Do You Have The Passion, Perspective and Persistence of a Saint?
Good Morning Friends,
Yesterday I heard Lt. General Susan Helms speak. She shares the record for the longest space walk and had multiple Shuttle missions and spent six months on the International Space Station. I say all that to set the stage for you to imagine looking down from space at our blue and white globe of the earth with its fragile atmosphere and to realize it is impossible to see the economic boundaries of all the nations from space. Somehow that picture comforts me in the hope the Kingdoms of this world would become the Kingdom of God. Sure we have democratic capitalism and that is great but what is greater still is something that is not worldly but a vision of something more than we can fully comprehend as we walk on this amazing planet in this amazing body God has given us. The challenge of this being achieved is the sin of conformity to worldly culture even in the name of religion…especially in the name of religion. It is the sin of not being passionate about God’s better idea…of not having faith. Now surely our contemporary socio-economic condition has molded the consciousness of people. But the prophetic message of Jesus is a calling to not conform to the materialistic values of our secular society, but to live out the vision of meaningful service to others prescribed by Christ. Do You Have The Passion, Perspective and Persistence of a Saint?
Scripture: I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
John 17:15-17 (NRSV)
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.
Matthew 20:1-14 (NRSV)
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. ‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
John 17:1-11 (NRSV)
Message: Today’s message is an invitation to come and work for the owner of the vineyard…and to be part of Jesus’ prayer for our unity in the love of God. And here it becomes crystal clear that the work of love is never done… especially during the time of the harvest. There is a lot of responsibility to keep a vineyard running….to keep a church running or to keep a country like America running. But there is something even better in the future. In today’s text we learn about another structure that is not a country or a corporation but a kingdom. In this parable, Jesus tells us what the kingdom of heaven is like. He compares it to a landowner…to men working….to getting paid. Now in other scripture Jesus combines faith and politics, the law and love, to point the way to salvation and eternal life in the agape of the Kingdom of God. What is interesting is that the nexus of these multiple functions of our faith journey come together beyond the church walls, in the larger community, when we work in the stream of holy history for the kingdom of God… when God’s will is in our lives, shining through our lives, and spilling over into the lives of others so as to produce good fruits. And yes it is sad for me realizing that almost always these fruits are not off the vine of the local church. Indeed scripture says we are to not be of this world but sent into it and that is why in this day and age it takes a saint to be part of the church and it takes the church to help build up future saints. The tension in this situation is real and perhaps unavoidable. Yes saints are first and foremost seekers of the Kingdom of God. And friends, if we seek first the Kingdom of God and His right path all the fear and anxiety of being in this world will fade away. We are called to get our priorities straight. So, give your entire attention to what God is doing right now and let Him help you deal with whatever hard things that confronts you when the time comes. So don’t worry. God commands you not to worry. But also be mindful that you can obey this commandment only if you are in the Kingdom of God and His will…one of the workers in the field…one of the Saints. Friends, only in Him can we be a visible sign of the love between the Father and the Son. Only in Him we can be a unifying factor and influence for the Kingdom of God. Jesus prayed it should be so. We need to respond to Jesus’ invitation to enter the Kingdom of God. But before we do we really need to understand that success in the Kingdom of God is based on something very different than the world’s way of gaining success. It is based on an enduring relationship with the Divine… a process of commitment to a covenant and less on thinking…less on the number of hours we have worked on more on revelation experienced when we see with new eyes something we thought we knew. Here we learn a God given guideline for growing the Kingdom of God in our lives…We are to love one another. Here we learn that the work of being a Saint is to benefit others whether they deserve it or not.
Pray we rejoice when we are working. Pray we realize that hard work pays off. Pray we are never jealous of others success especially when we don’t think they have earned it. Pray we realize that the only reason any of us will enjoy the kingdom is because of the compassion and grace of a God who is slow to anger and is abounding in love. Pray with thanksgiving that He does not treat us as our sins deserve. Pray that we all embrace God’s saving grace allowing us to experience the Kingdom even as it changes our lives. Pray that God alone gets the glory. Pray that when we wonder why Christians suffer, we ask with new eyes and discover that perhaps Christians suffer because they are the only ones who can take it. Pray that we accept the invitation to work for His Kingdom purposes now. Pray that we understand that our debts are forgiven in measure to the debts we have forgiven. Pray we do not fear. Pray we believe that grace is greater than our sins. Pray we have the passion, perspective and persistence to receive it. Pray God gives us a job to do and we work until our days are done. Pray we do not go away disappointed from an encounter with Jesus because the church and the world has changed from what we thought it would be.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 