PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Passion

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Jeff VanderLaan (no relation to Ray, for those of you familiar with my teachings) is the Vice President for Impact Campus Ministries and has become one of my closest friends. He has served with ICM for over 24 years and knows our organization and its DNA intimately. Jeff was discipled by ICM's founder, Dean, and knows these principles in ways that few of us do. I could think of nobody else to close out this year's blog posts then by having Jeff share his perspective on PASSION. 

“Will you pursue God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul?” 

It was the fall of 1994, and I was a senior at Michigan State University attending His House Christian Fellowship when Dean Trune asked me that one question. That question was the whole application and interview process to join the first Impact Campus Ministries campus ministry plant in Albany, NY. There was no written application, no reference checks, and no skills assessment. All Dean cared about was if I would have a passion for God.

For the next 15 years, while Dean was my boss, the question about my passion for God led every conversation and was included on every report I had to turn in to the organization. Often my answer would start with ministry success stories. Dean would politely listen, then re-ask about my personal relationship with Jesus.

Dean knew what I needed to learn. Ministry is hard. It would be easy to lose focus on God and get distracted by the ministry. It was not that Dean was anti-ministry. He just knew we cannot control “making an impact” or “fruitful ministries,” but we have absolute control over developing intimacy with God. He would say, “We must not allow ‘ministry for God’ to crowd ‘intimacy with God’ out of our lives.”

Dean knew that passion for God would naturally lead to ministry. Actually, it would lead to a ministry where you would willfully do more than is required to do. It would lead to a ministry driven by more than enthusiasm or excitement when successful. Your passion for God would lead to an ambition that is materialized into action through the good times and the bad.

Dean was right. We called the first year the year of tears. It was hard. Between Satan opposing the expansion of God’s kingdom to the University at Albany through campus ministry, and God’s appreciation of my choosing to serve him, I discovered the need for God to refine me to be a more usable vessel. It was never clear if the blow was from Satan trying to stop me or God trying to shape me, but I was sure it hurt. Yet passion for God gave us the strength to continue into year two and eventually through year 15.

Through the years, Impact’s value of passion for God has continued to teach me so many things.

• When I focus on ministry, people will be drawn to ministry. Focus I on God, people will be drawn to God.
• When I focus on ministry, I often take the credit. When I focus on God, I often give him the credit.
• When I focus on ministry, my weaknesses limit the ministry. When I focus on God, his strength empowers the ministry.
• When I focus on ministry, I often choose the direction taken. When focusing on God, he directs the ministry.

There was so much learned from such a simple concept.

Impact Campus Ministries values passion for God. May this value continues to underlie everything we do and continue expanding our understanding of what it can teach us in the future.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Passion

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

The last value we have to talk about is the value of passion for God.

This value is really the first on our list and I purposely saved it for the last post in our series. Why? Because this brings us all the way back, full circle, to where we started years ago under the leadership of Dean Trune. Dean’s passion for Jesus, back then and still today, is his sole concern. For Dean, his pursuit of God was his passion, and true passion is seen in our pursuit of Jesus.

Anyone who meets Dean would be able to tell you about his spiritual posture, through all of the ups and downs of his family and their experiences. Through Dean’s successes and mistakes (he’d be the first to tell you he makes them), his steady gaze, fixed on Jesus, is the one trademark he tries to pass on to as many people as he can.

At Impact Campus Ministries, following Jesus and giving him our everything is not an afterthought. It is not a secondary focus. It is not what comes at the end, or the value that gets our leftovers.

It is the foundation we start from. We begin our workday, our productivity, with a focus on what Jesus is doing in us, through us, and around us. We attempt to discern the movement of Jesus and go with it. This is not just the thing that we do “before the real work begins.” On the contrary, this is actually the work.

One of the things I should certainly do here is recommend Dean’s writings. His first two books have always been my favorite when it comes to communicating the essence of who we are at ICM. Dean’s first book is Path Toward Passion, and I’ve always felt like it is his personal magnum opus. His second book challenges me to be more “awake” and present in my interactions; the book is titled God's Divine Appointments.

This last January, we had an opportunity to let Dean come in and remind us (for some, it was brand new) of the thinking he instilled in our beginnings. One of the examples he used was the idea of deep friendship versus romance. Many of us have experienced or observed a deep and meaningful friendship; we have also seen or experienced the different kind of quality in a romantic relationship. Both are meaningful and powerful, yet one is so much more intimate.

Dean suggested to us that far too many Christians have a deep friendship with Jesus, but not a romance. I have written at great extent to show how far the Scriptures go to reiterate this perspective of God’s relationship with His people. Outside the metaphor of “Father,” the metaphor of “Lover” is a close second. God wants to have that kind of intimate relationship with us.

God wants to have that kind of relationship with college students.

It is this kind of intimacy that empowers them with a supernatural ability to Impact the World.

How will we ever Impact the U with this kind of message if we don’t experience it daily in our own lives?

Jesus, please lead us, call us, and draw us to yourself, that we might know you intimately and be able to share that kind of “knowing” with the world around us.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Sabbath & Personal Retreat Day

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

In this post for our DAY IN THE LIFE series, I take a look at something that should not have taken me ten months to write about, because it’s really where everything begins, not ends. It is not the byproduct or the result of the work I do elsewhere, it is the preparation for all of that other work. And yet, I waited until now to talk about it. Why? At least two reasons. First, the idea is horribly misunderstood by many and to start there would have been confusing for some. Second, because when I’m fully present in these moments, the last thing I’m thinking about is trying to shoot some video!

What am I talking about? I’m talking about SABBATH and PERSONAL RETREAT DAY (PRD).

SABBATH

For years, our family has made the Sabbath a non-negotiable priority. Now, before you read too much into that statement, you need to know that I’m not jumping across the table with a legalistic interpretation of Sabbath and what it is. Not at all. We have found a deeply compelling narrative in the practice of Sabbath and it’s become a fabric of our family life. Since this comes around once a week, no series on my daily life would be complete without it.

So what is it? Quite simply, it’s a day where we quit working and producing — no matter what the to-do list looks like. It’s a day of rest and of fun; it is a day that reminds us of what is most true about ourselves. It is not a day that comes AFTER a week of work; it is not a practice of recharging our batteries. No, this is a practice where we tell ourselves the truth about the world, about God, and about ourselves.

If you were to ask my children, “What do you do on the Sabbath?” they would tell you: “We rest. We play. No work. God loves us.” When I was trying to teach my children about Sabbath, I didn’t want to teach them a bunch of theology. I wanted them to understand something so simply that they could own it as a two-year-old. So we came up with that statement and it became a mantra for our family. First, we rest. Second, we play. One thing that isn’t allowed is work. And why do we do this? To remind ourselves that we are loved by God, not because of the work that we do, but simply because we are.

On these days, you’ll catch me sleeping in. You might see me enjoying the outdoors or spending time with the family. You might see me catching my favorite college team play ball or playing a video game. The one thing I will say is that I go through “Sabbath seasons.” Sometimes, I will need to spend time with my family and you’ll see me spending time with the family for a few months, but then that starts becoming a chore and it loses the ability to tell me the right story. So then I might go into a season where Sabbath is about my own self-care and doing things that I enjoy. But then that becomes selfish and starts to get in the way, so hunting season rolls around and I spend time in creation, close to the Creator.

Want to read more about Sabbath? There are incredible books out there by Heschel, Brueggemann, Bell, Winner, Sine… I wrote about it here and I talked about it here.

PERSONAL RETREAT DAY

So if you do Sabbath as a family, what is the PRD?

A PRD is a requirement for all staff at Impact Campus Ministries. Once a month, we are each supposed to take a paid work day and remove ourselves from the normal and usual workflow. It is a day for listening and changing our perspective. It’s different for everyone (for lots of different reasons), but the purpose is the same. We have come to talk about it in terms of a dance.

Imagine that ministry (or your job, whatever it might be) is a dance in a ballroom. You do a lot of things to make sure you are a good dancer. You study the art of dancing and you practice. You invest in your development as a dancer. But most of the time, you dance. You are engaged in the art of dancing. Tangibly, directly, immediately engaged.

But what do you think would happen if once a month, you stepped off the dance floor and joined God where He sits up in the balcony? Would the change of perspective be helpful? Not only would you enjoy rest and relief from stepping off the dance floor, but I imagine you would begin to see and notice things that you weren’t able to see when you were fully engrossed in the work of dancing. I would imagine you might be able to hear God’s voice a little more clearly when you are sitting next to Him in the balcony, versus being fully engaged in the work itself.

The balcony is certainly not where we are called to live; it is not the work we are called to. But it is important to the work that we are called to.

I made this short video to talk a little about my experiences on my own PRDs.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Spiritual Practices

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Spiritual practices really are the center of everything I do. Organizationally, this is the spiritual DNA that Dean Trune instilled in Impact Campus Ministries (and me personally) years and years ago. You have seen me write about the importance of pursue in the work of ICM and I wrote earlier about our counter-intuitive definition of success.

Personally, this space in my life has been incredibly important to me over the last decade. I am thankful that my mentors (not only people like Dean, but also Steve Edwards and Bill Westfall) have invested in me to the extent that they taught me how to possess the same passion for pursuing God that they had. This was even more important when I met Ray Vander Laan and traveled to Israel and Turkey and was challenged to get the Text inside of me like I had never known. For years, I had gravitated towards the Text and struggled with our conventional understandings of prayer. ICM’s commitment to spiritual practices, combined with Ray’s passion for the Text, made for an experience that would change my life forever.

Emotionally, these practices have been a life saver. Being a person who struggles with anxiety, I find the daily rhythms of spiritual disciplines allow me to manage my anxiety in a way that is incredibly helpful — and healthy.

Vocationally, it is the center of the work I do with students. As we seek to make disciples through the art of mimicry and imitation, this is my starting place. With every student I have ever intentionally discipled, I have started with this premise: it all begins with your daily pursuit of God; imitate me as I show you how I make space for Him in my life.

There are lots and lots of ways people can create this kind of space. We are all wired differently and we gravitate towards different practices and expressions of worship. I have a teaching that I give every year to my students that you can find here. It describes many (but not all) possible ways we can create space for God in our lives. For years, I have been surrounded by people who are deeply committed to prayer. I, however, have always struggled to pray and gravitated to more structure in my pursuit. Having not been raised in a church experience of heavy liturgy, I have found structural disciplines to be life-giving.

Some of the books that have shaped me the most in this regard are Celebration of the Disciplines by Richard Foster, The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard, Sacred Rhythms by Christine Sine, The Contemplative Pastor and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson, Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and many other specialized works (like books on fasting or prayer).

No series on A Day in the Life would be complete without talking about the daily spaces I create to passionately pursue God with my time and attention. I made a video diary of my practices here:

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Pursue

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Lowell Kosak is the Director of Staff Development for Impact Campus Ministries; he lives in South Bend, IN with his wife Katie and two sons who are grown and on their own. Besides being a great personal friend, Lowell has a tremendous heart for spiritual health and our personal pursuits of God. His voice rings with passion for God and a care for His heart. I could think of nobody better to share stories about our discussion last week than Lowell.

I am inspired by Henri Nouwen. He compared his yearning to become more intimate with the Father to a trapeze performance. There is a special relationship between the flyer and the catcher. The daredevil flyer swinging high above the crowd lets go of the trapeze and simply stretches out his arms, waiting to feel the strong hands of the catcher pluck him out of the air. The flyer must never catch the catcher; he must wait in absolute trust. For Henri, and for me, there is a yearning to fly in the spiritual life, but only within relationship and yielding more and more into the loving hands of the Eternal Catcher.

More often than not, I am that flyer who is reaching out to try to catch.

God has recently been teaching me a lesson about my intimate pursuit of Him. Just one week before Christmas, my dear Katie suffered a mild stroke. We are so very thankful for God’s gift of grace that we were able to get to the hospital right away and that she suffered no brain bleeding or significant damage. While she is making a complete recovery, the time and extent of her therapy has been slower and more difficult than either of us had anticipated; not because it was medically unexpected—she is making great progress—but that we were not ready for the time, the slow down, and need to wait and be patient.

In just a short amount of time, I was ready to get back to it, to travel, to work, and to achieve. While I teach differently, that our identity does not flow from our accomplishments and production, I certainly was not living out my words. I was proceeding as if I was indispensable. May I confess to you that I like to think that I’m one step ahead of the game and close to arrival. But in reality, in reaching out to catch the Catcher, I’m not trusting God’s story for me. 

Of the importance of the pursuit for the spiritual leader, the vocational pastor… How can I announce joy, peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation unless they are part of my own flesh and blood?

How can I do this?

How can I know this?

I must have need of them and humbly admit my utter emptiness without them. I must surrender my life story to the Gospel, the story of God, and there he meets me.

So joy is birthed from the agony, disappointment, and sorrow that I feel.

True peace only comes when I am honest with myself and the rage and anxiety that comes from deep inside.

As I allow the Holy Spirit to open me up and expose my wretchedness, I also know Jesus’s forgiveness that he freely gives.

While I am so inadequate to take on the mantle of leadership, God reconciles me to Himself and sends me on a mission of bringing His peace and love into the world.

This prayer of Charles de Foucauld has become a prayer for me this year.

Father,I abandon myself into your hands;do with me what you will.Whatever you may do, I thank you:I am ready for all, I accept all.Let only your will be done in me,and in all your creatures –I wish no more than this, O Lord.Into your hands I commend my soul:I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,and with boundless confidence,for you are my Father.

I am learning to accept being expendable. I have to become not so important in my eyes that I can and will stop and rest. Sometimes we can’t help but stop in times of crisis, and in that, we have to be ok with the time to just release control and stop. But in day-to-day, week-to-week living, I must also learn to have regular rhythms of work and rest.

In Sabbath, I am letting go, I am waiting and trusting God to do the catching. As I stop, I only hear His voice that calls me His beloved and His son. Paul’s words in Romans ring in my ears:

“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.” (Romans 8:15–17 NLT)

MAKING AN IMPACT: Pursue

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

In our last post of this series, we talked about the concept of discipleship and what it means to us at Impact Campus Ministries. I told the story about how we came up with the “in-house” definition of imitating a mentor who imitates Jesus. We expected this imitating would require more than just a one-hour-a-week spiritual check-up over coffee. Instead, we would need to be investing our lives into one another, living life together, and mimicking the walks of our mentors.

So what is it, exactly, that we would want them to imitate?

At the end of the post, I suggested that ICM has been, for years, preparing the soil of this work. Our mission statement has been to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with Christ in the context of Christian community on the American university campus. I believe this statement provides a fantastic roadmap to the process of discipleship and the things we would want our disciples to imitate. So I want to take a look at the first of these words: PURSUE.

ICM’s founder, Dean Trune, instilled within our organization decades ago the belief that true success is a supernatural byproduct of our passion for God. If we focus on pursuing Him and loving Him with all of our heart, soul, and might, He will produce the fruit in our lives that He wants to bear in the places and ways He wants to bear it. As Jesus taught us in John 15, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”

For us, that means discipleship begins with our pursuit of God. We create intentional space to pursue Him, commune with Him, and be changed by Him. This creates the outpouring work to impact other people — particularly college students. While this sounds incredibly subjective and mystical on paper, it’s actually incredibly objective and practical in practice. In 2013, I wrote a blog titled “Creating a Space”:

Which leads me to my reflection: I believe the construction of the Tabernacle models an unspoken promise that God has made to His people. If you will create a space in your life for God, He will fill it. The question is, will you create a space?

What would have happened if the Israelites never created the Tabernacle? The fascinating thing is that we run around like chickens with our heads cut off, filling our lives with busyness, and then we are flabbergasted that God doesn’t interrupt our days with His undeniable presence.

If we won’t create a space, why should we expect God to fill it?

But if you do create the space, God will fill it.

He may not fill it the way you want or expect, but if you will create a space in your life — a discipline, an hour of listening, a sabbath rest, a location of retreat — I believe God will fill it.

Yes, it is entirely possible that our pursuit of God can become mechanical, lifeless, legalistic, and dispassioned. But so can everything else we do. The heart of ICM is to be people who intentionally and passionately create a space for God where we are pursuing Him and wanting to know His heart so we can give that, in wisdom, to our students.

And so we read the Bible; we don’t just read it to learn, but we listen for God’s heart and His voice speaking to us. We journal in order to have an objective way to hear from Him. We study the Bible to learn more about its context and be able to interpret it better each day. We memorize Text each week, believing that if we put God’s Word in us, it will not return void.

We fast and pray. We strive to become better and better at praying. We want to intercede on behalf of others and look inwardly, offering prayers of humility, confession, and repentance. We create space for personal worship. We pursue spaces of sabbath, solitude, and silence. For most of us, these pursuits started small and grew over time — as with our passion for God.

But this is our craft at ICM. We want to be experts in spiritual formation. We want to be well aquatinted with the faithful pursuit of knowing God. We want to understand and experience true Bible study and meditation. If anyone has questions about fasting or prayer journaling, we want the world of campus ministry to be able to point toward us (among many others). For us, the daily pursuit of God is not something we do so we can get on to the “important work” of ministry; for us, it is the important work of ministry.

It’s important because it is the most foundational part of discipleship and the foremost thing that we would want imitated. Of course, it can only be imitated if it can be observed. So if we simply pursue God by ourselves, on our own, very little discipleship is going to happen.

This is where the idea of MODEL shows up.

MY BLOG IN 2018: Week Three

We’ve now talked about my four-week rotation for every calendar month of 2018. We talked about how I’ll be using the first week of the rotations to talk about the Top 12 Blog Posts of Covered in His Dust. We’ve also spoken about how I’ll be using the second week to bring you a little series titled A Day in the Life. Now it’s time to talk about what we’ll be covering in the third week of our monthly rotations.

While I don’t think it’s a secret to my readers, my vocational calling is one where I serve as the President of Impact Campus Ministries. At ICM, we believe in the work of campus ministry because we believe that if we can impact the university campus, we can impact the world. We truly believe that tomorrow’s great leaders are studying on campuses all over this country; we believe there are students here that will be called to all kinds of international destinations and jobs to make an impact in their particular contexts. In fact, the largest growing demographic of students is the international student — what better chance to impact the world on the global scale than to shape tomorrow’s leaders on today’s campuses?

Here is a video we made that talks about all of that:

One of the reasons I love ICM so much is because of the culture and the vision of our organization. Some of that culture was built into Impact from its earliest years of ministry. Amazing people like Dean Trune planted a counter-intuitive belief in ICM that true success is developing intimacy with God. I love working for an organization that runs against the current of mainstream thought — thought that believes all we need is a little more hard work — and says that true success is a fruitfulness that comes from what God wants to do through us. And maybe it has to be “caught not taught,” but just listen to this definition of success that was written long before I ever worked for ICM:

Success is developing intimacy with God and community with each other through a living relationship with Jesus. We believe an individual, who is developing intimacy with God, in the context of Christian community, will make an impact for the Kingdom of God.

A team of individuals, who make an impact for the Kingdom of God, will have a fruitful ministry. Though we do not aim for “making an impact,” and we do not aim for “fruitful ministries,” we recognize that these two situations will supernaturally occur when individuals develop intimacy with God in Christian community.

Ministry is the product of our love for God, and an expression of a heart devoted to God. We must not allow “ministry for God” to crowd “intimacy with God” out of our lives. We cannot control “making an impact,” and we cannot control “fruitful ministries,” but we have absolute control over developing intimacy with God and being devoted to one another.

I love that!

Out of this core belief, those who came after Dean and before me created a mission that still excites me. We exist to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with God in Christian community on the American university campus. Out of this mission statement we built a “common language” that we believe, over time, helps foster a culture to make ICM great. ICM is indebted to the leadership of Bill Westfall for this guidance.

We created eight core terms we use to talk about the discipleship process; we also have a list of six values on which we build our organization. We wanted to have shared definitions of what these words mean to us as an organization because we believe words are powerful. We created short definitions for disciple and discipleship. We found it to be very beneficial to identify exactly what pursue, model, and teach mean as ideas. And we also decided it would be helpful to expound on the importance of message, mode, and milieu. All of this is built upon the foundation of our values: passion [for God], community, character, excellence, [the local] church, and compassion.

Now, it’s important for me to state that this is simply our culture at ICM. This is not some seminar on success or how you can follow our formula to greatness. We don’t travel around the country putting on conferences about these terms and why they’re so great — “and you can do it too!” In fact, the mentality of ICM runs against this big box, perform-and-impress idea about church.

No, this is simply a conversation that means a lot to us. To be honest, I’ll be using this third week to write about these ideas for my staff and those connected to our organization. If Dean Trune instilled a definition of success — the spirit and DNA of ICM — and if Bill Westfall helped create a vision and mission for the future, then my job is to help us take ground and continue becoming the organization these great leaders dreamed about. And that means we need to keep talking about these ideas and pushing into them. Every day, every year — moving forward.

But these conversations are not something we want to keep secret. We want to share them with you. I will be posting a monthly article on one of our core terms and casting a little vision of what it looks like to pursue these ideas. If they bless you and help you in some way, we are excited and thrilled to be a part of what God wants to do in your life. If they don’t, that’s fine too. We have no plans for world domination.

So for the third week of every month, I invite you into the conversation of Making an Impact.

One more thought about prayer...

Jesus’s thoughts on prayer deserve more attention because of the famous teaching surrounding what we often call the “Lord’s Prayer.” Depending on which gospel you are reading, Jesus offers up this model of prayer in response to a request by His disciples to teach them to pray, or as an insertion of that prayer into His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

Quite frankly, Jesus’s response is telling. The prayer Jesus teaches them is not a new idea. Jesus did not introduce them to the Lord’s Prayer, nor did He create the prayer from His own mind. Most scholars agree that the Lord’s Prayer is a condensed version of what we know as the Jewish Amidah Prayer. Otherwise known as the “Standing Prayer,” this is a prayer that would have been uttered by Jews at the noon prayer time in the Temple. Tradition holds that Jewish men would stand in groups of twelve and utter this prayer together.

Spending a few minutes online searching for the Amidah Prayer will produce results to keep you busy for hours. While one can find several different versions of this famous prayer, we do know that the modern Amidah was not being used in the days of Jesus. Even referencing the modern Amidah Prayer, a reader might notice that Jesus’s prayer is a summary of the content of the longer version. We’ve found significant evidence for the following prayer being circulated in the first century as the Amidah of Jesus’s day:

avenu shabat shamayim; ye’kedesh shemchah; tomlich malchukah; y’aseh bashayim uve’aretz; et lechem hu’kenu ta’lanu he’yom

“Our Father, the One who dwells in heaven,
May Your name be holy.
May Your kingdom come as we do Your will here on earth, as it is done in heaven.
Give us today the bread of today.”

And some versions even add the following line:

“And deliver us from the evil one, cursed be he.”

In essence, this means that when Jesus’s disciples ask Him to teach them how to pray, Jesus responds with one of the most well-known prayers of His day. Jesus was saying, “You know how to pray. Just pray. And mean it.”

Jesus does, however, make one striking alteration. In no version of the Amidah, either past or present, can you find a mention of us forgiving others. There are requests for God to forgive us, but nothing about forgiving others. Again, we see forgiveness and mercy being central to Jesus’s message. We will cover this in greater detail at a later time, but it’s important to notice — especially for Jesus followers who have become so used to the idea of forgiveness that it means very little — that this is a radical idea. For ancient Jews, God forgives sins. We are called to love our neighbor, show mercy to our neighbor, and many other things — but forgiveness is a job for God alone.

This suggestion of Jesus, that we should partner with God in the work of forgiveness, is one that will get Him in serious trouble. This insertion into a basic, everyday prayer for Jesus’s disciples is more of a thunderbolt than many of us realize. It’s enough to make us ponder whether or not we give forgiveness enough thought in our life. There is something about the act of forgiveness and God’s coming Kingdom.

Done in Secret

The next movement of this “Sermon on the Mount” is a discussion about hypocrites. Jesus has some teaching points about giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting. They are as follows:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

If I were to hit the pause button, I would point out that Jesus directly connects “righteousness” with giving to the poor. This is a connection that is made in Jewish thought starting with the Hebrew language. The idea of tzedekah (“righteousness”) is connected to hearing the tze’ekah (“cries of the oppressed”). Even in Jewish communities today, you will find a tzedekah box; this is a box to collect funds for the poor and other acts of benevolence. In Jewish thought, your “acts of righteousness” are not “doing the right things,” but the right thing you should be doing is hearing the cry of the oppressed. It seems like there is a blog post hiding in that idea alone…

This is followed by thoughts on prayer:

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

And this is followed by the theme of fasting:

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

First, a note on “hypocrites”: Much to the disappointment of all the haters out there, this is not a teaching on hypocrisy. The word for hypocrite is actually the word for actor. The Hellenistic actors in the theater would fit the descriptions seen above. When famous actors were in town, their arrival on stage would be signaled with the blast of a trumpet (you often could not see the famous face when it was in costume and so far away). They would paint their faces to communicate a mood to the audience. Jesus’s larger point here is not the horrible character of hypocrites, but the life of an actor. An actor is one who makes a living at putting on a show. That show may or may not be accurate to reality, but the point is the actor is doing it for the show. Jesus has the audacity to claim there are “actors” in the synagogues — there are people who are actually walking the path of obedience for the sole purpose of being seen. This is what is being condemned in the teaching.

Second, a note on the “reward”: The reward is juxtaposed against the reward of the actor. Jesus warns his hearers that if they do these things to be seen by others, that is all the reward they will get — fleeting recognition from other people. They will get no reward from God. It is important to note the tense of that reward; the reward is a PRESENT reward, not a FUTURE one. Therefore, when Jesus claims that if you do these things with a pure heart, not to be seen by men, you get a much deeper reward; you get a reward from God. This reward is not speaking about the future; it makes no sense to look at the hypocrites reward as present and the worshipper’s reward as future. The reward you get is NOW. God goes about doing a work in your heart now, not installing an extra jewel in your crown for heaven.

Finally, a note on the “secrecy”: One of the most perplexing parts of this teaching is the exhortation by Jesus to do these things “in secret.” I cannot count the number of times that I have been told I am not allowed to discuss fasting because Jesus told me to do it in secret. This is completely bogus. Jesus told me that if I fast in order to be seen by men, that will be all the reward I get; but if I fast for reasons only God can see, I will experience a better reward. One must remember that merely a page earlier, Jesus told his listeners to “let their light shine before men, so that they might see their good deeds and glorify their Father who is in Heaven.” Jesus wants the deeds to be seen! His teaching about “secrecy” is directed at motivations of the heart. This is important, because our walks should be modeled before others. Our faith is not a private one. It is one that should echo the words of Paul, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

At any rate, Jesus’s words in this section invite us to examine our motivations truly. Do we find ourselves going through the motions in order to be seen by others? The answers may surprise us. We are warned there is not much reward in this. But if we truly desire to follow God with a pure heart, there is incredible work to be done.