IT'S AS EASY AS BEING LIKE JESUS

Ron Sider, a well-known Christian author, came to speak to our congregation this morning about the importance of individuals and churches doing both evangelism and social action. In fact, he is the founder and director of Evangelicals for Social Action, a name that once might have been mistaken as an oxymoron but increasingly reflects the dual mission of evangelical congregations.

He briefly but persuasively spoke about how evangelism and social action are two different things, and yet are equally necessary for individuals and churches to pursue. As his talk winded down, I began to formulate a question in my mind, a question that I had actually been ruminating on for quite some time. Fortunately, I got a chance to ask my question:

“Dr. Sider, I appreciate your perspective on evangelism and social action, and have a question about motivation. Sometimes I gravitate towards the spiritual stuff because the social stuff seems so complicated and intractable. And sometimes I gravitate towards doing good works because I get pats on the back for it from the world, whereas the world never pats me on the back for telling people about Jesus. I and this church don’t want to do what’s easy or what gets us pats on the back; we want to do what’s right. So what is our motivation to keep a proper balance?”

I sat down and looked forward to a lengthy and wise answer. Instead, Dr. Sider’s response took less than thirty seconds: “Just be like Jesus.” He offered that our model for this balance between evangelism and social action was the same as our model for life. And the gospels record Jesus doing both evangelism and social action. He did both perfectly, and He did both for perfect reasons: to do the will of His Father.

And so it is for us, that we ought to do both because we ought to be like Jesus. We ought not run from the complexity and intractability of social ills. And we ought not hide ourselves in the popularity of doing good works that we don’t mention the often divisive name of Jesus. Instead, we ought to seek to save the soul and heal the body. And we ought to seek to do both because we want to be like Jesus, because we want to do the will of our Father.

LASTING PLEASURE

January was a brutal month for me at work. New responsibilities, layoffs, and financial worries all added stress to an already stressful job. Add to that the many tasks that go along with being a homeowner, church elder, and husband, and while I was happy about everything going on in my life, I was a bit worn out. It was hard for me to feel I had any wiggle room to just have fun, burdened as I was with so many responsibilities.

This weekend, my wife and I watched the videotape of our wedding ceremony. Almost immediately, my dour countenance perked up. There I watched myself next to this beautiful woman, who was looking lovingly at me as we exchanged vows before God and our loved ones. My eyes teared up again, as they did that morning, when the part came where she sang to me. To this day, I’m not sure what’s more impressive to me: how great her voice sounded, or the fact that she was cool enough to hit that first note so perfectly on her big day with all eyes watching her.

What was even more special was realizing that I am more in love with my wife today than I was on that day, and that I find her more beautiful today than even on our wedding day in her wedding gown. As we sat on the couch together, watching younger versions of ourselves getting married, I allowed my mind a break from all of my worries and responsibilities, and let myself be in the moment. For that moment, all I could think of was how lucky I was to be with this wonderful woman.

I was still basking in the glow of this luckiness when, the next morning, during our church’s morning worship service, a young African-American woman in our congregation sang a soulful tune about being “caught up to meet Jesus.” And, unexpectedly, my happiness for the present got lost in something even greater: the thought of one day seeing Jesus face to face. In the span of a weekend, I had gone from being burned out on life, to loving life in the here and now, and now to longing for the life that is to come.

As John Piper says in Pleasures of God, there are three things lacking about pleasure in this world. One is that there isn’t anything in this world that is supremely worthy in which to find pleasure. Two is that any pleasure we experience in this world will eventually come to an end. And three is that our very ability to experience pleasure is limited by the frailty of our humanness.

But when Jesus comes again, there will be nothing lacking in our pleasure. He is supremely worthy of finding pleasure in. We will experience the pleasure of fellowship with Him for an eternity. And our bodies will be transformed so as to receive such a pleasure perfectly.

It is good and right that I find pleasure in the here and now: a wonderful wife, a fulfilling job, loving friends and family, engaging pursuits, and financial and physical health. But these are all precursors – temporary and not guaranteed – to something that is permanent and secure. Thank you, God, for working in my life to do good for me today, and for giving me a heart that can see such blessings and celebrate them. But thank you most of all that all of this is going somewhere, and where that somewhere is, pleasure will be triply better than anything I can fathom here in this world.