Do We Pretend?

"Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good." Romans 12:9 NLT

I have a confession to make. It's not an easy one it's not a fun one, but it is one that must be made.

I have pretended to love others... I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this particular act. We all do it, we don't like to admit it but we do. The real problem is many times when I'm pretending to love others, I'm fooling myself as much as I'm pretending. Fool myself into believing that I am showing love to people.

Aside from the fact that I am taking this weeks sermon text from Romans 12, there are other things that have brought this revelation to my being. Wow that sounds appropriately mystical, my being, anyway, in the past few weeks I have found that my tolerance level for a large group of people who are of a different political and social persuasion than I am getting less and less. In case you were wondering, and were unable to tell, I'm not really in the right camp as it were for many of the people I grew up with and who I am friends with. I know that many of my friends, former co workers, pastors and leaders are on one side of things, I also know that there was a time when I was there too, mainly because I was supposed to be, if I had any prayer of moving forward and moving up in certain circles in my chosen profession well there are things you are supposed to be, and a left leaning guy, that embraces some aspects (not all) but some aspects of socialism, who finds himself consistency voting on the Democrat side of the ticket isn't one of them. The thing is I have come to the realization that at the time I did hold a lot of those things as important, and while I would never really have branded myself as conservative, it seemed to make sense. As I've gotten older, and gone through life. As I have studied scripture, and as I have looked at history my views and leanings have changed.

I find some people hard to understand. Many times I get a sense that a lot of the people from my past would like to see the President fail, would like to take the New Pope to task for not holding the things they hold dear as important. Many of them seem to think more of their right to own a gun, than they do of the lives that are consistently taken by the same weapons. These same people call for a return to the way it was, to prayer in schools, to a melding of church and state to unfettered investment and capitalism at the expense of what I view as common sense.

BUT and here is where I realize I have been pretending to love people. Just as I get upset when a person judges my faith based on my political leanings. I have done the same thing based on theirs. I have pretended to love them. I have pretended to respect their point of view. I have pretended to be okay with what I view as their narrow view of life, and scripture and Christianity. Here's the problem in my passing judgment on them as narrow minded, I have shown my own narrow mindedness. I have taken delight in pointing out where they are wrong, or where they are posting things as fact that come strait from satirical news sources. I have looked at them as un-enlightened just as they may look at me. I have forgotten that Love is more than just saying it. Instead of taking them to task, instead of allowing the smug thought's that come to my mind, instead of writing them off I should talk to God for them. I should love them like Jesus did. That's what we are supposed to do. Countless times in the New Testament we find Jesus loving people where they were, not just geographically, but where they are in their journey. He didn't give a set of hoops to jump through for His love to be accepted. He didn't tell people to be worthy before he reached out to them. He just loved them as they were, weather they were a prostitute, a tax collector, a Samaratin woman, a untouchable leper...a traitor. Jesus loved people. He cried for people, he got angry at people, and he died for people, people that didn't agree with him, that didn't look like him, that didn't believe like he did. He died for people that were broken, people that were rich, for people that's what he did.

One of my favorite pictures of Jesus comes from the woman that the pastors wanted to stone because she broke the rules. At the end of the whole altercation, after ignoring them, drawing in the ground, and even agreeing with what the rules they were talking about were broken and that the punishment was legitimate, he does two things. He puts a condition on their being able to meet out said punishment. If you haven't ever sinned have at. Grab those rocks and start chucking them. He then looks at her asks where her accusers were, she looks up and realizes they are gone, and he says something that is very important. Neither do I condemn you. This is important because He had the ability to do so. He was without sin. He could have picked up the rocks but he didn't He loved her, didn't condem her and then made one request. Don't do it any more. That's huge. He didn't set up a 12 step program, He didn't give her an accountability partner, He didn't brand her for life. He simply told her to stop. He loved her, and trusted that the love he showed, that the encounter she had with him would be enough.

I have not done that. I have been pretending to love people, attempting to enlighten them, attempting to show them how it should be, trying to point out why I'm right and they're wrong... Who cares. What matters is this.

1. Jesus died for whoever...

2. Jesus death and resurrection was a game changer for all of humanity right where they were not where they should have been or where could have been

3. As a Christ Follower it's my job to be like Jesus to love people where they are without strings

4. If I will do that, if I will show my faith as well as sharing my faith with others, and then trust that an encounter with Jesus will make a difference, I won't find it necessary to defend my side of things, to prove that I'm right and they are wrong, no matter who it is, Republican, Democrat, Liberal Conservative, Strait, LGBT, Right or Left, Evangelical or Not. If I show the LOVE of Christ, and refuse to compromise on what is true, then get out of the way then that will be enough.

So there it is I am sorry for pretending to Love. It may take a while for God and I to deal with this issue, and I know that once we complete this project He'll start another but that's what it is to be a Christ Follower...

The Jorney that ended at a beginning...

The last five or six years have been really interesting in our life. There have been good times, bad ones as well and then of course the obligatory downright frightening ones. My kids are getting bigger and bigger, my age is going up and up. My eyes are beginning to betray me, especially when I have to read some fine print, who knew I would have to take off my glasses to see the small stuff, course if I am wearing my contacts it's the whole far away close thing or squint. Anyway I digress.

My family is an integral part of my life, but the journey that I'm talking about is more of a personal one. If you had asked me 5 years ago, shoot if you had asked me 2 years ago what I would be doing when I turned 40, I would have said that I would be subbing at my wife's school, or doing some sort of IT work, both of which have happened. I would have said that as sad as it is the whole ministry as a vocation thing is probably over. I'm 40 and I never really thought of myself as anything but a youth or young adult pastor. I would get glimpses of what I could do. I would pray, I wrote out ministry plans to start new churches, bounced them off other people I respected, but never really thought much past that. J and I would talk about what would happen if we were Lead Pastors, I was sending resumes out left and right for all kinds of positions, even lead pastor positions, even did several interviews for student ministry stuff. Worked part time at a couple of churches as a ministry coordinator, but that was it. As the mileage counter clicked to 40 I told J that no one was going to hire a 40 year old guy to be a student ministries pastor. I did some interviews, even got to the finish line of a couple only to be passed by another candidate on the way to the tape. It was hard to always be second, but I figured this was the way it was going to be. I would work IT and volunteer at the church we are attending and let that be the way things were...I couldn't shake that calling that I felt God had given me, I felt like I was sitting on the gifts that God has given me because no one wanted me. Amazing really how we can dig holes of pity, remorse, regret, and pride then jump down in them, looking up from our hole and tell the people looking down in on us that we understand, that God lets people go through things, we like to talk about 1 Cor. 13, wear it like a badge of honor, saying God won't give me things I can't handle. The problem is how we read that verse. We like to lump all the trials in our life into this non existent verse. If we read it properly in context... well here look at the whole thing.

1 Corinthians 10:13-14 (NLT)
13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
14 So, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols.

See it is not trouble or trials it's temptation. It's the things that tend to drag us down, that want to pull our focus from God. God tells us he will show us the way out of the temptation, the way to get away from the thing that could potentially pull us away from Him, he didn't say he would make it easy, the verse doesn't say God will pull you out of the trouble. It doesn't even say there will be big neon signs and a wide exit lane out of the temptation. It says there will be a way provided out of the temptation. It also doesn't say if we take the way out things will be rosy, it says he'll provide a way out of the temptation so we can endure. Endure is one of those words that denotes work involved, that says there is going to be some difficulty, some pain, some hardship. I love running, but due to my leg being messed up earlier this year, the doctor said I had to quite running for a while, now that it's healed I have some work to do to build up the muscles around the bone, I will then be able to start running again, and I'm going to have to rebuild the endurance that I had worked hard to achieve. It's the same thing with the whole temptation thing with God. He's not going to make it easy, he's not saying that there is going to be an easy way out of it. He's saying there will be a way out to endure the temptation.

Anyway back to the Journey that ended at a beginning. I've been walking this journey of being a pastor that no one wants for so long that I figured that was how things were going to continue. J kept telling me God was keeping something for me, that he was letting me do all these things so that I could really minister somewhere. She said that she wished instead of identifying with Job when things were sad she wished I could identify with Joshua. It is in this vein that things happened. See back in June I had sent out yet another resume to a church in Baltimore. J and I drove over to check it out and get a tour, in the process we met with one of the people on the search committee, from there we had a second interview, but it happened so much later that I really wondered. We finished up the first official interview, headed back out to check out a neighborhood festival to get an idea of the people we would be serving. I had a burden for Locust Point. I never really undersold that concept but I think I do now. I get it, the people of this community and the people in the church were on my heart. I prayed for them, I prayed for the church, and I wanted to plan ministry, to do all sorts of work for this church that I wasn't guaranteed to be working at, in fact if past performance equaled future results it would be just another we like you but.

It got quiet. What was going to be a decision made in October, kept getting pushed back, then one Sunday I got a call that they wanted to do a second interview. I was really happy about that but it was strange because once again it got silent. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then New Years passed with nothing and I just chalked it up to one of the other people got the nod.

Then I got an email, asking for a date in January to meet with me. The last two Sunday's had been taken but the second one was open. I said sure, pulled out the ministry plan I had been working on and that I felt was the direction God wanted the church in Locust point to go, prayed and we headed out there on a Sunday afternoon to what promised to be the final interview. They were lining the candidates up in the month of January and just like Highlander there could be only one. Final interview went well, and out the church doors we went to look at one of the hosing options for the pastor when the committee called the guy that was going to show us around back in. It was urgent they said.

We toured the house and I told them I looked forward to hearing from them in February, secretly figuring it would be at least March before a decision was made and when it happened it would be another "you're great but." Imagine my surprise when they said well we are canceling the other interviews. We want you to be our Pastor.

I figure the title is self explanatory now. It's been a long journey to full time ministry, and well that's where this whole thing begins.