What is Love?

What is Love? Tis the question we often ask as we enter the month of February and remember that Valentine’s Day is peering around the corner. Retail stores are filled with isles of cheap chocolates made with oils and lard, overpriced sentimental cards by Hallmark, and a variety of flowers that will wilt within the week. The consumerism of the holiday aside, love is a powerful word that demands our attention. This small, four letter word brings with it so much meaning and emotion.

Love may be one of the most used and abused words in the Bible. As we search the scriptures we see different usages of the word, different terms used to try and define love. Hesed, Philos, Eros, Agape all seek to bring clarity to a single word Love that we use in our English language.

Did you ever think about when the first time that the word love shows up in your bible? At first thought, you would assume that it would be in the Garden of Eden. After all, isn’t that is the place where God originated the concept of marriage, bringing together a man and a woman for the sake of union? Lonely Adam, with nobody but the lions and tigers and bears to keep him company, awakens from a deep sleep and sees beautiful Eve standing before him in all her perfection. After he wipes the saliva from his face, of course the first words out of his mouth must have been, “I love you.” If not there then surly he must uttered them during the wedding ceremony with all the animals as witnesses and God as the officiant.

But the author of Genesis leaves those words absent; he doesn’t include them as part of the narrative. It appears that he is being intentional about not letting us believe that the word love is based upon romantic attraction or marital obligation. So where does it show up first in the text? For that answer you have to flip to Genesis 22 and discover an unlikely setting for the word to appear. God, after appearing to Abraham and making a covenant with him that he would be the father of nations, after informing him that his barren wife Sarah would give birth to a son, and after fulfilling that promise with the birth of Isaac, now calls out to Abraham and gives him the following instructions: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2).

The first time that word love appears in your Bible is when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his one and only son. That is fascinating to me because it goes against everything that culturally I have been led to believe about love. I turn on the radio and hear about romantic love, the kind of love that makes me feel good and happy and giddy. I watch movies and see that when two people “love each other” that they are passionate and affectionate towards one another. I’ve grown up thinking and believing that love is an emotion that I am to receive because of what another person will give me. And there God is, revealing to me in the first book of his Holy Scriptures that love is actually something much different than my feelings or passions. It is about sacrifice.

Paul reminds the church in Ephesus that the perfect example of love is Jesus Christ, who “loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). He calls us to be imitators of this love and to walk in it (v. 1). And then he comes to famous marriage section of Ephesians 5 in which he declares the marriage relationship between a man and woman is a “great mystery” (v. 32). There is a secret to this relationship, an amazing and profound truth to what makes a marriage work. What is it? Sacrifice. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (v.26). We take the example of our Lord and Savior, who did not count “equality with God a thing to be grasped” but instead forsook his royal rights as the Son of God and “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6,8).

Christ reminds us that true love is about giving, not receiving. Love is our willingness to give up our lives for the sake of another. It is not a matter of my feelings, but a matter of my will. Notice what we say in weddings when we make vows to each. “I do” or “I will”, not “I feel like it.” We must acknowledge that love is fundamentally more action than it is emotion, more promise than it is passion, more duty than it is feeling.

In this season of romantic love songs and sentimental Valentine cards, let us know lose sight of the biblical vision of love that is about sacrificial commitment between a man and a woman. Let us keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:2) and model to the world a picture of love that is willing to lay down our lives for another, not matter what the cost to ourselves. What is Love? It is God first loving us through the finished work of Jesus Christ and allowing us to love others as a result (I John 4:19).

"You will find me bigger"

I love the Chronicles of Narnia.  As a child I immersed myself in the C.S. Lewis’ series; I was captivated by the tales of the Pevensie children as they entered a magical world full of talking beavers, fauns, centaurs, dwarfs, and white witches.  I even though the cheesy BBC version of the books were cool (although the current Disney movies put them to shame). 

Lewis had a way of bringing the science fiction into a reality that we all could enjoy and understand.  His tales were fanciful yet practical.  There’s a great interaction between Aslan the Lion (the Christ-figure in the Narnia stories) and young Lucy Pevensie in chapter 10 of the book, Prince Caspian.  Lucy is reunited with the Lord of Narnia and as she embraces him and looks over him she comments, “Aslan, you’re bigger.”  “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.  “Not because you are?”  she replied.  “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

Lewis uses the words of a fierce creature to communicate to us something profound about our relationship with Christ.  Like Lucy, we should be finding Jesus to be bigger and bigger each year.  As each year passes, we should be more in awe of who He is, what He has done on our behalf, and what He is doing in our world.  Far too often the Christian life is one of accepting Christ, entering into a safe and comfortable spot in life and then smooth sailing the rest of the way.  Yet if the author of Hebrews is correct, then God has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, “whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs” (Hebrews 1:2-4). 

Jesus is the creator of the universe, the radiance of God, the sustainer of all things, the savior of the world, the ruler who sits at the right hand of God, and the superior one who will return one day to display his power forever.  In the meanwhile, we are his servants, his stewards, called to live distinctly and faithfully to his calling on our lives.  My prayer for others as it is for me is that we continue to be people who live with a big view of Jesus, one that gets bigger and bigger as each year passes.  

The Journey to Jesus

I love to go on journeys.  The very idea of heading on an adventurous trip to a far away place and all the unique and amazing experiences that come with it gets my juices flowing.  If its somewhere I’ve never been then that’s even better.  During my college years, I would often jump into my Mazda B5200 truck in the middle of the night and decide it was time to take a trip.  Whether it was to the mountains or the ocean, with friends or flying solo, it was just the idea of going somewhere and looking for adventure that motivated me.  A journey is defined ‘as the act of traveling from one place to another.’  It is seen as a literal geographical movement from one location to another.    

This fall I’ve been on two amazing journey’s.  The first including packing up my bride and four daughters and travelling to 4100 miles across the U.S. in the mini-van to Lincoln, Nebraska.  Along the way we visited family and friends, ventured to cities and states we’d never been before, and enjoyed an amazing time of family bonding.  We saw beautiful sunsets and amazing rock formations.  We viewed desert and mountains and flatlands along the way.  We experienced snow, torrent rain, and blazing heat all in the same day.  We encountered a vomiting episode with my six year old, which rivaled something out of The Exorcist all while driving 8o miles an hour down the I-25 in Colorado.  We got lost, found our way, got lost again, and eventually made our destination.  We laughed and complained, argued and agreed, delighted and felt frustration.  It was truly delightful.  Why?  Because it was an adventure and it was with the people I cared most about.  

The second journey took me on a plane all the way across the globe to near east.  This journey was also with people but a group of individuals unknown to me.  I travelled with a team from Hume Lake and we hosted international camps for missionary kids in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  This time I encountered foreign lands, languages, and cultures.  I rode in a Song Thaew (pickup trucks converted into passenger/cargo carrying vehicle), watched a grown man kiss a cobra on the head, rode an elephant, and ate Thai delicacies that left me grasping for the Tums.  I met new people, made new friendships, and forged bonds with individuals that will last the rest of my life.   It also was truly a delight because it was new and exhilarating and life changing. 

Most of us are drawn the journey.  For centuries literature has produce some of the most epic journeys that people have undertaken.  From Homer’s Odyssey to the Arthurian legends of the quest to find the Holy Grail to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is something powerful in these tales of adventure that resonates with us.  We are inspired and moved by stories of men and women who risk everything and set out on a long journey to acquire knowledge or possession.  As we read and watch our protagonists explore exotic locations and cultures, face grave danger and overcome deadly obstacles we find inspiration and encouragement.     

The Bible is full of journeys.  Abraham leaves behind his homeland and family to journey to a new land that God had promised to show him.  Moses leads an entire nation of people out of Egypt to head towards that Promised Land.  Joseph and Mary must set out from Galilee to head to their ancestral town of Bethlehem in order to be registered.  Pregnant with child, this journey is both treacherous and dangerous for mother and child.   

There is another journey that takes place in the Scriptures that I have been thinking about a lot during this Christmas season.  It’s the one that some wise men from the East took in order to find a baby boy.  It’s the story of the Magi. 

We have a lot of misconceptions about these men.  Most of them stem from tradition, not from the text itself.  We usually assume that there are three although the Bible never makes reference to a number.  Three is in correlation to the number of gifts given to Jesus.  Its been thought that they were kings (think ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are) but this also in not mention in the text.  Matthew in fact gives very little detail about these men. We don’t know what country they came from, what faith background they had, or how they knew the meaning of the star.  They simply left everything in order to follow a star and find a king. 

There must have been something about this star, something so majestic and powerful that it would make these men willing to leave their homeland, travel across distant lands, and face many dangers.  While they may have been scholars who were well versed in astronomy and astrology and may have indeed understood the significance of the star, to leave behind everything and embark on such a journey required great faith and courage.

  

As I read through the pages of Matthew and unpack the Magi’s journey, I’m reminded that there are two main characters in this story.  One is mentioned, the other is not.  The one that is not written about in the text is God, interestingly enough.  You would think that his name would pop up in the narrative but it conspicuously absent.  Yet God is indeed the primary mover in this story.  It is God who reveals and leads the wise men to Jesus. 

God is a revealing God.  He is not some pie in the sky deity that we are left to conjure up ideas and thoughts about him.  Instead He is the creator of the universe who steps into his creation and allows himself to be seen.  From Genesis to Exodus to the Gospels and to the Acts of the Apostles, the glory of God is declared and revealed (Psalms 19:1, Romans 1:19).  God speaks to us, both as an audible voice that Abraham, Moses, and Paul heard as well as in the written word of the Bible given to all of us.  He revealed himself to the Magi through the use of a star and they are drawn to him. 

It is clear the magi are on a journey; it is their response to the star that brings them to Bethlehem and before Mary and the Christ child.  I love the reaction of the men as they recognize that they were close. “When they saw the star, the rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10).  It wasn’t enough to state that they were excited; Matthew repeats the statement multiple times in the sentence.  It’s the Bible’s way of making a point.  God is holy, holy, holy.  The wise men are joyful, joyful, joyful.

Their joy leads them to worship. They fall down before Christ and acknowledge him as royal and worthy of their praise.  As the psalmist of old wrote, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before our Lord, our Maker” (Psalm 95:6).  They offered him gifts of expensive value – gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Reverence and adoration filled their hearts and they laid down their offerings before Jesus.  Worship is the proper response when we recognize that our journey has found its destination, that our quest has found its conclusion.  The wise men may have physically journeyed to Bethlehem to find a king; but they also had been on a spiritual journey, one they were not aware of.  They had found the God of the universe, wrapped in human form, and their lives would never be the same.   

The story of the Magi ends abruptly.   “And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way” (verse 12).  What became of their lives?  Did this journey change them forever?  I wonder how often they retold the story to their family and friends?  Did they write it down so others could share in their tale for generations to come?  As often, the Bible doesn’t give us a ‘happily ever after’ ending.  But it does leave us with the sense that their journey was worth sharing and their experiences worth pondering.  For us during this Christmas season, what does our journey to Jesus look like?  Are we aware of God’s leading us to Christ?  Do we respond with worship and adoration?  Do we leave changed and transformed?  My prayer is that as we consider the act of traveling from one place to another is that we would recognize that each of us is on a journey and the ultimate destination is Jesus Christ.  

“And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel” (Matthew 2:6).    

Pastoral Reflections

At the Well Community Church we have a Elder team that provides leadership and oversight for the church.  We are an “elder lead, staff run” church.  These five men, fulfilling the qualifications of I Timothy 3 and Titus 1, are godly men who care deeply about the church and their role in what God is doing here in our Valley. 

I usually try and connect with at least one of them per month, for lunch or a cup of coffee.  It’s a good time of conversation and update, sharing the latest from our lives, evaluating what is going on in my world, and doing a little soul upkeep.  I love our times together and appreciate their insight and encouragement. 

This past week I met with one of our elders, Russ Taylor.  Russ is an architect in town and man of great character with a commitment to Christ and his church.  During our time together he asked, “So you are one year in this pastor thing, how is it going?”  That’s a loaded question to be sure.  Never in my wildest dreams did I see myself being called into this kind of ministry.  For the longest time my world has consisted of athletics and education and I always saw myself as a coach of sports team while working with young people.  To step into the church and into this pastoral role has challenged me and called out of my comfort zones. 

I smiled.  “Its been quite a ride,” I answered.  “One day is never like the last.”  I went on to explain that the fullness of human experiences that I have encounter in the past year.  I have stood with a couple on stage as they have exchanged vows and declared their love and commitment to each other.  In the same vein I have also sat with couples on the verge of divorce who have suffered through years of conflict and pain.  I have rejoiced at the birth of a child but have also prayed to the God of the universe to heal a newborn who has been diagnosised with a kidney cyst.  I have watched people transformed and healed of disease and addiction before my very eyes and at the same time I have agonized over people giving in to temptation and sin and creating destruction in their lives as well as others.  I’ve talked guys out of killing themselves and have celebrated with baptism as men have walked into newness of life.  Like King Solomon of old, I recognize that there is an occasion for everything, a time for every activity under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). 

Russ looked at me and said, “How do you do it?  How do you help people stay on the straight and narrow?  How do you keep yourself healthy and not become consumed with their issues and problems?  How do you allow yourself to minister to them and still continue to minister yourself?

“In all honesty, the only thing I know how to do is point them to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). I’m not smart enough, or experienced enough, or prepared enough to be anybody’s Savior.  I need mercy and compassion and wisdom and discernment just like the rest of them.  So I try my best to help people see that Christ is the source of life and healing and restoration, that He is our Savior, Redeemer, and King.  That he is to be the one we turn in times of trial and tribulation (Matthew 11:29,30), and that he alone is capable of saving us (Matthew 1:21). 

Russ looked at me and said, “Sounds like a good plan.”  I replied, "It’s all I got.  But I think its a pretty good."  So no matter what stage of life we are in, not matter what condition our soul is, there is God who loves us and is ready to be the very thing that nothing in this world can offer.  Hope, joy, peace, and love everlasting.  Come to Jesus, fix your eyes on Him, and be saved (Acts 16:31).      

Jesus in Everyday Life

We are reminded that the Word became flesh (John 1:14) and moved into the neighborhood.  Jesus is Immanuel – “God with us” – and he came to this earth as a human being and set up shop in the life of a community.  He didn’t tuck himself away in a castle or temple or government palace.  He hung out in the streets, the marketplace, and the local taverns.  In contemporary terms he was at the local Starbucks, community center, and little league baseball complex.  He met people where they were.  He listened and cared for those in need.  If we are truly his disciples then we are to embody the word, deed, and life of Jesus into every aspect of our lives. We are to live authentically and distinctively in our world so that people can see Jesus and not just religious robots.         

Throughout the Gospel accounts, you see Jesus enter into the lives of people and meet them where they are.  He went out to the sea and recruited local fisherman.  He broke all conventional wisdom and engaged in conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well.  He do the unthinkable and found a tax collector sitting in a tree and invited himself over for dinner .  

See a pattern?  Jesus didn’t shy away from the boundaries that we often put against others instead he initiated conversations with blue-collar workers, scandalous women, and notorious tax collectors. He brought the Good News of the Gospel to people in a real and authentic way.  He wasn’t offering people self--help talk.  It wasn’t 5 steps to a better you.  It is the life-giving, life-saving, life-changing love of God, found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  When we live this way, we also bring the Good News to the places where we live, work, and play.   

Song of the Harlot

Sunday evening was a real treat for me as one of my favorite indie bands showed up in Fresno to play a gig at THE NEIGHBORHOOD THRIFT.  Twenty years I came across the album "Chosen", a release by a Southern California band called the violet burning.  Captivated by their sound and worshipful lyrics that were a combination of traditional song and soulful inspection, I feel in love with this band and especially their charismatic lead, Michael J. Pritzl.  Over the years, the band has changed members multiple times but Pritzl has remained the one constant.  A tortured soul of sorts, Pritzl has been one of a handful of musicians/artists that over the years I have found myself fascinated with and been a loyal fan of.  He has always had the fascinating ability within his lyrics to provide an authentic and deep seeded faith with the honest anguish and heart wrenching reality of our lives.  Like the psalmists of old, Pritzl is a master poet who can uncover the sadness while finding beauty within it.  He understands the chaos of life but sees splendor all around.  He can embrace the light in the middle of deep sorrow.  Sunday was the first opportunity for me to hear the band  play live and it lived up to its billing.  Their newest offering, "The Story of Our Lives" is a powerful testimony to the  unstoppable power of art, of sound, and of words.  Love it.  

Pritzl's songs have always touched my soul but none more than "The Song of the Harlot", written in 1992.  A powerful description of Luke 7 and Jesus encounter with the prostitute who enter the home of the Pharisee and humbly prostrates herself at Jesus feet in worship and adoration.  Scorned by her community, she falls down to her knees and begins to weep before while kissing her master's feet.  Angered by such a sight, the religious leader turns his nose to this woman and condemns her for being a "sinner."  Jesus, never one to miss a moment to expose the religious hypocrisy of others, confronts with the man with a parable.  Comparing the woman to the Pharisee, Jesus asks the simple question: Who is more gracious, the one who has been forgiven more or less?  The religious leader, not making the connection, answers the trap.  "I suppose the one he forgave more" (Luke 7:43).  Jesus then reveals one of the many truths of the kingdom, "Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that's why she loved much"(verse 47).  When we recognize our sinfulness, our response to compassion and forgiveness is so much greater than when we see ourselves as righteous.  

Prtizl finds the exchange powerful,  "because when I read the Bible I find that I relate to the sinners more than I relate to the saints."  By connecting to the sinner, Pritzl allows himself the humility and dependance upon a Sovereign God to save him.  

     If I could be

    Anyone at all

    If I could be

    Anyone at all

    Let me be

    The whore at your feet

I want to be the type of man that is willing to take responsibility for my sin, acknowledge my depravity and cry out to my heavenly Father for mercy.  I don't want to take the posture of the Pharisee, who lived with such a wretched sense of self-righteousness that he was incapable of feeling love or extending grace.  I want to cry out like David, "Then I acknowledged my win to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD and you forgave the guilt of my sin" (Psalm 32:5).  Let me be the harlot that confess one's sin and depend upon a Savior that is faithful and just and capable to forgive us and cleanse us from our unrighteousness (I John 1:9).  Pritzl always has and will continue to speak to me because of his willingness to expose his heart, mind, and soul in honest and authentic ways.