PET PEEVES: IT'S ALL ABOUT JESUS

CAUTION:  This is strictly a personal rant.  My biases and narrow-mindedness may come out and I apologize in advance to anyone I offend.

I love Jesus.  I do not remember a time when God was not real to me or an important part of my life.  As a young child, I remember swinging on the swingset in our backyard and singing songs to God about my day.  When I was a little older and in second grade, I wrote love poems to God.  I was raised in the church and attended a parochial school up through eighth grade.  But for me - before I was ever old enough to be able to articulate it in this way - I KNEW on a deep level that the faith thing, the relationship I had with God, was bigger than the institution of the church.  That knowledge has resulted in my having a rather checkered, on again-off-again relationship with the institutions of the church over the years. 

While I was raised in the Roman Caholic expression of Christ's church, I have attended congregations of a variety of denominations.  I am currently serving as a pastor within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.  Given my love-hate relationship with the institutions of the church, that is actually pretty ironic.  Actually - it also shows what a crazy sense of humor our God has.  When I was feeling called to serve the Gospel concerning Jesus the Christ in a concrete way, I never expected that this is where I would end up.  But this is where my love of Jesus and the Gospel has led me.

Which leads me to my utter frustration today.  As a pastor, I spend a fair amount of time on the road.  There are a couple of billboards that I keep passing by that really aggravate me.  The first one is from some Christian radio station that says judgment day is May 21, 2011.  Give me a BREAK.  I read scripture.  Forgive me for being naive, but I think that if Jesus says that NO ONE knows except the Father (and that means even Jesus) then NO ONE knows. 

First, it irks me that people are arrogant enough to think that THEY have figured out some code to tell them something that even Jesus doesn't know.  Second, I get aggravated when folks try to use the threat of judgment to scare people into believing in God.  The Jesus revealed in the Bible is one who invites others into relationship.  Just not my idea of what Jesus meant when he charged the apostles to "Go and make disciples of all nations."

The other billboard is one from the local Roman Catholic dioscese.  It is attempting to draw members back to church and it says "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John miss you."   Really?  Sorry, I am not buying it.  Now JESUS misses us when we choose to absent ourselves from a faith community, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ... nah, not them.

And that sort of brings me to a frustration about churches using billboards to advertise in order to attract members in the first place.  They may try to scare us into coming to their congregation(Judgment Day is coming), guilt us into coming back (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John miss you.), or entce us into coming with promises of all of the nice fringe benefits that they have to offer (professional quality music, gymnasiums, rock walls, internet cafes, etc).  But I have yet to see a church billboard that offers to introduce us to the living Lord, Jesus Christ.

I will say about the instituation of the church what I said about worship - IT IS ALL ABOUT JESUS.  And WHEN did Jesus cease to be enough?

Today - my normally high BS tolerance factor just plummetted into the basement.  Just give me Jesus - you can have all the rest.   JUST GIVE ME JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope and pray that at the end of the day, whatever I have done in ministry has been for the sake of inviting people to "Come and see" and expereince the remarkable, unchangeable, unconditional, and limitless love of Jesus.  Because even though I am not always capable of living like it - I really do believe that it is all about the love of God made know in Jesus.

May you find someone to 'give you Jesus'.

Peace -
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