Gear for the Journey: Service

How are you doing with your disciplines?  Have you experienced a transformation in your spiritual journey?  I hope so.

Sorry for the lack of posting last week.  My intention was to post while I was away at my parents' house, but I got called back for a death in the church and my week was swallowed whole.  I still haven't posted on fasting, but I promise to do that soon.

Since I've just finished preaching service, I'll go with that first...

As I mentioned, I did a fair amount of traveling last week.  It was the first time in a while that I traveled by myself and didn't have my xm radio filling the car with continuous music or talk.  I had to find radio stations to listen to.  When I came into Birmingham, I found a sports talk radio station that carried with me almost to the Georgia state line.  The radio jocks talked about a number of different topics, some sports related and some not so much.  One that stuck with me was a survey that some organization had just completed.

The group surveyed thousands of women across the US (forgive me for not remembering who it was) and asked them all sorts of unusual questions.  There were two that stood out to me:

Half of women surveyed said that they would make a friend obese if it meant that they could be personally thin and attractive for the rest of their lives.  Wow.

More than half of the women surveyed, when given the opportunity to save the life of a stranger by shaving their heads, opted to keep their hair!  Really?  That stuff usually grows back.

Sadly, this isn't just the case for women.  Men have gotten to be just as vain and selfish.  We all look out for number one and won't give up even trivial things to improve the life of others.  In fact, we will sacrifice people that we claim to love for the sake of improving our own lives.  I would say that there's that whole thing about God exalting the humble and humbling the arrogant, but that's another post for another day.

The funeral I performed Sunday afternoon was for a different sort of person.  Her name was Doshia Barham and she was someone who set the example for selfless living.  She was an x-ray tech by trade on an army base, but was, for decades, a sort of community nurse for many of the senior adults in this area.  She took care of her parents and her husband's parents in their convalescence.  She went daily to a friend's mother's house to care for her.  Her mailman even brought his insulin shot to the house ever day so she could administer it.  Countless others recieved help from her that generations of people will remember. 

Doshia understood the discipline of service.  She gave and gave and gave.  She never recieved any compensation beyond the gratitude and endearment of others - and she loved what she did.  These last few months were tough on her because she was stuck mostly in a hospital bed and the tables were turned.  The people she had served now were serving her.  How incredible to see the body of Christ at work!

True service is something to be admired, learned, and practiced.  It's service that is humble, finds joy in its own practice, doesn't seek reward, attention, or compensation, and is habitual.  It's very different from self-righteous service, where we calculate what we will do for "those people," seek results in the form of affirmation or reward, and is done when it's planned (while passing by other, sometimes more obvious, opportunities to serve).  True service is an act of love and a reflection of a relationship with Christ.

Why do we serve?  Simple.  Because Christ first loved and served us.  After all, he took the form of a man and he didn't have to.  He called, taught, and put up with twelve disciples and countless crowds and he didn't have to.  He healed many of physical and spiritual ailments and he didn't have to.  He was arrested, tortured, and crucified and he didn't have to be.  He single-handedly took on death and won, offering us reconciliation with God and he didn't have to. 

Next time you see a cross, look beyond the beautiful stain or the shiny brass.  What do you see?  We place it as a symbol to remind us that God has extended grace to us.  True faith is accepting that grace and extending it to others.  "We love because Christ first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

Gear for the Journey: Meditation + Study

"This is my rifle.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.  My rifle is my best friend.  It is my life.  I must master it as I master my life.  My rifle without me is useless.  Without my rifle, I am useless..."

Those are the first sentences of the Rifleman's Creed, also known as the U.S. Marine Corps Creed.  My brother-in-law, Bryan, knows those words and the ones that follow just like every other Marine.  Later this week, Bryan will deploy to Afghanistan for yet another tour of duty.  He's been to Iraq three times since 2003 and was planning to go back before the emphasis swung from one country to another.

Bryan's been well-trained.  He's spent weeks in the field running simulations.  He's spent hours on the range, honing his rifle skills.  He's checked and prepared his gear.  He's as ready as he's going to be.

Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen all understand the importance of training and gear.  They prepare for all possible eventualities and train themselves to improvise in the midst of new situations.

What if Christians prepared this way?  What if we took the USMC Creed as our own and changed the word "rifle" to "Bible."  This is my Bible, there are many like it, but this one it mine...

Unfortunately, many Christians couldn't tell you the last time they picked up their Bible, other than to carry it to church as a sort of status symbol.  Many only open it when a pastor or speaker tells them what specifically to read.  Some use theirs as a good luck charm.  I laugh when I see a car on the interstate that has a Bible on the rear dash.  You just know that if you were to move it, a permanent rectangle would be revealed that had been preserved from the bleaching of the sun.  Those Bibles are there to "prevent" the driver from getting into an accident and perhaps deter a law officer from writing a speeding ticket.

The living word of God contained in Scripture is one of God's greatest gifts to us.  It tells us centuries of stories about God and his people, reveals God's character to us, and instructs us in living the abundant life Jesus came to give.  "My Bible without me is useless.  Without my Bible, I am useless..."

We have to learn to use our Bibles like a Marine uses his or her rifle.  That brings us to the first two disciplines I want to share with you:  meditation and study.

Meditation is the rumination, or reflection, on God's word, God's works, and God's world.  Our meditation isn't like that of Hinduism or Buddhism where the goal is to empty the mind.  Christian meditation is an exercise in filling the mind.  We meditate on scripture and soak up its apparent meanings and it's implications for our lives.  We meditate by centering down - pausing to let go of the things that have us stressed out and to recieve peace and insight from God.  We meditate by observing nature, not to find God in the trees or animals (he's not in them), but to see how God created things to be.  When we do this, we refocus our hearts and minds on God's intentions.  Lastly, we meditate on current events by searching for spiritual significance in the news or the local happenings.  When we take the time to apply God to the six o'clock news, we find sometimes that we've become Pharoah or Caesar and need to repent or that there is someone out there that we can be the Good Samaritan for.

Study is the second use we have for God's word.  Meditation is for soaking up God - study is for learning and understanding God's word.  Study is when we pull out the big Bible with the footnotes and the commentaries that explain what we've just read.  It's the regular, intentional practice of reading God's word for comprehension and reflection.  It's also what provides the concrete framework within which we appropriately meditate.  It sets up the boundaries for who God is and gives us a basis for reflecting on God's word, works, and world.

Study and meditation are contemplative practices that change the heart and the mind of a person.  With Christ, we no longer need a priest or a go-between to encounter God for us - we all have equal access to God.  That's threatening to some of us, simply because if we don't have a first-hand relationship with Christ then we don't have to work at our faith or change our ways.  Someone else does it for us. 

When we study and meditate on God's word, works, and world, we find that the other disciplines of prayer, fasting, service, and so on have deeper meaning and significance for our own lives.

More on Spiritual Disciplines

I probably should have included this in my last post, but if you're interested in learning more about Spiritual Disciplines, here are two good resources to read together:

Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster

-and-

Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren

And an encouragement for you: Jeremiah 6:16 reads, "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls."

These disciplines/exercises/practices are ancient paths that have been walked by many godly men and women for centuries. They are tried and true and work for anyone who applies them diligently.

Lent

What are you giving up for Lent this year? I've been asked that question a few hundred times, read about the topic on blogs, and heard about it on television and radio. I'm intrigued this time of year by the things that people sacrifice for 40 days. I'm even more interested in why they do it.

Popular this year, just like others, are sacrifices of chocolate, coffee, soda, television, and other guilty pleasures. Everybody has the opportunity to set their own rules for Lent. Some choose to go from February 25th to April 11th without any indulgence whatsoever - others choose to take off Sundays and celebrate them as "little Easters." A funny post on just these kinds of rules can be found here. Jon Acuff's got a great blog that pokes fun at the shallowness/wierdness/quirkiness of American Christians and he even makes fun of his own faith practice from time to time.

I wonder sometimes if we look at Lent more like a competition than a spiritual journey though. Often times we give up something so that we can say we gave up something. We challenge ourselves to give up something just so we can say that we conquered it. Isn't Lent more than that though?

Last Sunday, I preached about this topic and how Lent is a spiritual pilgrimage. We may never leave our homes or our communities, but we journey from the altar on Ash Wednesday to Jerusalem with each other and with Jesus. If we treat this season as a quest or journey, when we get to Palm Sunday, we'll raise our palm branches with great acclamation. On Maundy Thursday, we'll recieve the gifts of bread and wine with humble gratitude. On Good Friday, we'll stand, sit, or kneel at the foot of the cross - seeing just how much God loves us and realizing the sacrifice of Jesus in horrible suffering and painful death.

Easter will be different. We won't wake up thinking about that long-awaited candy bar, soda, cup of coffee, or episode of LOST. We'll stumble though the twilight hours of Sunday morning to find an empty tomb and, having been transformed by our pilgrimage, our hearts will swell with joy and excitement.

Giving up things for Lent is a great practice. It's not scriptural and I would insist that if you're going to do something special for this season, make sure it fits you. I've taken the route of many others - I habitually rearrange my priorities so that I can better discipline myself spiritually. What do I mean? I carve out more time for prayer, study, meditation, fasting, worship, solitude, etc.

If you're giving something up, great. Don't leave a void in your schedule or your wallet though - turn that sacrifice into something spiritually meaningful. Don't get caught up in the rules or the competition of your sacrifice either. I think sometimes we "swallow the camel but strain the gnat" when we worry about the wrong things.

How are you making this Lent a spiritually meaningful pilgrimage that will lead you to Jerusalem, the cross, and the empty tomb? What are you giving up? What are you taking on?

If you're in the area, come worship with us at Mt. Bethel. My sermon series for Lent is on spiritual practices, or disciplines, and we'll be examining some of them each week with the challenge of either refining our own practice of them or trying them out for the first time.

If you're not in the area, keep following here on the Yawp. I'm planning to post each week about these practices and how I'm using them and progressing with them.

Want more information on Lent? Here's a good post by a good friend of mine, Matt Parker.