Monthly Archives: December 2019

Life on the Edge

Posted on December 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:18 “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. [NRSV]

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Reading John 15:18 feels like I’ve fallen off the edge from one celebrated reality… the birth of the Promise of Advent as evidence of God’s love…and directly into a world of gray.  That world is filled with inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.  The edge is real and the world of  gray is real.  That’s unsettling because this world is our only option right now.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said  “I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.” God’s Promise has not come to separate us from this world but to clearly define how different the options are on either side of that edge.

Jesus is our world-shaping option who’s provided another reality for navigating a complete life on the edge in this world while we learn to have faith: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”  [John 17:15 NRSV].  

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Posted in John, Sunday

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Love First

Posted on December 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another


Matthew 22:37-40

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Posted in Christmas Day, John, Matthew, Wednesday

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Curious

Posted on December 22, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.  [NRSV]

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“Bear fruit, fruit that will last” is the curious qualification for the “whatever” in the response “SO…the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” I’ve spent hours and typed many paragraphs these last few days trying to explain to myself what that specific “fruit that will last” is because it’s so important to that “whatever.”  

In the end I’ve discovered to bear “fruit that will last” is something far simpler and more personal and it’s my tie-in to Advent.  Jesus is our  gift of faith.   “Bear” usually implies the power to sustain without flinching or breaking and faith is the only “fruit that will last” long enough to make “whatever” a reality in our life.

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Posted in John, Sunday

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Slave to Friend

Posted on December 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:15 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.  [NASB]

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Moving from slave to friend is a progression.  Long before I was even aware of a thing called a “personal” relationship with Jesus, I believed Jesus was God’s son and I was a faithful church member.  Faithful in the sense I was there and I was active.  There were very good reasons to be there.  Church was a place where people put their best face forward.  The activities were at an obvious level of insulated kindness and integrity.  It was a place we went every Sunday as a family without question.  I was a willing, and content, “slave” to religion.  Thankfully that was enough to keep me there because as it turns out “religion” is the very busy place the Spirit of God often chooses to reveal the truth that Jesus was born for slaves in the midst of religion!

That’s the progression of how my friendship with Jesus became a reality.  Friendship is what connects John 15:15 and my Advent celebration this year.  It was friendship that revealed the Cradle as more than the destination of an annual Advent celebration.  That long-ago Cradle is where God revealed His desire for our future: Jesus, God in-the-flesh, born to be our pathway from slavery to salvation and friendship.

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Posted in John, Wednesday

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Genetic Connection

Posted on December 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. [NRSV]

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I’m still working on the idea of shared DNA.  The celebration of Jesus’s birth is our annual reminder that God did in fact replicate His own redemptive DNA.  If God is the ultimate creator of us all, then we share that same DNA. That is our proof we are personally “related” to Jesus.  Friendship and obedience are like genes on that redemptive DNA string that can produce amazing similarities and distinct differences.  Genes spell out the information they contain but interact differently with one another and may affect the traits the gene controls.  So while the DNA may contain the same information the results may be different.  

Some may read John 15:14 and conclude that IF we do what Jesus commands, we are His friends.  That is certainly true, but just as true is the conclusion that BECAUSE we are Jesus’s friends we will do as He commands.  Christmas activity is filled with cookies, cakes and candy.  This cute word play helps makes my point about the variation John 15:14 addresses: “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts.”  It’s a humorous way to say we’ve got the DNA and we’ve got the genes but they don’t always spell the same thing.  Advent is God’s reminder to us our relationship to Him is not an either/or option.   It has to be both friendship and obedience.  God placed his own DNA in that Bethlehem cradle long ago to reveal our relationship to Jesus is our genetic connection to Him that makes that possible.

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Posted in John, Sunday

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The Power of DNA

Posted on December 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

I ended my last post, Love Story, with this statement “His [Jesus] own future on earth began with His willingness to trust that the humanity He entered would become a part of building His life on earth so that His love would become their salvation.”  That reality of Advent explains John 15:13 too.  But wait, there’s more to the story.  

Culturally those connections are of great interest today.  We’ve “discovered” DNA [a self-replicating material present that’s the carrier of genetic information] that confirms connections that have been lost in our lives.  I know because it’s happened to me both on a real life level and spiritually.  Jesus entered a world He’d been part of creating.  In that long ago moment He surrendered His place of intimacy with God to choose companionship with humanity in the flesh.  The cradle was where Jesus willingly laid down His own sovereign authority to become the “perfect” rebirth of God’s genetic connection with mankind for the second time.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Jesus’s birth is our annual reminder that same redemptive DNA has been replicated in each of us.  Within us lies the power of Jesus to transform and save those who will abide with Him.

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Posted in Advent, John, Wednesday

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Love Story

Posted on December 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [NRSV]

I read that the word “love” appears in the Gospel of John more often than in the other three gospels combined.  We may be familiar with many stories of Jesus showing love during His life as he taught, fed, healed and prayed for people.  We’ve learned our lesson well that the complete expression of that love is the death of Jesus followed by His resurrection.  That’s the ending.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus during this time of Advent as the embodiment of God’s love for His creation.  It almost seemed too simple to even try to write about until another thought entered my mind.  Jesus was always present with God.  He wasn’t a Heavenly go-fer who did God’s bidding.  He was God.  That certainly deals with the idea of simple doesn’t it?  Jesus knew full well what becoming human meant for Him.  He knew His future right from the get-go.  We begin this annual celebration knowing the end of the story, Jesus was willing to surrender His own life for us.  The beginning of the “love” story is the part that makes this Advent a reality.   Jesus loved us enough to enter our world as a helpless infant.  His own future on earth began with His willingness to trust that the humanity He entered would become a part of building His life on earth so that His love would become their salvation.

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Purpose

Posted on December 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

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Verse 11 is an unfamiliar place to look for a connection to Advent but we have history and hindsight to remind us God had a purpose in sending Christ as a new born baby.  John recorded this statement as part of the narrative of the purpose of the life of Christ.  Jesus clearly said what the purpose of His teaching was.  That’s a lot of “purpose” from a one-sentence verse but when I read the definition of the two grammatical parts of “purpose” it became my purpose for this second Advent post.

Purpose
noun: the reason for which something is created or for which something exists.
verb: have as one’s intention or objective.

God’s purpose for the birth of Jesus into our world as a baby was to provide a visual experience of new life and growth with all the perfection that had been lost back in the Garden of Eden.  That is the renewal of purpose we celebrate during Advent.  John is a respected expert on the purpose of the life of Jesus from the moment of His conception in the mind of God through His birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection.  

Verse 11 might actually be the bottom line purpose of why we celebrate Advent year after year.  There are so many good things that appeal to us emotionally and visually during the preparation for Christ-mas but don’t ever leave out that  “-.”  Christ was “created” and “exists” [the noun] as the reason for this season but  His ”intention or objective” [the verb] for your life lasts far beyond Advent – “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

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Posted in John, Wednesday

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First Sunday of Advent

Posted on December 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

John 15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in [accept and act in accordance with] my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. [NRSV]

This year my Advent posts are going to be like one of those mystery TV shows that begin with the solution and then proceeds to lay out the evidence.  My advent begins with the assumption verse 10 is the solution.  I plan to continue searching verse-by-verse for evidence that reveals why Jesus Christ deserves the repeated annual observation we call Advent.  It shouldn’t be too difficult to find.  We have this book of His-tory and John is the recognized expert on Christology [Christian theology relating to the person, nature, and role of Christ].  Expert witness testimony is an important part of the solution to every mystery.  

What are the commandments Jesus is referring to?  There’s a long list you can find with an internet search but John 13:34 has recorded this from my first witness, Christ himself; “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  

My second expert today is the Apostle Paul with evidence that supports Jesus’s new commandment. “For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4

There’s more than beauty to the Advent story that makes it important.  God provided a solution to the mystery of life in that cradle that could remind us every year He offers so much more than what we know to expect.  Jesus is the reality of our salvation, growth and “abiding” in His and God’s love.  My third witness today is John Piper from Come Thou Unexpected Jesus: “Jesus was long expected. But when and how and where and why he came were all unexpected…He did not come to meet [our] expectations but to love [us] in the ways [we] most desperately needed…[that’s] the place [we] are most likely to really adore him.” [edited]

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Posted in Advent, John, Romans, Sunday

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