Go about your business
[Adapted from this week's sermon: "Have a Little Faith."]
I’ll be honest: for most of my life, I’ve interacted with God in much the same way that Daniel does in chapter 12, verse 8:
I heard but could not understand; so I said, ‘My lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?’
Have you ever felt like that? “I could not understand.” Maybe you don’t know why you’re even in the place you are—literally or figurative; relationally, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. Maybe you don’t know where you’re going next. Maybe you don’t even think you’re still on the map!
A little bit of context for these verses: this is the end of the story of Daniel—at least what’s told in the Bible. This passage comes after several chapters of visions and dreams and prophecies that are hard to understand. God reveals them to Daniel, yet they concern social, political, historical events that will happen hundreds of years after Daniel’s death.
So understandably, his response is: “I don’t understand; can you explain it to me?”
Sometimes we like to think that if we only knew more, we’d be able to live life better.
If only I knew what school I’m getting into; or what I'm going to major in; or what job I'm going to get (or that I'm going to get a job!); or who I'm going to marry (or that I'm going to get married!). If I only knew that my kids would turn out okay; if I only knew that I’d be looked after when I’m old. If only ... If only I knew, God, what you have planned for me, that would make things so much easier. God, just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Show me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.
Really?
If you’d told me in 1999, when I was at boarding school in Surrey, England, applying to go to university in London to study law, that twelve years later, I’d be working at a church in Washington, D.C., I would laugh at you. If you told me in 2004, when I was studying music and playing in a rock band, that I would end up preaching more than performing, I would think you’re crazy. If you told me even a few years ago, when I was immersed in the world of politics and advocacy, that God wanted me to be a pastor ...
If you’d told me that my path would include leaving good friends—best friends—and family behind while I moved across oceans and countries, that it would mean seeing my nieces and nephews only once every few years because we all live in different places, that it would mean almost getting married … and then not, and then enduring several relationships that would be better characterized as “false starts,” that it would mean deep feelings of rootlessness, struggling through the issue of my own self-worth, and learning many, many lessons the hard way, I’d say, “Thanks, but no, thanks. God, would you mind designing something a little less tortuous, something a little cleaner, something a little more to my preference?”
On the journey of life, we all come up against things in life as Daniel did at the end of his--things that we just can’t get our minds around, things we just don’t get--and we say as Daniel did, “I don’t understand. God, what shall be the outcome of all this?”
Sometimes, God tells us; sometimes, we get an explanation. Sometimes things are revealed to us; sometimes we catch a glimpse of what God is doing.
But more often than not, we get the response that God gives Daniel. This is how Eugene Peterson translates it in the Message, from verses 9 and 13:
Go on about your business, Daniel. … Go about your business without fretting or worrying. Relax. When it's all over, you will be on your feet to receive your reward.
And we can imagine Daniel's response (as ours often is): “You didn’t answer the question. You didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. You haven’t told me what to do.”
But that's where the book ends--with God's answer.
Throughout the story, even leading up to this moment, we've seen Daniel “going about his business.” And that doesn’t mean living however he pleases, with no reference to God. That means living according to what he does know, what has been revealed, and with what understanding he does have.
In doing this, Daniel shows us what it means to have faith. He doesn’t have to know it all before acting. He doesn’t have to have the assurance that things are going to work out how he thinks they ought to work out. He trusts.
You see, the point that Jesus is actually making is this, and I said this a few weeks ago, but it bears restating: it's not about how hard you try, it’s not about how much faith you’re eking out; what’s important isn’t the size of your faith, it’s the God in whom you have faith.
Have faith in God, just a little bit. Trust in him, just a little bit. Put your life in his hands, just a little bit. And see what happens.
Because God has given us plenty to go on already. We are very capable of “going about our business” as Daniel did; God’s given us much of what we already need. Listen to this:
- Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. (Deuteronomy 6:5)
- Love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)
- Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:44)
- Seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
- Preach and live out the good news of Jesus Christ, make disciples of all nations, teaching them to do as Christ commands. (Matthew 28:19-20)
- Be holy as your heavenly Father is holy. (Leviticus 11:44; 1 Peter 1:15-16)
- Pray to your heavenly Father that his kingdom would come and his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9-10)
That’s all in the Bible already, and if we think about the implications of each of these, that’s plenty to get on with. If we even sought to live out one of these fully, we’d begin to see how much God has already said to us.
God has already shown us and given us his grace and his peace and his love in the person and life of Jesus Christ, and he says, “I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. And I give you my Spirit.” And as the Apostle Paul reminds the church in Rome, this is “the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead [who] lives in you.”
The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.
When you begin to grasp that, when you begin to tap into the truth of that, when you begin to get your sin and self and pride out of the way and truly let the Spirit live and speak and love through you, your life will somehow seem fuller, more exciting, more pregnant with possibilities.
Elton Trueblood, former chaplain at both Harvard and Stanford, said, “The deepest conviction of the Christian is that Christ was not wrong.” And John Ortberg writes, “At its core, faith is trusting a person.”
Trust that Jesus means what he says:
If you have just a little bit of faith in me—just a mustard seed’s worth—even when you don’t understand, even when you’re questioning what’s going on, even when you can’t see the whole picture, even then, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will be so, and nothing will be impossible for you.
Don’t let your fear of the unknown, your clinging to the concept of certainty, your confusion in the midst of chaos, keep you from living life to the full, from loving God and loving people with everything you’ve got. God has things in store that we can’t even imagine, a story so grand that we can’t even conceive.
So … go about your business. And have a little faith.
Lent
In case you weren't aware (or aren't liturgically-inclined), the season of Lent begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday (which means today is Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday). While Lent has become, in pop culture, a time for simply giving up unhealthy habits, the tradition is to take this time to humbly and thoughtfully prepare our hearts and lives to commemorate Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday and culminates with Easter Sunday; it's supposed to be a focused time of self-denial, just like Christmas is a focused time of celebrating the birth of Christ--not that we don't do these things every day, but that we take seasons during the year to elevate and examine particular aspects of our faith.
I didn't grow up in a church that was particularly liturgical, and so didn't really mark Lent at all (beyond gorging myself on pre-Lenten pancakes) until I moved to the UK. And in recent years, I've begun not only giving something up, but taking something on. Not simply for the purpose of ditching unhealthy habits and collecting healthy ones, but because these are beneficial for me--mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The journey that we are all on as Christians is to be more like Christ, more of who God made us to be, both in our own lives (bodies, relationships, habits, practices) and in the ways that we relate to God and others. (I talked about some of this in a Lenten post from two years ago, too.)
So my plan this Lent is twofold:
- To give up my time first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I've already begun implementing the practice of spending time with God before I start my day (even before checking email!) and before I go to bed, but I want to double down on this.
- To pick up working out every day. Since last summer, when I got injured playing soccer, I've been recuperating. And then recuperating turned into relaxing. And relaxing turned into indolence. And that's just not a good feeling for someone who's naturally inclined toward activity! So this in itself serves the dual purpose of being a physical manifestation of what I'm hoping is going on spiritually (training!) and getting me ready for the next season of soccer as well!
And as we think about what it means to deny ourselves, I hope this word from John Stott is as challenging and encouraging to you as it was for me this morning:
We need to rescue this vocabulary [of self-denial] from being debased. We should not suppose that self-denial is giving up luxuries during Lent or that “my cross” is some personal and painful trial. We are always in danger of trivializing Christian discipleship, as if it were no more than adding a thin veneer of piety to an otherwise secular life. Then prick the veneer, and there is the same old pagan underneath. No, becoming and being a Christian involves a change so radical that no imagery can do it justice except death and resurrection—dying to the old life of self-centeredness and rising to a new life of holiness and love.
(Through the Bible Through the Year, 210)
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P.S. If you're in the DC area, please join The District Church, Church of the Advent, and National Baptist Memorial Church as we hold a joint Ash Wednesday service tomorrow evening at 7pm at NBMC (on the corner of 15th St and Columbia).
An Interview with Rob Bell
Skye Jethani of Christianity Today got to interview Rob Bell again recently. I've always shared some affinity for Rob, both in our shared Fuller heritage and in the way that he loves to re-frame thoughts and notions that we've become desensitized to in ways that challenge us and stir us up again.
Here's a great quote from the interview, which pertains particularly to our church's current Mustard Seeds series:
Stop using the word 'missionary' and stop sending people out to the 'mission field.' Or keep the word, but also commission public school teachers, and dentists, and CPA's, and construction workers, and those people who take your money at the toll booth. We're all disciples, all ground is holy, every interaction and conversation is loaded with divine potential, anytime, anywhere. Ordain everyone, call everyone a minister, invite the whole church to be on staff.
You can read the full interview here.
Men, Women, and Super Bowl Ads
Yesterday's Super Bowl was pretty entertaining for a neutral observer--more points would have been nice, but the down-to-the-wire excitement made for a great game. Congratulations to the Giants for overcoming the Patriots again! (Now if only my Seahawks could get back ...)
Super Bowl ads get a lot of hype--and understandably so. It's estimated that almost 120 million people tune in to watch the game, so that's pretty great exposure for whatever you're selling. Every year, there are some ads that are awesome, clever, inventive, or creative; and then every year, there are some ads that are lame, flat, or just dumb. And every year there are ads that are sexist and pretty insulting--both to women (by portraying them as nothing more than things to be objectified) and to men (by advertising to them as driven and motivated by a single organ--not the brain).
This year was no different, and I'm not going to grace them by posting them on here. (You can check them out on the recap from Mother Jones at "Twitter Talks Back to Sexist Super Bowl Ads." All I'm gonna say is, "Really, Teleflora?!" And incidentally, I actually switched from gershomsjournal.com to justinbfung.com in order to switch my registration from GoDaddy.com, on account of their ridiculous commercials.)
The topic of men and women is one as old as time, particularly in the church. And I want to point out that we as Christians should be even more vigilant at how the culture we inhabit--and, perhaps more importantly, we ourselves--think and act. As a Christian man, it matters how I think about and treat women. My friend Eugene writes:
the treatment of women is the oldest injustice in human history. It’s so old and so taken for granted, that we don’t quite understand what’s at stake – not just for women, but really, for all of us. In more nuanced and simultaneously graphic ways, women are objects to be objectified and marketed and packaged for consumption. And these messages start early and often in human development and identity.
Moreover, many Christian guys--whether ignorantly and inadvertently or, more tragically and infuriatingly, deliberately--continue to feed into this mindset that women are somehow less than we are. There aren't very many good, genuine role models of what it looks like to be a guy like Jesus, and given that missing paradigm, we can tend to swing to one extreme (emasculated and uncertain) or the other (hyper-macho and equally insecure). Neither of those is a particularly biblical understanding of how men and women are supposed to be in relationship with one another.
Jesus should be the example for our lives, and particularly, for Christian guys, in the way that he interacted with women. I've posted these words from Dorothy Sayers before, but they're a constant reminder to me on what I want to be like:
Perhaps it is no wonder that women were first at the cradle and last at the cross. They had never known a man like this man. There never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made sick jokes about women; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took women's questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out a certain sphere for women; who never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took women as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its point or pungency from female perversity. Nobody could get from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything funny or inferior about women.
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On a related note, what did you all think of H&M's David Beckham ad? Because it just made want to work out ... but is that a double standard?
Elmo and Love
Last night I finally got around to watching Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. It came highly recommended by many of my friends, and I wasn't disappointed. I'll admit that I've loved Elmo since I was a kid--at one point in middle school, I may have perfected Elmo's voice ... yeah, it absolutely got me all the girls.
Anyway, the documentary was a fascinating look at the life of Kevin Clash, the guy who made Elmo who he is today, from his humble beginnings in Baltimore to fulfilling his dreams of meeting and working with Jim Henson, bringing a voice and character to a fluffy red puppet who's familiar to us all, and now to his role as an executive producer on Sesame Street.
One of the things that struck me while watching it was the story of how Kevin developed Elmo's character. The first incarnation of Elmo was as a growly, gruff-voiced caveman-like creature who liked to cause mayhem, but it just wasn't working, and so fellow puppeteer Richard Hunt tossed Elmo into Kevin's lap and said, "He's all yours." Every puppet, he'd been told, has to have one thing that makes them, one characteristic that defines them.
Somehow, someway, Kevin discovered Elmo's: love.
Elmo is love personified. He loves everyone. He's all about affection: hugging, kissing, holding hands. He's all about making people feel loved, welcomed, included, appreciated. And that, I'd suggest, is why he's so popular. It's why kids love him; it's why, as Kevin relates, kids in Make-A-Wish-type situations ask for him; it's why he brings comfort to those in distress; it's why he brings joy to those experiencing sorrow.
Love.
Yes, I'm drawing a lesson from a furry red puppet and applying it to faith.
Because God is love. Jesus is love personified. And we're supposed to be the same way--that's what a follower does, right?
So what does it say about how we're living our lives, about how we're presenting Christ, about how we're representing God to a hurting, broken world, that we aren't received the same way, that we aren't in those same places, that we aren't bringing the comfort and welcome and joy of a loving God to those around us?