Don’t Supersize Them

Scripture: Matthew 19.16-22; Genesis 22.1-14


Morgan Spurlock knows junk food. In fact he made it his goal to eat only McDonald’s burgers, fries, shakes, and cokes every meal, three times a day, for thirty days. At the end of his personal experiment he had gained thirty pounds, complained of fatigue and other ailments, and made an award-winning documentary about it all. “Supersize Me” is Spurlock’s take on the perils of eating too much junk food.

Is there, I wonder, a danger in consuming junk values? Is there a danger to us, and our kids, in getting “supersized” by the values of the culture – values like earn more money, validate yourself through work and achievement, put your own personal happiness first. Are these good values? Are these values that help us be human, help us be godly?

Someone comes up to Jesus and says, “Teacher, what must I do further to ensure my place in heaven?” The someone who asks that question is a product of his culture. He is a poster-boy for first century Judaism. He is good-looking, educated, articulate, influential, and morally grounded. The man could get elected for just about anything. And he knows it.

What’s interesting here is, Jesus knows that he knows it. That’s why Jesus asks the questions he does – they are questions that Jesus knows the young man will do well on. “I have kept all these.” On the SAT’s for religion, the man has a perfect score. He loves getting the right answer, particularly in front of a crowd of admiring people. Just to bask in his own glory a little longer, he says to Jesus, “Is there anything else?” fully expecting there is nothing else, nothing that he needs or lacks, or has failed to achieve. If I’m not perfect, I’m darn close, thinks the young man.. But Jesus surprises him and his crowd of admirers. “Oh, one more thing,” Jesus says, “If you wish to be perfect, go sell all that you own and give the money to the poor, so that you real treasure will not be here on earth but in heaven. Then come follow me.”

This young man couldn’t do it. At least not then. The Scripture says he went away grieving, sad and upset, because he loved his stuff. He loved his life and himself the way it was. He was a product of his culture and its values. He didn’t know Jesus was going to suggest there was something wrong with that. Do you know that I’m going to suggest there is something wrong with our cultural values?


What kind of values are we teaching our kids? Let me suggest a few. You must do well in school so that you can be self-sufficient. If you play sports, you should win, at the very worst, place. For all the lip service we give to sportsmanship and teamwork, kids know that “winner-takes-all” in the hearts of the public and maybe, their parents as well. If you doubt that this goes on, go to a high school football game, a hockey game, a Little League game. See if you can enjoy the game while Joe Parent is screaming at the coaches and the umpires.

Let me insert this caveat – am I saying that competition is all wrong? No. Am I saying that we shouldn’t want our kids to do their best? No. Pursuit of excellence, individually and as part of a team, is a noble and godly pursuit. But when rightly pursued, excellence is not only about the goal or the prize, but it’s also about, and maybe mostly about, what it takes to get there. Roger Clemens is a future Hall of Fame, Big league pitcher because he trains and prepares better than anyone else. He knows the value of hard work and discipline. The victories and the awards are a byproduct of the pursuit of excellence.

We can teach our kids who strive in the classroom, the vo-tech, in the band and on the soccer team, that how we go about conducting ourselves toward our goal is as important as the goal itself.

Now, I need to make a confession – I want my boys to succeed. There is a part of me that wants them to be first in everything. I want them to be liked. I want them to be cool. But you know what? That’s not what Jesus wants for them. Jesus wants them to give their best, not to us, not to sports, not to making money, not to this world – to him. God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and offer him as a sacrifice on the mountain.” Do we trust God enough to let him have everything about our kids? Is the Father in heaven trustworthy to us?

Sometimes as a pastor and as a youth pastor I fear that the picture of faith that we give our children and youth is that it’s just one more building block of success, it’s badge that you earn. It’s a trophy for your bedroom shelf. And this attitude in us parents is evident every time cultural values and activities take precedence over spiritual growth. You know, we can’t be in church too often because we have this game, this concert, this trip to make. We feel like we’re being balanced in our parenting and we are shaping balanced kids. There’s something to be said for that. But again, Jesus wants disciples on are radical, sold-out, countercultural, and deeply in love with Him. From the cultural perspective that looks decidedly unbalanced.

Donald Miller says that’s not very fashionable or cool these days. “The problem with Christian belief- I mean real Christian belief ,the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell – is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.

Another one of our cultural values that we are pretty proud of is “Passion.” As long as someone is passionate about something, then it’s a good thing. Doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are passionate about it. Again Miller writes, “Passion is tricky, though, because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something. If a rapper is passionately rapping about great his rap is, his passion is pointing to nothing. He isn’t helping anything. His beliefs are self-serving and shallow. . .What people believe is important.

I want you to pause and think about that last sentence. What people believe is important. What our kids believe is important. And as someone who talks to kids and listens to kids express what they believe, I can tell you , they believe some righteous and beautiful things. They also believe some pretty ignorant, shallow, and messed up things. All of which to say is, they are like you and me – they need to grow some more.

But what message do we communicate when we put the development of fastball or a musical instrument ahead of the nurture of spirituality, faith, and character? I’ll tell what we communicate – it doesn’t matter what you believe.

Someone once said that what we do is really what we believe. And if we’re honest, many times our lives communicate this belief – I am the most important person in the world. It’s all about me.

Is this the belief that we want to shape our kids with? Do we want to feed our kids junk values? Do we want to make little clones of the excesses of our culture? Or do we want to shape them with the belief that a loving and passionate relationship with Jesus Christ will set them free to become truly human and truly full of the life that never ends?

The other week I talked about the birth our my first son and what a memorable day for me it was. It was one of my best days. There’s something I didn’t tell you about that experience. When I held Seth in my arms for the first time and I called him by name, I got on one knee with him and I prayed this prayer:

Lord, thanks for this amazing gift that I hold in my arms. Thank you for Seth. Protect him. Help him to grow strong. I also ask this one thing: I don’t care, Lord, if he grows up to be rich or successful. I just want him to grow up to have a heart for you God. That’s all I ask for.

I thought that was a good prayer then and I think it is a good prayer now. As you go to prayer, will you pray that prayer for your son or daughter? Will you pray that for our children and grandchildren in this church?

Give Your Kids a Consistent Message

Scripture: Genesis 25.21-34; Hebrews 12.4-11


“Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.” In some ways that sentence tells you all you need to know about the strife that would follow between the two brothers. Why do we give your hearts to some more than others? Sometimes the reasons are not that mysterious or lofty. Isaac’s reason for loving Esau – “he had a taste for wild game.” Therefore the son who would provide it would be his favorite naturally. That might sound trivial and silly to you, but what are some of the reasons today’s parents favor one child over another? Older son does better at sports than younger. Sister gets better grades than brother. We gravitate sometimes to one child over another for some pretty flimsy reasons. People who work with children and youth can tell you that there are some kids that you just instinctively like and there are others, well, you have to guard yourself against displaying outright hostility toward them.

The key here is that, though we may find ourselves endeared to a child for their gifts and skills and personalities, we must never play favorites when it comes to loving our children. All of you baby boomers grew up on the Brady Bunch that classic blended family where everything had happy endings. One memorable episode is when the middle daughter, Jan, the classic middle child goes into a funk over how popular her older sister Marsha is. Everywhere Jan goes at school, at home, at work, she hears how great Marsha is. Finally, Jan expresses her frustration with the classic line – “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” Do you think our kids ever feel the frustration of being constantly compared to their siblings? Maybe Esau felt that way too – Jacob, Jacob, Jacob!

It is important that our kids hear and see a consistent message that they are loved no matter their accomplishments or failures or personalities. The kid with the moody or difficult personality must know they are as loved as the kid with the sunny disposition.

That brings me to my second point: the message of love is often communicated in the boundaries and framework of discipline that we provide for our kids. It’s easy sometimes to look at our own parents and point out where they went wrong. It’s so easy and enjoyable, in fact, that let’s do it now! I remember basically two rules that my dad gave me for growing: Don’t be late for supper and don’t let the fire in the furnace go out. I found out the hard way what happened when I violated those rules. Now, all in all, those are bad rules to have, but in retrospect, them being the only rules he gave me seems a bit odd. It seems there could have been more, and more important stuff for him to cover with me.

My dad isn’t the only one. One of the rules Jennifer got from her dad growing up was this: Always kill porcupines when you see them. I’m not kidding. In fact, he still has that rule. The other day we were visiting and I mentioned to my father-in-law that we had seen a porcupine crossing the road in Maple Hollow the night before. He got a gleam in his eye and said, “Did you kill it?”

Sometimes our rules don’t seem big enough for the relationships that we are trying to foster. Preachers have a term for this. It’s called majoring in the minors. We advise against it. As parents we must avoid the trap of majoring on minor stuff. It’s so easy to become nags and broken records about relatively trivial stuff especially when we aren’t communicating the big stuff. Am I saying kids shouldn’t be made to clean their rooms and take out the garbage and do their homework? Of course they should. But discipline must always come in the context of the overarching message – you are loved. We are proud of you.

There was a prophecy concerning Jacob and Esau – they are two nations in your belly Rebekkah, and Jacob is the greater one. Unfortunately, we see those prophecies and think we need to make them happen. Maybe sometimes God, rather than prescribing what should happen, is describing what will happen. Like when the Scripture says God hardened pharaoh’s heart, I’ve always wondered if God simply knew this was going to happen and went with it rather than made it happen himself. Maybe Isaac and Rebekkah spent too much time worrying about who was going to be greater and who was going to get the birthright and the inheritance, when they should have spent the time fostering a consistent message of love and unity in their family.

The episodes we read about this family in Genesis give the impression that they were not a tight knit, Brady kind of family. I believe Isaac loved Rebekkah, but somehow that didn’t translate into a sense of unity. Maybe, they didn’t let that love show enough.

The story in the movie On Golden Pond is one of a troubled relationship between a daughter, played by Jane Fonda, and her aging father, played by her real-life father, Henry Fonda. In movie it is apparent that every time these two are around each other tension builds and sparks fly. At one point, the daughter vents her undisguised contempt and venom towards her father onto her mother, calling her father an s.o.b. The mother immediately slaps her daughter’s face and, shaking with rage says, that s.o.b. is my husband and I’ll thank you not to talk about him that way around me anymore.

It’s a powerful message – one that parents would do well to draw a lesson from. We know the faults of our spouses better than anyone else. It’s easy to be their harshest critics. For the sake of your kids, don’t be. For the sake of your marriage too, but at the very least, for the sake of your kids, parents must be each other’s strongest allies. Show your kids that you love the one you married. Show your kids that you and your spouse are a united front when it comes to love and discipline. See cause kids learn, if it works with you, to divide and conquer you. They learn to play mom against dad and dad against mom. Jennifer and I disagree about boundaries and methods of discipline sometimes, but we have learned the value of saying, “Whatever your mother said is what I say.”

I know divorced couples with kids who have learned to communicate this message with their kids, and it makes for a better family situation and it above all, benefits their children.
Jacob and Esau missed that message. And you can see in their family tree the same mistakes of favoritism being repeated over and over. Isaac was favored over Ishmael. Jacob was favored over Esau. Jacob’s son, Joseph, was favored over his brothers. And there is always trouble because of it. But maybe the best message in the story of Jacob and Esau is this: as messed up as this family was, God still blessed and used them for many good things.

You may think your family is messed up too. God is with messed up families and God uses messed up people. Let me leave you with this: “Children, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his child.”

Parents are People too: The gift that makes you laugh and cry

Scripture: Genesis 18.1-15, 21.1-7


I was bench coach the other day at my son’s baseball game. I was bench coach on this particular day because I felt like sitting. This boy sat next to me, waiting his turn at bat; and as I watched the game I could feel him watching me. This is how he initiated conversation:

“Did you cut yourself shaving?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you have to put a piece of tissue on the cut?”

“Yeah. . . I did that.”

Then there was about a ten second pause and then this:

“You have hair in your ears. That’s cool.”

“Uh, Candler, I think it’s your turn to. . .”

“You have hair in your nose too.”

Don’t kids say the darndest things? As Bill Cosby said, “I love kids. I used to be one.” But they’re not always cute and cuddly and sometimes they do exasperating things. They can drive you to intense fury and then surprise you with sublime joy. They are a gift that makes you laugh and cry, sometimes in the same day, the same hour, the same minute.
The key word here, the kernel of truth is gift. Children are a gift.

If you lived in Abram and Sarah’s time this truth would be so obvious as to be laughable. Having a child, particularly a son, an heir, was hugely important. In Genesis 15 God promises to bless Abram and all Abram can say is. “Lord what can you possibly give me that would matter, since I don’t have a child to share it with?”

Right there we know where Abram’s dreams and sadness lies. He is “ a man of advanced years” and he is looking over his life because he thinks it’s over. And he has no children. And because of this, in spite of everything else he has seen and done, the places he has gone and the joys he has known, in spite of the wife who has traveled with him in his adventures all these years and continues to love him, in spite of all this. . . .Abram finds that his life has been a disappointment. He can think of only one thing that would change this judgment of his years – a child, a legacy – the one thing he knows is beyond hope.

I don’t have to tell you that Abram and Sarah’s sadness and disappointment has been experienced by so many since. Couples who have longed in vain to become pregnant, and singles who have dreamed of children of their own, live with this disappointment. The message that children are a gift is such an obvious one to these folks that it is almost a message not needed. But this sermon is not for them. It is for you who have had or will someday have children of your own. It’s a message that bears repeating – children are a gift.

We say we know that. Only puppy dogs rival children for affection on the cuteness scale in our culture. And yet, sometimes, far too often, our children get treated like nuisances, inconveniences, stray pets that no one wants anymore.

One of our retired educators told me about meetings he had with parents over discipline problems that the child was creating at school. This educator told me that many times parents would come in genuinely concerned to correct the situation and see their child improve and grow. Sometimes a parent would come in and confess to them that they were simply overwhelmed by their parenting responsibilities, they seemingly had tried everything to make their child listen and nothing seemed to work. They were exhausted and discouraged parents. But even in these cases, their exhaustion and discouragement pointed to a real love for their children.

But there was another kind of parent, this educator told me. This parent came in not so much exhausted or discouraged, just disgusted and disinterested. The conversation between the educator and this kind of parent went something like this:

Educator: “Thank you for coming in today. We are concerned about Johnny. Not only is he underperforming on his schoolwork but his behavior shows that there other serious problems as well.”

Parent: “The kid is no good. And I don’t care what you do with him. I never wanted the “&!#(“ in the first place.”

Oh, I forgot to mention one detail in this true story. The child being discussed was sitting in the office as they heard how much they were wanted by their parent.


We say children are a gift. Too many children, through what they see and hear, think they are an inconvenience and a nuisance. They’ve been told too many times to mistake the message – “you are unwanted and worthless.”

It’s a cliché perhaps, but peal back the skin on a messed up adult and you find a child who was unwanted and unloved. There is in perhaps no greater calling in this life than to love children as parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and friends.


Abram and Sarah were at grandparents age with no hope of being grandparents. And into this barren situation comes a gift. A prophecy. God says to Abram and Sarah you are going to have a child. What’s more you’ll be grandparents and greatgrandparents and. . .well look up into night sky and see the stars, count them if you can – your descendants will be more.

There’s a scene in the movie City Slickers in which three best friends are riding horseback together and talking about baseball and marriage, the important things in life ( not necessarily in that order) and one asks the question, “What’s the best day you’ve ever had? And don’t say the birth of your kids ‘cause that’s too easy.”

But I say it’s gotta be the birth of my sons. The day I got married was great, but I can truly say I didn’t know what love for my wife was then like I know now. But the day Seth was born. . . the moment I took him in my arms and spoke his name to him, that was a moment I will never forget. In fact I look at him in the same way sometimes, with awe and wonder that I could take part in making and shaping such a creature. Joy and wonder. Joy and wonder. I laughed and cried that moment and that day.

Does that mean I always look at my children with joy and wonder? No. Sometimes I look at them in anger. Sometimes in disappointment or sadness. Sometimes I fail to look at them when they really need me too. But the best reminder to me always of who they are and who I ought to be to them is this: they are God’s gifts to you, Rich. Treat them accordingly.

God’s prophets told Abram and Sarah they were gonna get an eight-pound gift.
And they laughed. They laughed as desperate people laugh when God tells them that good things are finally coming their way. And they kept laughing all through the pregnancy and birth. Well, Abram laughed all the way. Presumably Sarah’s laughter was interrupted with the occasional scream. But they both laughed as they named their son, Isaac, Son of Laughter.

Children are little people that take us to places we have forgotten and to a trust and faith that without which we cannot see God. These next several weeks we will focus on some general principles in being good parents and mentors to these gifts that God has gifted us all with to love and care for.

Desperate People

Scripture: Matthew 9.9-13, 18-26


The woman was desperate. She was sick. And she had been sick for a long time, twelve years and counting. Her illness is not exactly the kind you want to put on a prayer list. It’s a private problem. And there are all these people around. She has to fight to even get to see Him. And really, she has no guarantees that the man will even do anything for her. But she’s desperate. She says to herself, “If only I can reach out and touch him. . .maybe something of his power or I don’t know, his goodness. . .something of him will rub off on me.

This woman’s faith is so simple, so raw; and some would say, so naïve. If this woman actually came to church with her prayer request, she would be met with awkward silence. And she knows it. Churches sometimes don’t do too well with desperate people. We don’t really want people to show up in all the ragged and neon reality of their problems. Secretly, we would prefer it if people kind of cleaned up their acts on their own before they came to church, then, of course, they are welcome. We know people have drinking problems, but don’t bring it here. We know addictions abound, we don’t wanna hear about ‘em. We know relationships go on the rocks, but it’s better if we pretend all is well.

Mike Yaconelli writes about desperate people in his book, Messy Spirituality. Yaconelli writes about the “myth of fixing ourselves”:

For a period of time we were lucky enough to have a housekeeper. She would
Come in once a week to dust, vacuum, and clean every little out-of-the-way
Corner of our house. I dreaded the day she came, because my wife and I would
Spend all morning cleaning the house for the housekeeper! We didn’t want
The house to be dirty; or what would the housekeeper think?!

For some strange reason, we have been communicating this fix-it-yourself mentality
To desperate people of all stripe, including ourselves. The irony is that everyone, you and me and them, we are all desperate people, or have been at one time or another. We have all been sick, worried, low on cash, low on self-esteem, full of shame, full of doubt, full of depression. You’ve heard of “desperate housewives.” Well, how about desperate salesmen, desperate dental hygenists, desperate plumbers, desperate preachers. They may not all make for good television, but I guarantee you, they would make for reality shows that were actually real.


If our spirituality is really of the messed up variety, are we in fact, all lost causes, sinners who play at being church and being good? No. Our sin is in the hiding, just like when Adam and Eve first hid.
It’s only when we pretend that we don’t know what real problems are that we fall into phoniness and self-righteousness, like modern day Pharisees. Or like Mark Twain once described some people, “They were good in the worst sense of the word.”

If phoniness, awkwardness, and pretension are what desperate people have often received from the church, why do they keep coming back with any hope that help can be found there? Well, it’s Jesus. He seems to like desperate people. And they like him.

Take Matthew the tax collector. Jesus brings this surprising word to the tax office. Your days of trying to find meaning in money and cheating to get it are over. It’s probably not an accident that Matthew doesn’t follow Jesus to the synagogue (where he would be looked upon as phony or desperate or both), but instead has Jesus over at his house and invites some other desperate people to come too. Matthew has a party – which is, of course, the proper response when you have been desperate and God has met you in your desperation. Celebrate! Blow the joint. Give thanks.

Eugene Peterson writes, “When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn’t go off and leave us – he enters into our trouble and saves us.”


Remember, Jesus once told the good religious people that the tax collectors and prostitutes would be getting into heaven ahead of them. Is it because of the prostitutes heart of gold? No. It’s because, as C.S. Lewis writes, “Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”

I’m thinking of creating name tags for everyone in our church. On these tags will be not only our names, but also our current desperate struggle with weakness and sin. The name tags will be big. Everyone will be able to see them from some distance. “Hey Bob, how’s it going. I see you’re still dealing with that blowup you had at work last month.” And then Bob says, “That’s right Pete. Thanks for asking. How’s your son doing with the drug addiction?” No hiding. No pretending. All our mess for the world and Christ to see.

We have desperate people in our building every day. And I’ll be honest with you, it frightens me sometimes. It’s scary when someone sits in my office and says, “Rich, I’m desperate, can you help me?” Well, I already know they’re desperate or they wouldn’t be seeking help from me. I feel very inadequate. I want to help, I do. I want to wave a magic wand and make their troubles go away. But I haven’t found that wand.


I had a former youth of mine come speak to our youth group not long ago. Jeremy was there through a difficult journey of doing and selling drugs. He served time in a federal prison, and in the midst of the mess he had made of his life, Jeremy found Jesus. Or Jesus found him. Jeremy spoke about God’s working in his life through the mess. After he was done I asked him, “What could the church (of which I was pastor) had done differently to help you make better choices and to help you through the aftermath of the poor ones?” His answer was pretty simple – “love me. Just love me. I got used to going into church,” Jeremy said, “and having people stare at me and whisper because of what they heard about me. I wanted them to love me.”

Jeremy experienced a prison conversion, and prison conversions, like deathbed ones, are sometimes met with joking and scoffing among the unreligious and the religious alike. But what that scoffing and joking is really saying is that love and faith are a joke. If they are, then they are God’s joke. And every time Jesus meets a desperate person, he smiles at them, touches them, many times heals them, and says something like, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” And he winks, as if to say, “This will be our little joke.”