Kudo's Commissioner Silver

Kudos to new NBA Commish, Adam Silver for handing Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling  a lifetime ban from the league and the maximum $2.5 million fine for the long-time owner's racist remarks.  Silver did what his predecessor and former commissioner, David Stern would not do despite Sterling's long history of racial prejudice which is now coming to public light.  As Silver said Sterling's comments on the recording were "hateful and harmful."

The ruling came just three days after the release of a recording of the 80-year old and married Sterling making racist comments to his girlfriend.  As far as the Clippers are concerned Mr. Sterling is going to become familiar with the word, "no".  No games, no practices, and no player personnel, or business decisions and no meetings.  

It was the right call and it was big in that most professional sports commissioners serve at the mercy of team owners and often turn a deaf hear, or blind eye toward questionable behavior, conduct, or comments that often result in immediate termination and fines for players and coaches.  Silver's ruling shows there is no distinction between owners, players, coaches and other league officials when it comes to league discipline.  

Understand that Sterling is the rightful owner of the NBA club and will continue to receive proceeds from the club's ticket, souvenir and television sales/rights.  This is a ruling in the right the direction.  Let's be honest: at this moment racists own various businesses all across the U.S., and they do not lose ownership of their company for holding racist views.  But when such behavior comes to public light history proves that they will be punished whether through public humiliation, loss of sales/revenue, a mass exodus by employees, or a loss of public popularity upon the realization of the owners views.  Too many sponsors have already pulled out and the collective public response of the fans, media, NBA players and management toward Sterling's long held views that have become public will be enough to force him to sell the franchise.  And by the way, don't feel sorry for Sterling who is going to profit mightily from the sale of the Clippers.  

Racism will never be fully extinguished this side of eternity, but we must try.  President Lincoln once said, "To sin by silence makes cowards of men."  Those of us in the culture that have never experienced real and ongoing racial prejudice must stand up.  When we do not speak up, or attempt to right the wrongs of known racism and conveniently turn a blind eye on it we are embracing it through silence.  If we do, we become cowards.   

Be Happy!

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a psychology professor at the University of California.  Her book, The How of Happiness is a guide to understanding the basic principles of happiness based on years of research.  Dr. Lyubomirsky has identified eight steps to happiness:

1. Count your blessings
2. Practice acts of kindness
3. Savor life's joys
4. Thank a mentor
5. Learn to forgive
6. Invest time and energy in friends and family
7. Take care of your body
8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardship

These are great practices and Christ-followers can relate to these from a Scriptural perspective:

1. You are blessed (Deuteronomy 28:1-6; Matthew 5:1-11) 
2. Consider/serve others (Mark 12:31; Philippians 2:1-4)
3. Celebrate Joy (Psalm 4:7; Isaiah 55:12)
4. Extend Gratitude to Others (2 Timothy 1:3; Romans 1:8)
5. Practice Forgiveness (Matt. 6:14; Ephesians 4:32)
6. Redeem the time (Ephesians 5:16)
7. Your body is a temple (1 Corinthians 16:19-20)
8. Live courageously with hope (James 1:2; Colossians 1:11; Psalm 28:7)

If you are like me, I'm guessing you need to work on one or more of these areas.  The pursuit of joy instead of happiness would be a better phrase for Christ-followers, but that's more of a semantic debate.  Dr. Lyubomirsky has challenged all of us and God's Word provides the help we need to pursue these eight aspects of life.  Gotta go I've got to work on more than one of these!

This Side of Easter

At Sunday's Easter worship Pastor Charlie Boyd used the backdrop of Noah's story in Genesis to remind us how far humanity had fallen, and as a result of our sin, how desperately we need to be rescued through Christ's Resurrection.

It was a great Easter message, but an early statement he made as he unpacked the depth of human depravity and the human destruction of God's perfect creation really made me stop and think: "We broke it and we blame God!"

How often do we blame God for our mistakes? So many times we make bad decisions, or exercise poor judgment and instead of accepting personal responsibility for the results we dump it on God.  We reason: "If only God had...." or we ask, "Why did God......"

The truth is that God gets blamed for a lot of things He doesn't do, or cause.  We forget that God never intended for us to fall.  He created a perfect world and humans chose the imperfect.  Human depravity and sin should be blamed instead of God.

Pastor Charlie's quote stirred me to think and ask myself, "How often do I blame God?"  How about you?  Is there something for which you are blaming God?  Thank God for Easter grace and the ability to see our flawed lives in light of God's imputed righteousness through Christ!  Grace is God's response to our imperfect and flawed lives.  Instead of blaming God why not ask Him to show us where we made a mistake, poor decision, or sinned?  Then we can humbly accept responsibility and embrace His forgiveness.  Let's live this side of Easter!

A Dark Day

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."


"It is finished!"

Then......

Darkness

Sadness

Hopelessness

Foreboding

Defeat

Drop Your Bags!

In his book, "One Way Love," Pastor Tullian Tchividjian audaciously refers to God's grace as the: "divine vulgarity."   His point is that God's grace is so far beyond our grasp and comprehension that it reeks.  God's grace is bold, free, liberating, inexhaustible, infinite and shocking.  To those who think they are "in control" it is offensive because it cannot be harnessed, or administered like a government program.  We don't get to decide the invitation list for God's grace.  We are NOT God.  Grace is His to dispense whenever, wherever and to whomever He chooses.   

For Christ-followers this week is known as Passion/Holy Week.  It is the week that God demonstrated the depth of His grace to ALL humanity in the most mind-blowing sacrificial act the world has ever known.  A hint, or cue for the depth of God's love that will be demonstrated at Calvary comes earlier in Matthew's gospel when Jesus reflects upon Jerusalem and her response to God's leaders and Word through the ages:

37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

This is bold and downright audacious love.  Jesus offers the heart of a mother hen to the very people (like you and me) that will not only approve of His death on a cross, but cheer for it on Good Friday.  Imagine being there and getting swept up in the emotion of a mob mentality chanting, "Crucify, Crucify!"  

Control is about one thing. The inability to humble oneself in the face of grace.  The trumped up charges, the mock trial and the insults can all be reduced to pride, the father of control.  Prideful, arrogant men refused to accept the remote possibility that God's love outweighed the law they had manipulated and twisted and His outrageous love was embodied in the Christ standing in the flesh before them.  Pride is the worst kind of blindness because it convinces us that what we see is real.  Instead of relying on God's infinite vision we settle for our own limited sight.  

The Law of God (better yet, the interpretation of the one's citing it) has always been our Achilles.  By itself the law displaces pride and challenges us to be obedient to God.  The problem is that we use the law to justify, or suit our prejudices, beliefs and personal opinions.  We come to the law with our personal baggage.  Tullian writes:

"The law offends us because it tells us what to do---and most of the time, we hate anyone telling us what to do.  But ironically, grace offends us even more, because it tells us that there is nothing we can do, that everything has already been done.  And if there is something we hate more than being told what to do, it's being told that we can't do anything, that we can't earn anything----that we are helpless, week and needy.....Grace generates panic because it wrestles both control and glory out of our hands." (pp.72-72)

Jesus' obedience is what enables us to stand before God empty-handed, no baggage.  HE has freed us from the tyranny of control, pride, arrogance-----sin.  His death, burial and resurrection don't abolish the law, but fulfill it.  The Law ultimately brings glory to God.  Jesus' sacrificial act brings the ultimate glory to God.  We can't do it.  We never could.  In Tullian's words: 

The Gospel declares that our guilt has been atoned for, the Law has been fulfilled.  So we don't need to live under the burden of trying to appease the judgment we feel; in Christ, the ultimate demand has been met, the deepest judgment has been satisfied.  The internal voice that says, "Do this and live" gets drowned out by the external voice that says, "It is finished!"

At Holy Week, Jesus took the weight of ALL our baggage.  The weight has been eliminated.  Drop your bag and stand before a Holy and Righteous God knowing that He has done what we, or any human is incapable of doing for ourself!  Drop your bags and live free!

  

Going Back

They tell you (I'm not sure who "they" is) to never go back to a house, or neighborhood where you lived years before.  I'm not sure why, but I think it's because we tend to remember nostalgically and it never looks the same as it did during those years.  "They," are probably right, but I've never been good at heeding their counsel.

For some an old neighborhood, or house evokes painful memories.  Remember the scene in the movie Forrest Gump when Jenny returns to the house of her childhood where she experienced abuse?  It's all run down and she begins throwing rocks at the house and crying.  Forest holds her and says in his pragmatic demeanor, "Sometimes I guess there just aren't enough rocks to throw!"  Powerful scene and anyone who experienced a painful childhood can relate.  But some of us are fortunate to have good memories of the places and houses where we lived in years past.

Recently I had the opportunity to drive by the house where we lived in Lexington, 23 years ago.  It was a brand new, "starter" home.  Our son was seven, and our daughter was one-year old when we moved there.  It was my first full-time position on a church staff  and we were so young in so many ways.

Despite only living there for three years there were lots of memories made in that house.  I remember our neighbors.  All of us were in our early 30's with young children.  Oh we had our share of stressors and struggles living there because I was not only trying to pastor a small congregation, but three days a week I would commute to the seminary in Louisville, trying to complete my degree.   Having a baby in diapers added to the stress.  However, I think often think about those days and how simpler life was even as young parents serving in our first church and commuting to grad school.

Our son made that place his "fortress of fun".  Countless forts were built in the yard and inside that house on rainy/winter days.  He and his friend were free to run up and down the sidewalks between houses without worrying about traffic, or weirdos.  I remember painting his room bright yellow because he wanted a yellow room.  His school teacher in Lexington was one of our favorites because she challenged him and wouldn't let him coast.  He loved her too.

Our daughter learned to walk in that house and began her toddler years.  I remember going to the corner of the room where her crib was under the watchful eye of our Chow-Chow, Benson, the best dog we ever had, something our whole family agrees upon.  I remember trying to study in that small house with a toddler banging toys and having a blast in the toy box.  Next door there was a little girl about the same age.  They loved to play together.

I remember the Christmas when I pulled into a snowy driveway and watch my wife and kids through the kitchen windows after being at the hospital for a couple who had just lost their infant son in childbirth.  I remember seeing them (the kids standing on chairs) huddled around my wife at the stove making cookies and being simultaneously overcome with gratitude to God for my family and grief for that couple.

Something called "AOL" ("You've got mail") had just started.  I didn't own a cell phone.  No one texted and people actually spent time talking together and hanging out instead of posting it on FaceBook.  Life was simpler.

Ah those really were good days.  Tough and challenging days, but good days.