Zombie Apocalypse? I don't think so.

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 1 Corinthians 15:13–14

Ask 10 Christians: Why is the cross important, and you will get a fairly uniform response.  Ask the same 10 Christians why is the resurrection important, and you will get less uniformity, more variety and even some blank stares. 

The beautiful and selfless act of Jesus' death on the cross was necessary, taking the death that was ours on himself. Death was required. But the resurrection is death conquered; the resurrection is life -- not just for Jesus, not just for a future time, but for everybody, for all time. His death was once for all, but his resurrection keeps on flowing -- with power and hope for all areas of our life. Jesus began his ministry with the announcement that the Kingdom of God was at hand, was available to anybody who wanted to be a part of it, the resurrection gives us the power to do so. 

NT. Wright says, 

The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating that God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. The message of [the resurrection] is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. 

That's the invitation, an invitation to life in the Kingdom of God, with God, and for the world. Jesus says, 

It’s urgent that you listen carefully to this: Anyone here who believes what I am saying right now and aligns himself with the Father, who has in fact put me in charge, has at this very moment the real, lasting life and is no longer condemned to be an outsider. This person has taken a giant step from the world of the dead to the world of the living. It’s urgent that you get this right: The time has arrived—I mean right now!—when dead men and women will hear the voice of the Son of God and, hearing, will come alive. (John 5:24-25 MESSAGE)

It's urgent. It's life. It's available now. The resurrection was not meant to be a ticket for another time and another place, it is meant to be reality in your life, every day. Without the resurrection, we are become the walking dead instead of the community of life we were meant to be. 

Spend some time thinking -- make a list -- about the ways that the resurrection makes a difference in your life.

Peace, hope and love

Doug 

A Different Kind of Life

Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:1–3 

What does it mean to be a Christian? If you ask that question to a bunch of people, you will get a bunch of different answers. Fairly or unfairly the word Christian has a certain amount of "baggage" with some folks outside of the Church. It is not just outside the Church, however, but inside as well that there is often confusion or even wrong belief about what it means to be a Christian. My aim in this short e-mail is not to address the ins and outs of the confusion and misunderstand or to fix them all. Rather, my aim is simply to assert that the Biblical portrail of what it means to be a Christian is to be one who is a follower of Jesus. It is a person who has (an) eternal (kind of) life -- which is in fact a very different kind of life. 

Jesus defines the essence of eternal life as a knowing God and Jesus. The knowing he is referring to is not a knowing about, or knowing the rules, but a qualitative, relational, learning from and walking with God. Knowing about him is important in that it helps us flesh out who he is and who we love. It's Valentines Day, so I'll throw in a courting analogy. If you are interested in a person and they are interested in you, you seek to get to know them: what are their dreams, passions, likes, dislikes? This includes knowing about them, but is not only knowing about them. If a relationship is only knowing about someone, it's actually kind of creepy. No, this is relationship, that you might know them; and this is eternal life, that you might know God and Jesus whom he sent.

And so, the life of a follower of Jesus -- a Christian -- is learning in this love, and walk in a deepening knowledge of Jesus. Todd Hunter in his book Christianity Beyond Belief does a good job of defining what this looks like. He says a Christian is a "cooperative friend of Jesus, seeking to live lives of creative goodness in every aspect of their lives, through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the world." 

I think that is a fair definition, one that fleshes out this growing knowledge and one that can be a check to see if we are living into our calling to Christ and to the world. 

I recommend Todd's book, you can purchase it here.

I also recommend the book Lent for Everyone. I am encouraging everybody at Creekside to purchase this book and read along as a devotional during the Lenten season. I think you will find it to be a good resource as you seek to live our your calling to be a cooperative friend of Jesus, living the eternal life that he has given you. You can order our devotional here.  Lent begins on February 22nd.

Peace, hope and love

Doug

The Danger of a Life of Comparison

God is abundantly generous. I think we all believe we want to celebrate God’s generosity, the reality is that we find that hard to do when we feel he has not been at least equally generous with us. He calls us to a life where we rejoice with those who rejoice, and we can – so long as they are not rejoicing over something that we believe we deserve and that they have received.

In Matthew 20 Jesus tells a parable that shines a light on the vast sea of God’s generosity, and illuminates how easily the beauty of that generosity is smashed on the rocks of comparative living. His story begins early in the morning, with a landowner who hires people to work in his fields. They agree on a fair price (a denarious) and happily begin work. At 9:00, 12:00, 3:00 and 5:00 the landowner hires more men to work in his fields.

Jesus tells the end of the story, “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” (Matt 20:8–15)

“Or are you envious, because I am generous?” Ouch. That hits too close to home. And, I don’t think I am the only for whom that is true. Am I envious because God is generous? Yes, I have been, yes I can be. 

We live in a world and a culture that celebrates discontentment with what we have. It’s why we go out and get a new thing to replace the old thing that still works fine but is no longer the new thing. “You deserve what you neighbor has,” the add man says. “And since you deserve it, you should go get it, just charge it.” And so we get deeper in debt or we refrain from the debt and live with a sense that we are not getting what is deserved (and resenting those that have what we deserve). It is a vicious and destructive cycle that includes not only things that we can purchase, but things not so “easily fixed” as well.

The solution is simple, but not easy. The answer is to cultivate a heart of thankfulness and gratitude for the ways that God pours his generosity onto you.  This is not a one-time solution or a quick fix. It is a process, the development of a habit, but one that can begin today.

• Can you think of any way that God has blessed you? 
• Is there anything that you see as God’s goodness to you? 
• Is there anything for you to be thankful for?

Start small, spend 5 minutes, and make a list. Look at the blessings God has put in placed in your bowl. As we focus on those and not on the blessings he has put in other’s bowls, he will develop in us a heart of thankfulness that moves us toward a place of joy and to contentment in all circumstances. A heart of thankfulness moves us closer to the heart of God. 

Peace, hope and love

Doug

A Life That Glows

This past Sunday we concluded our series A Life That Glows, where we looked at life that God wants for us, as expressed by the prophet Micah, "to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." (Micah 6:8). I do not believe that this process is meant to be linear, first justice, then mercy, then humble walking. I think that they are interconnected. That said, if they were linear, I suspect they would flow backward from a humble walking with God that results, as we experience his mercy, in a love for mercy, and then out of this love of mercy the courage to do justice, to be justice for those who have been denied justice. And then, this process would wrap around again, where we’d experience in the doing of justice the humbling presence of Jesus more fully, and then be able to love mercy more deeply, etc. Justice is not the end, the end is Jesus; In doing justice and loving mercy we get more of him. (“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” Matthew 25:40)).

The process of moving towards justice is a process of moving from service toward solidarity, from a ministry to, toward a ministry with. To do this requires time, entering their world, multiple connections, willingness to have our assumptions challenged, and mentors. Our journey toward justice means requires education, exposure, listening, moving, community, and reflection. Again, not necessarily linearly, but education is a good place to start (very closely followed and along with the others). So, I wanted to give you some resources of places to start your education.

Here are a few books you could read:

LetJustice Roll Down by John Perkins, Generous Justice by Tim Keller, Strengthto Love by Martin Luther King, Jr., Sub-merge by John Hayes, and IrresistibleRevolution by Shane Claiborne to start. 

Websites and organizations you could visit include the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) and Sojourners.

Let me close with a quote from Robert D. Lupton,’s book Theirs is the Kingdom. He writes,

I want to serve truly worthy poor people. The problem is they're hard to find. Someone onour staff thought he remembered seeing one back in 1976 but can't remember for sure. Someone else remind me that maybe to be truly poor means to be priceless, inpatient, manipulative, Desperate, grasping at every straw, and clutching the immediate with little energy left for future plans. But truly worthy? Are any of us truly worthy? 

That question is the root of the process of beginning to walk humbly, love mercy and do justice. 

Peace, hope and love

Doug