Upgrade

It’s been a long year, and it’s only March.  I’ve been on the road 47 of the last 65 days, spent over 220 hours in meetings, been on 35 airplanes for over 100 hours and waited no telling how long in airports between flights.  I’m tired.  I mss my family.  I’m ready to go home.

I was the first one on the plane to Bangkok, and I had been in my seat for about ten minutes when a flight attendant came to see me.

“Are you Mr. Kientz?”

“Yes, I am.”

“May I see your boarding pass?”

“Sure, here it is.”

“Here’s your new boarding pass.  You’ve been upgraded to business class.”

“Upgrade.”

Weary travelers the world over long to hear that word.  Thos who frequent business class don’t understand the envy we economy class fliers feel when they draw the curtain between us and the priveledged.  Bigger seats, more leg room, fancy meals, better movies on bigger screens, a better blanket, a bigger pillow….ahhhh….Upgrade!

As I settled into my seat, very thankful for the unexpected blessing, I opened my Bible to John 2.  It begins with Jesus attending a wedding.  The host of the wedding ran out of wine, and Jesus’ mother brought the problem to Jesus.  In his first earthly miracle, Jesus turned as much as 180 gallons of normal water into wine that was even better than what the party-goers had been drinking before.

Upgrade.

The very next story tells of Jesus chasing all the money changers and those selling animals for sacrifice out of the temple.  He was incensed that they had turned His Father’s house into a market where people profited off the worship of the Lord, so he put together some cords to fashion a whip and began cleaning house.

Upgrade.

Chapter 2 ends with the Jews asking Jesus to perform a miracle to prove His authority.  He tells them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.”  Of course, He wasn’t talking about the building He had just cleaned out.  He was talking about the temple of His body.  Jesus knew that His purpose was to die for our sins.  But His death was just the end of the beginning, because He would raise His body back from death to life.  He would still have a body, but the new body could fly and walk throught walls!

Upgrade.

But that’s just the smallest part, because Jesus’ death did so much more!  It paid for every sin we have ever committed or ever will.  It bought us life with God for all eternity if we will just leave our economy class seat and agree to move to first class, where we will get our own new bodies one day – bodies that won’t get sick or die – bodies that won’t be tempted to sin – bodies set free to love God without reservation or selfishness and love each other without resentment, bitterness, or jealousy and love ourselves without guilt or shame!

Upgrade.

The Race

The runners are at the starting blocks.  The race is about to begin.

The starting gun fires!  The runners leap into action!

But something’s wrong.  Instead of speeding around the track, they clunk; they lumber; they stumble and fall.  These runners didn’t come prepared to race.  They are all bogged down with heavy clothes and boots, backpacks, and luggage with broken rollers.

Before they make even a dozen steps, those in the stands begin throwing things at them.  As they try to dodge the debris, the runners are assaulted by vendors on the sidelines hawking their wares.  Many leave the track to buy more stuff that they will have to carry to the finish line.  Some stop to have huge meals and then are too lethargic to continue the race until they’ve had a nap.

The spectators boo and yell out criticisms.  Some of the runners get so discouraged that they stop dead in their tracks, unable to do anything but focus on what they are hearing and seeing.  One is crumpled and weeping in the middle of the course.

But then a runner emerges from the crowd of athletes.  He’s shucking the baggage and the heavy clothing.  He’s ignoring the criticisms from the spectators and the vendors hawking their wares.  He picks up speed.  Within moments, he’s at a full sprint!

As he runs, the boos and the criticisms fade into the background and he begins to notice the sound of cheers.  Glancing to his right, he sees that the stands are filled not just with catcallers but also with enthusiastic supporters.  The harder he runs, the easier it is for him to tune out the negative voices.  By the time he crosses the finish line, all he can hear is the euphoric applause of his fans.

————–

In this story, the race represents our life as Christians.  We are the runners.  The starting blocks indicate the moment we accepted Christ.  The finish line is heaven.  The heavy clothes and baggage represent the burdens that we bring into the race – our sin, our emotional baggage, our hang-ups, our misunderstandings about God…

The spectators represent both the heavenly host of angels and the demons, who are watching God’s plan play out as we run the race.  The projectiles they throw are fears, worries and doubts.  The vendors represent Satan’s emissaries, doing whatever they can to distract us from our mission.  The heavy meals represent our materialism, that dulls our spiritual craving for godliness.

Most of us are ill-equipped to run this race.  We bring so much junk with us to the starting line, and we have no idea how to deal with Satan’s attacks.  But as odd as it may seem, we do our training while we round the track.  We carry our Bible with us as we run.  And it doesn’t slow us down; it helps us get rid of the junk and makes us faster.

So, start your race every day with your Bible and quit listening to the hecklers.  The heavenly host is cheering you on!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Hebrews 12:1)

Earn vs. Return – Part 1

Much of the world throughout history has been trying to earn its way into heaven (or nirvana, Shangri-La,  Moksha, Elysium, Jannah, Fiddler’s Green, Utopia, Valhalla, Goloka…), but it’s just not possible.  We can’t ever be good enough to earn our own way.

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags… (Isaiah 64:6)

Nothing we do goes toward eliminating our sin debt.  Jesus had to settle the debt for us.  He paid the price that we couldn’t pay in our spiritual poverty.

But even Christians who accept that they are going to heaven only by the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus still try to earn God’s approval.  Many of us do good works so that God will be happy with us, so that He won’t be disappointed.  We imagine that God is like Santa Claus, with a long list of the naughty and nice things we do, and we really want our nice things to outweigh the naughty ones.

Here’s a difficult truth to swallow:

God is already happy with us.

More than happy, God is pleased with us!

Read it again.

Do you believe it?

It’s hard to accept, because we know about all the bad things we do.  We know we don’t deserve God’s pleasure, because we struggle every day with submitting our will under His authority. But God’s pleasure isn’t dependent on our behaviors.  He is pleased with WHO we are even when He’s not pleased with what we DO.

And our sin doesn’t make us less righteous or less justified or less holy in His sight, because it’s really not about us.  It’s about Jesus. No matter how far from perfection we are, Jesus makes up the difference.  When the Father looks at us, He sees the righteousness of His Son.

Isaiah can help here:

I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God.  For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isaiah 61:10)

Jesus did two things for us:

1) He clothed us with salvation (i.e., we get to go to heaven).

2) He dressed us up in a robe of righteousness (i.e., He covered our unrighteousness with His righteousness).

Just like we can’t earn our salvation, we can’t earn our righteousness.  It’s a gift.  That’s why Jesus could tell the disciples:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  (Matthew 5:48)

There’s no way they could have accomplished perfection on their own, but God’s plan is:

You do what you can; Jesus will make up the difference.

We still have our part to play.  We are to do what we can.  But even if we turn in a miserable performance, we are still righteous in God’s sight, because Jesus makes up the difference.  And when we are doing what we can, we aren’t earning; we are returning.

Through obedience and good works, we give back to God what He has given to us.  You see, we can only do good through God’s grace.  He gives us the heart to do good; He gives us the energy; He gives us the talent or the money or the time….  Anything good we do originates with God.  And truth be told, we are only returning a fraction of what He has given us.

For example, when we tithe, we give God ten percent of what we earn.  But where did the ability to earn the 100% come from?  Where did the job come from?  Where did the talent and skill and knowledge come from?  It all came from God.  It’s like He handed us one hundred dollars and asked for only ten back.  We are only returning a portion of what He gave us, and He’s okay with that because He enjoys giving good things to His children.

So we don’t do good to earn His love; we do it to return His love.  Out of gratitude.  Out of a joyful heart that recognizes that there’s nothing to earn – that we already have all the righteousness that we need and that we have God’s pleasure despite what we DO because of WHO we are (i.e., His children)!

Fair and Equal

My teenage son sometimes gets upset about the extra demands we, his parents, and others make of him. His chores are sometimes harder; his homework takes longer; his responsibilities are greater; our expectations of him are higher.

“Tough noogies,” we tell him. “You also get more privileges and more opportunities.” Then we throw a little Spiderman-ese at him so he’ll understand, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Or in the words of Jesus,

“… From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48 )

Jesus and Uncle Ben were saying the same thing: Fair doesn’t always mean equal.

In Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus tells a parable that makes the point. Some workers were hired to work in a vineyard. The landowner goes out not just once or twice but five times to hire workers throughout the day. In fact, he hires the last group at five in the evening, when there is just a little daylight left.

Then, he does something even more strange. He has the foreman line all the workers up to pay them. Those hired last are first to get paid, and the landowner generously pays them a full day’s wage. He does the same with the next group and the next. When the group that was hired first comes up for their wages, they receive the same amount: a single day’s wage.

If this seems unfair to you, you’re not alone. Those hired first were feeling a little righteous indignation at having to work all day and receive the same reward. After all, they had been there during the heat of the day. The new guys had barely put hoe to soil before the day was up.

But our reaction is based on a faulty assumption: that the landowner’s generosity needs to be equal to be fair. The landowner was fair with all the workers. He paid the first workers what he had promised them: a full day’s wage. For the other workers, he promised to pay them what was right and actually gave them more than they deserved. To the early workers’ indignation, he replied, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15)

The parable teaches us a lesson about how we are to view God’s grace. We are the workers, and God has called us to go to work in His vineyard. No matter when He allowed us to join the work, we are to keep it up until He returns to reward us. When He does, it would be silly for us to look at our brothers and sisters in Christ and complain, “You have made them equal to us!” …as if we were something special!

We will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder in eternity with Samuel, Elijah, Daniel and others, who presumably gave their entire lives to serving the Lord. But we will also be shoulder-to-shoulder with the thief on the cross, who couldn’t do much serving when he finally and fortunately recognized Jesus for Who He was and is. God’s grace covers us all.

In other teachings, Jesus illustrates that there will be different rewards in Heaven for good works done on earth, but His point in this parable is that salvation is for all who trust in Him. It’s independent of how hard we labor in His service.

God can do whatever He wants with His grace, and we should feel blessed to receive any measure of it. It wouldn’t matter if we were able to trust Christ from inside the womb; we have no claim to any special treatment. That said, if we’ve been privileged to be called to the vineyard early in the day, He expects a full day’s work from us. “From everyone who has been given much…”

Man-na?

The Israelites had been miraculously freed from their captivity in Egypt, but their food ran out in the desert, and they were feeling a little grumpy. “If we were still in Egypt, we would have food to eat! Did you bring us out here to die?” they demanded from Moses. Moses, in turn, complained to God, “What am I going to do with these people you gave me?”

God agreed to send the Israelites bread (a.k.a., “manna”) from heaven each day, and He made good on His promise for 40 years while the they wandered through the desert. (Lesson #1: Be careful what you ask for. There’s only so much you can make from one ingredient breakfast, lunch and dinner. When manna got old, they learned to make manna-cotti, manna-lla wafers, and salad with manna-goes, but it was a few years before the first MannacDonalds.)

But when the Israelites first saw the bread, they had no idea what it was. They asked each other, “Man-na?” (Hence, the name.) Translated, the question is, “What is it?” Even though God had told them that He was sending them bread… Even though He had told them when it was coming, they still were surprised by its arrival.

Fast forward almost fifteen hundred years. Jesus had just fed the 5,000 and walked on water. The Jews met him on the other side of the lake, and their appetite for miracles had been whetted. “Show us a miracle!” they demanded. “Moses gave our forefathers manna in the desert.”

Jesus replied, “I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. If you eat this bread, you will live forever.” Of course, he was speaking spiritually, not physically, but they didn’t get it. They thought Jesus was a prophet, maybe Elijah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist returned from the dead. They were offended that He would say that they should eat His flesh, and many of them turned away.

In a very real sense, they were still saying, “Man-na?” “What is this?”  Even though God had told them that He was sending them a Savior… Even though He had told them whose family line He would come from…  Even though He had told them when and where and how, they still were surprised by His arrival.

“Man-na?” It’s the single, most important question any of us will ever answer in regard to Jesus. What do we make of Him? Is He prophet, philosopher, teacher, nice-guy? Or is He God? Will we be satisfied with His miracles, or will we not be satisfied until we have a relationship with the Miracle-Maker? We can’t just choose not to deal with the question. Not dealing with it is an answer in itself. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Nothing else can satisfy our spiritual hunger.