Okay, I’m back, but I don’t know why.
What, exactly, is the point of Christian ministry? To help? Help
who? Help who do what? Help folks live a normal life? What’s
“normal?” Who decides that? I saw this sister in a store the
other day, her shopping cart piled high as she explained to the
checker she was preparing for her big New Year’s blowout. I
couldn't help but wonder why. Why this tribal ritual of
partying, drinking to excess; why all the noise? Another twelve
months have passed, so what? Why is that in any way significant?
It’s certainly not biblical. I mean, there’s no biblical model
for the Lord instructing us to revel as the clock counts down to
twelve. Even our traditional Watch Night services aren’t
biblical. At best, they are our mirroring the world’s excesses
(and many of us head to the club after Watch Night anyway). At
worst, Watch Night is a dreary and tedious dirge of people
venting or bragging or purging the woes of their lives, thanking
God for having seen them through yet another year. “Thank God
I’m still here,” we say and sing, “I thank God I’m still alive.”
Do you? Why? I mean, given the nation’s shocking and abysmal
spiral into moral turpitude, a dire turn epitomized by the
election of a prurient, grossly immature, lying, unstable
bigoted admitted sexual predator to the nation’s highest office,
I frankly find myself looking for the exits. I mean, how much
more joyful would it be to be with God, to be where God is, to
dwell in His presence, than to be “still here?” Frankly, I find
myself “still here” under protest. I am “still here” because God
has work for me to do. And He has work for you, too.
All this high-fiving and cartwheels over having survived yet
another year taking up space on a bench would almost make sense
to me if we actually accomplished something for God in the
previous twelve months. I don't want to hear about your mother’s
cancer. I really don’t want to hear about how you survived
foreclosure or made it through your divorce. I want to hear what
you did for the Lord in 2017. Because, in the end, that’s all
that will actually count. And, if we haven’t done anything for
God in 2017, why are we celebrating?
I can’t stop anybody from wasting their money, but I can stop
you from wasting my money. Similarly, I can’t stop you from
wasting your life running in circles and ingesting all that
foolishness from that idiot box in your living room, but I sure
as heck can stop wasting my life trying to convince you that
God has ordained so much more for you. God has ordained
purpose for you— your life has meaning and value. Yet there
you sit, defeated, distracted, and bamboozled by the enemy, making a virtue of cowardice
Is it the minister or the pastor’s job to help you sit around
getting older and fatter, with bad diets and no exercise,
watching brain-dead TV, trolling Facebook all day and gossiping
on the phone? Why am I or any other minister turning myself
inside-out just so you can take up space?
How then shall they call on Him, Paul asked in Romans Chapter
10, in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe
in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear
without a preacher? But doesn’t the question imply a shared
responsibility? The preacher preaches, certainly, but the
hearer has skin in the game, too: an obligation to get off of the sofa. And that’s
where the trouble begins.
So, there was once this guy Joe. God orders Joe to run down to
the hood and tell them folks to change up or there’s going to be
a problem. Joe doesn’t want to go. He resents the people he’s
being sent to preach to. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian
empire which fell to the Babylonians and the Medes in 612 BC.
Assyria oppressed Israel and eventually took the Israelites
captive in 722–721 BC. Joe had no love for those people, whom he
likely regarded as ignorant, and didn’t want them to repent and
be delivered. He wanted them do die.
Now, we all know the Sunday School story about Jonah and the whale. Only, it wasn’t a whale and the whale is only part of the story. The sea creature, whatever that was, was actually a fairly short part of this book; Jonah’s three day and three night captivity foreshadowing Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. The whale was Jonah’s distraction— Jonah’s Facebook, Jonah’s grandkids, Jonah’s girlfriend/boyfriend— whatever exists in your life that’s keeping you from doing what God called you to do.