Category: gospel (Page 4 of 6)

No Greater Love

April 6, 2015 / Michele Minehart

In the name of the Easter season I’ve been spending some time in John’s Gospel story. I have to be in the right mood for Johnny. He gets all sentimental with flowery love language, telling his version of the story in a bit of an unusual way, compared to the other 3 accounts (called in the academic world the “synoptic Gospels”). I like the directness of Mark – he moves through the story as if it were a trip to the mall. “And then we, and then we, and then we...” And Matthew’s rich history underwritten into his texts. And Luke the Equalizer and his love for the poor and downtrodden. So, John is more the Love Child of the gospel stories and thus when I need to get out of the business of religion, I turn to his words.

Specifically, I love his writings on Jesus’ pre-death soliloquy. Chapter by chapter, you can’t read it in one sitting – it’s much too rich. Chapters 14-17 are best in small bites. Today’s nibble that caught me was 15:13.

[box] “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”[/box]

Now, I’ve always identified more as the one who received the love that cost life. Jesus died for me, so I’m receiving the Greatest Love. What a gift. Thank you Jesus, you shouldn’t have. I need to write a thank you note.

But today I dug out my 8th grade English skills and diagrammed this verse and realized I’ve been reading it all wrong. It’s hard in our murky English language with misplaced modifiers and gender-neutral language to completely understand it, but I’m fairly positive I’ve understood it backward.

While, yes, the beloved friends in the verse do reap benefit, they’re not experiencing the Greatest Love. That warm fuzzy is a mere bi-product. The Greatest Love goes to “the one” who is giving – giving the love, laying down the life. While we might feel special, we ought not feel as if we’ve achieved the Greatest of all Loves. We’ve simply been in relationship with one who has.

In our love-hungry culture, we frequently appeal to this desire to be loved. Look at our books and movies and find the undercurrent story of being pursued as the ultimate expression of love. I never watched it, but I believe 50 Shades appealed to a large audience because it played the strings of this desire to be the object of such a love. Christians, be careful – much of our language around dating, specifically for women, sings the same song. Be pursued. Wait patiently. It’s all very knight-in-shining-armor-y.

This narrative distorts the Greatest Love and leaves us hungry. When we devour romance novels and porn we taste something similar, but like saccharin, are not fulfilled. We’re dining on the wrong kind of love. We’re chasing a Receiving love. Jesus said we’ll be full when we begin to live a Giving Love.

Perhaps this is why God gave parenting as a gift and a practice. In this space, we’re thrust into Giving Love. We most certainly aren’t the Beloved of the relationship, and for many of us this might be the first time we’ve lost Beloved status. All of a sudden we’re Loving with costs, not just benefits.

Pair that with a culture that tells us that the measurement of our costly love is how our children turn out. Well-adjusted children become the measuring stick of love. No wonder all parents are neurotic. Because we’re seeing it backward. The beauty isn’t only in the Beloved. The real blessing is in the work of Giving Love.

The Easter season ought not be just a time to reflect on how much we are beloved, though we are and the day is a beautiful one to show gratitude. But it should be for us a time of year to focus on how we might be a Giver of love, someone who lays down one’s life.* If we stop at living the Beloved life, we’ll never actually experience the Greatest Love God has to offer.

*I appreciate and believe in the need for inclusive language. However, I also hate it and the way it can muck up a sentence.

Celebrate Sunday

November 16, 2014 / Michele Minehart

[box] “O God, who makest us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of they Son our Lord…”

-The Book of Common Prayer, A Collect for Sundays[/box]

Antonio Brilla’s The finding of the empty tomb of Christ

I’ve heard it said that we’re an “Easter People.” But on any given Sunday, is that true? The last time I have chanted He is Risen! was on Easter and then alone.

We tend to point to a cross when we need the empty grave.

Why are we so stuck on Friday? We recount the sin of that day, the hurt, the awful. Friday has its rightful day of the week, the day of mourning and grief.

But it’s Sunday! He took that to the grave and left it there.

We choose to gather on Sunday, the day the women sprinted back to the disciples and revealed that Christ had beat all that we feared. Their burial spices were useless because Jesus left an empty tomb. Life, as we know it, will never be the same.

Today, on Sunday, don’t live in Friday. Live Sunday. Resurrection. Every Sunday.

[box] “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

-Jesus, John 16:33[/box]

From the Archives: What does 9/11 have to do with Jesus?

September 11, 2014 / Michele Minehart

My FB feed erupted in people remembering a day that has been etched in our brain. We all recall where we were, who we were with and our reactions to the towers falling. Each year we turn our hearts and our memories to those closest to the horror and revisit their stories.

It’s a natural phenomenon, to remember and relive, even such horrific events. Our country bore a tragedy together which shaped us individually and as a nation. We tell one another, “Never forget” but do we know why? Not just to honor the victims, though they deserve a place in prayer and reflection. But I think remembering 9/11 goes deeper than a national holiday. I think our experience of September 11th exposed something we didn’t realize had anything to do with the message of Jesus.

After reflecting on Esther and Daniel, I let it sink in how they were living in captivity, mastered by another people group and government. I realized how within the story of the people of God lies a story of struggle against control and power and oppression. Being a 21st century American, it’s a piece of the Gospel puzzle that I – we – simply cannot fully wrap our minds around.

God begins his work with Abraham, promising him a nation and a land. A place to call home. A land where he would reap what he sewed, and would eat what he planted. Throughout the story of Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua the people of God journeyed toward what they hoped would be sovereignty. Fast forward and they finally find themselves in the Promised Land. It’s good for a while, until the people forget God. So the Babylonians move in, take over and haul them out of their own country to be slaves.

All of this makes for great story behind a pulpit or on a flannel board, but I just don’t think we completely fathom what was happening. Another country, another king, marched in, killed a bunch of their men, tore families from their homes and their gardens and their schools and their neighbors, and took them someplace else so they could be servants. Even after the nation of Israel is allowed to return, remnants don’t make it back, such as Esther.

We were born into freedom. I’m not much of a flag waver, but I think those of us who follow Jesus owe our predecessors a bit more regard than what we often realize. And not just those who fought and are fighting; but a realization that we are living a part of the Gospel promise.

American Christianity lacks a firm understanding of how the gospel of Jesus freed us not just from sin (though it did) but it paved the way to living free of a master. Unlike Daniel and Esther, we live free of fear from someone mandating we bow down to anything other than what we believe to be true. We are truly able to serve only God.

The events of 9/11 shook us because it introduced to our generation the concept that freedom is not a guarantee. We can be tormented and attacked. Someone could – and did – cross our boundaries and threaten the promises we often take for granted.

For the people of God, they lived 9/11 occurrences frequently. Some, for their entire existence, lived under a foreign regime. Don’t you suffer shortness of breath to think about what if Al Quida had won and conquered? What if bin Laden had somehow gained control? That same anxiety is what generations and generations of people woke up to each and every day. I’m sure somewhere, some still do.

I believe imagining those situations will lead us in the direction of the fullness of what Jesus did. His entire life was under Roman rule. He spoke of power and authority and freedom and love because it was very real to his situation.

Nowadays we cannot fathom what he really meant because we have no collective memory of such a life. So we align our Biblical freedoms to that of freedom from sin, freedom from legalism and a very moralist vein emerges. And while those things are true (we are free from sin and legalism), it is also true that we are free from oppressive powers.

September 11th needs to remain “forever in our hearts” because it scratched an old wound we forget existed. But we cannot stop there: if we are living the hope of so many generations, a freedom from oppression, then what will we do with it?

Right now we take that freedom and argue about taxes and medical terminology. And while those discussions have its place, I believe followers of Jesus should get a bit more serious about using our place of privilege (much like Esther and Daniel) and go about the work of extending the Kingdom of God to others. And not just in a have-a-tract, say-a-prayer, have-a-blessed-day kind of way. And certainly not using a typical American, because-our-way-is-the-best-way approach. If the freedom from oppression can and did become reality, then we have to believe that the rest of what Jesus said could be true.

Perhaps we need to get serious about the things which continue to torment God’s beloved in the rest of the world. Perhaps our little city on a hill should shine its light into the evils that plague other places, rather than just sitting so cozy in our safe little haven. And not politically (because I firmly believe that God didn’t grant us freedom so we can occupy someone else), but living justly, loving mercy and walking humbly in the many large and small ways that can change lives everywhere.

**Patriot Day is a political, American holiday – no matter one’s faith belief. I’m not taking something that belongs to everyone in the US and saying it’s only for Christians. I am saying that those of us who follow Jesus need to also realize that the events of 9/11 have deeper implications. I’m saying that when we cry watching the footage for the 11th time it’s for a reason – and not only an American one, but a human one, one that Jesus spoke to. All faith beliefs belong to our occasion of remembering.

Category: gospel (Page 4 of 6)

No Greater Love

Celebrate Sunday

From the Archives: What does 9/11 have to do with Jesus?

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