Satan

Get behind me, Satan! For you are concerned with things that are of humans and not of God.
Mark

Why in the world does Jesus call Peter "Satan"? Peter was a bumbler but he was not a bad guy. He made some bad mistakes, but he also made some great comebacks. He was one of Jesus' closest disciples. He gave up his entire livelihood to follow Jesus. He was a good man.

Peter had just finished identifying Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, and then this happened. At one moment Jesus called Peter the Rock of the Church, at the next moment, he was calling Peter Satan. Both can't be true...

This conversation happened at the height of Jesus' ministry. The crowds were all over him. Everyone wanted to be touched, healed. Everyone wanted to hear Jesus' words. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Peter says what everyone must have been hoping, that Jesus would save the Jewish people.

Jesus recognized that he was the Messiah, but then he began to describe the real plan that God had in store for him. He would suffer. He would die and then rise again. And Peter could not accept this. Peter scolded Jesus...

No, Lord, that is not the way that things are supposed to go. That's not what everyone wants and needs. You are supposed to rescue us from oppression and rule as king, not die. That just can't be right.

And that's when Jesus caled him Satan. Because the words that Peter spoke, the thoughts that he was articulating, were the thoughts of the Adversary.

The Satan first appears in the book of Job. The title literally means The Adversary. The One who opposes God.

Whenever we let our actions be determined by what others want and not what God wants, we follow the impulses of the Adversary.

Satan is not a red man with horns. He is the personnification of everything that slides into our minds to confuse us, to redirect our intentions away from the will of God. That is why the image of the snake is so powerful. The impulses of the adversary sneak into our lives and lure us away from God's purposes.

And one fundamental way that Satan distracts is to make us care more about pleasing people than about pleasing God.

In the 1960s, Dr. Stanley Millgram, a professor at Yale University, ran an experiment. There were three players: a doctor in a white coat, a volunteer taken randomly from off the street and a student named Carl. The doctor explained to the volunteer that he was to ask questions of the student. When the student got an answer wrong, the volunteer was to adminsiter a small electric shock. The voltage of the shocks was to increase as the student got more answers wrong. The purpose of the experiment was to see how the human brain might be capable of greater intellectual prowess when faced with discomfort.

Before the experiment began, the student, Carl, mentioned to the volunteer that he had a heart condition. The doctor gave the volunteer a small shock, so that he would feel what the student would be experiencing. It hurt.

The experiment began.

Carl got question number 3 wrong. The volunteer administered the electric shock and Carl began to sweat.

The experiment continued and with each successive incorrect answer, the volunteer administered another electric shock, turning up the dial each time so that the voltage increased.

Carl began to beg for them to stop. The volunteer looked to the doctor for guidance, but he simply nodded and smiled.

This continued. Carl pounding on the chair, shaking excessively, and begging for them to stop. But the volunteer, upon the insistence of the doctor, continued. In the end, the volunteer administered 400 volts of electricity. Carl was almost incoherent.

When the experiment was over, its true nature was revealed. Carl was an actor. The real purpose of the experiment was to see just how much pain one human being was willing to inflict on another just become someone told him so.

How often do you make decisions based on what others think or will say? Whenever that happens, you are in danger of following the Adversary.

How many people, after the fall of Nazi Germany, told the world that they felt Hitler was wrong, but they just kept thinking that everyone else seemed excited. So they silenced their reservations and followed him.

Jesus identified the mind of Satan immediately, forcefully. He recognized temptation. We are much slower to identify temptation.

How often do you let the opinions of others determine your actions, determine who you are? Pay attention to your own mind, so that one day you too will be able to say no to temptation.

Those Wise Guys

My dad was in a Christmas production years ago at a local public school. He played one of the three kings. He got to wear a big crown and march down the aisle singing. All the kids loved it.

About a month later, my dad was walking on the sidewalk near the school and a little boy ran up to him. Grabbing hold of the chain-link fence, the boy yelled, “Hey! I know you! You was one of those WISE GUYS!”

Wise Guys. I like that. The Wise Guys. They were probably not kings. What kind of a king could just up and leave his kingdom? The Bible does not say that they are kings, but we seem to have assumed that they were royalty because they give such profoundly wealthy gifts. Gold. Frankincense. Myrrh. Gifts FOR a king. Treasures for the Son of God.

The Bible does not say much about these men except that they were wise and that they came from the East. They were wise because they sought out the Christ child and they found him. They were wise because they recognized Jesus before anybody else did. It took most of the disciples until after the resurrection to begin to get it! Peter understood who Jesus was after walking around with him for about a year and a half. Most people never understood who Jesus really was. But the Wise Guys got it. They really got it. They must have been truly awake, watching and waiting. They seemed to know what they were looking for.

When JD and I go on road trips, we occasionally get lost. I will suggest that we ask for directions, but JD will usually refuse until I insist. I will needle him until he finally pulls into a gas station with a sigh, as if to ask for directions is to give up. Why is it that most men don’t like to ask for directions?

My folks got a GPS system for Christmas. They call it Gertrude. She speaks in a British accent and calls the highway the moterway. My folks will never be lost again, but I find her presence kind of confining. There is no wandering with Gertrude on your back. There is no getting lost, no asking for help, no searching for the destination. She maps it all out for you.

Most of us like to map out our lives. We want to know exactly where we will be in five years, ten years. We plan our careers and plan for retirement, we map out our children’s education and how we are going to pay for it. We make New Year's resolutions and five year plans. And there is no room for wandering. There is no room for God to guide us because we have already made up our minds. When we come to a fork in the road, we are told which way to go. Our minds are already made up.

I think that those Wise Guys wandered. That was part of their wisdom. They did not have everything planned out. They were willing to take off on the spur of the moment, travel in the dark to follow the light of a distant star. We know that they must have felt lost, for they go to King Herod to ask for directions!

I’m not saying that New Year’s resolutions are bad, but don’t plan your life so tightly that there is no room for God. You can lead a smooth life on a strict plan, but if you want to lead a life of meaning, you must be willing to wander around in the dark for awhile. Following God is not always a straight shot. Even Jesus did not always know what was going to happen next. On the cross, he wondered if God had abandoned him. But he was willing to follow God’s surprising curves rather than map out his own life. From a worldly perspective, Jesus’ life was a complete failure. Only God could know that his resurrection would change the world. Only God could take an unknown Jesus peasant and alter human consciousness with that one life freely given.

On the way home from the holidays, I sat next to a pilot on the airplane. He loves his job. He says that when he gets busy and distracted my the details of daily life, he goes up in an airplane. He sees the most beautiful sunsets. He looks down from the heavens and marvels at how small we humans are. And everything seems to fall into perspective.

Maybe we should make a different kind of New Year’s resolution in 2009. Maybe we should aim to be Wise, like those Wise Guys. To watch, to wait, and to wander in search of the Christ.

Shaving Down to Us

Merry Christmas!



I don't know about you, but I have felt different this Christmas season. Maybe its the state of the economy, the stress that everyone seems to be under. Or maybe I feel differently because of what happened to our tree this year.



We bought a large tree, much taller than our normal tree. We thought that we could place it by our staircase. All three of my boys liked the idea of a big tree, even my husband JD was OK with it. It took us hours to decorate.



I was sitting in the kitchen resting for a moment on Christmas Eve morning, when I saw it happen. The tree just slowly began to fall. I felt like I was watching in slow motion as the thing crashed to the ground, 0rnaments smashing and scattering, water everywhere.



I hollered at the boys to come help. Max, my littlest one, saw the mess and said, "Mom! Is Christmas over now?"



His comment made me so mad that I picked up the whole tree and stood it upright again. I don't know how I did that. I remember yelling as I lifted it. Bionic Momma- that's what I became in that moment. I couldn't stand to see the look on Max's face as he asked that question. It was scary to me that my son thought Christmas was about the tree and the trappings.



But we all tend to link Christmas with stuff. Christmas means shopping. Christmas means new stuff wrapped in packages. Christmas is supposed to be this perfect day, idyllic in fact- that's what the commercials tell us. In fact, we pile our expectations of Christmas so high that they are bound to come down crashing.

A lady I know went to the Post Office a month ago to order Christmas stamps. They asked her what kind of stamp she'd like and she said, "I'd like stamps of the Madonna, please." The young woman behind the counter replied, "Ma'am, we don't carry stamps of people that haven't died yet and Madonna is still performing."

What is happening to us? Have we completely forgotten what Christmas is about?

Christmas is about something that hits you in the gut, something so incredible that it can only be caught in glimpses.

I caught a glimpse of Christmas years ago when I went to visit the home of a man who had been diagnosed with cancer. He was about to undergo radical chemotherapy. He was a tall, handsome man with a head of majestic white hair. When I came, he was sitting in his bedroom with his thirty-year-old son.

"Kate," he said. "I can't stand to watch my hair fall out, so I'm just going to shave it. Will you come with me?"

I followed him into the bathroom. He sat down at the vanity and began to shear off his beautiful white hair. His son stood in the doorway, tears streaming down his face. Then his son said, "Wait! Dad, just wait a minute!"

His son went somewhere, I guess to his suitcase and came back with another razer in his hand. He stood directly behind his father in front of the mirror and began to shave his own head.

"You shave, I shave." He said.

When his father protested, the young man said, "Look, Dad. I can't make this better for you. I can't take away your pain. But I can be there with you, every step of the way. So, you shave-I shave."

That's what Christmas is about. God saw us suffering in a world that is broken of our own disobedience. God could not fix the world for us, for we would learn nothing and we would not be free. So God came, just to be with us.

God shaved down to the form of a tiny baby, born in one of the most violent parts of the world, born to a couple who had no place to sleep, born in the dirt of a cave where they kept the animals.

Have you ever noticed that when someone you love is suffering, giving advice doesn't work? Trying to fix others problems usually backfires. But you can be there. You can just be there with them, and somehow, miraculously, that seems to help.

Remember what Christmas is really about. It is about God saying to us.

"I am here."

And once Jesus came, He never really left. He's always been with us, in one form or another. Didn't Jesus himself say it at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Once you realize that Jesus is here, it hits you right in the gut. And you realize that you are never, ever alone.

The Lost Season

My father phoned last week. He is a member of an Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania. The priest asked him to teach a class on the signs and symbols of Advent. He completed the power-point presentation for his class, and then called to run it by me.

“I have this beautiful presentation of all the elements of the nativity: the crèche, the shepherds, the wise men…How does it sound?”

“Terrible, Dad!”

“What, why??”

“Dad, did they ask you to teach on the signs and symbols of ADVENT or the signs and symbols of CHRISTMAS?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then he asked, “Is there a difference?”

Advent is a lost season! Even my Dad, a faithful, active church member, doesn’t know about Advent. Why have we lost this season?

Advent is all about waiting and we Americans don’t like to wait. We march right out of Thanksgiving and parade right on into the Christmas celebration. The stores are stocked with Christmas gifts and Christmas carols blare just one day after Thanksgiving. By the time the day of Christ’s birth arrives, we are all sick of it.

Advent is a season in which we wait and watch for Christ, not just to remember the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago, but more importantly, to wait for the coming of Christ. You see, according to Scripture, this world will not last forever. And we must be ready when the end comes.

C.S. Lewis, in The Last Battle, has the end of the world coincide with the deaths of his characters. In other words, who can tell what the difference is between your death and the end of the world as you know it? Will there be a difference for you? Is there a difference for God? In God’s time, is there really a difference?

Whenever it happens, however it happens, we all need to be ready. When Christ comes for us, we need to look up, and welcome him. We need to say, “Oh! It’s You! I’ve been waiting for you!”

The purpose of this life is the purpose of Advent: to be ready to meet God. What could be more important than that? Shopping??

The loss of Advent is the loss of our perspective. We have forgotten who we are. We are children of God, waiting to come home.

In the Dark

Last night, I took the dog for a walk at 7:30 p.m. The sky was already dark, the stars bright. It was a beautiful, crisp night. It seems that the stars shine more brightly when the sky is an inky black. They stand out in contrast to the darkness.

I hate it when people don't come to church because they are struggling with something. I will not see someone for weeks, and when they return, I'll ask them if everything is OK. When they tell me that they didn't come to church because they felt depressed or sad, doubting or questioning, I get so frustrated! There is no better time to come to church than when you are down and out! How in the world have we come to believe that church is only for happy people or certain people? We are a community that is searching for Christ in the darkness and everyone is invited to search with us.

There is a parable that Jesus tells us about these bridesmaids that go out into the darkness to meet the bridegroom. In Jesus' day, it was customary for the women and girls who loved the bride to take their lanterns and go out at night, to search for the bridegroom in the darkness. When they found him, they would bring him back to the home of the bride, where there would be a great feast.

I can just picture these women, stepping out into the dark night, lanterns in their hands, searching in the darkness for the symbol of love itself, searching for the one who would enable them to celebrate life. But they could not start the celebration before stepping out into the darkness to look for him.

It strikes me that one of the best places to find Jesus is in the midst of the darkness, at the very center of our own pain and suffering. That is what the cross is about. That is why the Incarnation of God comes to us at the darkest part of the year, when the light is limited and our days are short. Christ comes in the darkness.

There is an amazing book that has been published recently. It is selling off bookshelves all across the country. It is called THE SHACK. The story is about McKenzie, a dad who loves his kids. He takes his three youngest on a camping trip. They have a great time, canoeing, pitching their tents, roasting marshmellows and lying on the ground watching the stars shining in the dark sky.

On the day that they are to return home, McKenzie's two older kids decided to go out in kayacks on the river. Mack and his little daughter, Missy, stay on shore. He watches the action on the water and she colors at a picnic table.

Mack's son capsizes. Mack watches intently. He does not see his son appear above the water, so he dives in and rescues his boy, who has somehow gotten his pants leg caught on something. When Mack finally gets his son above water, the boy is unconscious. Mack carries him to shore and does mouth-to-mouth until his boy coughs up water and begins to breathe. By this time Mack is crying with relief.

And then he looks up to find that his little daughter is missing. Frantically, he and his two other kids search the campsite. They alert the authorities. Someone reports seeing a man push a little girl into a truck.

The police search for days. They find Missy's body in an old, abandoned shack.

Mack enters what he comes to call The Great Sadness. He can no longer see color. He doesn't know what to think about God. He is lost. For three years, he lives in The Great Sadness.

And then he gets a letter in the mail. Come and meet me at the Shack, love God it says. Mack thinks that it may be the work of the murderer or some other quack, but he cannot stay away. He puts a shotgun in his car and goes to the shack.

When he walks in, he sees the blood stain on the carpet where his little girl died. He screams and screams, crying out his pain...

And God comes to McKenzie that day in the Shack. I will not spoil the book for you. I find all fictional depictions of God to be inadequate, but this is one of the least inadequate descriptions I have found. It is well worth reading.

My point is that Mack would not have encountered God if he had not been willing to go to the place of his greatest darkness, the place of his living nightmare. He found God in the darkness, and God fed him there.

If you are in the dark, please know that God wants you to come to church. Christians are not eternally happy, perfect people! We are full of doubts and despair just like everybody else. BUT WE LOOK FOR CHRIST IN THE DARKNESS. We seek Him. We long for Him.

I am looking for the coming of Christ. That is what we say as the days darken and Advent approaches. I am looking for the coming of Christ.