Today is the first time that I’ve ever heard of Senator Bernie Sanders. He’s evidently kicked up a ruckus today as he’s been talking for a while.  I don’t know what all he believes. In the two minute video of his that I watched I think his rhetoric is a little strong and he makes a few leaps that I’m not sure that I agree with. They are…

1) People who have lots of money are all greedy.

2) Sharing is a virtue.

3) Greed is almost like a sickness or a disease.

4) That there might be something more important than the rich getting richer when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world.

Yeah. I think he’s messed up on a few things here.  If we were debating, I would respond…

1) Not all people who have money (& he’s talk about the top 400 people in America) are greedy but there is that one guy I read & talk about a lot who says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God – not impossible to be part of what God is doing, but difficult. Don’t mistake Kingdom of God here for Heaven.  I think Jesus is talking about the work he is initiating…it’s very hard for a rich person to enter into what God is doing. It’s actually easier for that camel to get through the eye of a needle. Hmmmm

Oh….and I really think for some people it is not the money. It is the status or the power. The money is just an added benefit – a bonus per se, but this too is another issue.

2) Sharing is not a virtue. For the believer it is a command. It is the way that God intended things to be. The early church finally got what God intended all along.

3) Greed is most definitely a sickness. It is a contagious disease that destroys all who are infected.

4) There is nothing more important than us taking care of the needy in our midst.

But he raises a very important question. Actually, when I started this post, I didn’t really mean to write about #’s 1-4. That just kinda happened.

My real point was simply this…WHEN IS ENOUGH, ENOUGH?

What a great question and a question that I agree we need to wrestle with. And it’s not just those top 400.  It’s all of us. When is enough, enough? It always feels so much better to bless than to consume. God doesn’t want to use you & your resources one day when you have a certain amount of money. He wants to use you now – where you are, with what He’s placed in your hands. Remember: It’s not your anyway. It’s His.

God blesses us to bless others…not ourselves. This was the plan from the beginning of a called people who would be the hands & feet of Yahweh to heal the creation.

When is enough, enough? Thanks Senator Sanders for asking a tough, tough question in a room full of power people with probably…probably more than enough.

Watch the Video

*A continuation of What Jesus Didn’t Do

At our Christmas Eve gathering this past year we read the Spencer poem that opened up this chapter. We were reminded of what Jesus left behind in relationships and power. We remembered the moment of an absolute switch in existence. The scenario would be like me deciding by my own volition to become an ant but to be honest that doesn’t really touch what Jesus did in becoming human. One moment he was everything; he was the bright and morning star. The next a poor child in a damp cave surrounded by unusual faces and sounds. He was human.

The opening lines of chapter two of Philippians and of this hymn quoted by Paul bring us to an often elusive part of what Jesus did in coming to planet earth and what we are called to be. The most complete of which is verse 7. We are told that Christ made himself nothing; he emptied himself. Reading this verse in the Greek you find the word kenos which means to take away the content or to deprive of power. Jesus gave up all that was heavenly to come and walk life the way we do. He who had control gave up control. Now let’s look for a moment at some key words & phrases from this passage. Maybe take a moment and stop to meditate on these verses and thoughts.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.
Value others above yourself.
Look after others interest and not your own.
In your relationships…
Have the attitude of Christ.
He emptied himself of power and the ability to control.
Even to the point of being submitted to the powers of this world

We will never completely understand the “Why’s?” of this life. But for some reason God ordered planet earth in a certain way. I’ve once heard this necessity of Jesus’ action explained in this way. On planet earth it appears that control/manipulation exist on one end of a paradigm and love/compassion on the other end. You have seen this. People who are generally controlling and manipulative are often not very loving and compassionate. On the other hand people who are loving and compassionate are not very controlling and manipulative. So, if you are an all-controlling God who can manipulate anything or anyone how do you truly love? To love, you must give up control and this is what Jesus does for you and me. To love us well, to show us who God is, to show us how we were created to live he emptied himself. To be his follower, to be like-minded we must as well.

To truly love, you must give up control.

As believers in not only the power of the work of Jesus but also in the work of Jesus we must learn to live by a different ethic. We must carry into our relationships the attitude of Jesus – the attitude of a servant. This is difficult because servants aren’t in control. We want to secure the future as best as we can. Jesus gave his life to a world where some would say yes and some would say no. He gave up control to submit to the will of the Father and we are called as Christians to submit as well.

Remember, the goal is to look like Jesus. There is no other person; there is no other model. This doesn’t mean that we completely give in and don’t stand up for what is right. Jesus often challenged those around him. Remember the “religious” people that he is speaking to are the chosen people of God. They are off course and he tells them often not what they want to hear but they need to hear.

Let us think through the Mark 10 story one more time.
Jesus saw the wealthy young man. Jesus loved him. Jesus spoke the truth to him. The truth was too much for him to handle.

There was no coercion, no arm-twisting, and no five-step process of revealing whom God was and why he needed to change. The young man was drawn to Jesus. Who knows? The appeal may have been Jesus’ works or it may have been Jesus’ teaching. What ever the appeal was, there was something different that brought him to Jesus. The messiah saw him. He LOVED him and he told him the truth. Beyond this you and I cannot control the actions of others.
Even harder still is when we want more for people than they want for themselves. But maybe the key is seeing and loving not in speaking and controlling. Jesus saw and loved first and the emptied out love was the driving force behind his words. The emptied out yet power filled loved was what led him from the cross to ask his Father to forgive those who had murdered him.
You may be part of a situation right now where you are seeing and speaking but love is missing. When you see Jesus, you see God control free and as a follower you are called to love in that manner. Theologian Miraslov Volf wrote on the idea of exclusion and embrace. While we are called to exclude (speak to or speak out against) that which is not in line with the heart of God, the goal in the end is embrace.

The twisted Sermon on the Mount at the beginning of this chapter didn’t happen because Jesus chose to honor the heart of the Father. Jesus moving to control the situation is to lower himself to the ways of the world. He would fall into same old patterns that never work. The end for the believer never justifies the means because every moment is divine and is an opportunity to model Christ like love. Jesus’ earthly power resided in his purity, his holiness, his difference from the world and his unwillingness to lower himself to earthly pitfalls. Our power lies in loving like Jesus.
Greg Boyd in his book The Myth of a Christian Nation lays out the ideas of power over and power under. In every interaction with people we have a choice to use one of these methods.

Power Over = Manipulation, Control, Power, Coercion, Violence
Power Under = Serving, Healing, Loving, Listening, Giving

From Jesus we see consistent modeling of the power under mentality. Jesus models this even to the point of giving his life as a ransom for creation and its inhabitants. Our real power comes from living and loving like Jesus. We will advance the kingdom and the principles of God not through force or coercion (power over) but through love and service (power under). The Gospel story is much easier to share when we are building or rebuilding someone’s than it is after we have destroyed it.

The Beauty of the Kingdom
We are powerless yet powerful. We carry a message of beauty and hope that the world doesn’t understand. Yes we are exiles here but the beauty of the kingdom of God is it works. It does not matter who is in charge; it doesn’t matter who is in control. You can be under a king, a president, a dictator or a chief. You can be part of a democracy, a republic, a dictatorship, or a socialist government. It simply doesn’t matter. Selfless love always works any time, any place.

So some thoughts to wrap up this chapter…
As long as you are in control, God can’t be.
To be what you were created to be you are going to have to give up control and let the King of the Universe work in and through you.
Your families, neighbors, friends and co-workers need you to love – control free.
If you don’t love, don’t speak.
Speech without love can be scary for everyone involved.
May you give up control so that you may truly love.

*Continuation of What Jesus Didn’t Do. A book idea that I was working on this past year. All posts are under the category: What Jesus Didn’t Do.

A Scary Mass Identity
The words of Solomon may be a good guide for us. Solomon wrote, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” (Proverbs 23:7) I am convinced that if we don’t re-orient our thoughts around looking like Jesus and taking on a posture of healing toward humanity and creation, we are in for a long tough road.
Even more scary is the idea that when people build community they take on mass identity. So is it to safe to say, “That as a people thinketh, so they are?” If we are all running around afraid of others, convinced we are not good enough, trying to control everyone and everything what are we left with? We are completely reverted to our base drive to take the fruit from the tree. We must be in control – now! Are we listening to the voice of the shepherd or the whisper of a snake?
By our very fear are we compromising our ability to be Jesus to those who maybe need him the most – the terrorists, the foreigner, and the minority. It’s hard to share the gospel with those you are bombing or with a culture that you have compromised to be like. We have become what has been done to us all in the chase of the illusion of control and our lack of faith in the way of Jesus is exposed. When the world sees us it’s not just that we are hypocritical about some issues. To a non-Christian reader of the scriptures much of what the church does doesn’t look like Jesus. This not only makes us hypocrites in their eyes but it also makes us look weak. We appear to not have faith in the one we say we follow and if we don’t trust him, then why should they?
I have a couple of close friends who are closely acquainted with the 12-step process and Alcoholics Anonymous. I talk with them regularly and often find myself talking with them about what I think is one of the genius parts of the AA journey. It is summed up in the words, “I am powerless” and like it or not, I believe we all are. Some of just don’t admit it. We think by trying to stay in control that we are showing strength. In reality our inability to understand and govern our weaknesses leads to further instability and weakness, as we become more fractured people. We seem to quickly forget that it is in our weakness that God is strong and that we grow as we learn to depend on him – not him on us. He holds the whole world in his hand – not you or me.
You and I are powerless over other people and events. So maybe just maybe you could say it with me, “Hi my name is _______________. I am a control freak and I am powerless over _______________.” I wonder if we will ever be willing to acknowledge this drive within us so that we can be more open to the possibilities around us to listen, love and serve. If we as an American church are going to affect the future, I think we have to.
This concept is very hard for us as Americans. All of our lives we are told that we can be or have everything that we want. From the beginning of our nation we have been a people who have talked our way through moral dilemmas, often using the scriptures, to fulfill manifest destiny or to be an economic power or to secure our way of life. Think back over your life. You can be an army of one or be all that you can be. You can have it your way and now you can be an American Idol. The American experience is built around the idea that if you work hard enough you can have what you want. We can control our own destiny. You can succeed. Our churches have followed this mindset as well. Our ideas of church are very formulaic and goal driven but struggle when it comes to discipling people to look like Jesus daily.
I wonder if we would not be better served to really re-examine our posture in light of what Paul taught us about Jesus in Philippians chapter two. In one of the most beautiful sections of writing in the New Testament Paul challenges the church at Philippi to live in a different way.

Philippians 2
1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death–
even death on a cross!

As you may notice, the latter portion of the passage has been omitted. Many of us have become familiar with this passage and know that it comes to a rousing completion and that’s where our attention lands. For our purposes the journey is the focus. The gospels do not start at the cross and end at the resurrection. There is a picture of life before hand. Paul in this passage gives us the “how” and the “why” of the Christian life. In chapter one of this letter, he even calls his readers citizens of heaven, reminding them that they are part of something much bigger. They are part of something eternal and supernatural whose rules supersede the earthly.