We Can’t Know What We Don’t Know!

Many years ago Judy and I were facing our most traumatic and hurtful trial of faith. Our world as we knew it was falling apart, and there was nothing we could do to put the pieces of our lives back together again.

Kevin Butcher and his wife Carla helped us through with words of encouragement, counsel, and their usual warm friendship. As two of our closest friends who understand the challenges and heartaches of local church ministry, their support comforted us greatly.

Four years later, Kevin and Carla faced the exact same crisis, the exact same heartache in their own church. I’ll never forget Kevin’s words to me in the middle of his own battle, “Ed, I never knew. I just didn’t understand. I wish I could have helped you more, but now that I’m going through it myself, I get it. There’s so much more I should have said, so much more I could have done.”

I assured my friend that he had not failed us in any way and reminded him of a truth we often have to rehearse: “I can’t know what I don’t know.” There was no way Kevin could have drawn wisdom from an experience he had never known personally.

Jesus Knows!

When I hung up the phone, I thought of Hebrews 4:14-16 and immediately thanked the Lord Jesus for this precious promise. Because of His willingness to come to earth and to experience life as a man, He now sits in heaven with personal knowledge of what it feels like to be me. Every heartache, every trial and even every temptation.

Kevin’s friendship means so much to me. But there are times when even he has to say, “I just didn’t understand all that you were going through. I couldn’t know how you felt, how terrible it was, how much it hurt or how alone you must have been.”

But there is another Friend. A friend of sinners, who sits at the right hand of the Father. His name is Jesus, and I will never hear Him say, “I just didn’t understand.”

“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).

No book of the Bible separates those who get grace from those who don’t like Galatians.

I’ve been teaching Galatians, tweeting and facebooking quotes about Galatians, and discussing Galatians for a couple of months now. It amazes me that most Christian’s reaction to the radical Gospel of Christ is, “Be careful, don’t get carried away with this ‘grace thing.’”

I’m sorry, but I’m just going to have to disagree. You can’t get too carried away with grace. Grace is what the Christian life is all about. But there is one excess of grace the Book of Galatians warns us against.

But is has nothing to do with the typical evangojive lists of do’s and don’t’s.

Remarkably, it isn’t about Christian freedom at all.

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Missed Opportunity for Glory

I don’t know why, but I always felt like it was up to me to make sure Jesus got credit for anything I did in His name. For some reason I thought I should be the one to connect what His Spirit might prompt me to do with His glory.

If an opportunity to help someone in a small or even big way came, my first question was, “How can I let this person know that I’m a Christian, that I’m only doing this because He has changed me and He loves them?” Too often this meant that while I was still debating and calculating in my little brain how to guarantee that everyone would know that this moment was a truly eternal moment, the moment was gone!

I’m ashamed to admit that it didn’t bother me that much. “Sure wish there was a way to glorify Jesus there,” I would tell myself. “Oh well, maybe next time I will get a real opportunity to do something kind in the name of Jesus.”

We know that Jesus commands us to do good works of compassion and justice in His name. And we know that He promises to reward us when we do. So why do we hesitate?

Not Your Job!

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Biblical scholars love to argue the Markan priority vs. the Mathaean priority. It’s basically a debate over which came first, Matthew or Mark. But, before you close this email because it sounds like I’m going to talk about something only New Testament academics really care about, let me assure you this is not a scholarly piece. (For those of you who know me well, that’s not much of a surprise!)

A few years ago when I was studying Mark, preparing to teach it to my friends at Church of the Open Door, I realized that my problem with Mark is more practical than theological. What I’m struggling with is the real Markan priority—the one Mark actually emphasized that I don’t want to be a priority in my life.

Jesus the Servant

When I read Mark’s account of the Lord’s life, I’m impressed with his emphasis on Jesus as the Servant who came to serve others. Mark was a privileged man who probably kept servants and grew up in luxury. He heard, through Peter’s words, that Jesus was asking those who followed Him, the rich and the poor, to become servants.

For me this is serving the people in my world—my wife, Judy, my children, our staff and elders as well as friends. But there’s those other ones too: The guy who calls me way too late wanting to talk about the same problem I talked with him about last week, and last month, or even last year, or the hurting friend who stops by the office all needy when I really don’t have the time. And then there are the people from my daily routine: The snippy girl at Starbucks who hands me my Americano, or the guy who crowds in front of me on the bench press machine at the gym.

The Worn-Out Jesus

Mark pictures Jesus as an extremely busy, exhausted Lord during His Galilean ministry. People were brought to him for days on end and even into the late night. They crowded Him to the water’s edge at the beach. He had to get away just to pray. And yet, what strikes me is the many times Mark says that He “touched them all.”

And that’s what Jesus is asking of you and me: “Touch them all in my name, all of them—the inconvenient and the inappropriate, the mean and the hateful, the left-out’s and the left-over’s.”

My Markan Assignment

Many weeks it’s my most difficult assignment from Jesus–to put someone else first when every fleshly molecule wants me to put me first.

Who is He asking you to touch in His name this week? Who is He asking you to serve today?

It’s His Markan priority for all who call Him Lord.

“And whoever desires to be first shall be slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:44-45).

“Whatever happened to our hope of heaven?”

That’s the question an aged saint asked of a small group she had joined when a twenty-something Bible student told her he could care less about heaven because, “He was into being the hands and feet of Jesus to a hurting world.” He was about living for others, not about what He would get someday through some, in his words, “pie-in-the-sky” promises that, again in his words, “medicate the poor and hurting” so that they’ll accept social injustices.

As a Jesus Movement convert of the 60’s, I’d have to own some of this young man’s charge. We were so focused on “getting people to heaven,” we convinced ourselves we could ignore the social insensitivities, the prejudices, and injustices of our day. Wouldn’t want anyone to accuse us of preaching a “social gospel” like the liberals.

However, if I’m reading my Bible correctly, there’s no good hell and no bad heaven. Seems to me this isn’t an either-or but a both-and deal. Believers who ignore the hurting aren’t living out Christ’s love in this world; believers who ignore eternity aren’t living out what He says about the world to come.

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I’ve devoted the last ten months to the study of the Gospel of Mark.

Jesus’ radical words and actions astound me. He refused to be categorized or tamed. He challenged the presuppositions of the religious status quo. He fearlessly took on the most powerful men of His day.

He was constantly surrounded by somebodies clamoring for His attention.

But He always focused on the nobodies–beggars, children, whores, and IRS agents.

So, who are you paying attention to in your world?

Many years ago Judy and I were facing our most traumatic and hurtful trial of faith. Our world as we knew it was falling apart, and there was nothing we could do to put the pieces of our lives back together again.

Kevin Butcher and his wife Carla helped us through with words of encouragement, counsel, and their usual warm friendship. As two of our closest friends who understand the challenges and heartaches of local church ministry, their support comforted us greatly.

I didn’t understand!

Four years later, Kevin and Carla faced the exact same crisis, the exact same heartache in their own church. I’ll never forget Kevin’s words to me in the middle of his own battle, “Ed, I never knew. I just didn’t understand. I wish I could have helped you more, but now that I’m going through it myself, I get it. There’s so much more I should have said, so much more I could have done.”

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