Cause to Pause

Ever notice that it seems Jesus never answered anyone’s questions? Half the time it seems as if He completely ignores what people are saying. Take John chapter 3 for instance. Nicodemus comes and says “we know you are from God because no one can do the things you do unless God is with them.” Ok. Fair enough. Proper response would be along the lines of “Why, yes I am from God. Thank you for noticing.” Or “No, you are wrong.” Or “What does God have to do with what I am doing?” or SOMETHING along those like that. But that isn’t what Jesus says. Immediately He goes into “unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God”.
That sort of thing has got to make people twitch. I mean, it’s more than just an off the wall, Christopher Walken, out of left field kind of comment. How do you get from “I know you are from God” to “you must be born again” without some sort of transition?
Jesus didn’t worry about transitions. He also didn’t care much for formalities and useless discussions about theory. Jesus got right to the heart of people. The fact that Nicodemus took the bait tells us that what Jesus said was what was REALLY on Nicodemus’ mind. And isn’t that always the way it is? Doesn’t Jesus really get to the heart of what we need and not necessarily what we think we is important?

One of the local churches used to have a Saturday night service. When my wife and I were driving yesterday, we saw a group of bikers and thought “They remind us of the ushers from Saturday night.” Sure enough…

This guy was the leader. I don’t think I ever heard him speak. He just stood at the front, pointed to people, then pointed to where there was open seats. It worked well.

Do you love Jesus? Then just show up.

I was talking to a youth pastor friend of mine, and as usual, the talk turned to how frustrated we get with empty rituals and liturgies. I am sure I just offended someone, but for us, the drone of responsive readings seems to move Jesus right out of the room. They just become words people read without any meaning or “fire” behind them. We talked about how worship should be interactive, alive. How the rituals have taken the place of true worship. That the mindset is “If we just say the right things in the right order, we can mark our duty to God off our ‘to-do’ list.”
He mentioned he was at a conference and the speaker used an Amazon kindle for his sermon notes. This pastor would write his sermon, email it to himself, and then just scroll through it from the pulpit. No pages to turn, etc. He was just completely fascinated by it. Then he said something that was very telling. That he was so fascinated by the fact that this preacher was obviously referencing notes and passages somehow, but there were no papers being turned, and how he had to find out how he did it. In fact, it was so fascinating that this youth pastor couldn’t remember a thing about the message. Yikes.
Which begs the question, “Can technology become for us, like empty ritual?” where we think if we have the right video elements, the right multi-media, the right sound and band, we can say we “did church the way it is supposed to be done” and never reach people for Jesus?
Everything is just a bunch of tools to get the message out. But what happens when tools become our “treasure“?