Thoughts Like Shadows

At the cross, we all stand there as sinners confronted with the true condition of our hearts.  The horror of our sin is quickly challenged by the grace of God on display in the substitutionary death of God’s perfect Son for us.

At the cross, no one is better or any worse than anyone else.  No one is more deserving of God’s grace than another.  Despite what any of us have done to deserve the judgement of God, not a one of us has earned anything at all by his or her deeds.  We each stand together at the cross in judgement and each stand there together recieving the same measure of grace.  We meet united in belief, toegther washed in the blood of the Lamb and marked by the most amazing act of love in history – the sacrifice of the Son of God.

At the cross, there is no room for hypocrisy of love, no room for hating of brothers and sisters in Christ, no room for not sharing life with one another in the family of God, no room to honor yourself at the expense of another, no room for inflated egos, arrogance, pride or conceit.

But there is room enough for each one of us to be transformed by the power of God’s love and plenty of room for us to live out our love for another in bold and courageous ways.

My friends, as Christ has loved us, let us love one another.

Do you remember the first time you saw “The Passion of the Christ”?  For me, it was a Thursday night, February 26th to be exact, and I took a handful of teenagers from my youth group in Gettysburg.  I expected to shed a tear, but I did not forsee the wave of emotion that would absolutely take me over while I watched.  Tears just kept coming as I watched the brutality unfold.  It was ugly…almost too ugly.  I saw images that day that will stay with me forever.  The crazy thing is that while these images are so brutal and so painful to watch, they lead to peace for those who understand what took place in the life and death of Christ.

The two most moving moments of the film for me were both flashback moments.  The first such moment was watching Peter deny Christ.  As the denials unfolded, the movie took you back in flashes to when Peter declared his undying devotion and committment to Christ.  I often think of it in chronological order rather than reversed in this manner.  It reminded me and convicted me of my own two-faced committment and lack of loyalty when it comes to my relationship with the Lord.

The second of these emotional flashbacks for me was with Jesus on the cross and John, his disciple, standing by watching.  Suddenly it flashes you back to the scene of the Last Supper as Jesus is breaking bread and saying, “This is my body broken for you.”  Then you come back to the scene of the cross, and John’s eyes are flooded with tears as he gets the meaning of the bread.  The bread was breaking before his very eyes.  There on the cross the Bread of Life was broken for him.  It was a personal moment for John and his 11 fellow disciples when Jesus broke the bread and said this is for “you.”  John was that ‘you’.  I am that ‘you’.  You are that ‘you’.

Imagine the next time John did communion.  You know that they did.  It had to be intense.  It must have been emotional…no doubt in my mind.  It was real to them.  The bread was broken.  The blood, represented by the cup, was spilt.  Their act of remembrance in communion was an emotional, moving, passionate, impactful worship experience.

Why am I so cold and calloused to the communion table?  Why is it routine?  I am too often oblivious to the reality of the cross.  The cross was real, and Jesus really took my place.  The bread was broken for me, and the cup was poured that I might believe in Jesus as my Savior.  My God, why have I for so long looked upon  your sacrifice with empty emotion.  I kneel before your throne in humble thanks and praise.

That night after the viewing of The Passion of the Christ, several teens just sat in their seats in the theater and cried.  They couldn’t move…frozen by what they experienced, because they were shocked by the horror of what they saw and the depth of what that horror meant for them.  That was their horror, and Christ exposed himself to all of it for them…for me. 

When we remember Christ’s sacrifice at the communion table, what do you feel?  What emotions are stirred?  Maybe it should freeze us to our seats and make us wonder at the love that was on display in the moment when God was pleased to see His Son die on our behalf.

And when I take communion, I think to myself and say in my heart, “Lord, I remember.  I remember what you did for me.  I remember your display of love for me.  Lord, I remember.”  Do you remember?

Missional is one of the new buzz words storming the church these days.  In fact, the word missional is only about 10 to 12 years old, though the ideas it presents are ancient.  (As I type this entry, Microsoft insists on underlining missional as a misspelled word.)

 As we launch our mission together as a church , the goal is to be focused in and energized together on glorifying God by being obedient to His call upon our collective body.  So as we define, discuss, launch and embrace this mission, we are becoming a missional church.

Simply put, being missional then is “understanding what God has called us to be and do and then putting our energy and effort into accomplishing that mission.”  Basically, it’s obedience, but we’re talking about extreme obedience…where pleasing the Lord means everything to us.

Typically, when you encounter the term missional with a church, you find that they are actively seeking their role in solving the world’s problems.  These churches are very involved in their communities and even throughout the world feeding the hungry, restoring those devastated by disaster, helping the homeless, educating Africans in regard to AIDS and any kind of social justice agenda you can think of.  However, I refuse to be satisfied with simply making the world more comfortable.  While I think there is value to our social justice efforts, they are not the end all.  Each and every effort of the church must be accompanied by the Gospel.  In fact, the Gospel cannot simply be the companion of missional living, it must be the essence of missional living.  The Gospel is why we love God.  The Gospel unites in love for one another.  The Gospel is our message of love to the entire world.

Bottom line:  The church can choose to do many good things for this world and the inhabitants of this world, or the church can choose to do the one thing that makes all the difference in the world – live as God’s ambassadors to the lost and proclaim the salvation of the Lord.

Are we a missional church?  The answer is “yes”, and we will attack our mission with all that we have.  We will give our money, time and effort to loving God, loving each other and loving the world.  We will do this, because sacrificial love is the essence of the Gospel.  The truth is that God allowed Jesus to be brutally murdered for us in the greatest display of love the world has ever seen.  This is our pattern, our example to follow as we live out our mission collectively as a church and individually as believers.

The Apostle Paul said it the best in I Corinthians 13 when he spoke about those who “do stuff”, even amazing stuff, but without love.  The result is nothing more than noise.  As a church, it’s time to do more than make noise.  It’s time to put our efforts into much more than simply doing some stuff.  It’s time to embrace the mission God has given us and see our church, community and even the world transformed by the love of God.