Speak Something into Nothing

I want you to look at a picture by Brian Kershinik, courtesy of Donald Miller’s blog, www.donaldmilleris.com,
titled, “Nativity.”


Notice that the holy family is a focus, but they are not centered in the picture.


You don’t have to be an artist or a critic to see that what commands your eye is the host of angels or saints who are in movement. They are flowing in white toward the Christ Child, but they are not stopping there. Even the size of the baby tells us something. In this painting, the baby is smaller than he might be, as if to say, that Jesus came not to point us to himself but to lead us on to the Father. We come,, like Wise Men, to see Christ in order to see God.

Movement toward God – this was the mission of John the baptizer. He said I’m not here to point to myself and say follow me. I am here to prepare the way for One greater than I. And the irony is that the very public event when John points to Jesus says there is, is also the place where the Trinity speaks, the Voice of the Father, the tangible presence of the Spirit alighting on Jesus like a dove.

If you were there that day, then the words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wouldn’t be just words, would they? You would that they are words speaking to a reality.

In our Call to Worship reading in Genesis it says that God was creating the Universe, and he made the earth,, but so far, it was nothing. It was a black void – Chaos.

“Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness “ writes Eugene Peterson. “God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.”

And then God spoke something into the nothing. And something happened.

Donald Miller tells the story of Bob Goff and his family. One New Year’s Day a man in San Diego named Bob Goff was sitting around the house with his family and the kids were bored. If you don’t like college football, let’s face it, it’s a boring day. Goff believed it was a sin to be bored on New Year’s Day. So Bob Goff asked his kids, what can we do to honor the fact that God gave them this day to enjoy?

The idea they came up with was a parade. They went around the neighborhood knocking on doors telling everybody they were having a parade, today. They invited everybody not to come watch the parade, but to “be in the parade.” That was the rule. Everybody has to be in the parade. There are no bystanders in this gift of the day.

They had the parade and ended it with a cookout. Ten years later hundreds of people participate in the annual New Years Day Parade in the Goff’s neighborhood. They elect a Grand Marshall. This year it was the mailman who rode on a float and tossed letters. The elect a Queen, usually a resident of a local retirement home.

“People on Bob’s street know each other better because of the parade. The children grow up thinking New Year’s Day is a special celebration honoring the miracle of a day, “ Miller writes.

“It strikes me how wonderful it is God gave us time. He had made us characters in a grand epic. The epic is meaningful but there are dark forces trying to convince us it is meaningless, worth nothing, and therefore boring. Bob’s family decided to fight back.”

They spoke something into nothing.


I’ve realized my favorite stories are stories where people decide to take a journey, because you can’t just sit and do nothing. My favorite western, Lonesome Dove, recounts how Gus and Call decide one day, let’s go we’re going to Montana with a herd of cattle. The epic Lord of the Rings is really just one long walk. And then there is that other epic story in which our two heroes embark on a physical and spiritual journey to reach their Promised Land. I’m talking, if course, about the movie Dumb and Dumber.

There is the scene where Lloyd and Harry return to their dump of an apartment. Lloyd has just lost his job as a chauffer – “they get really crazy when you leave scene of an accident” – and they realize they don’t have much really going for them in their present situation.

“We got no food. We got jobs. Our pets heads are falling off!”

That speaks for all of us, doesn’t it?

And Lloyd turns to his friend Harry and says, “I’m tired of being a nobody. Most of all, I’m tired of having nobody.” And he convinces Harry to embark on a quest for the place of his dreams, a place called Aspen. And they go.

Even though they’re pretty dumb, even Lloyd and Harry speak something into nothing.


We don’t have sit around and be bored, eking out an existence that sort of resembles living. If we’re bored, it’s our own fault.

Victor Frankl wrote the now classic Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl is a survivor of the Nazi death camps. His father, mother, and his wife died in the camps. If anyone had an excuse to throw in the towel at the meaninglessness and grind of life, it was Frankl and his fellow inmates. But they didn’t do that.

Frankl argues that what kept people alive in spirit was their belief that life expected something of them, that life needed them to at least die with dignity, to play a role that would teach the world the important lesson of honor, and also of evil.

“We had to learn ourselves and we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but what life expected from us,” he writes.

Life expects something from us. And to say Life expects something us is another way of saying God expects something from us.

God expects us not to just sit and be bored. God expects us to speak something into nothing. He expects us to live by the baptism and power of His Spirit and work with Him to do the things that He does. So how do we speak something into nothing?

Have a parade. Invite people in your neighborhood over for a party. Take time to mentor a kid. Host a small group Bible Study. Ask someone to be a prayer partner with you. The whole point of our Talent Program was not, “Look how much we made.” The point was, “Look at the cool stuff God has given us. How can we use this to bless others?”

The mission of our church is to “Make Disciples and Create Community.” What is one thing this winter you can do that will contribute to our mission?

We are on our way to someplace good. We are on our way to Some One good.

Innocents Lost

The Wise Men from the East came to worship the Christ Child. They stopped first in Jerusalem to ask for help in finding the babe. As I mentioned a few weeks back, Herod feigned belief in the Messiah, saying, “that I, too, may worship him.” What Herod really believed in was Herod. He soon proved what he believed with his actions. When the Wise Men didn’t return to Herod with the location of the baby, Herod was furious. He took out his anger on the newborns of Bethlehem. He had them all killed, in the vain attempt that one of them might be the child in question. He killed what has been conservatively estimated at maybe, thirty-five babies, because he feared one baby. Herod killed these babies because he could. He was the law of the land.

If you think we live in better or more civilized times, think again. What is the law of the land in our own very religious country?

According to the Supreme Court of the United States, when is it permissible to abort and unborn child?

Is it only in the first trimester of a pregnancy? Or does the law allow for it for serious reasons in the second trimester, and forbids it at all in the third?

Sociologist James Hunter says this is the commonly held view among the public in its understanding of the law of the land. Hunter calls this “mass legal illiteracy.”

In fact, Roe v. Wade and its companion decisions constitute the law as presently imposed by the Supreme Court. And that law allows abortion at any time for any reason up through the fully formed baby emerging halfway out of the birth canal.

As Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon has written, it is the most permissive abortion regime in the Western World. The result of this permissiveness is a lot more than thirty-five babies killed a year.

When asked when abortion should not be permitted, a great majority of Americans lists reasons for which 90 percent of abortions are done. Mostly, abortions are done as a means of birth control. That is a point no one can argue against. Our society uses abortion as birth control and makes human beings disposable objects – the remains to be thrown out with the trash. When occasionally, but predictably, we read about a young girl who abandons her baby in a dumpster, everyone is dutifully outraged. But it’s only a matter of timing isn’t it? If she would have abandoned her baby a little sooner, no one would have noticed.

Folks, we don’t know what is going on.

In our recent presidential election there was the usual talk, and then some, among Christians that maybe we shouldn’t be “single-issue” voters. In other words, don’t make your opposition to abortion alone determine how you vote. I agree that there are many important issues to consider leading up to an election. But being pro-life isn’t just one issue among many, it is a fundamental issue.

It’s been said that you can gauge the moral temperature of a society by how that society treats its very young and its very old, its oddities and its infirm, its members without a voice. How a society in fact cares for the unborn determines the foundation upon which a house of justice is built. Show me a society confused about when life begins and I’ll show you a society on its way to euthanizing its elderly and mentally challenged members as well.

There are many admirable qualities in President-elect Obama, and much nonsense was said about him in the campaign race, but this much is fact – by his own voting record as a state senator he is the most consistent supporter of legalized abortion ever nominated by a major party.

He summed up his rationale for the unlimited abortion license by saying he “didn’t want young women punished with a baby.”

When asked at the Saddleback forum hosted by Rev. Rick Warren the question when does life begin, Obama answered lamely that the decision was “above his pay grade.” Well, then, let’s consider this:


“Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. . .” Jeremiah 1.5


According to the Bible, God is clear when life begins, and it begins well before a child visibly forms in the womb, let alone when the child is coming out of the womb. Presumably, this decision is in line with God’s pay grade.

As a Christian, President-elect Obama should know this. I’m not questioning his faith. I suppose on this issue he is a thorough product of his political culture. He makes Bill Clinton look very pro-life, and that’s saying something. What this means for our country in the days ahead is not known, but you can take an educated guess. The Freedom of Choice Act is currently before Congress and may be as extreme a measure as the nation has ever seen. If enacted it would invalidate for the entire country all restrictions on abortion before viability that any states currently impose. These restrictions include – parental notification, waiting periods, and partial-birth abortion bans. Obama was one of the sponsors of this bill in the Senate and has vowed that one of the first things he would do as president is to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

The Hyde Amendment, named after the late Senator Henry Hyde, currently prohibits federal funding of abortions. This Congress and president may sweep that away as well. A new health care reform proposal will almost certainly try to include provisions that mandate abortion training for doctors and abortion services for hospitals.

As I’ve suggested, we, the American public have been ignorant of our own laws and practices. It’s time we wake up. I think the majority of Americans will want to oppose many of the changes I have suggested. On the question of when does life begin, the science is so very clearly in favor of the pro-life position. For example, I received an email a few months ago from friends who are pregnant. The email included the picture of the sonogram they had just received. I didn’t need to ask them when doyou think life begins. It’s a given. People like my friends make up a silent majority that is the pro-life movement today.

But even if this were not so, would it matter? If you took a poll and it said that ninety percent of folks say abortion is ok, would that make it ok?

As Bishop Will Willimon of the Alabama Conference has stated in regards to abortion, “Since when did believers ever care about opinion polls? We are not making this stuff up ourselves. We are declaring a truth that has been revealed to us.”

Yes. We are proclaimers of a revelation, the Revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe that life is not a “burden” but a gift, even when that gift comes upon us at inconvenient times, finding us under-prepared. Isn’t this always how life comes?

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.”

God is a Giver

What makes Christmas, Christmas for you? What are the traditions you love? Is there one Christmas you would point to as the best Christmas ever?

I think back to memorable Christmases from my childhood. When I was kid we would make things in school to give to our family as Christmas presents. This was particularly important to me as I had no money to buy presents. But, boy, did I make presents. The present that I made the most, that I was best at I guess, was the now classic ceramic ashtray. Remember, this was in a time before everyone on television and every where else was telling us that smoking is the worst thing in the world. Back then, people on television were telling us that smoking was good for us. So the fact that our teachers in school were showing us kids how to make ashtrays sort of made sense. The ceramic ashtray had both a practical and artistic dimension to it. I made it in different colors and in different sizes and shapes. I would make them and my teacher would fire those bad boys in the kiln at school every year. And every year I would wrap up the best ashtray of the bunch and give it. . .to my grandmother. In case you’re wondering, my grandmother didn’t smoke – she never had smoked, didn’t smoke, and never would smoke to her dying day. But every year I would give her a new ashtray to go along with the other ones, and she would thank me and hug me like it was the best Christmas gift she had ever received. Which prompted me to think, “Then I know what I’m giving you next year. . .”

Another Christmas memory that I have is of my father. Every year the gift that he would receive was a box of chocolate-covered cherries. He liked them. He would request them. That’s all he wanted. So my mom would get him a box and he would unwrap them every year and be pleased. One year though, I watched him open that box of cherries and it seemed to me a sad thing. Here he was the dad and he only received one measly present, and, in my mind, a poor one at that. (A little disclosure: I didn’t like those chocolate-covered cherries. Couldn’t we give him peanut butter meltaways instead?) So I walked over to his chair and put my arm around his shoulder and said I was sorry he only got that lousy box of chocolate-covered cherries.

Then I said, “Here, I made you this really nice ashtray.”

Maybe your “best Christmas ever” has to do with a special gift you gave or received; or a special time with family. The Bible talks about the best Christmas ever. It starts with a verse:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3.16

What made that first Christmas great to God was what he got to do. He got to give the Universe what he had been saving up to give – a Savior.


See, Giving is what Love does, how Love expresses itself. Giving is the heart of Love and therefore, at the heart of God. What many folks don’t understand is that God is not a taker. God is a giver.

In the ancient Mesopotamian world, there were myths and stories about gods who had power but also were mean-spirited and basically used humanity as their lackeys, to do for them what they wanted and make up for what they the gods lacked. But then along comes Israel and in Genesis an account of a God who creates and gives and says do with this what you will. Some believed is this giving God, some didn’t.

Many people have trouble believing this today. It’s like the story of children lined up for lunch at a Catholic elementary school. At the table at the head of the line was a large pile of apples. Someone had left a note, posted on the apple tray:

“Take only ONE. God is watching.”

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end was a table with a large pile of chocolate chip cookies. A child had scribbled a note,

“Take all you want. God is watching the apples.”

Is this your idea of what God is really like, a big greedy spoil-sport waiting to catch you doing something wrong? Is this what you’re idea of God looks like?

Show Dwight picture.

Is this mean-spirited god worthy of your worship tonight? No wonder more people don’t go to church, if that’s the god they expect they’ll meet there.

It is true that the Bible says, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” But mostly the Lord gives. That’s who God really is. And the Bible makes this clear:

“Do not be deceived my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1.16-17

Notice that James not just “some good things” come from God but “every good thing” comes from God.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” Lamentations 3.22-23

God has always been a giver. But at that first Christmas he got to give his best. He outgave himself. He gave the best gift to the people who needed it the most – sinners. You know who that is don’t you? It’s that person next you.

So having the best Christmas ever is not about the church being decorated just so, or, like Clark Griswold having your house lit up so much that it brings down the power grid for the whole town. The best Christmas ever is not about what gifts you receive or even the moments you create. I heard a radio commercial yesterday in which the sponsor wished everybody, to “feel the spirit of the holidays.” That’s nice. But the best Christmas ever is more than a feeling.

If God so loved the world that He gave his best to us, then what kind of response could we give? What if we gave like God gives? What if we became conduits of god’s blessing?

Jesus gives us a profound teaching, so simple and profound that Paul made sure he included it in the book of Acts:

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20.35

Think about that. He doesn’t just say it’s better to give, or you’re supposed to give, or God wants you to give – He says you are “blessed” when you give. To be blessed is to be enhanced, enriched, given more life.

Jesus is saying that giving is a better way to live. Be a giver not a taker.


Let’s try an experiment with our posture. I want to divide the room here and one side I want you to take the posture of openness and giving. The other side I want you to assume the posture of taking and grasping.

It is more blessed to do this (open hands) than to do this (closed fists).

The Monkey Jar. There is an old story that asks the question, “How do you catch a monkey?” You take a jar with a narrow opening and you place something inside the jar, a banana, an apple, an ipod, that a monkey might want. You tie the jar to a tree or something. A monkey comes along and reaches in and grabs the banana; but as long as the monkey holds on to the banana it can’t pull its fist out of the jar. It faces a future of cages and imprisonment and death, but it won’t let go of the banana. And so the monkey holding on, wanting to the banana, and is stuck, until you come and catch it.

That’s how the story goes. In truth, no monkey has ever been caught this way. Because monkeys aren’t that greedy and stupid. The monkey jar doesn’t work on monkeys. There is one species it does work with – cats. And one other species. There a lot of folks out there with their hands stuck in the monkey jar.

A young man once came up to Jesus. The Bible calls him a “rich young ruler.” And the young man says to Jesus, “What must I do to please God? I’ve kept all the rules, been successful – what am I missing?”

Jesus tells him, “Get your hand out of the monkey jar.”

I want to be a giver. That’s what a follower of Jesus does. Maybe our prayer can be, “Jesus, I want to do what you do.”

My Plans Have Changed

She was an attractive girl and he fell in love in her very quickly. Not only was she pleasing to his eyes, but there was a goodness about her, an inward strength, quiet but unmistakable. She felt the same way about him. She knew that he was a good man. She trusted him. They got engaged. They would get married and raise a family in Nazareth. This was how they envisioned their happiness would be.

Then their plans changed. And you can’t make up this next part: Mary discovered she was pregnant. There was more than the usual surprise in this; because Mary had never been with Joseph or any other man. Really. And yet. . .well, there it was, the unmistakable signs of a life begun in her womb. Can you imagine the shock and tears and shame, and utter bewilderment that she must have felt? And Joseph, he felt it too. Seemingly, their dreams of a happy life together were shattered. He couldn’t marry her now. Even though he loved her, he had to say goodbye.

Life has a way of interrupting our plans.

Faith Hill has a new song about this event called A Baby Changes Everything.

Teenage girl, much too young, unprepared for what’s to come
A baby changes everything
Not a ring on her hand, all her dreams and all her plans
A baby changes everything

The man she loves she’s never touched, how will she keep his trust
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

Joan Didion is author of the best-selling book, The Year of Magical Thinking. It is this successful writer’s attempt to make sense of the sudden loss of her equally successful writer-husband, John Gregory Dunne. They had come home from the hospital where their only child was in a coma. They sat down for dinner, and he died of a massive coronary. The book’s title refers to her growing awareness that she kept behaving as if somehow her husband would come back. She knew better but she could not stop the irrational thoughts that death would not be allowed the last word. Didion writes how people in her world shared a habit of mind usually credited to the very successful:

They believed absolutely in their own management skills. They believed
Absolutely in the power of the telephone numbers they had at their
fingertips; the right doctor, the major donor; the person who could facilitate
a favor at State or Justice. The management skills of these people were in
fact prodigious. I had myself for most of my life shared the same core belief
in my ability to control events. Yet. . .some events just happen. This was one
of those events. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

In the end, she concludes we are all powerless. One of the lines that recur in her book is a reaction to Jesus’ teaching. She writes, “no eye is on the sparrow.” It is the last line of her book.

I can understand that feeling. It is a shock when our illusion of control is broken. Things happen. And life as we know it ends. We are reminded, sometimes very unkindly, that we are not in control. Ernest Becker says, “I am in control” is not just a lie; it is the vital lie because we need it for our egos to survive. “We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not control our lives, that we always rely on something that transcends us.”

A deeper problem with trying to maintain the illusion of full control is that it puts me at odds with other people. Control-freaks find other people very annoying and disappointing. Cf’s are perpetually irritable and frustrated. Other people are always a problem.

The oil tycoon played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the film, There Will Be Blood, has a level of power and control few people in this world attain, if attain is the right word. But, not so coincidentally, toward the end of his life his emotional isolation rivals his power. “I look at people and see nothing worth liking,” he confesses.

“People do not behave the way I want them to,” John Ortberg writes, “so I try to find some way to manipulate them , placate them, flatter them, intimidate them, or boss them around.”

I walk into work: things run my way, my projects have been completed, tasks I have assigned have been carried out. What does that mean? It means I’m in charge. This is my little kingdom.

I go into my kids’ rooms: beds are made just as I prescribed; chores are done just as I commanded. What does that mean? It means I’m in charge. This is my little kingdom.

I walk through the door at the end of the day: my slippers are laid out by the La-Z-Boy, my iced tea is ready, my paper is waiting for me, my dinner is on the stove. What does this mean? It means I have walked into the wrong house.

If we really were in control, our hopes would die with us. But if there is another Master, a better one, then there is a better hope. The Joseph of the Old Testament found this out. Out of jealousy, his brothers sold him into slavery when he was just seventeen. He spent many years in servitude and then in prison; yet in the end, the very attempts to destroy him led to his becoming the most powerful man in Egypt next to Pharaoh. His brothers ended up throwing themselves at his feet, saying, “We are your slaves.” But Joseph didn’t want slaves. He came to realize that there is a Great Power at work in the world.

“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
How did all this happen? Someone’s eye was on the sparrow.

When Mary received the visit from the angel, she reacted pretty much the way you or I or would react. She no more expected to see an angel than to see snow in July. And when the angel said to her, “Greetings and hail favored one. . .” Mary rightly wondered “what sort of greeting this might be.” What did it mean, me getting visited by an angel and the angel saying I was picked by God?

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. . .”

She can feel it coming soon, there’s no place, there’s no room
A baby changes everything

Our Joseph and Mary didn’t know they were in a prophecy about to be fulfilled. Remember, they couldn’t read the ending of their story in advance. They had to trust. They had to surrender. And they did. They stayed together and had the baby and trusted that God would keep his promise. They found that in surrendering to God comes power. They were not in control of their lives, but God was, and through them the Lord shook the very foundations of power in the world through these two trusting teenagers.

At some point, it dawned on Mary and Joseph, that the out-of-their-control mess their lives seemed to have become was moving toward something favorable. Despite the shame of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the hardship of a long journey taken to another town just to be taxed, and the overall preposterousness of their four-member family (Joseph, Mary, baby, and Holy Spirit); they began to sense that God was with them.

“They shall name him Emmanuel, which means, ‘God is with us.’”

Choir of angels say glory to the newborn king
A baby changes everything

Mary and Joseph surrendered control. “I am the Lord’s handmaiden,” Mary said.
And in that surrender to a change of plans they not only found their faith strengthened, they saw a blessing that went far beyond anything that they could have imagined. It was blessing and good news for all people, everywhere, for all time.

My whole life is turned around
I was lost and now I’m found
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

I want to believe, that in their old age, Joseph turned to Mary and said, “You know, you couldn’t have made that up.”

Intro to prayer: God is with us. What would it look like for the Holy Spirit to be a member of your family?

Invite

What kind of belief really matters? John Ortberg asks this question. He comes up with three categories of belief. The first category he calls “Public Convictions.” These are the convictions that I want other people to think I believe, even though I really may not believe them. For example, if a certain someone asks me, “Does this dress make my hips look too big?” the correct response is “No. I didn’t even know you had hips until you mentioned them.” I make such statements for PR purposes whether I believe them or not.

In the New Testament King Herod is a fine example of public convictions. He tells the Wise Men, “Go and make careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” Matthew 2.8

Did Herod really have any interest in worshipping the Christ child? No. It was a spin job. His mind was more on murder than worship. And he would soon show what he really believed.

The second category of belief is our “Private Convictions.” These are the convictions I sincerely think I believe, but in practice these beliefs turn out to be a bit fickle. I believe in reading the Bible. I believe in prayer. I believe in the Pittsburgh Pirates. I sincerely think I believe in these things, but in practice, my beliefs become a bit dicey.

The third category or level of belief is the level of “Core Convictions.” These are the beliefs that really matter. We know what these beliefs are because they are revealed by what we actually do. They are like a mental map. I believe if I touch fire I will get burned. I believe coffee helps me wake up. I believe in gravity. I don’t have in jump off a building to prove that I believe in gravity. I prove I believe it by also not jumping off the building. The belief is part of my mental map. I live by it without thinking most of the time. My actions always reveal what I believe in my core convictions. I live at the mercy of my ideas about the way things really are. Always. And so do you.

These categories of belief explain why some people can say they believe in Christianity and yet live very unlike Jesus lived; and why another person who appears indifferent to religion seems to live a life very much like Jesus would live. It’s not the public or private persona even, that matters, but what is at the core of our convictions, the shape of our mental map.

There was this man named John the Baptist who said that his most important conviction was that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. The Baptist spent most of his energy witnessing to this fact to anyone who would listen. He understood this to be his purpose in life. When people came and asked him who he was, he didn’t want to talk about it. His answers were indifferent, as if to say, “Don’t worry about who I am. I’m nobody. But look there! Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!

John didn’t waver in his belief. He didn’t have separate categories of public convictions and core convictions. In John they were one and the same. When he became convinced the Jesus was Messiah, John threw himself into inviting others to this belief. The Gospel says this about John:

“He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.” John 5.35

You might say John set himself on fire and other people came to watch him burn. That’s who he was. You don’t have to guess what his mental map looked like. He lived it.

John paid for his great commitment literally with his life. He was martyred by decapitation. But I think perhaps the even greater display of his loyalties and convictions was shown earlier in his life at that moment when he receives the word from Jesus. Jesus tells him I am the One. But don’t just take my word for it, judge me by my works. John was convinced. He could have waited and watched longer. He could have hedged his bets. He could have played the spin game and said, “I believe you Jesus,” without ever changing his game plan. But instead John looked at his own disciples and said,

“Go follow Jesus now. He’s the One we’ve all been waiting for.”

That’s integrity. And it’s that integrity that lead John later to write,

“He must increase and I must decrease.”

Maybe this is why Jesus said of John, “There is no one born of a woman in this world greater than John.” He was a man who lived what he believed.

It’s possible for us to live what we believe. Not just what we say we believe. Not just what we sincerely think we believe. If we have repented and rethought our lives by putting our faith in Jesus, then this mental map in us, by the power of God, can change our actions.

This doesn’t mean that we never have anymore doubts. But it does mean that when we believe something, we commit to it. I believe in coffee and I have committed to it. I spend time with it every day. When I skip a day, by body cries out in pain. (You know I’m not making this up.) Coffee is just a thing. We are called to commit to more than a thing. We are called to commit to a person. The Person. Here’s an interesting thought - Jesus never said, “Commit to my arguments.”

He said, “Come follow me.”

And like John the Baptist, when we commit to following Jesus, we burn with energy to invite others to follow as well.

A woman named Sheryl went to the salon one day to have her nails manicured. As the beautician began to work, they began to have a good conversation about many subjects. When they eventually touched on God, the beautician said, “I don’t believe God exists.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Sheryl.
“Well, you just have to go out on the street to realize God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine loving a God who could allow such things.”

Sheryl thought for a moment but didn’t want to argue, so, when they were done, she thanked the beautician and left the shop. Just after she left the shop, Sheryl saw a woman in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair. She looked filthy and unkempt. Sheryl turned and entered the beauty shop again, and said to the beautician, “You know what? Beauticians do not exist.”

“What do you mean?” asked the surprised beautician. “You were just here and I worked on you. I exist.”

“No,” Sheryl exclaimed, “beauticians do not exist, because if they did, there would be no people with dirty, long hair and appearing unkempt like that woman outside!”

“Ah, but beauticians do exist, “ she answered. “The problem is, people do not come to me.”

Exactly. People do not come of their own accord sometimes. Sometimes they need help. They need someone with the right mental map, with core convictions, motivated enough to invite them to come along.

In the next couple weeks, a lot of people that you know are open to the possibility of coming to church. What do you believe? What are you going to do because of it?