friend and fellow minister, Jim Hinton observed, “Well, they could still send text messages!” That may be, but an unspoken dread most ministers share is a kind of discouragement that causes us to wonder if we are doing any good? Is anyone really listening to what we have to say? Are we relevant or just tolerated?

One of the curses God pronounces on Israel through the prophet Amos is a famine for the Word of God (Amos 8:11, 12):

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,
“when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.”

The challenge for preachers is two-fold. The first is not to give up but continue to speak out. Noah preached for over 100 years and no one except his own family listened to what he had to say; yet he is called a man of God. The second is the far more important imperative. The famine isn’t of preachers but of “hearing the words of the Lord.” It isn’t enough to just speak. We must be sure of our message! Now excuse me while I gargle again and try to find my voice for Sunday’s sermon.

Through the centuries there have been many powerful symbols used of Christianity. One of the earliest is the fish and that’s appropriate because there are many references to fish and fishing in the Gospels. Jesus told his apostles to lay down their nets and follow him and he would make them “fishers of men,” (Matthew 4:18, 19). But there is another, better, reason. The Greek word for fish, ichthus, (pronounced “ik-thoos”) is an acronym for Christians:

I is the first letter in the name “Jesus” (I in Greek is the same as J in English)

Ch is the Greek letter “Chi,” the first letter in “Christ”

Th is the Greek letter “Theta,” the first letter in “Theos,” “God”

U is the first letter in the Greek word for “son”

S is the first letter in the Greek word for “savior.”

When you put them altogether, it spells “Ichthus” (“Fish”) which stands for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son and Savior.” Some writers have even speculated it was a kind of sign/counter-sign for early Christians as they traveled during times of persecution. When you entered a new city and were trying to find other Christians, you would casually draw the lower half of the fish symbol in the dust. If the other person was a brother, he would draw the upper half completing the symbol. I’m not sure that is true but it is a wonderful story isn’t it?

Other Christian symbols were the lamb, the Good Shepherd with the lamb on his shoulders (Luke 15), the “Chi-Rho” symbol (It looks like an X with a P – the Greek letter R – superimposed on it. These are the first two Greek letters for “Christ.”), the Alpha and Omega (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet signifying Jesus is the beginning and the end. See Revelation 1:8; 21:6; 22:13), the anchor (Hebrews 6:18, 19), and even the pelican (legend says when a pelican can’t find food for its young, it wounds itself and feeds them on her blood).

Of course the most famous symbol of all is the cross but there are two variations: the cross and the crucifix. The difference is a crucifix portrays Jesus hanging on it and this symbol plays a powerful role in Catholicism, however I believe the cross is the better symbol because on a crucifix, Jesus never gets off the cross. We worship a Risen Savior who triumphed over death and that is why we celebrate and that is why we have hope of eternal life!

 

^{Mark 14:51} And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, ⁵² but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

Only the Gospel of Mark includes this story that seems so out of place in the Passion of the Christ. Jesus had been praying in the Garden of Gethsemane when Judas betrayed him to the mob with a kiss. One of the disciples, probably Peter, tried to defend Jesus but the Lord told him to put down his sword and all the disciples fled away into the night. Jesus is taken to the home of the High Priest for questioning and only Mark tells us about the young man clothed in a bed sheet who tried to follow. The crowd grabbed him but caught only his sheet. The poor young man ran away into the night through the streets of Jerusalem naked!

Who was he and why did Mark include this rather comical story in the midst of such a serious scene? Some way it was the fulfillment of Bible prophecy: “ ‘and he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day,’ declares the LORD,” (Amos 2:16) but the Bible itself never makes that claim.

For centuries Christians have suspected the young man was John Mark, the author of this gospel and disciple of both Peter and Paul. Many believe the Last Supper took place in the home of John Mark’s mother, Mary (See Acts 12:12, 13) and that’s the first place Judas would have gone with the mob to find Jesus. Mark, aroused from his sleep, wrapped only in a sheet ran through the streets of Jerusalem to the Garden to warn Jesus. But it was too late. Robbed of his robe, Mark too ran away into the night with the other disciples.

Peter tried to save Jesus with his sword. Mark, the nearly naked disciple tried to warn Jesus but Peter lost his sword and Mark lost his bed sheet. What they and the heavily armed crowd didn’t understand is Jesus willingly went to his death. He loved us that much!