Monday, August 29, 2011

One of My Heroes

Do you have any heroes?  More than one or two?  Who are they?  I have a small number of heroes in my life, some that I know or knew personally and others who I have only read about.

I’d like to share with you one of my heroes, a man who exemplifies a peacemaker or reconciler who chose to stand up against evil and resist oppressors even at the cost of his own life.   He was a man who was a committed follower of Jesus, who served other people – especially young people, and who wrestled with how he should live out his faith in a country increasingly captivated by Adolf Hitler.   I am focusing on this man because he had to make some very difficult decisions, decisions that some of us today might question.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian born in 1906.  A number of his books were influential in my own understanding of the Christian faith, particularly The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.  This brilliant man, who was the sixth of eight children from a prominent middle-class family in Breslau, was an exceptional pianist as well as an outstanding student and he earned his doctorate in theology at the age of 21 from the University of Berlin.

While I read these books by Bonhoeffer years ago, I’ve been thinking about him lately because I recently finished an outstanding new biography about him by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.  Metaxas tells the story of Bonhoeffer’s amazing life and his incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil. 

As he witnessed acts of violence against Jews, he was troubled by how other Christians were manipulated by Hitler’s cronies into supporting “German Christianity” – a mixture of Nazi beliefs and traditional Christian teachings. Eventually Bonhoeffer decided to join forces with a small group of German leaders who planned to assassinate Hitler, a plot that failed and resulted in his arrest, imprisonment and execution in April 1945, only 23 days before the surrender of the Nazi regime.

Metaxas quotes a speech Bonhoeffer gave in August 1934, as he struggled with how to respond to the evil of the Nazi regime.  Here are the words of the 28-year-old pastor:

There is no way to peace along the way of security. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe.  Peace is the opposite of security.  To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself.  Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hands of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes.  Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God.  They are won when the way leads to the cross (p. 241).

Bonhoeffer had no idea in 1934 how prophetic his words would be in terms of his own life.  I see him as a hero because he understood that following Jesus in the modern world can be a dangerous undertaking and that being a peacemaker does not mean tolerating injustice and evil.  He lived what he believed, no matter the cost.  I will never forget his words “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church.  Our struggle today is for costly grace.”

So What?

  • I encourage you to take the time some day soon to think about and write down a list of your heroes and then some short observations about why you chose them.
  • Being a peacemaker is not necessarily a safe way to live.  Can you think of some peacemakers in recent history?  What happened to them?
  • Bonhoeffer recognized that the energy and strength he needed to be a peacemaker – to defy Hitler’s call to make war on the innocent – came from the Holy Spirit’s work in his life.  Have you ever experienced this in your life?

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Forgiveness & Peacemaking

I am not very good about forgiving people who have hurt me. Sometimes the pain is deep and when the hurt comes from someone you are close to, it is especially difficult to handle emotionally. One powerful lesson that Jesus taught his followers was the importance of forgiveness, a lesson I need to keep relearning. Being able to forgive is an essential quality for peacemakers.

Rembrandt's "The Denial of Peter"
Do you remember when Jesus is in the Upper Room, during the days before his arrest and execution, and tells his disciples that “one of you will betray me”? Later that evening, Peter boldly declares that he would lay down his life for Jesus. But Jesus tells him that “the rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times.”

Following Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his beloved disciple Peter does indeed deny he knows Jesus, not once, but three times as predicted, out of fear for his own life. How painful that must have been for Jesus to have one of his closest friends betray him!

Jesus Eats With His Disciples
at the Sea of Galilee
After his resurrection, the third time Jesus met with his disciples was when they had breakfast together on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. During their breakfast, Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me?” Here is Peter, who had boldly stated he would lay down his life for Jesus and then shortly thereafter denied he even knew him three times. But Jesus restores his relationship with Peter. He asks him three times if Peter loves him and then makes it clear that he is forgiven by inviting Peter to “Follow me.” Do you think Peter got the message, especially the third time Jesus questions him? What an incredible act of forgiveness!

So What?
  • On a personal level, we all know this, right? Unless we are willing to forgive someone who we think has wronged us, a healthy friendship with that person is not possible. Jesus teaches us to be people who forgive others, just as God forgives us for our sins. That is a key part of the Lord’s Prayer – “forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts of others.”
  • Another important lesson to be learned here relates to how the lack of forgiveness on the part of the person who has been hurt keeps them a victim with continuing anger and bitterness. God knows this and instructs us to forgive because he wants our lives to be full of joy and peace – an inner Shalom.
  • In our broken, violent world, forgiveness is an important beginning for any healing to take place on a national level. We saw this in South Africa, when after years of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to bring together the various racial communities of this country, to share their personal stories of what had happened – to tell the truth, but to also forgive those who had done wrong. It began the difficult process of healing.
  • In many autocratic regimes where much violence has been perpetrated by the ruling elites on the majority of the population, there have never been apologies by anyone accepting responsibility for past or current injustices. A healthy, just society can never be built on the basis. In the early 1970s, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote an essay in which he said that Russians needed to stop blaming others for their troubles and start searching for their own errors and sins. Then they needed to ask for forgiveness because repentance “is the only starting point for spiritual growth.” The same challenge applies to the countries in the Middle East who are wrestling with popular opposition movements.
  • The importance of forgiveness and its relationship to peacemaking has application on the personal, national and international levels. Can you think of some examples in your own life where, if you forgave a friend for something that they did that hurt you, a relationship could be restored? Just do it!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Fired Up

Portion of El Greco's
"Pentecost" (c. 1600)
Being a disciple of Jesus in the first century was not easy! As we have discussed in previous posts, some of his teachings were very difficult to follow and some of his actions broke all of the rules of good behavior set by the Pharisees, who were respected by Jews in conservative religious circles.

When he touched lepers, recruited a hated tax collector into his inner circle of disciples, talked with a Samaritan woman, healed people on the Sabbath – these were all actions of an unusual teacher. This rabbi was challenging the religious establishment of his day, with all of their rules and prohibitions about not dealing with the outcasts in society or their neighboring Samaritans, and the disciples had to figure how to be faithful followers.

Then comes the Passover Feast when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and the crowds cheer him and hail him as a political liberator. This seemed to be the time when Jesus would truly become the King of the Jews and together they would break the bonds of Roman oppression. But what does Jesus do? As we discussed in the last post, he withdraws from the crowd, loses all of this momentum, and winds up being arrested, tried and executed.

Before he died on the cross, Jesus promised to send his disciples a “Counselor” or “Helper” and he repeated this promise when he met them following his resurrection as they hid out of fear that they would also be arrested and punished. Of course the disciples were excited when they learned the news of Jesus’ resurrection, but they were still confused about his mission. On the day of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, forty days after his resurrection, the disciples were still wondering when Jesus was going to “restore the Kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6).

Let’s face it – the disciples were like us. Being a disciple of Jesus in the twenty-first century is also not easy. There are times when I am also confused about what God is doing in this world and how I am to follow his commands, times when I just don’t seem to get it. Having to suspend RAI’s undergraduate program after fourteen years is an example where I thought I was doing what God wanted me to do. Only now am I beginning to see that God’s plan may be much more significant than I understood it to be.

Things changed for the disciples ten days after Jesus’ ascension, when the promise of the “counselor” was fulfilled. At Pentecost, the disciples were “filled with the Holy Spirit” with dramatic results. No longer would they flee persecution as they had on the night of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. They were now “fired up” and became fearless witnesses of the gospel of peace!

So What?
  • When facing difficult challenges, we need to remind ourselves that God has given us the power, the strength, to persevere -- this is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We can’t make it on our own, but God does not leave us on our own. We have a promised “Helper” and this makes all the difference.
  • The change in the disciples after Pentecost is truly amazing. If you want to study this further, get the book by Professor Michael Green, Thirty Years That Changed the World. Here’s his summary: “Three crucial decades in world history. That is all it took. In the years between A.D. 33 and 64 a new movement was born. In those thirty years it got sufficient growth and credibility to become the largest religion the world has ever seen and to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people.”
  • If you have doubts about your faith or are confused about how to live as a follower of Jesus in our world, don’t be distressed. Doubt is not the opposite of faith, fear is. Doubt can eventually lead to a stronger faith, to a better understanding of God’s Word, if you ask God to help you as he promised through his Holy Spirit.

Monday, August 8, 2011

The Power Source

Where do we get the energy, the strength, to be a peacemaker in the middle of a violent, chaotic world? My recent posts have discussed some of the hard teachings of Jesus about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek – radical teachings for sure, so how can we do this?

There have been many times in recent years when I have faced some difficult challenges in Russia, when bureaucrats or political extremists have tried to block our efforts to build a school. My initial response to opposition is to fight back, but when I reconsider and decide to respond as a peacemaker, I then often get very discouraged because I sometimes lack the energy for another struggle. It is times like this when I have learned that I need to find energy, to find power, in another source. That’s what I want to share in this post.

Da Vinci's "Last Supper"
When Jesus met with his disciples in the Upper Room during the week before his trial and crucifixion, he said some remarkable things that the Apostle John recorded in his Gospel. But first let me set the context. After Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem during Passover week, he withdraws from the crowds who celebrated his donkey ride into the city. Instead of seizing the opportunity to mobilize the crowds who hailed him as a political liberator from Roman rule, Jesus orders his disciples to rent a private room where he pours out his heart to these twelve men.

You can sense the intensity of Jesus’ words to his disciples as you read through chapters 13-17 of John’s Gospel. Jesus washes their feet, talks with them about being servants, and predicts his own betrayal. Then he tells them that he will ask God the Father to send “another Counselor [Helper] to be with you forever.” He explains that “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, . . . will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you“ (John 14: 15 and 25-27).

Jesus summarizes his message in the word “peace” (shalom), the gift he would give to his followers, a gift promised by the Old Testament prophets. Jesus says: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14: 15 and 25-27). His gift of “peace” was not something that non-believers would understand, but it was a fulfillment of his life, death and resurrection.

Caravaggio's "Doubting Thomas"
After his resurrection, the disciples are hiding behind locked doors because they fear they will also be arrested and possibly executed. Jesus enters the room and says “Peace be with you!” This was not a typical “Hello.” After showing his followers his wounds, Jesus breathes on them, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the “breath of God.” What Jesus had promised in the Upper Room, he gives them this night in anticipation of Pentecost, fifty days later when he poured out his Spirit in ways the disciples never expected.

Jesus gave his disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit and he offers this same gift to us. Jesus knew that his followers would never be able to be peacemakers and reconcilers in a broken world without the power and energy that they receive from the Holy Spirit. We simply are not able to be people who live a life of shalom without the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. But with the presence of the Holy Spirit, we can do amazing things -- in fact, Jesus said we will be able to do greater things than he had done (John 14:12)! Isn’t that incredible? Why are we so fearful and unwilling to take risks as peacemakers, when we have these promises from God?

So What?
  • One of the key issues followers of Jesus face is whether or not we trust the promises he makes to us. God is a God of covenants, of promises, yet isn’t it easy to forget these when we face tough situations?
  • Can you think of a circumstance in your life when you faced a difficult time, but chose to believe in God’s promises despite what others might be saying?
  • We need to remember that God desires to use us to achieve his purposes in our world, but that our ability to be used for making the world a better place is not because of our talent, but because of the Spirit of God in us. Doesn’t this help us to relax?