god’s love

Captain Obvious here: Bob has stinky feet. It’s Spring. Bob the bloodhound has Spring fever. That means I (Tim) have the job of cleaning Bob’s muddy paws every time he comes back into the house. It’s a thankless job. But Bob reminded me on this Maundy Thursday in Holy Week, that for Christians everywhere, stinky feet (and paws!) ministry is anything but a lowly job.

Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end. It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 

Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So, he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.

When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.”

“No,” Peter protested, “you will never ever wash my feet!”

Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.”

Simon Peter exclaimed, “Then wash my hands and head as well, Lord, not just my feet!”

Jesus replied, “A person who has bathed all over does not need to wash, except for the feet, to be entirely clean. And you disciples are clean, but not all of you.” For Jesus knew who would betray him. That is what he meant when he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow.

Do as I have done to you. I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message. Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

(John 13:1-17, New Living Translation)

Bob and I often come in from the muddy outdoors and sit down together to read the Bible. One of our favorite ways to reflect on our reading is the S.O.A.P. method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer). Here is our “S.O.A.P.” for today….

Scripture

John 13:15 – Jesus said, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Observation

Jesus Christ loves me just as I am, and not as I should be. He loves me even with my dirty stinky feet, my herky-jerky commitment to him, and my pre-meditated sin. Jesus loved even Judas and washed his stinky feet.  Jesus serves people because they need his love, and not so that they will love him back.

I recently read about a man who lives in Paris. His wife has Alzheimer’s. He was an important businessman, and his life was filled with busyness. But he said that when his wife fell sick, “I just couldn’t put her into an institution, so I kept her. I fed her. I bathed her.”

“Through the experience of serving my wife every day, I have changed. I have become more human. The other night, in the middle of the night, my wife woke me up. She came out of the fog for a moment, and she said, ‘Darling, I just want to say thank you for all you are doing for me.’ Then she fell back into the fog. I wept for hours to know this grace.”

Application

Sometimes Christ calls me to love people who either cannot or will not love me in return. They live in the fog of some sort of disability, depression, poverty, or just plain spiritual blindness. As I serve them, I may only receive brief glimpses of gratitude.

Jesus loves me in the midst of my sporadic spiritual confusion by graciously washing my stinky feet. So, I desire to continue loving others by washing their stinky feet, as they walk through whatever fog they’re in.

Anything that doesn’t have to do with the love of God through stinky feet ministry has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which in Christ Jesus.

If God so wants it to be, my life will be useful through my both my words and my actions. If the Lord wants, my life will bear fruit through my prayers, my service, and my love handling people’s stinky feet.

But the usefulness of my life is God’s concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that. I simply desire follow my Lord’s example of washing nasty stinky feet.

Prayer

Loving Lord Jesus, how shocking it was on this Maundy Thursday for your disciples to be served by you in such a humble manner. But I cannot be spiritually cleansed unless I allow you to love me in an almost embarrassing fashion. Help me not to be so proud that I neither refuse your humble loving service toward me, nor neglect to offer that same kind of service to others.

May love be the word, the idea, and the action that governs my every motivation and movement in your most gracious Name, I pray.  Amen.

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The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish. (John 1:14, The Message)

Christmas Eve

Bob the bloodhound and I are curled up in our favorite places tonight in front of the fireplace. Yet, we are mindful this night of the many people throughout the world. Many will be acknowledging the birth of Christ, the Word become flesh, in very different environs than us.

A Lowly Christmas Eve

In the largest cities of the world, like Mexico City, Mexico and Manilla, Philippines, there are huge garbage dumps that cover several square miles. On top of these heaps of waste there live hundreds of families who have made this their home.

Each day they send their kids out to forage for scraps so they can have something to eat and survive.  Few others tread where these families are.  Yet, there are Christian believers who make the journey. They try to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to such a place.

The First Christmas

As incredible and sad a situation that this is, it doesn’t compare to the journey from heaven to earth that Jesus made.  God became flesh. Christ descended to earth. Jesus Christ came to the sin-soaked dump of this world – to us who were living on a heap of garbage – and entered our lives to save us from our wretched and pitiable condition.

The late Eugene Peterson’s simplistic translation, a paraphrase of the Apostle John’s words, communicates the essence of Christ’s gracious and cataclysmic entry to this earth on our behalf. It’s as if Jesus moved into the garbage dump and was born on the heap of waste so that God might be present with us.

Jesus did not just appear to be human, but actually became like us and lived with all the same things we face from day to day.  He “tabernacled” with us, using the imagery of God’s presence with the ancient Israelites.  God is with us!

Christmas Is for Believing

Bob just reminded me that John and the other gospel writers were evangelists. They wrote in order that people might believe in Jesus. That they might see what God has done in joining them in this sinful world.  The four Gospel writers’ purpose was to be a witness of Jesus to others. They testified to the truth that Christ came to rescue us from our terrible condition.

John saw Jesus interact with the families in the dump. John knew what was happening. God was coming to save the people.  The way to reach people, who are so concerned for scurrying about their business and trying to survive apart from God, is through the incarnation. Through testifying to what God has done in Christ, and through being sent, we ourselves, as little incarnations of entering into people’s lives.

Christmas Means God Is with Us

We are like the moon, not producing light ourselves. But in the middle of darkness, reflecting the light of the sun so that the earth may know that Jesus is coming.

The mystery of the incarnation, the Word become flesh, is that Jesus became human and lived among us.  May we rejoice and be glad in this reality. May it move us to be used of God to save those on the sin heap of this world.

May you have a blessed Christmas and enjoy peace with God and others in this next year.

Pastor Tim (and Bob!)

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To be frank, the giving and receiving of love is something that everyone on planet earth needs. Bob the bloodhound knows this, likely better than most people. I can testify that Bob is not shy about making his needs and wants known and letting me know when he wants love in the form of dog food, a walk, or a good old-fashioned pet.

We all require love, in both receiving love, and giving love. But not everyone has a heart open to accepting love, and, so, find it nearly impossible to dispense love. However, the good news is that love is near to each one of us. We only need to reach out and touch it because it is so close.

We have all likely heard the dictum “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”  Even if we have not used the phrase, the concept is common throughout the world.  Perhaps the chief hindrance to receiving and giving love is this reciprocal notion. It would be weird if I expected Bob to scratch my back right after I give him a good scratch.

Much of Western society turns on the wheels of transactions. This is seen in the many words we have for money and financial exchanges: bills; coins; cash; credit and debit cards; stocks and bonds; bank accounts; 401k; paychecks, etc. You get the idea. We can scarcely imagine a culture without putting something into an account so that we can engage in commerce and consumerism.

None of this is neither inherently bad nor good; it just is. A problem arises, however, when people allow the idea of transactions to seep into relationships. When a person chooses to view the world primarily through the financial lenses of a transaction, we set ourselves up for a deficit of love.

It works something like this: A parent invests time, money, and resources into a child’s life. Mom and Dad do everything they can to set up little Johnny for success in this life (which, by the way, is often defined as getting a good paying job someday and being financially independent). But when little Johnny decides to go all avant-garde and does not live up to his parents’ expectations, their reaction betrays the transactional: “Look at all we did for you, and you repay us by not going to college and running off to do only God knows what!?”

Put in the context of a workplace, some bosses are only happy when the employee is producing and making money. Management doesn’t understand why workers are upset. Paying them more money doesn’t seem to do it. They only see the transactional view of the world. Employers often fail to understand that money and wages cannot fulfill the need for giving and receiving within healthy relationships.

In the realm of personal relationships, we might send a card to someone, and they never sent one back, and that makes us mad. When it comes to God, we went to church, kept our nose clean and were ethical in all our dealings, and now something terrible happens in our lives. We believe that God did not make good on us. We invested in this God thing, and then he didn’t follow through with the transaction to give us the good life we were expecting.

But God operates in a different economy. Grace overwhelms transaction and is the currency of God’s kingdom. Grace is the gears and the grease of God’s love toward us. The good news of Christianity is that God loves us, even when we have nothing to give, and even when we are far from the words and ways of Jesus.

“Christ died for us at a time when we were helpless and sinful.  No one is really willing to die for an honest person, though someone might be willing to die for a genuinely good person. But God showed how much he loved us by having Christ die for us, even though we were sinners.” (Romans 5:6-8, CEV)

It is likely that all of us, at some time or another, have felt the sting of someone else’s disappointment with us.  They “invested” in us in some way. We “repaid” them with a decision or a different direction than what they expected. Or it went the other way. We put time and effort into someone or a group of people, and they didn’t come through for us (ironically, pastors and church volunteers often feel this way).

The first step in awakening to love is forsaking a transactional view of relationships and adopting a gracious approach to people and to God. God is gracious, merciful, and kind. It isn’t just what God does; it is who God is. God gives love because God is love. Until we get that basic understanding, we will flounder in our human relationships because true love will forever be elusive due to the transactional view. It will throw out of whack the true giving and receiving of love.

Grace is the most effective way to the world of love, and the best way to the good life. Yet, surprisingly, this is at no cost to us. So, what are we to do? We are to give ourselves to God, as people who have been raised from death to life. We are to make every part of our lives an offering to God. Don’t let sin keep ruling your lives because you are ruled by God’s kindness and not by the law of the transaction.

Awaken to love because God is love. (Romans 6:12-14; 1 John 4:8-11)

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