Gospel of John

God Chose YOU

May 28, 2015 By Michelle

Youaresoloved2

Often when I tell my faith story or give my testimony, I use phrases like, “When I returned to God…” or “When I came back to God…” or even, “When God found me.” That’s the way I’ve understood my story: I was estranged from God for twenty years, and then I slowly came back to him. Recently, though, I’ve begun to realize that while my understanding of that process isn’t wrong, necessarily, it’s also not the whole story.

The whole story is encapsulated in this one simple verse from John:

“You didn’t choose me. I chose you.” (John 15:16)

Sometimes I forget that God does the choosing; I forget that he chose me as his beloved child even before I took my first wailing breath on this earth.

I forget that the door into his love and grace was open from the get-go, a standing, open invitation to me – to all of us.

Remember the story of the prodigal son? We typically pay a lot of attention to the son who returns in that story. We relate to the son’s need to seek forgiveness; we see ourselves in his act of returning to his father and his home.

But think about the father in that story for a moment. Sure, he comes out to greet his son and to welcome him back after his long hiatus. But the truth is, the door to the father’s house was always open; all those years, the invitation still stood. The father greeted his lost son with open arms, but that son had long been chosen as beloved by him; that fact never changed.

White Peony

white peony closeup

You are so loved

I tend to give myself a fair amount of credit for turning back to God after a twenty-year hiatus. If I’m not careful, I can easily slip into the misguided belief that I chose God. But as I mentioned earlier, that view is a subtle misrepresentation of the story.

The fact is, God does the choosing; each one of us is already chosen, right from the start. That invitation into grace, into the God-with-us life, is waiting for us on the day we are born. Our role is to say “yes.”

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: The Most Exquisite Gift

March 10, 2014 By Michelle

For the next six Sundays I will be posting the Sunday devotional that I wrote for my church’s Lent devotional booklet. These will be a little bit different than my usual style: a little more reflection and devotiony, a little less story-based. I’ll also start with a Scripture reading and end with a prayer. This is my way of stepping back from the blog a bit during this Lenten season – thank you for your grace.

That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again, he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” (John 20:22)

Think about this for minute: Jesus gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples as they sat together on the evening of Easter Sunday, just hours after he had risen. The disciples didn’t do anything to earn this treasured gift. Jesus didn’t require them to perform a certain number of good deeds or even believe a certain doctrine. He didn’t even require that they profess their faith to him.

In fact, this very moment came on the heels of their betrayal of Jesus, just three days after they’d abandoned him to the Romans and allowed him to die on the cross.

But none of that mattered to Jesus. He didn’t hold it against them. Jesus simply offered his disciples peace, twice, signifying that he forgave them, and then breathed the essence of himself in the form of the Holy Spirit into them, no questions asked, no strings attached.

You know what’s even more amazing about this story? Jesus does the same for each one of us.

We all make mistakes. We all sin. We all separate ourselves from God through our thoughts, actions and words. Jesus knows this about us, and He loves us anyway – fully, completely and unconditionally.

We don’t have to jump through any hoops, prove ourselves to God, perform a certain number of good deeds, follow a certain set of laws or rules – we get the gift. Period. In spite of our past and even our present flaws, we get the gift of the Holy Spirit, no questions asked, no strings attached. Knowing full-well we will flounder and flail and fall, Jesus trusts us anyway. He trusts us with this most exquisite gift: himself.

Dear God, I am humbled by your generosity and your infinite grace. You know my flaws. You know my sins. Yet you lavish the ultimate gift on me, day after day after day. Thank you for trusting me with the most precious gift of all, the gift of the Holy Spirit in me, a gift I don’t deserve but still receive. Amen.

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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Different Doesn’t Mean Wrong

February 24, 2014 By Michelle

A black and white photograph of my maternal grandparents hangs on the wall in my parents’ living room. In the picture my grandfather stands handsome in pin-stripes, a white corsage pinned to his lapel. In front of him, their shoulders barely touching, is my grandmother. Her floral hat is angled just so, her porcelain skin framed by a spray of ribbons and gladiola across the shoulder of her suit.

It’s their wedding portrait, but there’s no tuxedo, no white dress, no lace-trimmed veil. On the day they married, my maternal grandparents didn’t walk down a church aisle or stand before a congregation of friends and loved ones. Instead, they were married in the rectory adjacent to the church. My grandfather, born Baptist, was not permitted to marry my grandmother, a Roman Catholic, inside the church.

I used to sit in the blue chair in my parents’ living and stare at that wedding portrait of my grandparents. Truthfully, it made me sad. I mourned the fact that my grandmother hadn’t been allowed the kind of wedding most girls dream about. I mourned that my grandfather, one of the most faithful men I ever knew, had been barred from marrying the girl he loved in a proper church wedding.

For a long time I railed against what I perceived as the Catholic Church’s intolerance of other denominations. When, after many years of unbelief, I returned to faith and religion as a Protestant, I naively assumed my new religion was free of division and divisiveness. Turns out, I was so blinded by my new love for God; I couldn’t see that some Protestants drew their own lines, with Catholics, and others, on the other side. I was disappointed. It was a different “enemy,” but the same old dividing lines.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” Jesus told the crowd gathered in the Temple on the last day of the Feast of the Tabernacles. “Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says.” (John 7:37-39)

Like Brad observed last week, Jesus chooses the most basic, elemental symbols to make his case: hunger and thirst; bread and water. Water comprises 70 percent of the Earth and about 57 percent of the human body. It is the most basic, but also the most fundamental component to our survival. We all thirst, every last one of us. Jesus chooses the symbol of water for this very reason – because he extends the invitation to everyone.

I love how Jesus always cuts straight to the chase. It’s simple, isn’t it? If you thirst, you are welcome. If you thirst, you’re in.

Yet it’s easy to forget this, isn’t it? It’s easy to forget that Jesus wasn’t about doctrine and creeds, rules and regulations. He simply opened the door and offered the invitation. To everyone.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t advocate that we all adopt a milk-toast, one-size-fits-all religion. I value and appreciate the differences unique to our denominations. I love how we all have a slightly different take on the body and the blood, the bread and wine, the sacraments and the rituals and the prayers and the creeds.

Maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m simplistic, but I believe we can celebrate these differences without deeming one or the other wrong. I believe we can find a way to embrace and appreciate doctrine without allowing it to trump Jesus.

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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: The Bread of Life

February 17, 2014 By Michelle

In a fit of panicked work overload, I asked Brad to write this week’s #HearItUseIt post, and he graciously agreed (with a little begging on my part!). Thanks, Bradster!

When I was about sixteen years old, a friend and I attended an event at a local non-denominational church. The event may have been a concert or a talk by a well-known athlete. I don’t recall. What I do remember is that it was all a bit of a set up.

At some point, counselors came through the rows asking about the state of our souls. My designated evangelist chatted a bit before staring seriously at me and asking “Are you a Christian?” That kind of personal question was strange to me, but I knew this was one I could get right.

“Yeah, I’m a Lutheran,” I responded.

He looked at me and said, with just a touch of sadness in his voice, “I used to be a Lutheran before I became a Christian.”

He then turned to my friend and asked the same question, to which my friend responded, “I’m a Catholic.” The counselor had no response, suggesting that my popish friend might require intervention beyond mere evangelism.

It’s a real temptation to feel like we have all the answers, to think that the ones in some other group are a bit naive or downright wrong. After all, when Jesus describes himself as the bread of life, he uses some exclusive sounding language. In verse 44 he says that “no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them to me” (NLT). This seems to suggest that God selects some to be brought to Jesus, while others are, by implication, rejected before they get a shot.

Fortunately, the central metaphor of the story is bread — “Anyone who eats this bread will not die . . . ” (v. 58, NLT) If God offers Jesus as the bread of life, he brings people to that bread through hunger. It’s hard to imagine a more universal image since we are all programmed to get hungry and thirsty, just as we are all programmed to seek meaning in our lives.

Jesus did not proclaim, “I am the obscure password of life. If you can produce the secret knock, the door shall be opened to you.” Instead, he offers himself as the most basic fulfillment of the most basic need.

Questions for Reflection:
Have you ever felt spiritually excluded? How can we be welcoming of people who hold different beliefs while still remaining true to our own?

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Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When You’re Looking for a Sign

February 10, 2014 By Michelle

The day my sister-in-law’s father died, she pulled into the driveway of her parents’ home wrung dry with grief and witnessed a full rainbow arched right over the roof of the house. It was, she told me later, a sign from God, a sign of hope, peace and comfort in the midst of sadness and dispair.

Just a few weeks later, as my mother-in-law lay dying in a hospital bed in her family room, I looked for a rainbow, too. I looked every day, scanning the cloudless Nebraska horizon for signs of rain. I wanted that rainbow so badly. I wanted a sign from God that he was near, that he hadn’t abandoned us in our grief.

One late afternoon I watched as clouds gathered and the rain came pouring down onto the hot concrete. It was a sun shower; the conditions were ripe for a rainbow. I leapt up from my office desk, ran down four flights of stairs and out the back door and stood in the parking lot in the rain. I walked around the whole perimeter of the building, scanning the sky from every angle.

There was no rainbow that day or any other. And quite frankly, I was mad about that. Would it be so hard? I remember griping to God. Would it be so much skin off your nose to give me a little sign, a little peace, a little reassurance here, please?

I remembered those hard weeks and the days I searched for a rainbow when I read the lesson for this week. At first Jesus’ response to the Roman official who approaches him with the request to heal his child seems abrupt, even harsh.

“Will you never believe in me unless you see miraculous signs and wonders?” Jesus asks the Roman official. The man’s son is dying, and Jesus seems to be giving him a hard time.

The Roman official persists, asking Jesus a second time to heal his dying son, and Jesus responds by telling the man that his son will live.

The difference between the Roman official and me is that the Roman official takes Jesus at his word. He believes what Jesus says is true, without proof and without any concrete assurance. Jesus doesn’t accompany the man home to heal his child in person. He simply gives the man his word, and the man believes him. I, on the other hand, wanted the sign, the proof that God was present in the midst of my pain.

I don’t have anything against signs from God. I believe in them, and I believe that sometimes God does send us special messages this way. But the more important lesson here, I think, is the understanding that we don’t need a special sign from God, because we always have his promise in his word. This is what the Roman official knew, and what I so often forget.

“I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” Jesus tells us. I don’t need a rainbow to know God is with me when I walk through the valley of fear and grief. I don’t need a sign or proof that he cares. He’s already told me; it’s right there in the Bible, in black and white. That promise is all the proof and assurance I will ever need.

Questions for Reflection:
Do you ever look for signs from God? Do you ever wish He would offer you proof, once and for all, that He is with you?

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Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

Gospel of John

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