Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-12-19

That phrase, “My elder brother Jesus,” was used uncountable times by the evangelist R W Schambach, whose ministry played a big part in my spiritual revelations and growth. Our relationship with the Savior is multi-faceted, but this is a component that is real, and important, and not sufficiently appreciated by believers. Or acted upon.

The three members of the Godhead have multiple personalities, if I might use a contemporary clinical term in the most respectful way. To people who are skeptical about the existence and nature of God – “What about One True God?” and “Why not thousands of gods like the Eastern religions?” – usually are asked to be bratty, not truth-seeking. There is something to be savored, however, in what I called above the multiple personalities of the Deity.

The essence of the “Old Testament God” (stereotyped as stern and vengeful) did not change when He became incarnate as the Christ: new aspects, new expressions of love and forgiveness (often exemplified in the Gospel of John), were revealed. But God has always spoken, and inspired, His people in myriad ways. When Jesus ascended to the Throne, He said to His followers that it was good that He leave: “In fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment” (John 16:7,8). The Holy Spirit was present, and active from the beginning of the world, but specifically has been the source of wisdom, discernment, and power in Jesus’s place.

So the One True God has revealed Himself in three manifestations; and acts in uncountable ways, as we noted. More than an everlasting help in time of trouble, He is indeed the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end – literally the Great I Am. “I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began” (Proverbs 8:23).

When we consider the lineage and patrimony of Jesus, we are, or should be, in awe. He was the agent by whom all things were made… and was made flesh to be the agent of our salvation. He performed miracles; stilled the storms; healed the diseased; read peoples’ minds; brought the dead back to life; walked through walls and walked on water.

The simple acknowledgment of Who He is and confessing your belief, He told us, is sufficient to attain eternal life. What a mighty God we serve.

Yet do we sometimes forget the aspect, the truth, of Brother Schambach’s characterization – that Jesus is our Brother, too? There is power in that realization. The shed blood of the cross, after all, is enough to have God overlook and forgive our sins – just as the Passover lamb’s sacrifice was sealed on the lintels of believers’ doors. That is, when we accept Jesus, when we invite Him to live in our hearts, God no longer sees us, but sees His Son. We are “covered in the Blood.”

That does make us kinfolk of the Savior. Children, finally, and fully, of God. Brothers and sisters of Jesus.

I feel the persuasion to carry this beyond clichés. Many of us grew up with Sunday-school bulletins with paintings of Jesus and the little children, sort of a Holy Babysitter. Many of the older movies portrayed Jesus as a moon-faced mystic, serene and floating through crowds. We know that He was angry with the money-changers, and that He wept over the apostasy of Jerusalem; but those are rare glimpses.

As fully God and fully man, however, Jesus did everything we do. He ate and drank, more than when He consecrated meals. The water-into-wine? Surely He drank, as all the guests did. Feeding the 5000? He too would have eaten the loaves and fishes Himself also. There is no record in Scripture, but He would have defecated and urinated as other men and women did. I do not mean to blaspheme – I am not – but we need to remember that Jesus had many mortal aspects.

That is how He could identify with all of us, in all our ways.

For all the portrayals of Jesus preaching and performing miracles; for all the paintings of Him with a halo and an aura; for all the movies where we see Jesus persecuted and in agony on the cross… it would do us good to remember that He is our Brother.

I reckon that as many times Jesus preached and healed, He more often laughed, put His arm around friends and strangers, and was a brother in the best sense. That’s what brothers do.

And that’s what our elder brother Jesus still does.

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Click: What a Friend We Have in Jesus

7-30-12

Does God have a sense of humor? Speaking personally, I get grouchy whenever I hear the lame responses like, “Just look in the mirror!” or “Check out the platypus!” These lines are facile and obvious – but they are also spiritually offensive. God created you; He created the mirror; and He even created the platypus, according to His will. Humor is a matter more serious than glib wisecracks.

Whether God has a sense of humor is to some people an open question, but ultimately a silly question. Existentially, God has a sense of humor since senses of humor exist in the world. How it is manifested is a bit problematic – something to add to your long list of “questions to ask the Lord on your first day in heaven.”

In fact there are few biblical instances of God laughing. When He does, it’s usually in derision: laughing contemptuously at the wicked or the condemned. Returning to the existential, it is not intellectual presumption to assume that if Jesus wept (see the shortest verse in Scripture) He surely must have laughed too.

Biblical examples of laughter are few and far between, although we don’t need a description of God actually being mirthful (the Chortling Bush? ) to know that humor has a place in His plan. Consider:

Jesus saying, “Let the dead bury the dead” – a sarcastic challenge to one’s perception.

Similarly, Jesus’s almost visual depiction of the contrast between a speck in one person’s eye and a log in another’s – exaggeration to make His point.

Jesus, again: In the middle of a scathing tirade, He resorted to a ridiculous allusion to paint a contrast, when He compared people’s hypocrisy to someone who strains a gnat out of a cup, but is willing to swallow a camel.

The Savior’s nicknames for His disciples – Peter the Rock, a pun; “Sons of Thunder” – reveal a playful use of humor.

The writer J C Lamont has speculated on the humor in the biblical account of God appearing in some human form and wrestling with Jacob… and resorting to sneakiness to win! He bested Jacob in the area of his putative strength, which is not only a just result, but a humorous ending to that significant chapter in Jacob’s life.

Cartoonist and educator Mark Dittmar sees a graphic use of “black humor” in Paul’s criticism of Judaizers in Galatians – in effect, “Why stop at circumcision? Let them castrate themselves!”

Mark’s wife Lynn can’t resist seeing humor in God speaking through Balaam’s ass – choosing a most ridiculous vessel when something less startling would have sufficed.

We cannot ignore examples of laughter in the Bible – Abraham’s barren wife laughing when she received the news that she would conceive… and her son’s very name, Isaac, meaning “laughter” in Hebrew.

As I recalled nicknames of the Disciples, my mind raced to some prominent names in the church. Is there humor here? –

The first Chief Rabbi of the modern State of Israel, a dignified Torah scholar, nevertheless was named Rabbi Kook;

The most respected Archbishop of Manila, who, after his elevation by Pope Paul VI, and (as is customary) using his last name in his new title, was Cardinal Sin;

Is there any humor in the fact that one of the most corrupt and licentious of popes – fathering two illegitimate children – was Pope Innocent VIII?

In American Evangelicalism, one the cheeriest uplifters and bearers of glad tidings in his crusades was nevertheless named Moody;

At a time when the public was skeptical of televangelists congenitally having boasted and swaggered, there was Jimmy Swaggart;

At a time when the public is skeptical of television ministries’ obsession with money, a prominent TV preacher is named Creflo Dollar;

At a time when the public is skeptical of ministries’ ethical standards – whether donors are being swindled – there is the popular (but very ethical) Chuck Swindoll;

At a time when the public is skeptical of television preachers making questionable claims and popping off on every subject, there was Pastor Peter Popoff.

As it is written, you can’t make this stuff up.

Many are the attributes of God and the names of the Christ in the Bible, and on posters sold in Christian bookstores: Alpha and Omega; The Arm of the Lord; The Author and Finisher of Our Faith; The Faithful Witness; The Good Shepherd; The King of Kings; The Lamb of God; Lord of Lords; Messiah; Prince of Peace; Bright and Morning Star; Balm of Gilead; Our Passover; Rock; Rose of Sharon; Wonderful Counselor; Son of God; Savior. And so on. But one of the most essential often is overlooked – “essential” because it reflects the Essence of Christ.

Friend.

We have become conditioned by generations of paintings and movies and Sunday-school lesson-sheets that portray Jesus as everything from grim to moon-faced mystical to well-coiffed and white-bread. But if Jesus could weep, He surely smiled. And if He loved His friends, and strangers, enough to figuratively climb up on the cross to suffer and die… certainly He cared enough to be a friend, in the best senses we can think of.

We should know the Jesus who smiled, who laughed, who connected with people by a soft word and perhaps a joke, who put His arm around someone in good humor. He was more than familiar with the first verse of Proverbs, chapter 15: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” He was a Man of Sorrows, the Bible tells us, and therefore humor must have been a special language to those who identified with Him in sorrow.

Just as using “Abba” (in effect, “Daddy”) as another name for God that allows a greater intimacy, let us all see Jesus more often as Lord and Savior… and Pal. He IS a friend like no other.

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If Jesus is our Holy Friend, then the comforting old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” can occasionally be a little more informal, a little more accessible to us! Here is a Dixieland-Rock-Funk (OK, you come up with a better category) version by the great Bart Millard, moonlighting from MercyMe.

Click: What a Friend We Have in Jesus