Archives For worship

Let God be God

samuel kee —  January 7, 2013 — 4 Comments

4483There’s a story early in the Old Testament that has puzzled people for years.  It’s the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.  The narrative walks us through the time when both offered sacrifices to God, but God only had regard for Abel and his offering, not Cain’s.  Some have suggested that Abel’s offering was somehow better than Cain’s, but the text shows no indications of that.  It simply says that “the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard” (Genesis 4:4, 5).  Cain was a farmer, so he presented God with an offering of the fruit of the ground.  That makes sense.  Abel was a herdsman, so he presented God with an offering of his livestock.  That makes sense, too.  Yet God liked one more than the other.  Though that might not make sense to us, it does not mean that we can’t accept it.

Cain couldn’t accept it.  In fact, it says that he grew angry and his face fell (4:5).  So God asks him, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?” (4:6).  God’s question is very searching, penetrating deep into our souls, unburying their gross dysfunction.

Something happened after the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, which colors all of our text in Genesis 4 with their children, Cain and Abel.  Sin began in Genesis 3, but the effects of sin are described in Genesis 4.  The major affect of sin is that it causes us to turn from God to self.  In fact, that’s what Cain’s anger was all about: he couldn’t let God be God.

Cain couldn’t let God prefer one sacrifice over the other, as if God were not allowed to like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla.  But so what if God prefers chocolate over vanilla?  What is that to us?  So what if God prefers Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s?  What’s the big deal?  Can’t God be God?  God is not obligated to us, as if we’re his Creator and Master.

Sin had caused Cain to place himself at the center of the universe, and his heart’s desire was for everything to revolve around him—even God.  His sacrifice was not really about worshipping God, but about God worshipping him.  Think about that.

Cain wanted God to make a big deal out of his offering, not his brother’s.  It wasn’t about God at all, but about Cain.

I learn a lot from Cain’s pride, for it forces me to search the areas in my life where I am not letting God be God.  God is holy other and wholly other than me; he can do whatever he pleases.  So what if he prefers to take my life or leave it?  He is God and can do as he chooses.  So what if he chooses to bless my neighbor more than me?  He is God and he can do as he chooses.  Who am I to get angry and allow my face to fall?

Allow God’s question to address you, too.  “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?”  Why are you bitter with God?  Do you think he owes you?

Let God be God.  Only then will we discover the true meaning of worship.

© Samuel Kee, 2013

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Scripted

samuel kee —  September 3, 2011 — 2 Comments

We cry out for a savior to pull us out of the script

I’ve been thinking about behavioral scripts a lot lately, probably because I just got the new album by Icon For Hire called Scripted.  Icon For Hire is a metal band from Decatur, IL, who is now on tour with Brian “Head” Welch.  I had the opportunity to meet Icon For Hire—Shawn, Ariel, Josh, and Adam—they are top-notch individuals and incredibly nice.  I’ll get back to Scripted in a minute.

Behavioral psychology (I was a psych major) teaches us that people use hundreds of scripts each day.  Scripts are routines that we memorize when we’re in familiar situations.  When seeing someone in the morning at work, we know exactly what to say and do.  We simply follow the “script.”  When checking out at the grocery store, we follow a script.  When talking with a friend, we follow a script.  When meeting someone new, we follow a script.  We not only follow verbal scripts, but also we apply scripts to people, in order to stereotype them, and easily brush our hands of them.  If we see a certain ethnicity, for example, we follow a script in our interactions with him or her.

By following scripts, we are mentally able to “check-out” and exert the least amount of physical, emotional, and intellectual energy.  In any given situation, a script tells us what kind of behavior to do or expect.  Thus, scripts put distance between people; we no longer engage another, but merely act out a memorized script.

Here are some lyrics from Icon for Hire’s song Scripted:

I know they’ll come with what I’m owed; My enemies belittle me reminding me the penalty of all my deeds despite my plea is death; Don’t let go cause; Don’t wanna be this; Don’t wanna be this; Death is mine I know.

In this song, it’s recognized that humans are bound by scripts.  We know that we’re sinners and we deserve death.  That’s where we’re headed and we cannot get out of the script no matter how hard we try.  So we cry out for a savior to pull us out of the script, “Don’t let go!”  When it comes to spirituality, we need a script-breaker.  We cannot operate on how things have always been, for that would spell tragedy for us.

We follow scripts when it comes to God, if you haven’t figured that out yet.  Even if we aren’t surrounded by enemies, as in the song, but friends, we follow scripts.  Even those in church could need a script-breaker.

I’m thinking of John 2:13-22, that part about the temple worship.  It was just another day in the life of the typical Jewish worshipper.  They were offering sacrifices in the temple.  They were bringing their tithes and their offerings.  They were exchanging their foreign currency for the native stuff.  It was just a typical scripted day in the life of these good religious people.

Then along comes the Script-Breaker, Jesus himself, who storms the temple with a whip and a war cry.  Jesus knows no script.  He rushes the temple and tosses over all of the tables.  He frees the animals and flails his whip like a madman, no doubt piercing skin along the way.  All the while he’s shouting out Bible verses.

The Script-Breaker knew that religious scripts needed to be crushed.  There were things that were getting in the way of our relationship with God, scripts that put a convenient distance between us and the Almighty.

What scripts do you follow with God?  Maybe you don’t believe in God, and that’s your script.  You follow the script of disbelief so you don’t have to deal with God.  Or maybe you have a religious script; you know what routine to follow to keep others happy, hoping that it will keep God happy, too.  Or you might have a prayer script; you say what you need to say to “get through it” and keep God at a distance.  Perhaps you have a cultural-script; you follow what the culture says about God rather than investigating him for yourself.  If the culture says that there are many ways to God or that God is whatever you want him/her/it to be, then that’s what you’ll believe, just so you won’t rock the boat.

Maybe your script has to do with money.  You do whatever is financially reasonable rather than whatever is divinely commanded.

The truth is that Jesus hates our religious scripts, for they put a wall up between us and God.  When a wall is up, we cannot experience his healing and life-saving presence.  We forget that we are loved by God himself, despite who we are.  We are left to face our enemies and death alone.

Icon for Hire is challenging our scripts; we don’t have to follow them and they don’t have to destroy us.  There is a way out—for he broke his way in.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

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Jesus Would Be Fired

samuel kee —  August 18, 2011 — 1 Comment

We must boldly accept our limitations and throw ourselves completely upon Jesus

Jesus would be fired from your church and here’s just one reason why.  His sermon to the Canaanite woman was awful (Matthew 15:21-28).  Roman numeral 1 in his sermon: Totally Ignore a Crying Woman.  Roman numeral 2: Tell the Crying Woman that He Didn’t Come for Her Kind.  Roman numeral 3: Call the Crying Woman a Dog.

Yep, Jesus would be fired.

But that’s the way it went for this Master of Morality when he was confronted by a desperate woman from another culture.  So why did this Rabbi, who was renown for his compassion, give such a heartless message?  To understand, we have to look at the rest of the story.

A desperate woman comes to Jesus with a major problem, she has a demon possessed daughter.  She has heard the rumors that Jesus is able to heal in all kinds of ways, including demonic possession.  We can’t get sidetracked about the exact meaning of demonic possession; it’s safe to say that whatever it looked like, this little girl was trying to destroy herself.  For those of us who have observed loved ones destroying themselves, we can understand why the woman from Cana sought the help of an alleged miracle worker.

We have to grasp that this was a test.  In all of our stories about Jesus and his fantastic intellectual judo and wit, there’s only one person that beats Jesus in an argument; it’s this woman—this lowly Canaanite.  This tells us that not only was Jesus allowing himself to lose an argument (which had never happened before), but also that something other than verbal exchange was on his mind.  He had no desire to beat her in an argument; his only desire was to test her faith.

She was a woman with obstacles in her life.  In Matthew 15:22-23 alone, we see seven of these obstacles that could have kept her from getting help: her gender (a woman), race, life situation (demons in her family), religion (not a Jew), country, the type of help needed (healing by distance), and the negative peer pressure from the disciples (who told Jesus to have nothing to do with her).  And the burning question on Jesus’ heart is, “Will this woman fight through all of these obstacles?”

That’s when he devises his test: to play along with the culture of the day and give the typical kinds of responses that she was used to getting.  Shame.  Being marginalized.  Name calling.  Jesus does not act like “Jesus” in order to find out if she had a key ingredient of true faith: perseverance.

He says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  She responds brilliantly, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Jesus exclaims, “O woman, great is your faith!” (15:28).  She passed the test.  She boldly accepted her limitations, on the one hand, and passionately jumped every hurdle to get to Jesus, on the other.  Here is the key ingredient of faith that Jesus was testing her for: trust that Jesus was enough.

Let me tease that out for you.  You might also say that she didn’t have her eyes on all of the boundaries in her life, but on the Boundary Breaker.  She fixed her eyes on Jesus, not her problems.  Put yet another way, she believed with her whole heart that Jesus was enough for her.  She imagined a feast at which Jesus was giving bread for all those who “deserved” to eat at his banquet; then she envisioned the crumbs falling from their table.  Those crumbs represent the full extent of God’s grace and how it is enough for everyone around (or under) the table.  Even the crumbs had enough power to heal.

That is how powerful Jesus is; that is why we must not stop when our limitations tell us to stop.  We must only stop when we finally have a taste of Jesus.  At the same moment, we must boldly accept our limitations and throw ourselves completely upon Jesus, the One who is more than enough for us.

Does God test you?  You bet he does.  He wants to train you how to find him through the fog of your own limitations.  Even more, he wants to show you his glory alongside of your miserable story.  Worship is not forgetting your problems and focusing only on God—that’s denial.  Neither is worship fixating on your problems and refusing to see God—that’s depression.  Worship is bringing all of your problems before God and seeing them both, together.  Then you have the privilege of seeing how God can overcome anything.

“And her daughter was healed instantly” (Matthew 15:28).

© Samuel Kee, 2011

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Making the Most of Lent

samuel kee —  March 10, 2011 — 1 Comment

May your love be fuelled by his love.

Lent has begun!  Just as Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness before his public ministry, some Christians choose to sacrifice for 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter.  Just when I’m getting serious about sacrificing lima beans for Lent, I open my Bible to find an amazing story of sacrifice, which is essential for anyone who desires to take their worship to the next level.

This story of sacrifice takes place at the beginning of the passion week of Christ, making it most appropriate in the context of Lent.  Here it is from Mark 14:3-9:

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.  Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume?  It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.  “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.  The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.  She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.  Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Though this story is very rich for discussion, I just want to point out two things.  First, a woman who once had seven demons, meaning that she was completely messed up, makes an astonishingly huge sacrifice for Jesus: she pours an alabaster jar of perfume on Jesus’ head.  This alabaster jar of perfume cost a year’s wages.  Imagine if you sacrificed a year’s wages in one moment like she did.  What would others say if you blew $50,000 in order to express your love for someone?  They’d say, “That’s way over-the-top!”  But her sacrifice was extravagant because her love was extravagant.  Families would own just one alabaster jar of perfume and often pass it along to the next generation.  But Mary chose to empty it all in one moment; how was she able to do this?

Jesus answers our question by saying, “She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.”  How was she able to do this?  She had Jesus’ death in view.  And this second point is how you can make the most out of Lent: worship Jesus with his death in view.  Mary was able to sacrifice so much because she realized how much Jesus was going to sacrifice for her. 

When was the last time you worshipped Jesus with his death in view?  One way of doing it, and forgive me for being crass, is to imagine Jesus with a noose around his neck.  Then worship.  Only when we are able to imagine the noose around his neck will we truly worship Jesus Christ.  Only when his death is in our view will we be able to engage in extravagant, over-the-top sacrifice for God.

Most of the time, we sing our little songs, pray our little prayers, go to church, and make our little sacrifices, without Jesus’ death in view.  We don’t connect our sacrifice with his sacrifice, allowing his extravagant love for us to inform ours for him. 

If I had to choose between a year’s worth of salary or keeping my life, I would obviously choose to keep my life—it would really be no “sacrifice” at all to give up my money so long as I could keep my life.  That is why Mary was able to give up so much: she knew that her sacrifice was nothing compared with his.  Even more, she knew that she would gain far more than she lost. 

May your sacrifice (whether for Lent or just because) remember his sacrifice.  May your love be fuelled by his love. 

In other words, unless your heart is filled with the knowledge of God’s love for you, then your sacrifices will remain small and joyless.

© 2011 by Samuel Kee

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The Ride

samuel kee —  January 3, 2011 — 2 Comments

As I think about that ride, I understand why my son was able to let go.

My son and I went on a bike ride in New Jersey.  Being just two years old at the time, he rode in a child seat that was mounted above my rear tire.  We loved going on long rides through the diverse Jersey countryside, along nostalgic, winding roads. 

All was going well until the road narrowed sharply, forcing me to ride in the actual lane of traffic, instead of on the berm.  In fact, the berm dropped off into a ditch, making it impossible to get out of the road.      

Then, all of the sudden, this quiet country road became infested with traffic.  Cars started whizzing by us, one after another, at a very rapid rate.  What had began as a relaxing and pleasurable ride, turned into a very dangerous situation.

I got scared.  I clutched the curved handle bars of my ten-speed road bike with all I had.  My knuckles turned white and my arms grew stiff, locked at a 90 degree angle.  My skinny tires wobbled nervously back and forth as they struggled to stay both out of the ditch and clear of the invading cars.  I thought for sure that this ride was not going to end well for me or my son.  One car after another continued to rush by us as we headed down a steep hill.

Trying not to go too fast, but being compelled by gravity, I began to descend the hill with great fear and trembling.  Now at top speed, I heard something strange from the back of me that wasn’t there before; it was a tiny voice.

Peering over my steady shoulder, I looked back at my son.  Both of his arms were raised above his head, which was tilted back so that his face was parallel to the sky.  He was calling out at the top of his little lungs, “Hallelujah!”  “Hallelujah!”  “Hallelujah!” 

His eyes were closed as someone might do when smelling a flower, and his face was swollen with a smile.  Again and again, he shouted, “Hallelujah!”

Soon we reached as far as the hill would take us; and the threatening cars ceased as quickly as they started.  Of course I was trembling, as life returned to how it was before the traffic, the hill, and the precarious pavement. 

As I think about that ride, I understand why my son was able to let go: because he knew that I wouldn’t.

Scripture does not want us to miss the location of Jesus right now.  Again and again, Scripture tells us that Jesus is on the throne (see Hebrews 12:2).  To be on the throne is to be seated and in control.  It’s to be steering the bike through all of the conditions of life, whatever the ride may bring. 

Jesus is seated on the throne in front of me and he will not let go.  The more that I comprehend the significance of his position, the more that I will be able to lift my hands in worship along the way.

© 2010 by Samuel Kee

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