Flag Wavers

Only a little imagination is needed to picture the crowds welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday. We have seen enough parades and festivals to put faces into the crowd, branches waving in the air, and all the noise that would make some of the Pharisees demand Jesus tell his disciples to quiet down. (Luke 19:39-40) The heralded prophet from Galilee had come to the center of Jewish power. The country folks had their hero.

Mat 21:8-9 A large crowd of people spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds walking in front of Jesus and those walking behind began to shout, "Praise to David's Son! God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord! Praise be to God!"

Things changed in less than a week. The crowds that created so much noise would be gone. The joyful cheers from the crowd were replaced with cries for a death sentence, a Roman crucifixion. Instead of palm branches being raised, angry fists were shaken in the face of the man who had so recently taught and fed thousands.

We are left wondering what happened to all the flag wavers. They were so certain about whom they followed. They gave him royal and messianic names such as “”Son of David”, “prophet”, “he who comes in the name of the Lord”, “the King”, and “the King of Israel”. They waved palm branches before him and laid them on the road ahead of him. They laid their cloaks before the one they saw as their rightful king.

They were flag wavers. They were caught up in the emotion of the moment. They remembered all the good times, the miracles, the heart-touching words spoken in open fields and crowded rooms. They were cheering on their hero who would set all things right. They were on his side – as long as he did things their way.

Then came the week of verbal jousting with the temple rulers. There was the Temple cleansing. Jesus told stories of the choices that would have to be made, sacrifices that were coming to all who followed him. The cloaks lay torn by the trampling of the mob. The palm leaves turned brown and then into dust. As surely as the dust was blown away by the wind, the welcoming, flag waving crowd disappeared. Their dreams for their kind of messiah were once more disappointed.

We are in the midst of March Madness. College basketball teams are seeing their last chance to achieve national acclaim. Sixty-four teams began the tournament. Now only sixteen remain. Forty-eight teams have seen their flag wavers disappointed. Some may have been glad just to get as far as they did, but all would like to have won. When it is over, only one set of flag wavers will still be standing.

What will all the others think? Yes, some will be proud their team got invited to the tournament. Others will be proud their team won more than one game. Many will just be glad they had a chance to go see some of the best basketball teams in the nation play a game they love so much.

There will be many who will go home disappointed. They cheered their team all season hoping for the best. Their team looked so good. They had such a great record. Instead of looking so good here at the end, they did not meet expectations. They didn’t come through the way all their fans had anticipated. They lost when so many were hoping for victory, just like the crowds who had waved their palm branches on Palm Sunday.

Flag wavers can be loyal followers. They can also be fickle. Give me success and I’ll follow you anywhere. Disappoint my expectations and I’ll drive nails through your hands. Jesus wants those who walk with him into Jerusalem also to walk with him to Calvary. Our flags must bear the symbol of the cross. Victory has a different meaning in the Kingdom of God.

I Told You So!

Don’t you just hate it when you hear those words directed at you? It is bad enough to be wrong. It is worse when you are wrong and someone else is right. The worst situation is when you are wrong, someone else is right, and they remind you of it. At that moment you pray for patience and the strength to admit you are wrong and they are right without you doing something crude and brutal to them or wishing someone else would.

Being civilized should mean something in our conversation with others. We think before we speak or act. We consider how our words might be received by our listeners. We do all we can to make sure what we want to say is what is understood by our listeners. We know our tone of voice will convey as much if not more than our words. Even our body language will determine how our words are received.

The brief statement, “I told you so”, conveys different meanings and emotions to different people. The confession I offer here is simply I do not like the statement, and it has a tremendous impact upon how I look at the person making the statement both at the time and in later situations.

Is this a new statement? Not at all. I have very little disagreement with the Apostle Paul. He could, however, test my patience on the rare occasion. This involves how he treated some people and how his speech did not always convey the compassion and grace the gospel demanded.

On example may be found in Acts 15 where Paul refused to allow John Mark to travel with him on his second missionary journey due to a past failing. Emotions prevailed and a missionary partnership was dissolved. Only later was there a reconciliation. The other example of Paul’s abruptness is found in Acts 27 during the long and disastrous journey from Caesarea to Rome for Paul’s trial before the emperor.

Act 27:20-21 For many days we could not see the sun or the stars, and the wind kept on blowing very hard. We finally gave up all hope of being saved. After everyone had gone a long time without food, Paul stood before them and said, "You should have listened to me and not have sailed from Crete; then we would have avoided all this damage and loss.

Earlier in the voyage the captain and the crew had decided to make the voyage to Rome instead of staying in a less than adequate harbor for the winter. Paul had counseled staying in the safety of the harbor limited as it might be. Now with disaster seeming to await them, Paul stands up and says, “I told you so!” I would have thrown him overboard.

Reading the chapter you will discover the ship is lost, but everyone escapes to an island safely and are rescued, eventually able to continue their journey to Rome. Paul’s words, however, hang as a sour note in the middle of God’s rescue of the crew and passengers. Who wants to hear someone say, “I told you so” even while your ship faces almost certain destruction?

Being right is a wonderful feeling. Being right when everyone else seems to be wrong can lead you to feel more than a little self-righteous. James in his brief letter carrying his name emphasized we need to:

Jam 1:19 Remember this, my dear friends! Everyone must be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry.

Being quick to listen and slow to speak is what gives us the opportunity to think about what would be most appropriate to say before we say it. Being right is always best. Being right and silent may also be appropriate, at times even better.

Give warning when warning is needed. Allow the results to show you were right. If they are evident, then all will know and need not be told. If the results are not evident, don’t be so sure you were right.

Live What You Believe

A healthy church knows what it believes. It might have a printed doctrinal statement. It may have a vision statement supported by a set of core values. These could be included in new member materials. They may be rehearsed at annual church celebrations. The church may have parts of them included on their stationary and in their regular promotion pieces, weekly and monthly. The question is do the church members live them.

A person and organization of integrity live what they believe. We have proverbial sayings that reflect this idea. “What you see is what you get.” Perhaps you have heard something like “She is true to the heart,” or “He is true to the core.” All of these would indicate someone lives what they believe. Their life reflects their speech and their values.

Those who do not “practice what they preach” have been around as long as man himself. In the Old Testament, God has a complaint against those who practiced hypocrisy among his people.

Isa 29:13-14 The Lord said, "These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized. So I will startle them with one unexpected blow after another. Those who are wise will turn out to be fools, and all their cleverness will be useless."

The Lord was not happy with a people who patted themselves on the back for all their religious rituals and speeches while their lifestyles made a mockery of what they said about themselves and their piety. In the end the Lord would show the truth of their hearts.

People had not changed by the time of Jesus. The religious leaders of his day were recipients of his wrath as he called them to account for the discrepancy between their words and their actions.

Mat 23:1-3  Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples. "The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees are the authorized interpreters of Moses' Law. So you must obey and follow everything they tell you to do; do not, however, imitate their actions, because they don't practice what they preach.

Religious leaders and teachers carry the greater responsibility to be true to their spoken values. Integrity is of utmost importance. The responsibility is no less for those who say they are followers. “Practice what you preach.” Live out your values. Live what you believe.

In three and one half weeks, the sacred day on the Christian calendar will arrive, Resurrection Sunday – Easter. For hundreds of millions of believers around the world, the day represents the reason they are followers of Christ, Christians. They believe he died as a criminal when he had never committed a crime. They believe he was buried and on the third day after his burial he was raised alive from the tomb in a transformed body. They believe his victory over death confirms the promise that all who follow him in obedience will also be raised from the dead to live with him for eternity in a new and glorious existence.

Believing these things about Jesus should affect how we as his followers live. Resurrection Sunday represents God’s love shown in a supreme way for all those who love him. If God loves us so, then we should love others. If God was willing to forgive us because of that love, then we should be willing to forgive others. If God was willing to give us the hope of eternal life in glory with him, then we should be willing to offer that same hope to everyone we meet.

Php 1:27 Now, the important thing is that your way of life should be as the gospel of Christ requires.

That is living what we believe.

Grace Is Being Loved When You Lose

No one likes to lose. No one likes to feel they have disappointed someone else, especially someone who is special to them. When you lose and you know you did not give your best, that makes matters even worse.

I am a University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball fan. I won’t deny it and I won’t apologize for it. I have been a fan of the team for over fifty years. I have cheered for them when they won and I have cheered for them when they lost. I celebrated when they won and I was disappointed when they lost, but I never stopped being a fan.

That college team is special to me. Among people living in rural Kentucky, they are a very special team. We will stand by them in the good times and in the rough times. We love our Wildcats all the time even when they lose.

We call that grace. We learned it from God. Even when those Wildcats play worse than we know they can, even when they get beat by a weaker team, we still care for our Wildcats. That is how God looks at us. He looks at us with his heart filled with grace. He knows we have messed things up. He knows we could have done better. He knows we could have beaten the temptation, but now we are stuck with the loss.

Rom 3:23  everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence.

That’s right. We all have lost. We all were given a choice that would have made us winners, but we made the wrong choice and we lost. We missed out on the best win of all. We failed God and missed his saving presence. Now we must suffer the consequences.

Except that God intervened and gave us grace. That means he loves us even when we lose. Even when we fail and disappoint him, he still loves us and gives us grace. That grace takes away the loss and gives us a win instead. It isn’t because we earned it. No, we lost it on our own. He gives us the win because he loves us that much. He put the loss on his Son Jesus Christ.

Rom 6:23  For sin pays its wage---death; but God's free gift is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

Grace is being loved when you lose. We all have lost. None of us will ever have a perfect season or a perfect record or a scorecard without a big L for loser on it. We all have disappointed our Creator and committed the sins that deserve death. Grace intervened and said no. Jesus died instead.

We can get our winning season back in the eyes of God in very simple fashion. All we have to do is accept God’s plan for giving us a winning season. A winning season in God’s plan is to have a personal relationship with him through faith in his Son Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul wrote the Book of Romans to explain to his readers how they can have a winning life. It all revolves around Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus won the game for us when he died for us taking our failures, our losses upon himself. God looks at the scorecard now and he doesn’t see the losses in our column. Jesus took those all away. God sees our lives through the perfect score of his Son.

Faith in Jesus is our part of the game.

Rom 10:9  If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.

Even when my Kentucky Wildcats lose a basketball game, I will still be on their side cheering them on. Even when I lose, when I fail in life, God is still on my side cheering me on. His grace is love in action in my life.