So about three weeks ago I received a message from the unlikeliest of sources.  For four years, not a single word, and then, after the New Year, a little note that God’s been pushing for amends.

The weird thing is, we have this history of hanging up on each other, always leaving someone high and dry.  Now the ball was in my court, and I must admit that there existed a piece of me that would have experienced great pleasure partaking in the silent treatment.  And it took some backdoor sermon illustrations from OIL to conquer that piece.

I responded that I didn’t think there was anything to forgive, and if there was, it was already forgiven.  Which by sin is a lie but in Christ is His reconciling power.

Forgiveness releases another from an obligation to repay.  This is true.  I agree with it.  There is no obligation to make amends to me.  But there has been no response, and I can’t help but wonder why I feel like I got hung up on again.

Okay.  A couple days overdue.

Whenever I hear a sermon on this passage, it has three basic points.  First, Jesus humbled Himself and served us.  Second, we should humble ourselves because Jesus humbled Himself.  Third, we should serve one another because Jesus served us.  And the sermon ends up going pretty well.

My old youth group used to do footwashings, in part because we wanted, as a group, to love one another the way Jesus established in the Gospel of John.  It’s a worthy goal.

But the more I think about this passage, the deeper it goes.

v1:  He loved them before and He loved them to the end.  This is the ‘split’ between the first and second half of the Gospel of John.  The first part of the book focused on three years of ministry and mystery and signs, while the next half will focus on the passion account.  John ties the two together with love.  “…He loved them to the end,” and because this is a type of introductory sentence, John’s thoughts imply, this is how.  While this is referring to the entirety of the passion account, through the cross and the resurrection, this first act is very important.

v2-5: Jesus served us.  Jesus went the whole nine yards.  He didn’t just talk about serving one another in love, He actually served them.  He’s a very good teacher relating a spiritual truth, and He does so by serving in the way of the least servant.  Not just that, He served every disciple.  He could have just stopped after one and said, “What I have done for James, you should do for one another,” but He didn’t.  He could have just taken the towel and the water and performed the task, but He went beyond that and became a servant, disrobing and wrapping the towel around His waste.  If it was just about telling us how to serve or doing good things, I don’t think He would have gone through all this trouble.  It wasn’t about the act of serving, but how to be a servant.

v6:  Jesus humbled Himself.  It was mind-blowing for Peter.  While he’s asking Jesus, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” he’s really thinking in his head, I should be washing your feet… you’re the master and I’m the student.  Peter recognized that little piece of humility, just a shadow of God coming as a man and going to the cross, and it was unthinkable to him.

v7:  You don’t understand, but you will understand.  This is a great promise, and one upon which I personally rely.  You don’t understand what God’s doing for you now, but in the future, you will (and it’s good).  If I can read back a couple of months and say, “Wow, God was really doing something there,” just once, then keeping this blog is worth it.  But the understanding comes second to the nature of God, Who is waiting for the right moment where He can show us in full.  For Peter, maybe this happened at the cross, or at the resurrection, or by the lakeside at the end of John, or at Pentecost.  But rest assured that Peter knew what forgiveness was all about, and what it meant for Jesus to go to the cross.

v8:  Jesus wants to purify us daily.  Peter regresses to the first day of His spiritual life:  He meets Jesus and tells Him to go away because he’s such a big sinner.  His motives aren’t so bad, because I think by saying, “You shall never wash my feet,” he’s just following the hierarchy in his mind.  Jesus is, after all, his teacher and Lord – above him.  But Peter forgets Jesus’ mission and method.  Jesus came to serve, and He came because we needed Him to come.  We could not wash ourselves, so Jesus came to do just that.  And without this relationship, we can have no part in Him.

v9-10:  We need to be confident in our salvation.  Peter doesn’t quite understand what he’s requesting when he asks Jesus to wash his hands and head, as well.  I admit that there are times where I screw up so bad that I feel like I need to go to Jesus and finally become Christian.  In my guilt, I doubt my salvation.  *Personally, I’ve come to know this ‘doubt’ as the method God uses to tell me, “Steve, that sin is not your identity,” but that’s a whole different story.*  Don’t make that sin bigger than it should be, that is, bigger than the grace God extends to you.

v10:  We are  clean.  If Jesus washed our feet, who do you think washed our whole body?  Jesus has told His disciples that He loves them, has the power to forgive sin, and is about to tell them that He has prepared rooms for them in heaven.  He has washed them; He has saved them.  This has to be a great feeling:  “Wash my hands and my head, as well, Jesus!”  “You don’t have to worry.  I already have.”

v14:  We need to serve one another.  We need to emulate Jesus’ actions and serve one another, and by Jesus’ example, no service is too big or too small.  Or too dirty.

v14:  We need to humble ourselves.  We need to have to same heart as Jesus.  Jesus was certainly entitled to forgo the lowly act.  Yet He did it and had a loving heart about it.  How much more should we, who are not entitled in any way above another person, serve with a loving heart?  He humbled Himself from heaven to earth, from the earth to a servant, and from a servant to the cross, so the least we can do is the serving part.

v14-17:  We need to restore one another.  Here’s where I might deviate a little from the norm.  Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, telling us to do the same, and I think this whole theme of forgiveness, purification, and restoration are part of imitating Him.  While God is ultimately the only one who can forgive and redeem, Jesus gave us a very specific example.  Peter made the bold statement later that love covers over a multitude of sins.  One of the radical ways that we can love each other (and they will know we follow Jesus by our love for one another) is to wash one another.  Not just in the physical way, not just with the same humble heart, but out of love, make yourselves right by one another.  Where there is sin in someone else, forgive it and release them from that burden.  Count them dead to sin, and know that God washed them, too.  Cover each other in love, especially when it’s dirty, and especially when it’s lowly.  This is how we are to serve our brothers and sisters.

There’s probably more…

Peter has been on my mind for the past few hours, though what triggered the train I know not.

I’ve been reflecting on one of Peter’s many instances of faithful buffoonery – the footwashing preceding the Last Supper.  It’s a familiar sequence:  Jesus surprises His closest disciples by washing their feet; Peter resists; Jesus insists that if He doesn’t wash Peter’s feet, then he has nothing to do with Him; Peter then says, “Not just my feet, but my hands and head, as well;” to which Jesus replies, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean…”

And it made me want to be a little more like Peter.  He didn’t understand one bit, yet he was all-in.  First, he resists Jesus just like his first encounter (away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!).  But when Jesus tells him that if this is not done, Peter has nothing to do with Him, his reaction is entirely opposite.  Wash all of me, Lord!  Peter doesn’t have a clue.

If Jesus told Peter to cut up some tomatoes for a salad, I imagine Peter would take the lettuce and carrots, too, and cut himself because he couldn’t take his eyes off Jesus.

There’s a whole lot more to this passage.  I hope to get to it tomorrow.

This satirical article out of nowhere.  The Onion can at times be crude, but there are those select few pieces that aren’t funny at all and let a different type of satire shine.

You might as well grind me up and put me in a McNugget.

There’s a person out there, and I’m almost certain that if I spend any time with her, I’m going to trip all over myself and fall into some blissful state.  There are three semi-rational options:

(1) Ditch her.  Summary:  Logistically easy, but nothing of worth is easy.
—-(a) Won’t be distracted if another girl comes along.
—-(b) Requires not being friends, not praying for her.
—-(c) Burning bridges – and a really good bridge at that.
(2) Just be a friend.  Summary:  Spiritually hard, but I’m probably making it hard.
—-(a) “Do I like her” debate in my head.
—-(b) Person worth knowing, but don’t get to go too deep or spend too much time.
—-(c) Mad awkward.
(3) Go for broke.  Summary:  Either way, one less person to invite to the wedding.
—-(a) Could easily complete (1c).
—-(b) Might be really great.
—-(c) Steal time from what we should really be doing.

…

(4) Making list.  Summary:  Sign of indecisiveness and immaturity.

Hello, neglected blog of mine.  I shall write a serious post sometime in the near future.

But today I received an interesting email from Facebook:

Subject:  Facebook will be sending you less email – learn why

Hi Stephen,
We’re trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we’ll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.
You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.
Thanks,
The Facebook Team

I find this hilariously deceptive.  The email doesn’t really explain why.  The implication is that Facebook is trying to be nice by cleaning up the spam notifications, only sending the content of absolute import to your inbox.  The reality, however, is twofold:

First, Facebook is trying to re-design once more in response to Google+.  They anticipate another level of networking and realize that people will complain if they get fifty emails per status update.

Second, Facebook realized that some people, namely people like me, shrug off logging into Facebook in lieu of simply reading the notifications by email.  The new settings encourage your home to be Facebook, not Gmail.

Don’t lie to me Facebook.  I’m on to you.

One of the last memories I have of my old church and congregation was a small Bible study.  The topic for this specific class:  Prayer.  What does it do?  Who is it for?  What is the end?

I recently had a similar discussion with a friend while preparing a summer Bible study.  I remembered some things and had to re-learn others, but most of our discussion surrounded the effectiveness of prayer and the contrast between God’s sovereignty and the outcome of prayer.  Here are some things about prayer that I’ve come to realize over the years:

God has no need for our prayers.  He doesn’t need us to tell Him what’s wrong.  We aren’t going to change His mind with them – He can and will do whatever He pleases without them.  He doesn’t feed on prayer like it’s magic spiritual energy.  God is the only self-sufficient, omniscient being, and has no need that could possibly be fulfilled by prayer.  Therefore, since God has no need for prayer, yet He gives us the gift, then we must be the ones in need; we must be the beneficiaries of prayer.

But what does prayer actually do?  What is the purpose?  What are the results?

Here I come to an impasse.  I cannot objectively measure prayer, and don’t fully understand the purpose.  My first instinct was that prayer was the alignment of our hearts with God – that instead of going to God like He’s some sort of genie in a lamp, we come before God in prayer and He molds our hearts to be more like Him – even through our petitions.  James gives a good example of the negative, that we don’t get an answer because we don’t ask, and then sometimes we don’t like the answer because we asked with wrong hearts.  When God does answer our prayers, in the negative or affirmative, it reveals a bit of His character.  In all this we find at least one purpose:  Prayer is a relationship; where God reveals Himself; and where we come to become more like Him.

But then there is the subject of the ordination of prayer in building the Kingdom.  As a friend of mine once stated that God can do whatever He wants, but His purpose can be to have you pray.  It borders on fatalism and a restriction of will.  But think of it this way:  Imagine you prayed for something or interceded for someone and God answered positively.  If you had not prayed, then would God have done it anyway?  He certainly could have, but this way was decidedly better.  In this manner, and perhaps only in hindsight, we can see the growth of the Kingdom through the work God does in our prayers.  He reveals parts of His plan and His will, and we become agents of His salvation.

Which brings up something that could have been said earlier – when you pray, don’t be afraid to be the answer to that prayer.  If you’re praying for someone to come to faith, be ready for God to say, “Sure… you tell him.”  So if you aren’t willing to be an answer and if you aren’t willing to change, I’d almost suggest not praying for that subject at all.  Pray for a better heart.

But still, with all these purposes for prayer, they are incomplete.  One thing I have observed from prayers and answers is that sometimes they are inconsistent.  What God says for one person might not be what God says to another.  If the only purposes are the ones listed above, and God is immutable and unchangeable, then the answers should all follow the same pattern.  They need not be exactly the same, but they should at least follow the same… logic.  And they don’t.  There must, therefore, be another reason God answers prayers the way He does, and it must also cater to our human nature, which is neither immutable nor unchangeable.  I have so far contemplated two such reasons that are very similar to one another.  Simply put, God answers prayers to show His faithfulness to us, and God answers prayers to show His love for us.  When God answers a prayer for seemingly no reason (we can’t figure out how the Kingdom was built, or what it revealed about His character, etc), then it was simply to demonstrate His own perfect faithfulness and love to us.

… I don’t want to write a concluding paragraph.

Before I say anything else, Old People’s Bible study is awesome.  It is a struggle to try and contain it in an hour and a half… or forty five.  I am always blessed.

The men were in part two of the Bible study series Not a fan.  The video aspect can be slow at times, but, if nothing else, it is deeply layered.  Gary and Erik were friends from a young age, never quite fitting in at school and getting into trouble.  They’d drink and party together, and this behavior persisted in some form until their forties.  Gary had been divorced, and Erik wasn’t far away from the same – his wife had just handed him the papers.  With the sudden stress, Erik has a heart attack that eventually leads him to make a decision to follow Christ… and leave Gary behind.  After a few years of getting his life and marriage together, Erik tries to reconcile with Gary, but Gary is unresponsive.  Another few years later, Erik has a fatal heart attack which forces Gary to evaluate the past friendship and Erik’s subsequent transformation.

Sorry.  I know that was a lot.

At the beginning of the video, Pastor Kyle Idleman recounts a story about his young daughter.  She spilled pink nail polish on the couch, panicked, and hid the stain by flipping the cushion over.  When the stain was discovered, she broke down and ran upstairs.  When Pastor Kyle was comforting her, she asked, “Do you still love me?” to which he responded with an overwhelming yes.  Her mother went so far as to say that there wasn’t a stain large enough to make them stop loving her.  Over the next couple of weeks, something strange took place in their daughter:  Whenever company was over at the house, she took them to go see the stain and tell the story.

So that’s the background for the discussion, which inevitably found itself on the question, “Why are non-believers and believers uncomfortable hanging out with each other?”  After all, Gary and Erik were best friends until Erik’s conversion.  One of the men talked about Christian jargon.  If he walked into a conversation between two guys about computers, he might stick around for a few minutes to be polite, but would end up ditching because he didn’t know a thing about computers and couldn’t relate to or understand the conversation.  And there’s merit to that point – we end up using a bunch of long, loaded words and inside jokes, and someone on the outside might feel uncomfortable or simply lose interest.

But at the same time, the idea of the stain came up.  Jesus washes us clean, right?  We are white as snow, with no more staining sin.

This is where non-believers and believers cannot relate to one another.  There are two kinds of people:  The people who see that they are imperfect and stained; and the people who pretend that they’re not.  And Christians should be able to relate to both of them.

Most of the time, when we talk (or sing) about sinful life, even if we know better, we use a bunch of phrases like ‘sanctification’ and ‘forgiveness.’  “Sanctify me, clean me, and wash my sin away.”  “I’m dead to sin, presented without blemish before the throne of God.”  And unwittingly, we have only given half the picture.  Our stains are suddenly not badges of honor testifying to the glory of God.

And just as suddenly, you’re not a real human being.  No one can relate to you.

Isn’t it odd?  In Jesus’ time, the people attracted to Him were the stained people, and the people who took offense were those pretending to be clean.  And now, somehow, the perception is that Christians and stained people can’t relate very well to one another.

Wednesday night, during the tornado warning, I was running through the rain in the dark, and tried to jump a puddle.  The puddle turned out to be a pothole, and my recurring ankle injury… recurred.

After trying to jog it off in denial for half a mile, it was swollen to twice its size.  So I spent the better part of today working on my sprained right ankle.

Through hours of icing, elevation, wrapping and re-wrapping, I have regained almost complete range of motion.  Still hurts on the outside and inside when I walk on it.  The ‘inside’ worries me somewhat.  Regardless, I was happy to be able to bike to prayer meeting and conquer my couch-ridden indolence.

It’s still baseball-sized, and much of it is a lovely shade of purple. but here’s to summer school and summer league.  Here, here!

More of You and less of me
That’s how it’s supposed to be
You and I know it rarely happens that way
More and more I am finding
I’m in need of constant reminding

Must confess I make a mess
Of all the matters, more or less
Even when I do my best, I still fail
More and more I see clearly
I’ll never make it if You leave it up to me

The unwavering, tenacious chase
Of Your incessant, unceasing love
Finds my heart in this defenseless place
And pours over me relentless grace

Oh ain’t it odd a holy God
Who reaches down in filthy sod
Draw me to Your heart, hear me one more time
I need You more than ever
I need You more than I can say

Lord, You know I aspire to hear a higher calling
You know every part of my heart
Lord, and we both know I’m unworthy but I’m blessed

~Relentless Grace by Peder Eide; What a Ride; 2003