A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

I’ve spent much of the day today reading about and thinking about three men who lived out their belief in Jesus and in a Father who is “able to do abundantly more than we can ask or think.” Perhaps I’m more sensitive to that topic because of the last two sermons I’ve delivered at the Palo Alto Church of Christ, or perhaps God is just trying to tell me something.

Whatever the reason, I share this with you partly as a warning. I cannot read about these people and how they lived their lives without some influence on my own life, and that undoubtedly means that I will try to influence you in those same ways. If you are comfortable being a part-time Christian or if you think that the church can somehow be separatist and still be the church, be afraid, be very afraid!

Of course I’ve already tried, and will continue to try, to convince you that your life has to be different if you are a follower of Jesus. Different than the world, I mean, and for some of us different than it is. More trusting of God. More extremist against injustice. More patient with each other. More urgent for the lost. More desirous of a deep and real relationship with the creator of the universe, including us.

Just who are these departed saints who have invaded my sunny afternoon and challenged me from the grave? Larry Norman (take a look at the PACC blog to see the entry I just posted about him), Martin Luther King, Jr., and Francis Schaeffer. It may be that you have only heard of King among those three, but what they all had in common while they walked on this earth was a willingness to be counter-cultural for Jesus. All of them gained some measure of prominence in their lives, using the gifts God had given them in ways that honored God, but not a single one of them sought fame and fortune — they sought to please their Father. One did it with protests, one did it with a school in Switzerland, and one did it with rock and roll music.

May we do the same — with whatever God puts in our hands!

Under the mercy,

Lewis

On the morning of February 23, 2008, those of us who were privileged to be at PACC heard an excellent address by Sterling Stuckey titled “Paul Robeson: Christianity, Commitment and Radicalism.” Sterling, a retired professor of history (Northwestern and University of California, Riverside) is an acknowledged expert on Paul Robeson, one of the most commanding figures in the American 20th century, if not in the world’s 20th century.

In anticipation of that talk, I looked last week more deeply into the life of Paul Robeson through the means of that great library, the Internet. I had known about Robeson on a cursory level, having first been told about him by my father, and much later having seen a PBS program about him in the American Masters series. (Sterling Stuckey, by the way, was one of the experts interviewed for that production.)

As I studied Robeson, I began to see some similarities between him and Jesus. But listening to Sterling made Robeson come even more to life, made him even more human, and both my admiration for that great man, who died in 1976, and how he reminded me of Jesus, who died 2000 years ago, were deepened.

The important question for all of us is this: Do we remind people of Jesus? When people look at our lives, will the greatest Life of all be remembered? A man like Paul Robeson only comes along once or twice in any generation — possibly not even that often. So I’m not saying we should be famous, that we should have a place on the world stage, or even the Broadway stage. Our audience may be smaller, but our influence, our being like Jesus, can and should be just as big.

Under the mercy,

Lewis

When I told a friend of mine I was going to speak on the topic “Aliens and Strangers,” she suggested that I show something from the movie “E. T.” That was an excellent idea, and although I didn’t use it Sunday it certainly could have worked.

The movie’s full title is “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and I saw it shortly after it was released in the summer of 1982. Now, almost 25 years later (will there be a 25th anniversary edition?), the movie and its famous “phone home” line still gets to me.

Somewhere along the way I realized that E.T.’s story had many similarities to my own story as a Christian. E.T. was here on earth as a botanist, exploring the flora and fauna of this little blue planet with some other botanists. But his group was almost discovered by some humans, and in their rush to take off they left E.T. behind. It was E.T.’s choice to come to earth on this mission, but it was not his choice to stay. He wanted to get home in the worst possible way.

As children of God we are sometimes looked on by the rest of the world as aliens. In one very real sense we are aliens, because while we may be citizens of the United States or some other fine country, our real citizenship is in the Kingdom of God. Once upon a time we were citizens of earth and therefore aliens to God, but now our roles have reversed and we are aliens to this world.

So we have that in common with E.T., but there is one thing that we usually do not have in common with him — we have little desire to get home.

And why should we? We speak the language of the world, we understand how to get along in the world, and, for the most part, the world wants us to stay. But more and more I “feel” the truth in the statement that this world is not my home, and as I await my transportation my longing for home grows.

Under the mercy,

Lewis

A high percentage of the people who call PACC their home church have
traveled to other countries. A number of people in this body were not
born in the U.S., and so are actually living in a foreign country.

But even if you haven’t been to other countries, you can imagine
something about it. For instance, it is likely that you would not know
the language, or at least not know it well. It is likely that you will
not know all the customs of the country, not the cuisine. All those
things can be overcome with time, of course, but until you do learn them
you are likely to stick out to the native population as a stranger -
because that is what you will be.

In fact, even though you “speak the language and know the customs, that
is what you are on this earth. No one who is a Christian belongs here,
although there are times when we Christians like it here very much.

The old song says, “This World Is Not My Home” and it is my prayer that
we will understand that more deeply as time goes on and live like the
intruders that we are, for we are indeed in a Foreign Land!

Every blessing,

Lewis

After our service on Sunday morning I was asked by a “seeker” if good works were different than simple works (see Ephesians 2.9, 10). An excellent question! His reason for asking though, was a different question. He wanted to know if God was involved in, or possibly even the cause of, all good works.

This fellow has been involved in many noble causes and has witnessed many others. Most of those were not done on behalf of God, although God’s name was often invoked as though his support of these activities was certain.

Do you think Paul is making a distinction in Ephesians between “works” and “good works?’ The phrase “good works,” or some form of that phrase, appears 19 times in the New Testament. The first person to use the phrase was Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount he says, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

That may give us a hint as to the nature of good works — they bring glory to God.

Luke writes in Acts 9.36 that there was a disciple of Christ in Joppa named Tabitha, and “this woman was abounding with deeds of kindness and charity, which she continually did.” Perhaps there is another clue there — deeds of kindness and charity constitute good works.

Finally, in Paul’s first letter to Timothy he says, “The sins of some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment; for others, their sins follow after. Likewise also, deeds that are good are quite evident, and those which are otherwise cannot be concealed.”

So it would seem that we can clearly see the difference between good works and “those which are otherwise.” That answers the first of my friend’s questions, but does it answer the second? Is God involved in all good works?

Under the mercy,

Lewis

Two weeks ago I said that mercy was not getting what you do deserve while grace is getting what you do not deserve. It may be that we all experience a little of both of those every day without recognizing them, but today we experienced some grace and we could see it as it happened.

As a church we have said, both with our words and our actions, that we want to grow both spiritually and numerically. Part of the action we have taken to encourage growth is a postcard-mailing campaign in which we are inviting 5,000 of our closest neighbors to join us on March 9 for a “fresh start open house.”

On the surface, a program like this seems to address only numerical growth, but look just under the surface and you’ll see a whole lot of spiritual growth taking place as well, and that is happening before even one visitor comes to our church’s home in response to our invitations.

People have been praying for the mailings and for those who will receive the cards, and those who are praying are growing. People have been volunteering time to put labels on cards, and those who are peeling and sticking are growing. People have pledged funds to help pay for this outreach, and those who are giving are growing. People have been getting the building ready for an influx of visitors, and those who have been preparing are growing. People have been planning Sunday school classes and worship services to accommodate larger numbers, and those who are planning are growing.

The first group, those who are praying (and I hope that includes you), got a good answer today and it came in the form of grace. Some of the postcards we received, you see, were printed with incorrect mailing information. We received the cards on Saturday and (to keep to our schedule) needed to mail them today. But could we? Would the post office accept them? If not, our mailing would delayed enough to disrupt the timing of the whole campaign schedule.

And so it was that we received grace today, because we were allowed to mail the cards with the error, and we give God the glory. After all, it was God’s grace that we received through the post office, and specifically through a man named Abraham.

God is good!

Lewis

In Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus (and really to all churches), he says “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” That is the New American Standard Bible translation, and it is very accurate but not very easy to understand.

Here is the way the Bible in Basic English gives the same verse: “For by his act we were given existence in Christ Jesus to do those good works which God before made ready for us so that we might do them.”

So what does that mean? It means that PACC (our particular body of believers within the church universal) has an assignment, works that God has made ready for us, and that they are ours to do. Wow!

Many years ago I worked in a factory for a summer, and not one single day of those 90 days did I go to work wondering what I was supposed to do. The work was laid out for me, and until I pushed some big red button the work parts I was there to assemble just kept right on coming. (I could often sympathize with Lucy in the chocolate factory.)

But the church isn’t a factory and the work is not always so obvious. But it must be there, because God has prepared the work for us, and he has created us to do the work. I suppose we ought to figure out what it is and get after it!

Under the mercy,

Lewis

It has been encouraging to me to hear from several of you over the last few days that you have been thinking about mercy more than you had before, or in ways you hadn’t thought of it before. My hope is that as we realize we are recipients of mercy, we will also be dispensers of mercy.

The reality of too many of our lives too much of the time is that we want mercy for ourselves and judgment for others. Of course we would never say it that way, and so we fail to even see the dichotomy. Instead we say things like we want “them” to get what “they” deserve. But we don’t have to think very long or very hard to know that “we” don’t want to get what “we” deserve.

The Bible is filled with examples of both sides of this equation, and the math is both simple and hard. It is simple because God has made it clear, and it is hard because God has made it clear. It is also hard because our human minds and spirits continually interfere with our ability to grasp God’s mercy and God’s love. Tune your radio to the edge of the frequency for a station you really want to listen to and you’ll get get the picture.

One way to tune in more clearly to God’s mercy is to be a carrier of mercy. Several years ago I found a song by The Choir called Mercy Lives Here. The chorus to that song says simply:

Mercy lives here
Oh Mercy lives here
At home with the saints and the sinners
Mercy lives here

May the body of believers known as the Palo Alto Church of Christ be able to sing those words. May we be where mercy lives.

In the City and Under the Mercy,

Lewis

In the first three verses of Ephesians 2, Paul tells the church that they were dead in their trespasses and sins and lists three causes for those failures. Many commentators divide those out as “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” and that makes a lot of sense. Too many times we fail to take the blame for giving in to our desires, and too we are quick to say “the devil made me do it” when all the devil had to do was watch.

But the part I want us to think about for a moment — because it is so amazingly dangerous — is the world. Specifically, Paul writes, those who now make up the church once “walked according to the course of this world.”

In Pilgrim’s Progress the hero, Pilgrim, and his traveling companion Faithful are walking on the path that has been laid out for them and for all who would find their way to the Celestial City (heaven). After a while the path becomes difficult and rocky, but just on the other side of a fence they can see a path that is grassy and much easier, and it appears to go in the right direction.

So they climb over the fence at a stile and resume their journey, walking and talking and simply following the path. As evening approaches they suddenly become aware that they can no longer see the way that they know to be the right way, and as they try to find the way back to the stile in the darkness they stumble and fall and realize that they will have to wait until daylight to carry on. But before daylight comes they are taken captive by Giant Despair and thrown into a dungeon at Doubting Castle. Suddenly, Pilgrim was not making much progress!

How about us? Have we ever decided to step off the path we knew to be the right way just to take an apparently easier way that was offered to us by the world? Have we ever walked according to the course of this world?

May we always stay on the right path, the path called Jesus, and keep our eyes fixed on him.

Under the mercy,

Lewis

Have you ever needed mercy?

Of course you have, because you have been guilty, as have I. Once (well, more than once, actually, but once that is important to this story) a policeman in Illinois wanted me to stop so he could chat with me. I obliged — it seemed like the right thing to do — and he gave me a written invitation to join several dozen other people on a particular day at a particular time where a friend of his was holding court.

The purpose of this court was, of course, to determine the guilt or innocence of all the invitees. Some of the people there were indeed innocent, but I was not one of them, and I knew it. That left three questions in my mind: 1. Was there _any_ excuse for my failure to keep the law? (No.) 2. How much was the fine? (More than I wanted to pay.) 3. Was there any opportunity for mercy?

Perhaps everyone who stands before a judge desires mercy, and if that is the case, imagine the mercy that will be prayed for at the judgment seat of God. Thankfully, all of those for whom Christ is Lord have both a relationship with the judge and a guarantee of mercy from the judge’s father. And that is a good thing, because just like I was back in Illinois, we are most certainly guilty.

Under the mercy,

Lewis