“This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” – John 21:24-25
In the last two verses of John's gospel that I just read, John says in effect, I saw all of what I just wrote happen, and I wrote some of it down, and if every one of the things that Jesus did were written down there would not be enough room for all the books that would be written…Just think about what he's saying, my testimony is true, I saw it, I witnessed a lot of this, and if all that had been witnessed, or all that Jesus has ever done, would have been recorded in a book there aren't enough books in the world to record it all. See, he is pointing to Jesus not only as the rabbi he walked and talked with for three years. As a disciple, he's pointing to the Jesus of John 1:1 who, as it says, “In the beginning, the very beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He's pointing to Jesus as the One.
Inhale the victory of the cross and exhale the power of the resurrection. Maybe that gives us something in the thick of the suffering, down deep in the valley of suffering. Inhale the victory of the cross. Exhale the power of the resurrection. This is the way of the Christ follower.
And you know what strikes me in all this, as we reflect on this. What strikes me is that this is another one of those occasions where we begin to realize, or we realize again, the business of following Jesus or of living Christian is not some nice idea. It's not a paper transaction to avoid hell. It's not a religious distraction to pretend things are better than they are. Rather, the business of following Jesus and living Christian touches our real lives in every way. It is intensely and immensely practical. It's actually, the center of our lives. It reshapes us. It reorients us and reframes everything around us, including, believe it or not, the valley of suffering.
Friendships can be hard; that's just the simple point, they can be hard. We let each other down, we disappoint, we don't come through, we don't show up, we fail as friends, and some of our friends have failed us. And so, friendships in the real world will usually be a mixture of the good and the beautiful and the hard and the painful, but the resurrected Jesus, just by way of vision, models friendship that perseveres through the failure with grace and with the desire to reconcile.
Every person that professes to be a follower of Jesus Christ has a vocation and that vocation is bigger, more important, and more of a priority than our jobs or…
Part one, thinking it was the gardener, just another day, just another person, just a thing. Part two, she hears her name, he calls her name. And part three, she turned toward him. This kind of just walks right out the door with us on any given Monday.
Outbreaks of God’s presence and activity in the ordinary of our lives anytime, anywhere. See a God who can return from the dead can rather easily handle something so pedestrian as omnipresence; present and active everywhere. So, we can encounter him anytime, anywhere if we are attentive. If we are listening. If we have eyes that see and ears that hear. If we’re present in the moments of our lives rather than being behind them or ahead of them, if we’re open to it.
You ever wonder about wilder things? Why are we here? What is the point of these lives we have, if what we see is all there is. You ever wonder that? Is what I see, what I can touch, what I can put my hands on, is that all there is? You ever wonder about that? You ever wonder if what you are and who you are is merely the sum total of what you do? What do you long for that usually stays quiet under the piles of obligations and to-dos and tasks but every now and then for reasons only the shadow knows leaks out and pokes ever so gently at your soul.
God is at work behind the scenes of everyday life stuff, but his name is rarely mentioned. He's working, through all these things. Kind of behind the scenes. So, then we come to the crux of the matter, in verses 16-18, but Ruth replied don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you in me. When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. That's the courageous action that unlocks and unleashes all kinds of Kingdom goodness. And throughout the Bible people come to a crossroads where one path is the clear winner. It makes the most sense. It's the obvious choice. But the person makes an unexpected move. They choose the unexpected path. They courageously act for God's sake and for the good of the Kingdom, even though in practical terms it doesn't seem to make sense.
See, when we come to worship that is a very different thing than going to church. Coming to worship is categorically different than going to church. Because when we come to worship, we come thinking about the offering we are going to give. We come ready to do the work of worship. We come ready to pour out our hearts and our minds and our emotions in adoration and praise to our beautiful King with our brothers and with our sisters. We come and we are willing to risk vulnerability for God's sake and each other's sake. And when this happens, when we come in this mindset, you can try this out, but when we start to come in this mindset, I promise you this worship gathering will change in ways that I am incapable of describing.
Prayer may be the most important practice for co-operating with God as he tenderly pulls up the old carpet in our lives and installs his new creation version. But the triggers around prayer are real. I have a bunch of them myself. You may as well. Prayer may be the most important practice, but in some ways it is also the most challenging and the most confusing. It is challenging, we might say, because it is so confusing. Prayer can be so challenging and confusing that our prayer life sometimes becomes part of the old carpet of our lives, meaning our prayers become rote; somewhat meaningless, boring. We think of prayer as a duty lacking much delight and in either the front or in the back of our minds, prayer raises hard questions for which there does not seem to be very many satisfying answers. Questions like, if God knows everything already and knows what is going to happen, why in the world does prayer even matter? Or, if prayer is so powerful then why do so many prayed for people suffer and get sick and die instead of being healed? There are dozens of these graduate-level questions and there's not too many of them that have an easy answer or any answer. So like most things in life, and most things in the life of faith, prayer is a thousand-piece puzzle.
Paul commands us to not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Because then we will be able to discern God's good pleasing and perfect will. And I do not believe it is possible to resist conforming or to be transformed or have our mind renewed or discern God's will unless we are regularly and consistently interacting with the Bible in ways that shape our inner core in the way of New Creation. If we are not consistently engaging with scripture and being shaped by it then inner transformation is a pipe dream and the renewal of our mind just ain't going to happen.