Global Andy

Outside a village in Africa sat 10 people who were infected with AIDs. It should not have been a rare site since 5% of the adult population of Sub-Sahara Africa are living with HIV. Of these 10, 6 were women and 2 were children.  One man was a homosexual. But lest he face the death penalty in his own country, he told no one. (BTW, the President of this nation – Uganda – became a born-again follower of Christ in high school.  Is this what it means to follow Christ?)

It so happened that Jesus made his way past this village.  Not the Jesus we might imagine or we have created in our own minds. (Plug here to buy my friends book the comes out in 2010.) But the real Savior.  One full of grace and truth.  A man of sorrows and acquainted with much grief.  The healer.  The redeemer.  The Promised One.

These modern day lepers met him but they didn’t get too close.  We know we can’t get AIDs from a touch but they had been outcast and rejected. The were the living dead in a land with no place left to bury them. Yes, there are the anti-viral treatments that can keep these lepers alive but few of them could afford it.  Unless they lived in Botswana where the President has chosen to give it away, they have little hope.

“Unclean” their lives cried out to the world!  And the world in turn avoided them.  We have turned our eyes from this epidemic.  ”What can we do?”,  we ask. ” It’s too painful.  Not my world.”

But to this gentle healer, their voices cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”.   Mercy.   We need mercy.  You are the Master who can give it.  Don’t turn away from us!

He didn’t.  God gives mercy to whom he chooses but He also gives mercy to all who in their free will ask.  A lovely paradox.

He took a good look at them. (And don’t think He was afraid to get too close. He broke bread with a leper leaning on him. ) He wasn’t afraid of his life being affected by their’s.  He knew shame. He knew rejection.  He – the exact representation of God – choose to share in their humanity.  The Creator became the created.  Not jsut a created.  A man of poverty.  An outcast himself.  The Exalted One became like of the lowest of humanity.   He was the Master but he knew what it was to be ‘a leper’.

“Go, show yourselves to the priests.”, He said. For only a priest could declare them clean.

They went, and while still on their way, became clean. Notice they weren’t clean until they left Jesus’ presence.  They obeyed by faith.  What if they didn’t become clean along the way?  The Priests would declare them unclean.  It was a step of faith.   Funny how things never work the way we think!   Sometimes Jesus healed immediately.  Sometimes He didn’t even have to be there.  Sometimes it was in stages. (“I see but people look like walking trees.”) And here, he didn’t even happen until they left.

One of the lepers, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough—and he was the homosexual.  Jesus said, “Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Can none be found to come back and give glory to God except this sinner?” Then he said to him, “Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you.”

That word ‘saved’ in the Greek is the same word in Ephesians 2:8, 9 when Paul writes that we are saved by faith.   To this man, it was a spiritual healing as well as a physical one. The kingdom of God brings healing to the whole man.  The 10 were healed and set free. They all experienced the power of Jesus to change their lives.  The one, the outcast of outcasts, found healing in his soul through gratitude and real worship.

This was no bait and switch work of compassion.  ”Hey nothing’s working, let’s try good deeds.”   No exposure strategy to get to the real kicker.  He would have healed him anyway because He was a man of compassion.  It also wasn’t:  ”shoot I am tired of being chastised as a follower of Christ.  Why don’t I do some good so people will think Jesus is cool.”  But if you want a Samaritan to think, “What the heck I am doing going to a Priest?  Not like they would accept me in a synagogue.  That man, He is the real Priest.  He deserves my praise, my gratitude, my worship.   If that’s a Jesus I could leave all to follow.”    If we want to bring about the Kingdom of God, maybe we need to live and love like the King.  Maybe this limitless love and power of Christ needs to be displayed.

How will I respond?   Do I grieve over this day set aside as World AIDs Day?  Do I see it as a opportunity to live out the Kingdom of God, to live as Christ lived?  Will I look the other way or avoid that village?  Do I look beyond someone being a ‘Samaritarian’ and see with His eyes?

Oh Jesus have mercy on our world!  We acknowledge our promiscious lifestyles have brought about the crises.  We have not lived as you desire.  Oh Master, have mercy.  Many are dying.  Many children. All ones created in your imagine.  Countless grieve over this loss.  This is not how the it should be.  May your Kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I don’t get the Book of Judges.  It’s just a bunch of misfits who lead Israel in a time when everyone was just doing what was right in their own eyes.  (Sort of like the world today) But most of these judges are just random.  Like you have Jair who all it says about him is that he had 30 sons who rode 30 donkeys.  Then later you have Abdon who breaks that record with 40 sons and 30 grandsons who ride 70 donkeys.   Sort of like a poor man’s Mongolian Horde.

And there’s no way to understand Jephthah and how we followed through on his stupid vow to sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house.  Like couldn’t he have said: ‘the barn’?  What was he expecting to come of his house to greet him?   Or how bout when he saw his daughter saying:  ’I was just kidding?’   I think God would have understood.

But the king of weird in Judges is Samson.  You read his story and you cringe for his parents.  Bless little Zorah and Manoah.  They finally have a kid and he is a loose cannon.

Dude is a caveman. He goes off and kills men just to settle a bet.  He lights the tails of foxes on fire.  He’s crazy.  He’s a caveman.   In fact he even lived in a cave once.   I am certain the seven braids of his hair looked like a mullet.  And if his hair was his strength, women were definitely his weakness.   If he was around today he might make the Power Team (if that’s still around) but there is no way on earth anyone would ever entrust him to leadership.   He’s got every HR red flag in the book.

And yet…

God uses him.  He even uses the stupid things Samson does for His glory and purpose.  I looked at my own life and say “God can’t use me.”  Especially when I do something stupid… which is often.    Or I analyze and evaluate others and say “God can’t use them.”   They are not worthy.   But God can.   Maybe you wouldn’t put a Samson up front or in charge of the youth.  But God can use anyone… even a caveman.  He used Samson.  Then in the NT, Jesus takes out a recently clothed man who demon-possessed and hanging out the tombs and sends him on a home-town mission.  No seminary training nor even simple training of some how-to’s.

God uses the foolish things to confound the wise and the weak things to shame the strong.  His power is made perfect in weakness.

The grandeur of God is displayed as His glory shines through broken clay pots.

Near the beginning of the Book of Judges, after Joshua dies, the author writes this:

“After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger ¹³ because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the LORD handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.”

Notice that this generation wasn’t one that just forget, they didn’t know Him or what He had done.   They left Him for other gods but they really didn’t know the God they left.  The end result us that they gave themselves to other gods, provoking God to anger and His hand to be against them.  And they were in great distress.

The tragedy is that the generation right before them knew – they knew firsthand.  They saw God lead them into the promised land parting the Jordan river, leading them to victory, giving them the Land.  In Moses’ final sermon (Deuteronomy), that generation was warned to Love the LORD your God with all their heart, soul and  strength. They were to take to heart the commandments given to them and  impress  them on your children. They were to talk about them at home and along the road as they walked, when they lied down and when they got up. There was to be visual reminders everywhere on doorposts, gates and even headbands.  The precursor to the WWJD bracelets I guess.

It was expected that your kids would ask, ‘Now why do we do this?”.   And they were to tell them the history and not forget….   But I guess they did.

Moses warned them.  Living in houses they didn’t build, they forgot that their mothers and fathers were slaves.  Drinking from wells they didn’t dig, they forgot times of thirst.  Eating and being satisfied from vineyards and olive groves they didn’t dig, they forgot what it was like to go hungry. Living in flourishing cities, they forgot the wilderness.    They forgot.  And they didn’t tell the next generation.

I can’t look in judgment on them.  I wouldn’t consider myself rich but compared to even what my Father went through as a boy, I am.  Not to mention how rich I am compared to the vast majority of the world.  I live in a house I didn’t build.  I eat food I didn’t toil over the ground to produce.  I drink from water that I didn’t have to walk 5 miles each day to fetch.  I am satisfied.  I am blessed.  And in the blessing, I think I am entitled and I forget.

I look at my sons and wonder will they be a generation that doesn’t even know?  That thought grieves me and haunts me of the distress they could encounter.  How do you ‘impress’ kids without it being forced?   How to you make it normal to talk about the goodness of God?

How do you help them know?   How do I not forget?

Caleb is interesting bible character to me.  He seems to be the kind of guy cut from a different mold.  You might know the story.  When he was 40 he was one of 12 spies sent into Canaan to scope it out.  (Numbers 13 & 14) Like David and Jesus who would come after him, he was from the tribe of Judah.  Actually the expediation was not to be ‘should we take the land’ or ‘can we’ but ‘go and see the land God is giving us’.  As you know there were 10 who saw giants and said ‘no way’ and Caleb alone with Yeshua (Joshua) said ‘let’s go get ‘em… If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.‘.

At that the congregation wanted to stone him.

Flash-forward 40 years.  Joshua is promoted to the man and we are reintroduced to Caleb.  Actually its 45 years because after crossing the Jordan, they spend 5 years taking possession.   All the people who said ‘no way’ died.  Joshua and Caleb alone are still around.

So this 85 year old man, goes to Joshua and says ‘give me my land’. Give me the land I scoped out, the one with the giants.  The one promised to me 45 years ago, I still have fight left in me.  I’ve been waiting for this day for 40+ years.  Yeah, the giants are still living in that hill country but with God’s help I can take it.  He’s bigger than they are.”

Bold, brash, full of faith.  Wholehearted devotion.  Not half-hearted.  But he was ‘all in’.

In fact that’s why he was promised this portion.  He followed God wholeheartedly.  He believed when others didn’t.  He believed despite the circumstances.  His faith wasn’t in his ability as a he-man but in God and the promise of His word.

When I look at the giants in the world I get overwhelmed.  In my soul, I say ‘no way’.  Giants that stand in the way of “His Kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”    And with Kingdom, I am not talking some Christian political utopia.   I am talking about surveying the land and seeing the things on earth that are not like they are in heaven.  His Kindgom is to be in this world but not of this world.

I see giants – pain, grief, suffering, death, extreme poverty, spiritual emptiness, apathy, hatred, war, murder, racism, abuse, human trafficking, injustices…  a lack of worship and honor due our King.

I see things within my own life… sin, self-centeredness, pride, lack of faith, pursuit of things that are temporal, wasting what God has given me, callousness, indifference, impatience…. a lack of genuine worship and honor due my Savior and  King.

I want to follow the Lord my God wholeheartedly.  I want to go after giants to see His Kingdom come.  I want to stand with Yeshua even if its just two standing.  I want to believe not because of what I see but because of who His is.

I want a little of crazy Caleb.

I have been reading the Gospel of Mark and mulling / mediating on some things of late.   It’s not just Mark but other books I have read within the last year or so like The Jesus Way, Hope Lives, The Hole in Our Gospel and reJesus to name a few.   I am kinda of slow so its taken me a while and God using a lot of sources for me to get it.  Perhaps my soul needs to be detoxed.

For most of my adult life, I have lived and ministered off the mentality that to  change the world I need to reach the most significant – college students, leaders, the influencers, those who can effect change.    It’s not that this was bad and all-wrong.  And God has used people who were significant in the world’s eyes in the bible and throughout history.    But subtly (maybe it was just me), the mentality stretched into being ‘reaching leaders’ is the pinnacle.  And if you reach a leader who doesn’t want to reach other leaders, you moved on.

But what about Jesus?  Of all the people He specificaly called / ministered to / sought out, how many would be significant in the world’s eyes?   The Centurian.  Jarius’ daughter.  (Maybe not her but her father) Perhaps Joanna,  the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household. (again maybe not her at that time in history) Two secret disciples: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.   So what?  5 over 3 years.  Perhaps I forgot someone but that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

So who did He target?  Who got His attention?  His hot hours?  The insignificant.  The poor.  Women. Children.  Blind beggars. Lepers. Diseased people. The lame, the mute, the crippled.  Demon-possessed men, women and children.  Tax-collectors (ostracized by both sides of the fence). Radical zealots. Smelly fishermen.  Women of ill repute.    Whenever Jesus is asked who is the greatest in the Kingdom or how to be great, He answers by saying:  ’a child, a servant, a slave, be like them.’     Not exactly ‘the signifanct’ of the world.    Not exactly the kind of crowd you would build a ministry/movement/church on.    

In Mark 10, there is a story we all know… Jesus encounters a rich young ruler.  I am not even gonna go in to how we quickly dismiss Jesus’ instruction to him or how this is one of only two times when approached with the question of how to be ‘saved’ that Jesus challenges people to a life focused on the least of these.  What has struck me of late is that this guy is the model of how we were told to build our kingdoms ministries.  Look at the dude: he’s young, he’s hip, he’s a leader and to top it all off he’s rich.  Dude could either lead the ministry or better yet… fund it.  He has staff potential all over him.  He’s the man who would want to invest him.   And to top it off, he is coming to ask  how to get  into heaven.  How easy is this.    But Jesus blows it.  He runs him off with some super challenge that no one can do.  And He doesn’t chase the guy down when he walks away.  Just says, “Oh well.  it’s hard for guys like him to make the cut.”

What the heck is going on?   I thought He was building a church?   Jesus would have been fired from most Christian organizations or churches for this insane act.  You can’t go building anything if all you do is run off the influential seekers with some high bar act like selling everything and giving to the poor.

Something else strikes me about this.  This story is found in 3 Gospels and every time, every time, it follows the scene of people bringing their kids to Jesus to be blessed.    In the NIV, it says that when  the disciples rebuked these parents that Jesus was indignant.  Here they were thinking they were doing Jesus a favor by sparing him from menial ministry so He could concentrate on those really important or at least those with real needs.  And yet it was affront to Our Lord.   “Guys don’t you get it.  This is not a waste of time.  These kids are what the Kingdom of God is all about.  It belongs to these precious little ones… vulnerable, dependant, full of faith, innocent. In fact its a prerequisite to be like children if you want any part of my Kingdom.”    Admit it.  We think ministry to kids is second-rate.   At best its a means just a program to best bring in the rich young ruler parents.  Or babysit them while we entertain the parents.  Certainly its not worth being indignant over.  Yeah, Jesus, be indignant over chasing off little kids but then turn around and chase off the guy who could fund the kids program.

So what do I do with this?  I don’t know.  Certainly we need to ask what God is calling us to do and do that.  We can no longer devalue ministry to those at the bottom.  We can’t go on thinking that people are selling out for the easier choice if they work with orphans and the poor like its some easier choice.  Giving your life to serve the poor is way harder than reaching leaders… it cost way more.  And, if we are called to reach those at the top and  if we are not helping them minister to those at the bottom, are we really making true disciples of Christ?

Personally… I have to examine my own life.  ”Lord show me where I run after the significant and ignore the insignificant.  Lord, help me see its not a waste of time.  Remind me that this is how you lived.  Break my heart for the things that break yours.”

What would my life look like if I truly knew Christ?  Not just head knowledge.  Not some false concept I have.  But really intimately knew Him? 

What would my day look like if I made it my goal to simply know Him better?  His life?  The power of his resurrection?  The fellowship of His sufferings?

Philippians 3

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

… But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

Once the disciples came to Jesus and asked him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

Perhaps they thought He would choose one of them.  Instead He called a little child and had him stand among them.  Not only did he pick the child as the greatest, he said that unless get over ourselves and become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus didn’t stop there.  He said that when we welcome a little child in His name welcomes Him.  But if anyone causes one of these dear precious little ones  to sin, it would be better for him to have a huge boulder hung around his neck  to be drowned in the depths of the sea.  OCH!

Jesus continued to tell the parable of the lost sheep.  The  Luke 15 account of this parable is the more common one.  This context ties it to kids.  “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.  What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.”

It’s the end of the weekend.  Tomorrow we go back to ministering to kids.  Tons of them.  I am not good at numbers.  More than a 100 maybe even more will show up unless it rains like it did today.  Half of these kids are orphaned… maybe living with a granny or an auntie.  Some are the older siblings taking care of their younger ones.  Almost all have unemployed parents.  For all the meal we help serve around 2 or 3 will be the last meal of the day and all they have had since breakfast if they had much then or not.

All are starved for love and affection.  And its a joy just to give them what they hunger for.

They are precious.  They are special.  They are invaluable. Ministering to them is ministering to Jesus.   He is serious about them.  He is not willing that any be lost like a sheep w/o a shepherd.

May I not forget that they are the Greatest and I need to be like them.

Then, accompanied by the disciples, Jesus left the upstairs room and went as usual to the Mount of Olives. There he told them, ‘Pray that you will not give in to temptation.’

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” ~ Jesus

“Arise, O Lord! Punish the wicked, O God! Do not ignore the helpless! Why do the wicked get away with despising God? They think, ‘God will never call us to account.’ But you see the trouble and grief they cause. You take note of it and punish them. The helpless put their trust in you. You defend the orphans *.