A bit of whimsy today but with an important lesson…

I’m on distribution for road construction updates from the Colorado Department of Transportation mainly because 20 miles of interstate between where we live and Castle Rock (toward Denver) has been undergoing a widening project. It’s called the I-25 South Gap project. Here’s what came in on April 29: 

I-25 Impacts Increase Next Week – Construction on the I-25 South Gap project is still ongoing through November 2022. This week, crews will ramp up construction impacts on I-25. This includes extended lane closures on Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7, and daytime Express Lane closures Monday through Saturday.

Bob, why are you telling us this? Because…with great fanfare, the project was declared completed “ahead of schedule” last December!

Here’s what the Denver Post reported on November 22, 2021:

A much smoother ride between Castle Rock and Monument is in store for drivers on Interstate 25 next month as new express lanes open, bringing an end to more than three years of traffic shifts, tight lanes and construction backups...

“By mid-December, in time for Christmas, the I-25 South Gap project team will open all lanes of travel in their final alignment, with an express lane fully open in both directions,” Gov. Jared Polis said during a news conference at a truck chain-up station near Larkspur…Several speakers touted that all lanes “will be open an entire year earlier than originally projected,” as Polis put it. 

On December 8, 2021, the Denver Post closed the loop:

New express lanes opened Friday morning on Interstate 25 — initially without tolls charged — through the I-25 South Gap project zone between Castle Rock and Monument...After more than three years of construction along the 18-mile corridor, the additional lane in each direction is expected to smooth the drive through the notoriously bottlenecked section of I-25 south of metro Denver by making at least three lanes open each way.

Good news, right? It’s done. Not so fast, the Post article continues:

The highway is now in its final configuration, but work remains to be done during the winter and spring to wrap up the $419 million project officials said. After crews install and test tolling equipment above the express lanes, tolls will take effect.

In short, it’s NOT done. And work slated to be done “winter and spring” really means, I found out last week, through November. Communication, not from the governor, not from the newspaper, but from the actual people who do the work:

Construction on the I-25 South Gap project is still ongoing through November 2022.

In case you’re wondering why people sometimes have trouble believing politicians, it’s because they sometimes don’t tell the (whole) truth. 

The two kings, with their hearts bent on evil, will sit at the same table and lie to each other… (Daniel 11.27, NIV)

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18.38, ESV)

Therefore, putting away lying, Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. (Ephesians 4.25, NKJV)

And I just discovered an even more troubling aspect of the perception of truth in our society, and it applies to all of us. Stay tuned.

Star Wars, the original Star Wars movie, since renamed Episode IV: A New Hope, came out Wednesday, May 25, 1977. I saw it that Friday with my friend John Wolf, fellow Air Force officer, and our base housing neighbor at Offutt AFB near Omaha, Nebraska. It was the first (and still one of the very few) movies I had ever seen in its first few days.

I still have fond memories: good and evil were evident, I could follow all the characters and the plot, the objective was clear, and we all celebrated success when the Death Star was destroyed with, yes, the help of The Force.

It’s a good reminder that we are still engaged in a cosmic battle against the forces of evil, and victory requires the Spirit – the real FORCE.

God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out. (Ephesians 6.10 – 18, MSG)

Yesterday I wrote about “the remnant” referring to a powerful essay by Albert Nock first published in 1936. I was prompted to dig out that essay, sent to me by a friend a number of years ago, because of a provocative article by Mike Metzger about TED talks. Near the beginning, he has a paragraph strikingly reminiscent of the opening of Nock’s essay: smart people believing that they can change things by spreading ideas to the masses.

TED’s premise is simple: ideas change the world. There are problems in the world… fortunately, there are solutions to each of these problems… they’ve been formulated by extremely smart, tech-adjacent people… so, for their ideas to become realities, they merely need to be articulated and spread as widely as possible in stories that actually manifest a new world. – Mike Mezger, April 18, 2022

Mike was quoting from another article, What Was the TED Talk? by Oscar Schwartz. I commend both articles in their entirety. Schwartz’s article opens with the story of Bill Gates advocating in 2015 that we weren’t prepared for a global epidemic. He was right, of course, and he had a solution – an idea. Schwartz reports Gates’ idea:

Back when he was a kid, the U.S. military had sufficient funding to mobilize for war at any minute. Gates says that we must prepare for a pandemic with the same fearful intensity. We need to build a medical reserve corps. We need to play germ games like generals play war games. We need to make alliances with other virus-fighting nations. We need to build an arsenal of biomedical weapons to attack any non-human entity that might attack our bodies. “If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic,” Gates concludes, to a round of applause. 

But Schwartz continues that few of the TED ideas as good as well-articulated as they were, bore fruit:

Of course, Gates’s popular and well-shared TED talk — viewed millions of times — didn’t alter the course of history. Neither did any of the other “ideas worth spreading” (the organization’s tagline) presented at the TED conference that year — including Monica Lewinsky’s massively viral speech about how to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy, or a Google engineer’s talk about how driverless cars would make roads smarter and safer in the near future. In fact, seven years after TED 2015, it feels like we are living in a reality that is the exact opposite of the future envisioned that year. A president took office in part because of his talent for online bullying. Driverless cars are nowhere near as widespread as predicted, and those that do share our roads keep crashing. Covid has killed five million people and counting.

Mike Metzger says that the assumption that ideas in and of themselves change the world is false. And certainly spreading ideas “to the masses” doesn’t work. What does?

Jesus gave his 11 remaining apostles and, by extension, the total of 120 in the upper room a mandate to change the world.

When they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1.6 – 8, NKJV)

And after Acts 3, we don’t have any record of big meetings. (And even those meetings were followed by extensive training: “And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. (Acts 5.42, NKJV)

The world has been changed, not by spreading ideas through the masses but by committed Jesus followers, living out the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. Rodney Stark documents this transformation in his marvelous book The Rise of Christianity (strongly recommend). In The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity, Matthew Kelly argues we can do it again through Holy Moments. And we should be intentionally investing in the other people, including the next generation. It’s something any of us can do – without worrying about how to reach “the masses.”

But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things–that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. (Titus 2.1 – 5, NKJV)

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, NKJV)

Our recent readings in Matthew included Matthew 13, a collection of Jesus’ parables, beginning with one of the most important: the parable of the sower.

Then Jesus said to [the disciples when they asked about the meaning of the parable of the sower], “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?” (Mark 4.13, NIV)

I wrote about the parable of the sower back in August 2019: sow more seed! The sower kept sowing seed until he found the right soil – soil that would produce and reproduce.

I’ve just been reminded of a related application: when we’re sowing seed, we’re not expecting to reach “the masses” – but “the remnant.” And one of the best treatments of the idea of the remnant is in a (secular) essay first published in 1936. Isaiah’s Job by Albert Nock starts this way:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: “I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?”

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe.

Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind cannot possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favorite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah…

In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”

…There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.” – Albert Nock, Isaiah’s Job, published in Atlantic Monthly in 1936.

Tomorrow, I want to share a more modern-day example of people trying to change the world just by sharing ideas with the masses. In the meantime, remember: Jesus taught the masses, he helped and healed many people, but he trained twelve.

Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach… (Mark 3.13, 14, NIV)

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2, NIV)

I hadn’t intended to follow up yesterday’s blog on welcoming outsiders which mentioned a downtown church’s ushers trained to keep certain people out. When a new senior pastor found out about it, he said:

We have to catch ’em before we can clean ’em!

Something similar happened in the first Calvary Chapel back in the 70s. Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, came to church early on a Sunday morning after the church had installed new carpet. There were signs up saying “no bare feet.” A large part of their ministry was to hippies on the beach, and the sign was directed at them. Chuck tore all the signs down and called an emergency meeting of the leadership team right after morning services. “If because of our plush carpeting we have to close the door to one young person who has bare feet, then I’m personally in favor of ripping out all the carpeting and having concrete floors.”

Here’s the way Chuck tells it in his book Harvest. It’s long but worth the read:

I don’t want it ever said that we preach an easy kind of Christian experience at Calvary Chapel. But I also do not want to make the same mistake that the Holiness Church made thirty years ago. Without knowing it, they drove out and lost a whole generation of young people with a negative no-movie, no-dance, no-smoke gospel. Let us at Calvary not be guilty of this same mistake. Instead, let us trust God and emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit within individual lives. It is exciting and much more real and natural to allow the Spirit to dictate change. Let us never be guilty of forcing our Western Christian subculture of clean-shaven, short-hair styles or dress on anyone. We want change to come from inside out. We simply declare that drugs, striving to become a millionaire, or making sports your whole life is not where true fulfillment or ultimate meaning lies. Because the end of all these goals is emptiness and disappointment.

Perhaps this involves interesting symbolism, but I think that the last barrier to go in our church was the “bare feet” barrier. When we got beyond that, we were home free, The pivotal incident centered on a wide expanse of brand-new carpet that we had just put in. Those who had been inwardly protesting the hippies finally found a target upon which to vent their discontent. Dirty feet soil carpets, and these carpets cost a lot of money. Besides, who wants to see dirt marks on a brand-new carpet? They took it upon themselves, early one Sunday morning, to hang up a sign reading, No bare feet allowed. For some reason I happened to reach the church earlier than usual, and was in time to take down the sign. It was sad to see division over things this trivial. It was also sad to see what really lay behind the outward demarcations of division: a we/they polarity instead of love.

This time, I was the one to call the board meeting, and…I spoke from my heart to the board: “In a sense it is we older established Christians who are on trial before the young people. We are the ones who told them about James 2 and I John 4:7. The kind of action we displayed today puts a question mark across our faith. When things like this happen we have to ask ourselves who or what it is that controls and guides our motives. If because of our plush carpeting we have to close the door to one young person who has bare feet, then I’m personally in favor of ripping out all the carpeting and having concrete floors. If because of dirty jeans we have to say to one young person, ‘I am sorry, you can’t come into church tonight, your jeans are too dirty,’ then I am in favor of getting rid of the upholstered pews. Let’s get benches or steel chairs or something we can wash off. But let’s not ever, ever, close the door to anyone because of dress or the way he looks.”

Yesterday’s scripture still holds:

I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders. (Matthew 9.13, MSG)

This week’s readings in Matthew’s Gospel included the call of Matthew the tax collector. I wrote about The Chosen’s treatment of this last July. For now, let’s just stick with our theme of the past few days of outsiders versus insiders. The Message account captures it beautifully:

Passing along, Jesus saw a man at his work collecting taxes. His name was Matthew. Jesus said, “Come along with me.” Matthew stood up and followed him. Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riff-raff?” Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” (Matthew 9.9 – 13, MSG, emphasis mine)

“I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” For some of our churches, the opposite is true. We coddle the insiders and keep the outsiders, well, out! One large downtown church’s ushers were trained not to let certain kinds of people into the services. When the new pastor heard about that practice, he exclaimed, “You have to catch ’em before you can clean ’em!” The policy changed.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19.10, ESV)

Yesterday’s story about the Roman Centurion reminding Jesus that Jesus could heal his servant from a distance was about the faith of an outsider – a Gentile:

When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. (Matthew 8.10, ESV, emphasis mine)

I came across the same idea in the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15.21 – 28, ESV, emphasis mine)

Jesus rarely commended people for faith. Usually, when he talked to people about their faith it came out, “O you of little faith!” But here are two Gentiles commended for their great faith. The Roman centurion’s faith was demonstrated by his understanding of Jesus’ power to heal, even at a distance. This woman’s faith was demonstrated by her persistence and creativity.

(And for those of you worrying about why Jesus appears to put down this Gentile outsider, recall that he was around the Sea of Galilee when the story started, he walked up to “the district of Tyre and Sidon” – at least two days, I’m told. He healed the daughter and returned to the Sea of Galilee. What do you think he talked about with the disciples on the way back?)

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11.6, NKJV)

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. (Luke 18.1, NIV)

Here’s a practical follow-up to the “Living Word” series we started last Saturday. A key quote by Eugene Peterson was:

The intent of revelation is not to inform us about God but to involve us with God. – Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder as quoted by Jack R. Taylor

The Jews of Jesus’ day were certainly informed about God, but sometimes those who understood him best were “outsiders.”

As Jesus entered the village of Capernaum, a Roman captain came up in a panic and said, “Master, my servant is sick. He can’t walk. He’s in terrible pain.” Jesus said, “I’ll come and heal him.” “Oh, no,” said the captain. “I don’t want to put you to all that trouble. Just give the order and my servant will be fine. I’m a man who takes orders and gives orders. I tell one soldier, ‘Go,’ and he goes; to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” Taken aback, Jesus said, “I’ve yet to come across this kind of simple trust in Israel, the very people who are supposed to know all about God and how he works. This man is the vanguard of many outsiders who will soon be coming from all directions…Then those who grew up ‘in the faith’ but had no faith will find themselves out in the cold, outsiders to grace and wondering what happened.” Then Jesus turned to the captain and said, “Go. What you believed could happen has happened.” At that moment his servant became well. (Matthew 8.5 – 13, MSG, emphasis mine)

Some who think they know all about God from their study of the written word will find themselves “outsiders to grace and wondering what happened.”

And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.” (Matthew 25.10 – 12, ESV)

We know too much, do we not? Our news media reports not only on major events like the war in Ukraine but on local events such as an apartment fire in some faraway city (in other words, not our local). We are inundated by “information,” which, if we pay attention to it, is too much to handle. If we let it go, we may feel like we don’t care about others as much as we should.

Here’s a prayer to help. It was excerpted on Breakpoint, April 24, 2022. It’s long but worth it.

In a world so wired and interconnected,
our anxious hearts are pummeled by
an endless barrage of troubling news.
We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord,
than we can rightly consider,
of more suffering and scandal
than we can respond to, of more
hostility, hatred, horror, and injustice
than we can engage with compassion.

But you, O Jesus, are not disquieted
by such news of cruelty and terror and war.
You are neither anxious nor overwhelmed.
You carried the full weight of the suffering
of a broken world when you hung upon
the cross, and you carry it still.

When the cacophony of universal distress
unsettles us, remind us that we are but small
and finite creatures, never designed to carry
the vast abstractions of great burdens,
for our arms are too short and our strength
is too small. Justice and mercy, healing and
redemption, are your great labors.

And yes, it is your good pleasure to accomplish
such works through your people,
but you have never asked any one of us
to undertake more than your grace
will enable us to fulfill.

Guard us then from shutting down our empathy
or walling off our hearts because of the glut of
unactionable misery that floods our awareness.
You have many children in many places
around this globe. Move each of our hearts
to compassionately respond to those needs
that intersect our actual lives, that in all places
your body might be actively addressing
the pain and brokenness of this world,
each of us liberated and empowered by
your Spirit to fulfill the small part
of your redemptive work assigned to us.

Give us discernment
in the face of troubling news reports.
Give us discernment
to know when to pray,
when to speak out,
when to act,
and when to simply
shut off our screens
and our devices,
and to sit quietly
in your presence,

casting the burdens of this world
upon the strong shoulders
of the one who
alone
is able to bear them up.

Amen.

This liturgy is from Every Moment Holy by Doug McKelvey. Posted by The Rabbit Room • March 16, 2020

“Move each of our hearts to compassionately respond to those needs that intersect our actual lives…Give us discernment to know when to pray, when to speak out, when to act, and when to simply shut off our screens and our devices,…”

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6.34, NIV)

At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them…At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” (Luke 4.40 – 43, NIV – unfinished business – not even Jesus could do it all)

Back to Matthew’s gospel, I was struck when I read one of the best-known sayings of Jesus:

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7.12, NKJV)

The real “Golden Rule” – not, “he who has the gold makes the rules” – but a piece of wisdom it’s hard to see how we’ve missed. Missed?

• Were whites treating blacks the way they would want to be treated?
• When I was short with a store clerk the other day for something over which he had no control, is that the way I would want to be treated?
• Is Putin treating Ukraine the way he would want people to treat Russia?
• And here’s an interesting question: if someone were invading our country, would we expect an ally who had the means to stop them to act? Is the US supporting Ukraine the way we would want to be supported?

I don’t know the answer to the last question, and I’m well aware that principles that apply to individuals don’t always apply to nations, but still…

You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19.18, NKJV)

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22.36 – 40, ESV)