rich morris sermons

2011-01-31T06:50:00.002-08:00

One

“If there’s only one nation in the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?”

Pi Patel, The Life of Pi

This is the truth to which all religion points - Oneness. Oneness of the Universe. Oneness of the Higher Power. Religion calls us to the awareness that we are not at the center of the Universe. Certainly, as a Christian I can embrace this truth. In fact, we believe that God has revealed truth in a many different cultures and religions. God has prepared the nations with prophets and revelations and whispers. But preparation for what? Is it for simply a declaration that all religions are equal and the same? Couldn’t God have gotten that message across with much less effort and trouble?

If all religions are equal and the same, then there is no getting around it, it simply doesn’t matter what you believe. Even if you’re an atheist, you don’t know have to be a music-lover to be invited to the concert - if all paths and passports are valid. But if I have a destination to get to, but I am fairly lost, I need the right map, not just any map will do. If I need to get to a particular place and stop and ask for directions, its fairly important to ask the right person for directions in how to get there. Not all roads will take me to where I want to go. In fact, some roads and places uphold that old country saying, “You can’t get there from here.”

“We’re one, but we’re not the same.” Bono, U2

The Apostle Paul recognized this situation in his day as he strolled through the very cosmopolitan city of Athens. Athens was the city of wisdom, of learning, and especially of philosophy and religion. The city abounded with temples to every known god, goddess, and religion in the western world. When Paul met the philosophers in the open-air forum on Mars Hill he recognized the wealth and variety of faith and philosophy represented there. “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are,” Paul announced. He was establishing common ground. He notes they have a altar in the city to an unknown god. “Let me tell you about this god,” Paul says. Then he begins to tell them specifics of how this unknown god has in fact made himself known. This god is in fact the Creator that all religions acknowledge, even their own secular poets. And this Creator has revealed himself in a particular and unique way in a man by whom the whole world will be judged.

Jesus Christ is the particularity of God. He is the One in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. Jesus Christ brings the truth of Oneness that is present and proclaimed in almost all cultures and takes it to its purpose and fulfillment. God has prepared the nations, whispering truth for a purpose as big as the world and universe. This purpose is perhaps to big to leave to just the seasoning of cultures with universal ideas. God chose a particular time and place and people to whom and through whom to most fully reveal himself to the world. God needed to get particular and we needed God to do this. Here’s why:

My life has been changed by reading glasses this past year or two. It was a surprise to me when I first recognized the need – why are the words on the page running into each other? My eyes strained and watered to keep doing the job they’re paid to do. With glasses things have improved, but I’m still getting used to them. I don’t wear them all the time and I let them lie places when they should be with me. And now when I am helping with my son’s homework or reading the directions on the bottle, I have to summon my eyes to me. I can’t get it done alone. The world is masked and dark without them.

Jesus is not only the particularity of God. Jesus is the clarity of God. In no where or way does God speak more clearly than in the person of His Son, Jesus.

It is this clarity of truth that prompted the Psalmist to declare: “In thy light do we see light.” Psalm 36.9

And because the Lord is our light (Psalm 27) the light of Christ shines in us. Jesus said,

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. . . in the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5.14-16

Timothy Keller recounts serving on a discussion panel at a local college along with a Jewish Rabbi and Muslim imam. The conversation was courteous, intelligent and respectful in tone, Keller recalls. Each speaker affirmed that there significant, irreconcilable differences between the major faiths. For example, they all agreed with this statement:

“If Christians are right about Jesus being God, then Muslims and Jews fail in a serious way to love God as God really is, but if Muslims and Jes are right that Jesus is not God but rather a teacher or prophet, then Christians fail in a serious way to love God as God really is.”

Keller sums up, “The bottom line was – we couldn’t all be equally right about the nature of God.”

The purpose of this series was to examine the other great faiths and see what we have in common and what divides us and then to answer the question, “Why am I a Christian?”

One person here said only half-jokingly, that this series had caused doubts in him. I take it be the kind of doubt that causes us to ask questions and so work for deeper understanding. That’s the good kind of doubt. Some might even call it a holy disturbance, God disturbing your thoughts like the angel used to disturb the Bethesda pool. I don’t want you to remain in a state of doubt. That’s a poor home. We must move on to a confident answer to the question, “Why am I a Christian as opposed to a Jew or Muslim or Buddhist?”

I am a Christian because of Jesus. When I met Jesus I met the clarity of God. When I met Jesus I met my Soul friend. I met the One who forgives and saves and teaches me. I met the One in whom I put my absolute trust. I’m not a Christian because of my parents, my friends, my church, my country, my education, my culture – although they certainly all helped. I’m a Christian because of Jesus. Jesus spoke into my life. He spoke with clarity. He revealed the One to me. And what’s more, I have a confidence that anytime someone has “ears to hear” Jesus will speak to them too. I think He is an attractive person to meet. He is in fact, the Person, the Human Being – Son of Man. He is also God revealed. He transcends cultures and races. He belongs to all because all belong to Him.

As a church we have been commissioned to introduce people to Jesus. It’s good when we introduce people to our friends, our family, and our church. But when we introduce someone to Jesus they are changed forever.

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God who. . .has given us the ministry of reconciliation. . .so we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.” 2 Corinthians 5.16-20

In Ephesians, Paul talks about how God has chosen the church to reveal the mystery of Christ to the universe. The Church is here to tell the Gospel to the whole world, “to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages but now made known.” When he spoke to the Athenians Paul recognized that there were times of ignorance that God overlooked, but now the time of salvation has come.

In commenting on Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians the early church Fathers said, “Right up until the cross there was a suspicion that Christ was weak.” We regard him this way no longer. Today there is a suspicion that the church is weak, and it may be so. But we don’t recommend the church to the world. We recommend Christ who is strong. He is “fairest Lord Jesus.”

2011-01-31T06:50:00.001-08:00

Eastern Mysticism

Across the Universe
This Beatles song was written out of a 1968 trip to India and their experience with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental Meditation.

I think this artist captures the spirit and experience this song points to:
Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world

Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe

Words are valued for their experiential value, not for their meaning. The man in the rocking chair is experiencing the Universe around him in its life and death and colors and senses. The Universe is what it is. “Nothing’s gonna change my world.” He isn’t, that’s for sure. He is going to sit in his chair and contemplate. His “thoughts meander. . .and tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.”

Notice what happens to the man as the song progresses – he fades into his surroundings and becomes a tree. In the end, his perspective is restored, and in the end the only thing that has changed is the different pictures (perspectives) on his wall.

This is a picture of Eastern Mysticism. The religions of the East contain many and varied philosophies from Hinduism, Hare Krishna, and TM to the essentially atheistic Buddhism and Confucianism. But all these share a sensibility that is very different from the Abrahamic faiths that we have thus far discussed.

In Eastern Mysticism essentially God and the Universe are One. In fact, in Buddhism there really is no god. There is only the Universe. In Hinduism there are a pantheon of gods but nothing like a One God.

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law when an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush. . . “God called to him out of the bush, Moses! Moses! And Moses said, ‘Here I am.’

Then God said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. . .I am the God of you father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

We forget how radical and awesome a notion this is the One God of the Universe would declare himself, reveal himself, and speak, speak!, to a human being. You’re darned right Moses hid his face!

This story and experience would never fit in the religions of the East. Oh, the looking at the burning bush part, sure. But there would be no speaking God coming out of it. In mysticism, the Universe “speaks” for itself. And what the Universe says is more experience than doctrine. There are many roads that lead to enlightenment, not just one. So ideas are not important. Technique and experience are the thing.

What technique and what experience? Spiritual gurus like the Marishi Mahesh Yogi emphasized chanting a mantra, a seemingly meaningless phrase in Sanskrit given to the novice by their master. The novice chants it over and over again for long periods in quiet and solitude with the goal of going beyond mere meaning to oneness with the universe. The word om is the most significant word in a mantra. It has no literal meaning but some have suggested it means yes, perfection, ultimate reality. When you achieve that then the worries of past and future fade away and you become completely in tune with the present.

Remember words are used primarily to jolt you out of the rational and mundane to a new level of consciousness. In Zen Buddhism you have the koan, a brain teaser like “If a tree falls in the forest but there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Or, “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” These puzzles are intended to drive you to silent contemplation beyond rationality.

This is what was and is attractive in Eastern Mysticism to many Westerners. The Beatles helped popularize a trend that was already happening, many young Christian or agnostic men and women in the West journeyed to the East or to one of the meditation centers that were popping up in the States to experience a new kind of spirituality very different from the suit and tie religion of their fathers. Dallas Willard points out that the flight to Eastern religions among western youth was the flight from a dry orthodoxy to an experiential spirituality. Christianity had become unsure of itself, at best holding onto “the form of godliness” with none of the power. At a time when the hippie generation hungered for experience, Christianity had lost touch with the burning bush and Pentecostal fire.

If there is a common ground between Christianity and Eastern religions it is the value that words point to experience. It is the belief that the Universe is bigger than we are and that it can be experienced in meditation of simple things. That’s the common ground. What is uncommon between our worlds is a world unto itself.

As you may gather, eastern mysticism is very concerned with enlightenment. But what does it say about the great suffering and moral problems of the world around us?

Suffering is merely a part of the Universe, the yin and yang of experience. There is no strictly right and wrong, good and evil. They are two sides of the same coin. Everything is cyclical, coming and going across the universe. Strictly speaking, suffering is an illusion. If you are suffering you just need to get more in tune with the universe. Many practitioners of eastern religions hold a high view of morality, but it really doesn’t follow logically from their philosophies. What is the motivation to do good rather than evil? You hear a lot about karma. But karma is not a duty to do good. Karma is what happens to you regardless of your behavior. It tends toward fatal resignation. “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”

I want to listen to another song that is more of a critique of the eastern way. The song is called “Enlightenment” and its by Van Morrison. Morrison has experimented a lot with religion and philosophy and eastern mysticism was one of the paths he explored before settling into his Christian faith.

Chop that wood
Carry water
What's the sound of one hand clapping
Enlightenment, don't know what it is

Every second, every minute
It keeps changing to something different
Enlightenment, don't know what it is
Enlightenment, don't know what it is
It says it's non attachment
Non attachment. non attachment

I'm in the here and now, and I'm meditating
And still I'm suffering but that's my problem
Enlightenment, don't know what it is

Wake up

Enlightenment says the world is nothing
Nothing but a dream, everything's an illusion
And nothing is real

Morrison doesn’t mince words. Enlightenment? The definition keeps changing. Suffering? I guess that’s my problem. Everything is an illusion. Nothing is real. I’m meditating. Like the monks, I’m chopping wood and carrying water. But, enlightenment, I still don’t know what it is. You can hear Morrison’s judgment – Wake up!

It’s interesting that Eastern religions speak well of Jesus. They hail him as guru and an enlightened soul. But what would Jesus say to them? Take me as I am.

“Believe in God. Believe also in me. . .I am the way, the truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you know the Father.”
Jesus rejects the many ways and says I am the way. He won’t allow the characterization of himself as merely a guru or teacher or prophet. He is either a liar or lunatic – or he is who he claimed to be, God.

In his book, Siddhartha, Herman Hesse journeys into eastern mysticism and describes his vision of “all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world . . .the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: OM – perfection.”

In the book of Revelation, the many palaces of the kingdom are the setting for thousands upon thousands of voices that sing of the perfection of the One – the Lamb of God who sits on the throne.

2011-01-31T06:48:00.000-08:00

The House of Islam

Muhammad was a forty year old merchant from Mecca and he was spending the night in a cave near Mt. Hira where he used to spend nights in prayer and meditation. This one night he was suddenly awoken by a heavenly voice telling him he was the Messenger of God. He was terrified but the voice was confirmed by a vision of a mysterious figure presenting himself as the angel Gabriel. The angel physically grabbed hold of Muhammad and made him recite revelations about God. This was the first of many recitations that later became known as the Qur’an which means “The Recitation.”

Muhammad quickly gained many followers and Islam was born. It is important to note that Islam is one of the three great monotheistic religions that say there is One true God. And it is surely not accidental that Muhammad had his vision in a region where, to be sure there were many pagan Bedoin tribes and Arabic peoples, but there were also many Jews and Christian Arabs as well. And at first, Muhammad stressed the compatibility of his revelations concerning Allah with the Jews and Christians of Mecca and the surrounding region.

Many of us have a limited and sometimes distorted view of Islam, a view that is formed primarily by the lens of radical Islamic terrorists and their violence and vitriol reported on the news. I am not denying they exist or the seriousness of the threat they pose to all good people in our country and around the world. But they do not define Islam. We should ask ourselves if we can think of examples of people who call themselves Christians who we nevertheless would be embarrassed and outraged by if they claimed to represent us? How about that minister in Florida who was burning books? Do you want him speaking for you? Or how about that wacky church whose members go to funerals of soldiers killed in action and hold up signs saying it was God’s judgment on them? Are you happy they call themselves Christian?

I want, in our brief time, to look at the very basic beliefs of Islam. I want to look at what we have in common and how we are different. There are things in Islam that I think you can recommend and there are no doubt things with which you will strongly disagree. But understanding these things can only help us and help our world.

To help us find common ground it might be good to look at what Muslims call the Five Pillars of Islam. They are:

1. Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad.

2. Establishment of the daily prayers.

3. Concern for and almsgiving to the needy

4. Self-purification through fasting; and
5. The pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.

In the first pillar we can find the common ground of belief in the One God. Muslims exalt the power and greatness of God. Psalm 29 fits well with their belief. A Muslim’s purpose in life is “to serve and obey God, and this is achieved through the teachings and practices of the Last Prophet, Muhammad.”

Islam stresses the vital importance of prayer and fasting. This is another area of common ground. In fact, many Christians would do well to dedicate have as much energy to these spiritual practices that many Muslims do.

Muslims believe that Mary was Chosen, that Angels spoke to her, that Christ performed miracles, and in one sense, is the way to eternal life. Muslims look to Abraham in a similar way that we do. They claim the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures as theirs as well. These are not insignificant matters in which to find common ground.

“For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through he righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there no violation.”

Muslims stress obedience to God’s will. “Islam” literally means submission. Muslims resonate with Jesus teaching in Matthew 5.17:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. . .” and then in verse 20: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Muslims see most Christians and “Christian” nations like the United States as people of lax morals, people who ignore God’s laws. A concern for a moral society is certainly something we share with Muslims. But here lies a great difference as well. Muslims don’t believe in Original Sin, a basic Christian doctrine. Muslims believe that every person has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other and must decide which one to listen to every moment of every day.

This brings us to what Islam says about Jesus Christ. As I briefly mentioned, Muslims declare Jesus as the way to eternal life. But in the context of their other beliefs and their practice, it’s difficult to see how that statement is really true for a Muslim. Let me explain. Muslims don’t believe that Jesus died on a cross. That was a fabrication of some of the disciples. God wouldn’t let that happen according to Islamic thinking. Jesus also was not the divine Son of God. According to Islam, Jesus never claimed that for himself. That is something that Christians “did to him.” Combine this with the fact that Islam doesn’t believe in Original sin and the sin nature, and Jesus doesn’t die for people on the Cross because there is no need of, nor indeed purpose for, salvation this way.

For a Muslim salvation is a matter of personal effort, supported by their community of faith, to lead a righteous life of prayer, fasting, and obedience to God as taught by God’s last and greatest prophet, Muhammad.

Muslims would agree with the first part of this scripture, Romans 6.23, “For the wages of sin is death. . .” but they really don’t make sense of the second part, “but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Rather, maybe I should say the way they make sense that Jesus means eternal life is that his teaching is part of a continuum of Allah’s teaching through the many prophets that culminate in Allah’s Recitation to Muhammad. Eternal life will happen for all peoples who eventually bow their to knees to Allah and declare His greatness and the greatness of his prophet Muhammad.

In his farewell address in March of the year 632, Muhammad declared, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’”

This was the beginning of jihad, holy war, that increased and carried on after the death of the prophet. Islam is concerned with converting both individuals souls and whole societies, and the concern is often much greater for the latter than the former. That is why the religion is often referred to as Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam. For Muslims identify much more with the umma, the homeland of Islam, than the individual countries in which they live. It must be said that initially Muhammad often spread the influence of Islam by the point of a sword. It must also be said that Christianity has sometimes been spread that way. Certainly, many if not most Muslims today understand jihad as an internal, spiritual struggle between the angel and devil on your shoulder, good and evil. Muslims who take this view are much closer to what Jesus says about the Kingdom to Pilate:

“My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Matthew 18.36

There is a struggle for the soul and mantle of true Islam in the world today. In a November 2001 address, Osama bin Laden said this:

“I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.”

This is word for word from the Prophet. Our hope for dialogue and peace today lies with those Muslims who cringe over that statement as much as we do.

2011-01-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Are All Religions the Same?

There is a common belief, frequently expressed today, that all religions are the same. Added to this is the thought, “We all worship the same God, right? The important thing is that you believe.” Despite a vocal minority of atheists, most people today express a belief in God or some higher power. Some of these beliefs are of the “big guy upstairs” variety – vague, uninformed, childish even. Many people’s belief systems are a hodgepodge of spiritualities that they have chosen, ala carte, if you will, and formed what they consider their “faith.” It becomes clear after just a little inspection that the deity at the center of this kind of belief is the person themselves; their “holy trinity”, me, myself, and I.

I’m not sure how prevalent this kind of spirituality is or how you would measure it, much less seek to improve upon it directly. If there is a way to bring this “me-first” spirituality to a place of deeper truth, then one thing that needs to happen is a better understanding of the world’s great religions. Timothy Keller notes that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was a common belief that religion was no longer the center of truth, or even slightly truthful, and so was no longer useful. It was believed that within a generation or two, it would be completely gone. This secularization thesis has been discredited and is now almost gone. Today, virtually all major religions are growing in the number of adherents. Harvard University pondered a few years ago that it might be a good thing for its students to learn the difference between a Sunni and Shiite. The university didn’t have the consensus to go ahead with anything like a required course in religion, but that’s another discussion. We are not Harvard, we’re Hicks. We have the freedom to discuss these things. What’s more we have the greater freedom and resources to consult the Holy Scriptures and see what God hath revealed about himself and humanity. What does God say about religions other than the “biblical” faiths of Judaism and Christianity? Over the next several weeks we are going to look at several of the world’s great religions. We even hope to have a couple representatives of those faiths speak to us and give us the perspective that only an adherent of that faith could. In the end we expect to come to a greater understanding and appreciation of other faiths and a greater understanding and appreciation of our own faith.

You may have surmised that we believe all religions are not the same. What are the implications of this truth? Are some religions better than others? Why am I a Christian? Do I have reason to believe that Christianity is the best way?

We are going on a quest in search of truth. Matthew’s Gospel speaks of certain wise men, Magi, who went on such a quest at the time of Jesus’ birth. They were the Ph.D’s and professors of their day. They were part of an international wisdom movement. They are depicted as both kings and astrologers. And their journey to Judea and Jerusalem is the beginning of the proclamation of Jesus to the Gentiles. They brought three gifts so we number them at three. They followed a star that they believed to be special, a sign that was pointing them to the birth of a King. They didn’t know the Biblical prophecies. They were probably not very familiar with Hebrew history. They simply went on a journey in search of truth.

They, of course, make it to Jerusalem and inquire of the vassal king of Rome, Herod the self-titled Great, about where they might find his replacement. They are directed to Bethlehem. They bring their gifts and place them at the feet of the Christ child and then they quietly go home.

In the eyes of these wise men, Judea was probably an unlikely place to look for ultimate answers. But of course, from our perspective, it was a very likely place. The Jewish people have always claimed a special knowledge of God. In fact, they’ve claimed a special relationship with God as the chosen people. The Hebrew scriptures give an account in Genesis of the creation of humanity, its multiplication and dispersal through the Near East and beyond. The scriptures tell us that God chose a man named Abram who was from Ur of the Chaldean empire, one of the oldest civilizations, known for their advancements in agriculture and civil planning. This Abram and his wife Sarai are the beginnings of the chosen people. Abram and his wife avoid calamity at the hands of the Pharaoh of Egypt. God makes covenant with this couple and they give birth to a child in their extreme old age. The backdrop on the world stage to God’s dealing with this couple is two things:

1) There are many different peoples and cultures in the world

2) Other peoples and cultures are worshipping other gods

There are hints throughout the book of Genesis that various people groups have begun to depart from the God of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. But the hints are basically that the mass of humanity had grown evil. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth.” The judgment of Noah and the Flood didn’t seem to change this. The Tower of Babel was a testament to human pride. We are told God confused their language and produced many more language groups. More languages mean different cultures and the possibility of different religions.

Later in Genesis when Jacob and Rachel flee from Rachel’s father, Laban, Rachel steals the “household gods” and takes them along with other valuables for their journey. The whole book of Genesis spans many years, exactly how many no one seems to be convincingly sure. But in the span of this one book the world of the ancient Near East has become an incubator of religions.

In the Hebrew scriptures that we call Old Testament, the God Of Israel pits himself against the gods of Egypt and the gods of Canaan. If you haven’t read those stories, spoiler alert, God wins. You also have the instances where God uses both powerful rulers and humble people of other faiths and cultures to do his will - Darius of Persia in the Old Testament and the Roman centurion in the Gospels come to mind. These persons, though not a part of God’s people, are sometimes called “God-fearers”. They are often described, ala the Centurion, as “upright and devout”, not unlike a certain Abraham who, strictly speaking, was not himself an Israelite. He was however called a “friend of God,” and father of not just one people, but many.

God, especially as we picture Him in the Old Testament, is often thought of as narrow-minded and cruel towards pagan, “unchosen” peoples. But that is not the full picture. The Lord is always looking for people who “fear” (read “love”) him.

“The eyes of the Lord scan the whole world to find those whose hearts are committed to him, to be strong on their behalf.” 2 Chronicles 16.9

The God of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, makes it clear that he hasn’t forgotten the Garden, the Flood, and the Covenant that one day his world will be made right and the original promise of the Creation will find fulfillment through the Redemption and Salvation of all peoples.

The Scriptures maintain that the Lord is God of all nations and that He will draw all nations once again (back) to Him. The Messiah that will come from God’s chosen people will be a light to the Gentiles and the desire of all peoples. Jesus echoes this thought when he tells his disciples,

“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” John 10.16

The desire for God and the desire to please God are some “threads of redemption” that can found in the world’s great religions. There is some common ground in which some vital truths can be found among our faiths. There are also differences that we would do well to understand. Let us be wise men and women who are willing to give time and energy to first things, important things, truthful things. Nobody else is talking about this stuff. Where are the god-fearers and truth seekers of today? You won’t find it on Entertainment Tonight or Sports Center. Harvard can’t talk about it. But we can.

2011-01-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

Written in the Stars

Last year, I believe it was, at Christmas Eve I showed a picture of me as a kid. This year I want to show you a picture of my dog. This picture may be better looking. This is Addie. Addie is long-haired shepherd, sometimes called a Shiloh shepherd. I think she’s a good looking dog, but she’s has a bit of a troubled past. Don’t tell her I said that. There was the time that my wife went to get pizza for the big birthday party and took Addie with her. She got the pizza, put it in the Jeep, and then made just a quick stop in another store, only to come out and find mozzarella and marinara all over Addie’s mouth. The pizza was GONE, ALL GONE! Addie wasn’t very popular at the birthday party I can tell you.

There was the time she got into the skunk. There was the time she ate the ham. Do you know what ham does to a dog’s intestinal tract? There were the times she attacked the neighbors little dogs. I could go on, but I’ll stop here. No use piling on. Addie can be very exasperating. It’s fitting that Addie was named after a grandmother in our family who, God rest her soul, was an exasperating woman.

But there’s another side to Addie as well. And see if this doesn’t capture something that you see in your dog as well:

Show God and Dog clip.

God thought and made up the dog. Dog reflects a part of God. My dog has never criticized one of my sermons. My dog has never given me a disapproving look. She loves going on walks with me. She thinks I’m great. Dog reflects a part of God.
God’s desire to have a relationship with us. God would stay with me all day. I’m the one who walks away.

There is an old expression that compares something to “a dog in a manger.” The expression refers to an old Aesop fable in which a dog plants himself in a manger so none of the other animals can eat the hay there. Even though the dog can’t use it, he doesn’t want the other animals to have it either. A dog in a manger is useless and spiteful to others. It’s a mean-spirited spoilsport. And I wonder if this how many people look at the God in the manger – useless to them and a spoilsport to the world. Is this how God is?

God’s story of Christmas is found in Luke 2.and the setting of the story is really the world’s stage. . .”in those days a decree went out from Caesar, the ruler of the civilized world.”

But even that setting is not big enough for what God has in mind because a few verses later we are told some shepherds are in the fields and angels and hosts speak out of the night sky and stars to declare what God has in mind.

God chooses a people to teach his ways and to whom he will make Himself known. God gets specific. He calls these people to come out and be different. Through all their struggles and failures he preserves a faithful few, a remnant to carry on, and through the centuries the remnant seems to get smaller and smaller until you have to search really hard. You have to look in a backwater region of the Empire, a crude country called Palestine, to an even lesser known town there called Nazareth. In Nazareth is a girl who is engaged to be married to a simple carpenter. That girl is named Mary. Though she doesn’t know it, she is the faithful remnant of God’s people. She is the conduit for God’s plan of salvation that funnels through her and bursts into the world in the form of a baby boy who will become salvation for all peoples. Jesus is God getting specific and God getting big at the same time.

God isn’t content to be an idea or even to be a god of some folks of a certain religious persuasion. God’s heart is pining for everyone. He wants to have a relationship with everyone.

Dallas Willard says that God wants to “form us to be persons He can set loose in the Universe.” Truly God wants us to be stewards and rulers of the whole Creation.

Some people have trouble believing that their lives have a cosmic purpose. Others have trouble identifying what that purpose is, what their lives are really about.

In the fifth of the Harry Potter books, a young Lord Voldermort is just coming to the height of his evil powers. He goes back to his alma mater, Hogwarts, to speak to Headmaster Dumbledore about a teaching position. Dumbledore knows that his former pupil, Tom Riddle, now known as Lord Voldemort, has become a truly evil being. Yet, Dumbledore agrees to see him and hear his application to teach.

“I think you must know that I have seen and done much since I left this place. I could show and tell your students things they can gain from no other wizard.” Voldemort states.

Dumbledore responds, “Rumors of your doings have reached your old school, Tom. I should be sorry to believe half of them.” Voldemort continues:

“I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed –“

“Of some kinds of magic,” Dumbledore corrected him quietly. “Of some. Of others, you remain. . .forgive me. . .woefully ignorant.” For the first time, Voldemort smiled. It was a taut leer, an evil thing, more threatening than a look of rage.

“The old argument,” Voldemort said softly. “But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore.”

“Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places,” suggested Dumbledore.

Perhaps you have been looking for meaning and purpose in the wrong places.
Love is the reason. Love is the purpose. Maybe that’s not the freshest idea you’ve ever heard. Maybe it’s an old argument. But to say its old does not mean untrue.

“For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3.16

I had a conversation with a stranger after a wedding a few weeks ago. . .` I went into a restroom at the reception and this man came in after me. “Pastor! That was great speech you gave. That was a really good talk. . . “ He went on and the enthusiasm with which he praise me made me believe that he had had too much to drink. I mean, my sermon was good. But it wasn’t that good.

He continued, “Me and the big guy upstairs, we haven’t been too close. . .” and then his voice trailed as he mumbled something about “getting reconnected.”

Now, anytime I hear someone mention “the big guy upstairs” I know that they probably don’t know God that well. There in front of the bathroom stalls I expressed my hope that he would get “reconnected” with God.

Where are you in this Universe today? Because I believe that question is not so much “Where is God?” but where are you? Are you disconnected? Are you walking around in a haze where the best belief you can muster is expressed with the words “the big guy upstairs”?

That weak belief is not going to get you very far, in this life, or the next. There is an alternative within your grasp – you can know the Almighty Creator of the Universe. You can know Him as your Savior, your Lord, and your Friend. He’s written it in a book. He’s written it in the stars. He’s written it on my heart and on the hearts of many. It can be written on your heart too.

“Simple spelling G O D. Same word backwards D O G. They would stay with me all day. I’m the one who walks away.

“But both just wait for me. And dance at my return with glee. Both love me no matter what – divine God, canine mutt.

2011-01-05T05:38:00.000-08:00

Servants Entrance

Not so long ago wealthy homes had servant’s entrances for “the help.” These were the ways the hired servants would come and go to do their jobs for the master of the house. Servants were and are looked down upon as inferior. But there’s no getting around it that the servants are the ones that do the work that others don’t want to do – work that needs to be done. There is still a servant class in America, usually filled by current immigrant minorities who clean our buildings, drive our cabs, and pick our fields. I wonder if the rest of us have forgotten what it means to serve?

And yet those who go by the name of Christian have been given pretty explicit guidance by our Master in regards to being servants. He says, don’t hire them, be them.

“The greatest among you will be the servant of others.” Matthew 23.11

And “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

“Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many.”

This Man, this Ransom, says to be my follower is to put your beliefs into hands and feet and show your belief by what you do. In fact, what you do is what you believe.

We have looked upon the Church as the place where we attend. So church is a place and if we are good Christians we will attend church, at this building we call church. We attend and a chosen few lead the activities that we attend. The minister is the head leader or most chosen and that’s why we pay him – to do the ministry. I hope you are either smiling or grimacing at this characterization. Because it’s really not true. Although we have acted like it is true for many years in the modern church. This obviously wasn’t true for much of the history of the church and it can’t be true today if the church is going to fulfill its mission in the world.

Don’t get me wrong – coming to worship together is important. I remember some years ago at church camp we were planning a evening worship service and someone suggested that for Holy Communion we do a representation of the Last Supper, recruit counselors and kids to be disciples sitting around the Table and I would serve the sacrament. I didn’t get excited about the idea of kids in bathrobes and bedsheets as disciples. I thought it would be just a cheesy skit. But we went ahead with it. We gathered for worship, sang some songs, had a message, and then did the Last Supper skit. As a part of that skit we had a couple of the disciples wash the feet of all the campers. And as that was wrapping up we began the words of institution of the sacrament. And I don’t know how to capture this in words what happened except to say that as I watched the kids washing each others feet, their was no giggling or distractions as you might expect, but rather there was just this holy quiet. And I heard my own voice saying, “He took the bread and gave thanks and said this is my Body which is broken for you.” And I all can say is I felt the Holy Spirit just wash over us there. The sense was so powerful I almost wept. I know God showed up. And it was in the breaking of the bread and the washing of feet. Worship is loving God and each other and reminding us who we are, that we are sent out to serve as His hands, his feet, his body.

See, the church is not a building but the church is the people who. . .I say “who” because I want to qualify this, the church is the people who serve. Truly, if the church is just the people who show up, you might have something there but you really don’t have the Jesus Way of the Church. Jesus said all my followers will be servants.

The Apostle Peter took this a step further and said, in effect, we are all ministers, we are all priests.

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.” 2 Peter 2.9

If we are all ministers then we are all supposed to do ministry. Ministry is not just the job of the paid professionals. Ministry is job one for everyone here. Some have called this the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Part of this teaching emphasizes that we can all go directly to God through Jesus Christ. Jesus has brought us near to God by his grace. We don’t have to rely solely on paid professionals to pray for us, study for us, and do church work for us. We can all do that. But the bigger emphasis is on how if we have been saved by grace, we have also been saved to do good works in Jesus which he has prepared for us to do. God is waiting for us to go crazy with service.

What we often have in the church is not crazy service, but polite passivity. Like I said, if we show up once in awhile, we show our agreement to these doctrines and we approve of the whole idea. But when are we going to get our hands and feet involved?

In the business world they have this idea called the 80/20 Principle. It’s simple. In most businesses, eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent of the people. That’s why many businesses struggle to get by. But when a business gets eighty percent of the people doing good work, well, you’ve probably got a great business going there. Many people have observed this 80/20 Principle in the Church. I’ve heard some of you express this frustration, even if you haven’t called it by this name.

Our apathy and our idea of the church as the place where I just show up once in a while is standing in the way of us really being the Church, the Servant Church that the One the prophet Isaiah called “the Suffering Servant” had in mind. Remember the Parable of the Talents? It’s a story Jesus told about a master who gives each of his servants a certain amount of money to be steward of. Two of the servants use the money to benefit their master. One of the servants is afraid to do anything and so just sits on the money. When the master returns he congratulates the first two servants for their initiative and hard work and the additional money they produced. But the master turns to the third servant and hears his story of how he was afraid to mess up, and so, did nothing. The master doesn’t say, its okay, you’re just not as good with stuff as the other two. The master doesn’t say, I understand, you’re an introvert, not an extrovert. Or even, hey its okay, you’re just not as talented as the others, I didn’t expect much out of you. No, the master calls the third servant, “wicked” and “lazy.” Because he did nothing with what was entrusted to him.

We’ve got to start being more assertive and bold with not just what we believe but what we are going to do about it.

You may remember last winter we had a lot of snow around here. The one storm in February was particularly bad. We paid to not only have our parking lot plowed many times but we had to pay to have snow trucked away. So, in the Spring it came as a delight to learn that we were eligible for Snow Emergency Grant Money from the federal government. I thought it was worth a shot so I began the application process. Let me offer this caveat: if you have never applied for a grant from a government agency, ask yourself, do I really need this grant, before you begin. Because the process can be daunting. Anyways, I filled out a lot of paperwork and online work and attended some meetings and made phone calls and was told through the process by several officials that everything looked in order. Until I received a call in late September from someone in the FEMA office in Washington who told me that we were not eligible for the grant because, and I quote “you are only a church.” I am guessing what the man meant by that. He meant that we are a group of people who meet weekly in a building for purposes of their own. While perhaps harmless, we serve no greater good to our community and certainly no greater good that the Federal Government is interested in.

This is what I read into his statement, to which I responded, “Oh but we are serving our community,” and I proceeded to “prove” our community value.

The Federal Government may require us to prove that we are “more than a church” to really matter, but I’m saying that to serve our community is the Church. If Hicks isn’t here then there is no place for senior citizens to meet every day through week. There is no place for the Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts. If Hicks isn’t here then many people who have needed rent money, food, and clothing maybe don’t get it. If Hicks isn’t here then there are kids and youth who miss out on groups to belong. If Hicks isn’t here then there are a couple hundred less people giving witness in our communities of what faith in Jesus Christ is like.

But we only scratch the surface. We need to stop making excuses and get off our butts and do something. You are the ministers! You are the chosen people. You are a holy nation that, if it learns to serve, won’t be stopped.

2011-01-05T05:37:00.000-08:00

A Magnifier, a Weight, and a Cow

-show clip Don’t Buy Stuff-
Today we continue our series, Simple Living. We believe that the way to contentment is in living simply and generously. All who would pursue this must confront issues surrounding money and wealth. It’s important to note that Jesus talked about money to teach about money. And he also talked money to teach about other things. Jesus talked about money all the time. One reason for this, no doubt, was that Money was an important cultural value in Jesus’ time. It is in our time too. I agree with Ben Patterson who said,

“There is no such thing as being right with God and being wrong with money.”

Money is that important because it connects with and affects so much else in our lives. Money is the Universal Language. There is always an exchange rate. For example, we are still in a season when kids birthdays are very important. We usually have a party to which the boys can invite a bunch of their friends. These friends all bring birthday cards with money in them. In fact, it is rare anymore for a birthday guest to actually come with a wrapped present. My boys do the same when they are invited to their friends parties. Cash is easier, more convenient. And the kids want it this way. There is never any worry in getting something you don’t want. Money is the thing they want. And they make out quite well at these parties. I had to warn the boys not to pad their guest lists just to increase the birthday earnings! Of course not , dad, they smile at me as they look over their list of mon. . ., err, I mean, friends. We have learned that you can never go wrong with money. . .as a gift.

But what if we did get it wrong about money? What would be some of the consequences in our lives? We are going to look at what the Scripture says about what happens when we get money wrong, and what happens when we get it right.

Jesus tells a story about a king who was owed a large amount of money by one of his servants. Jesus tells this story in response to a question about forgiveness. This is one of those times when Jesus tells a story about money to illustrate some other spiritual issue or principal. So, this king goes to his servant and asks the servant to settle up and pay what he owes. The servant can’t. It’s just too much debt.

And so the tension of the story appears – a man owes a good deal of money, money that he doesn’t have, to another person. Can anyone relate to this story?

I think Jesus wants us to learn certain things from this story. One of those things is that by its nature, money is a magnifier of a person’s character. What do I mean by this? Well, it’s like in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The central object is the Dark Lord’s Ring of Power, which corrupts anyone who tries to use it no matter how good his or her intentions. Tim Keller calls the Ring a “psychic amplifier.” The Ring takes the heart’s deepest desires and magnifies them to idolatrous proportions. And remember, an idol is taking something that is good and making it an ultimate thing. Idols usually don’t start out from bad things. Idolatry is trying to find soul satisfaction and ultimate meaning from things not meant to give them.

“The human heart is an idol factory. Anything can be an idol and everything has been.” Tim Keller

Money is a similar psychic amplifier. It isn’t by nature inherently evil, like the Ring of Power, but it does magnify character like few other things. In the story of the king and the debter, the debt magnifies the principal characters. The king’s good character is brought out by the occasion to forgive a debt. And the servants bad character is soon thereafter revealed by his ill treatment of those who owe him money. Notice, it’s the same debt but it elicits two different responses. Because the king and the servant are obviously two different quality of persons.

And that offers another teachable moment that no doubt Jesus wants us to get: Money and greed are not just a problem for the rich. We want to think that. And we want to say it’s just those rich folks and we’re not them. But the hard truth here is that the best person in the story was the wealthy king. He didn’t allow his money to be an idol. He valued forgiveness and other persons more than he valued his money. Not so the lowly servant. His love for money was great. It was at least one of his idols. There may have been others.

“The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

Money has the power to do great harm when we get wrong. It can harm us and harm others. For example, carrying a lot debt over sustained periods of time rarely brings out the good in us. Debt is a great weight around us. Maybe we can carry it for a little while okay. But over the long term we pay a price. Debt can kill. Debt has the effect of isolating us from others. It squelches are ability to be generous with our money, our time, our talents. It affects our spirit of generosity and forgiveness. As the story well illustrates, being forgiven of debt doesn’t de facto makes us giving and forgiving people. Debt is often just a symptom of some underlying problems. When the debt is gone, the problem must be addressed, or, as Jesus taught, the demons will returned seven-fold.

However, being debt-free does provide us a wealth of opportunity to be generous, forgiving, and loving. Here we learn the lesson that the birthday party kids know. Cash is good. We all need a cash cow. But what we do with the cash will not only reflect and magnify our character, but will also help shape it.

We all need food and shelter, some savings, some income to live on. In a book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, it says social scientists have shown that once a person’s basic needs have been met, additional money and possessions have virtually no impact on his or her contentment level.

Remember, we are pursuing the Simple Life – a life well-lived in taking pleasure from simple things and from the joy of generosity toward God and others. That way lies contentment.

“There is great gain in godliness in contentment. . .if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. . .”

Somebody tell St. Paul that almost two thousand years after he wrote that sentence, social scientists have discovered the same thing.

In the pursuit of godliness we will make “getting money right” an indispensable spiritual discipline. We will begin to measure our priorities in part by what our checkbook and online accounts say is important to us. And if we find a great disconnect there, like the king in the story, we should be outraged, outraged at ourselves. We may have some cleaning up to do, some debts to pay down. We may have to start budgeting. We may have to reconsider what is food, shelter, clothing, i.e. what is necessary for contentment and what everything else is. We should start giving more generously today, our money, our time, our skills, our selves.

Does not the invitation to the Table come from the One who gives most and gives best and holds the key to Life and Death?

2011-01-05T05:36:00.000-08:00

Simple Living in Tough Economic Times

Point: Life is not about our possessions. If we would remember some simple wisdom we can live a simpler life that makes room for peace and joy.

I think many of us feel like our live are cluttered and overscheduled and overstuffed. We are overstuffed with busyness and overstuffed with stuff. The more we try to find meaning in our busyness and our stuff, the more elusive it is. It’s like drinking seawater, the more you drink the thirstier you are.

“Our culture is shallow and complex while Life is simple and deep.” Fred Rogers

Many people these days are looking for a simpler, deeper way to live. When I think about a simpler way of life the image that comes to mind is the front porch. Sitting in your favorite rocking chair or swing on the front porch on a nice evening is one of the simple pleasures of life. I’ve always loved a porch. I remember my grandparents porch. It was screened in with a swing and rocking chairs. It had a view of the garden and a view of the lane and we sat many times and talked as family there. You are never in a hurry when you are sitting on the porch with family or friends.

We have too many homes with no front porch. We are a people in a hurry and a people who are secluded inside with their stuff. I think about my grandmother on her porch. She sat there and did her snap beans. She would tell my Pap to get some of the homemade ice cream out to serve us kids. My Pappy was frugal with his ice cream. He made it with care. It was a treat for us. My grandparents always had good things. But here’s the thing – they never had a lot of stuff. Their lives were never overscheduled or cluttered. They didn’t seem to need a lot but they always had money for what they needed. Their lives were not about their stuff. Many of us today have forgotten or never learned the wisdom of simple living that many of our grandparents and great-grandparents lived by. In fact, noted author Dave Ramsey tries help people learn wisdom about their stuff and their finances and themselves. He repeatedly states that what he teaches is nothing new, “It’s things your grandmother knew and taught.” Here’s news – grandma didn’t make it up either. Her wisdom had its source in the scriptures.

God teaches us to live lives that are full, full of purpose without sacrificing peace, joy, and love. This is a clue to where we find contentment.

A man approaches Jesus and says, “ Rabbi tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” This provokes a response from Jesus who does not get drawn into the family dispute but uses it as a teaching moment.

“Watch out and guard yourself against greed.” One translation has it, guard yourself against “the spirit that is always wanting more.”

The spirit that is always wanting more is the cause of a sickness some have called affluenza. You may have affluenza if you have already thought to yourself, “Hey, I like that rocking chair up there. I wonder where I can get one?” Another name for this is materialism. Materialism is finding meaning in life from your stuff. Watch out for that, Jesus says. Then he tells this story about a man who farmed land that did so well it made the already well-to-do man fabulously wealthy. Look at all this great stuff! What should I do with all this stuff? I know what I will do! I will build! And then I can enjoy of this stuff and I will be set for life. I have nothing to do but enjoy myself.

William Barclay notes that there is no parable in the Bible as full of the words, I, me, my , and mine. The amount of stuff this man owns is matched only by the size of his ego. It nevers occurs to the man that he could solve his storage problems very simply – give some of it away. But that idea apparently never entered his head. He wanted to keep it all for himself, always. He forgot that Life sooner or later won’t tolerate that arrangement. Sooner, later, or this very night your life will be required and then who gets your stuff?

It’s like the wealthy businessman who died and at his funeral someone asked an associate, “So how much did he leave?” The answer – he left everything. Everyone always leaves everything. Always.

Adam Hamilton asks the question, “Which tent are you living in, con-tent or discon-tent?”

The scriptures teach that contentment is not found in more stuff or busier lives but rather in lives lived simply and generously for God and others. In this maxim you can hear Jesus two great commands of life – Love God and love others as much as you love yourself.

I knew a couple once who built a house that was beyond their means to pay for. To pay the monthly house payment they both had to work full time jobs. He actually started working overtime all the time, which means you’re really holding down two jobs. They had kids but they hardly had any time for their marriage or their kids. They never saw each other because they were always working. They were always working to pay for that house they didn’t really need. Were they living in the house or was the house living off of them? The stress of their life increased over several years until their marriage and family disintegrated. They start out intending their marriage and family to go this way. They knew what we perhaps know.

But we tell ourselves that things can’t be different because we are helpless. We are helpless to control our schedules. We are helpless to control our spending. We are helpless to control the amount of stuff that flows to us and into our homes and lives. But this is just excuse, isn’t it? We do have choices. We can choose other priorities in our schedule. We can choose to eliminate expenses (luxuries) that require us to work more hours or take certain jobs. We can choose to get rid of the clutter of our time and stuff that steals our simplicity and therefore our peace and joy. Sometimes we would be better off if we would just go sit on the porch.

In other words, living in contentment is possible for you and me, for anyone.

“For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have very little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.”

I have learned the secret. . .”I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”

John Ortberg suggests a few keys to contentment:

Remember it could be worse. When you are getting into your five or ten year old car in the parking lot, you say “it could be worse.” When you walk by all the broken things in need of repair around your house you say, “it could be worse.” When you go to work and are frustrated by all the problems and challenges there you say, “it could be worse.” And when you’re frustrated and disappointed with your spouse you say, “it could be worse. Well, actually you should probably think these words rather than say them.

Another key to contentment is asking yourself “How long will this make me happy?” We have found out how quickly the glow fades off the latest greatest shiny new toy or appliance we simply had to have. In months, weeks, or days, it simply doesn’t seem that great anymore. But the bill for it seems just as big, if not bigger.

Give thanks in all circumstances. Developing a grateful heart is one of the most important keys to finding contentment. Remember Paul’s words, that he learned how to be satisfied in any circumstance. He also says this, “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,” (1 Thessalonians 5.18)

The last key is ask yourself where your soul finds true satisfaction. True satisfaction, joy even, is found in obeying the two great commandments of loving God and loving others. St. Augustine wrote 1,600 years ago words that ring true for us today:

“Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

We are capable of living simply and generously. We are capable of making room in our lives for peace and joy and generosity. Over the next several weeks we are going to look at how we can free ourselves from some of the financial problems we have chained ourselves to and begin to live with more wisdom, joy, purpose, and generosity.

2011-01-05T05:35:00.002-08:00

Teenagers Need a Purpose

Clip “Dewey Knows Best”

“What kind of a God makes us think outside of school?” Although Dewey, a character from the show Malcolm in the Middle, isn’t a teenager, he expresses many teens and young adults initial aversion to church and matters of faith. Dewey’s premise is that God is too big and different for us to know and we are too small for God to really care about. “There’s nothing we can do about it,” is what Dewey concludes. That belief is more prevalent than we may realize.

Recent polls and census data tells that the fastest growing category of response on questions of faith in this country is the “no faith” category. Young adults and teens are a large part of this response. The number of young adults who respond “I have no faith, I am nothing” has doubled in the last 20 years. Remember, these statistics are real people. These are our sons and daughters, our grandsons and granddaughters. What if these trends continue? What if nothing changes? If nothing changes we will lose a generation to the faith. And if there is no strong witness to Christ in one generation, who will speak to the next generation, to their sons and daughters?

This is what is so urgent about our mission and message. We are here to Make Disciples and Create Community in such a time and place as this. We must continue to orient ourselves outward, toward those not yet a part of us, so those who have no faith may come to have faith in Jesus Christ. This is the last week in a series called How to Save a Life – Things Every Teenager Needs. We have talked about how teenagers need Room to Grow, Parents to Love and Instruct, how they need a Cheering Section, how they need forgiveness. But there is one more piece that we need to consider in what Teenagers Need. Teenagers need a purpose. As we’ve discussed, teenagers should not be relegated to a no man’s land between childhood and adulthood. Teenagers can and should grow in knowledge, wisdom, character, skill, and leadership. We do our teenagers, and our young adults for that matter, no favors when we treat them merely like older versions of our little children. They are persons becoming adults in their own rights. Too often we cater to teens worst instincts.

“Here we are now entertain us. . .I feel stupid and contagious. Here we are now entertain us.” Kurt Cobain

There is an episode recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospels concerning a man who approaches Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds by saying you probably know the commandments and your responsibility to obey. The man responds all these I have kept since I was very young. Jesus responds by telling him the one thing he lacks. Go and sell your possessions, give to the poor, and come and follow me.

Matthew’s Gospel refers to this man as a young man. (Matt. 19.20) For Matthew this wasn’t an incidental detail. Here was young man who was seeking God. But there was an obstacle to this young man’s spiritual journey – his materialism. Jesus says remove that and you can, and will be able to, follow me.

“But when the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” Matthew 10.22

Mark’s Gospel says he went away shocked. He shocked that Jesus would suggest his lifestyle was an impediment, or had anything to do with, his being a spiritual person, let alone a follower of Jesus. He was a materialist. Materialism is when you get your meaning in life from your stuff. The young man was a religious person. Unfortunately his everyday god, his real god, was materialism.

It is a sad scene. This young man is the only person mentioned in the Gospels who is invited by Jesus to follow and turns him down. Materialism is the specific idol and god here at work, but there are others, then and now. Our young people are giving their lives to false gods. They are settling for little or no purpose beyond having stuff and looking hot.

“Everyone has a purpose in life. Maybe yours is watching television.” David Letterman

The rich young man was probably not a teenager, but people like him are held up as models for our teenagers today in a culture saturated with selfishness but precious little purpose and vision. God wants to call our young people to lives of purpose. He not only wants to save them from their sin for heaven. He wants to get heaven into them so that they are Kingdom people doing the work of King in their generation.

The Bible is filled with examples of how God calls young persons to lives of purpose. Samuel was a young man serving under Eli the priest when God called him. The introduction to that story goes like this:

“Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” 1 Samuel 3.1

What are the consequences for a young person who lives in a time when hardly anyone is speaking of the Word of God? What are the consequences of living your life with little or no vision? God called Samuel, like he called Isaiah, like he called Jeremiah, like he called Ruth and Deborah and Mary. God loves to call young people because there is a lot that young people can do in the Kingdom that God is bringing to fruition.

Notice as well that God called Samuel while he was “ministering to the Lord.” We are most likely to hear God’s call and see some vision in our lives when we are already seeking to serve God. What are the implications for our church and ministry? Young people are a constituency that we merely do for. You know, get them pizza, buy them soda, keep them entertained and hope they will come to church once in awhile. Young people are people we minister with. Young people are also people who minister to us.
I had lunch with a guy in our church not too long ago and I asked him a standard question that I often ask people, “How is it that you came to be a part of Hicks?” He looked at me with eyes shining and said, “I have never told anyone this but I want to tell you. I came to church one Sunday but I wasn’t planning on it being more than a one time thing. But that morning the confirmands were giving testimonies and Ethan stood up and talked about how important the church was for him, how there were a couple persons who didn’t give up on him and made him feel cared for and appreciated, how he saw faith in God through that. When I heard that, that God was doing that in this kid’s life, I was challenged that maybe God could do that in me.”

Young people minister to us. God is pouring out his Spirit on all flesh and young people are getting vision and dreaming dreams

It’s not too early to ask our teenagers what their passion is, where they sense God’s leading in their lives, and how are they going to live God’s purposes. God knows, our young people don’t need to be entertained more. They are like us. They are happiest when they are living lives of purpose. They get joy when they can serve others.

I don’t think it’s an oversimplification to say that young people are taking their own lives today for lack of purpose. It’s been said that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. We need to show our young people that their lives are not just problems, their lives are filled with promise and purpose.

“Let no one look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in your speech, your conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity. . .Do not neglect the gift that is in you.” 1 Timothy 4.12,14

2011-01-05T05:35:00.001-08:00

Teenagers Need Forgiveness

Jesus is asked how many times we should forgive someone. The standard religious answer of the day was you forgive someone seven times. Jesus said, one time, that’s it. . . No, that’s not what he said. He said, “Not seven times. Seventy-seven times.” Some scholars say that seventy-seven was a symbolic number that implied an unlimited scope. In other words it was Jesus way of saying you forgive someone for doing the same stupid, wrong, even evil stuff to you, indefinitely.

Do you buy that? Isn’t that pretty difficult?

Have you ever struggled with forgiving a son or daughter something they’ve done wrong to you, especially something they’ve done more than once?

If a teenager were guilty of say, lying, seven different times, would you be ready to forgive and forget? If a teenager were caught stealing seven times, let alone seventy, what would you call them?

There was an old proverb known by the people of Israel for many years that said,

“The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

This meant, whatever the parents did wrong the children will pay the price as well. The children will make the same mistakes as the parents. It’s like a bad debt that won’t go away. That old sin cycle will keep on spinning. But the Lord speaks to the people through Ezekiel, saying, “Why do you keep on repeating this proverb? It’s not true and so you shouldn’t say it anymore. Everyone will be responsible for their own sins. All lives are mine. All souls are mine. Only the person who sins will pay the price of the sin, which is death.”

Of course everyone, parents and youth, everyone sins. But the good news in this is that God has a remedy for every person – that remedy is new life through God’s gift of His Son. And new life starts with experiencing forgiveness.

This can be difficult for teenagers because seeking forgiveness would be admitting there is something wrong.

Kraken scene from Juno

Teenagers don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know there’s anything wrong with them. Shoot I don’t want people to know there is anything wrong with me either. I don’t want that. And I’m supposedly mature. A teenager’s worst fear is that they will be found out. So they change the subject.

There was a boy in my youth group many years ago who seemed to be struggling with living up to his own reputation. Mike was a smart kid with an even quicker wit. He liked to play the part of the slightly bad boy. He was pleasant most of the time but he always had a gleam in his eye, like there was more going on than he would tell you about. I’m not altogether sure why he came to my youth group except that he was friends with a couple of the kids in the group and that there was a part of him, perhaps a very small part, that was interested in what we were living.

Mike stopped coming to youth group as he got older. I would see him in the neighborhood occasionally. I would hear about minor troubles and then a dui. Then another. Fast forward maybe five years later Mike contacts me and says he wants to talk. He had just been convicted of another dui and fleeing the scene. He was about to go back to jail for the third time. He had a young wife and a baby that he would be leaving for awhile. He came to me to ask if I thought he could change. He came to ask me to pray for him.

I think people like watching soap operas because the characters always stay the same. If a guy is player and cheater in one episode, he will be in another. If a woman is prone to letting people walk all over her last year, it will still be happening to her this year. So you can tune in to the soap opera after missing months of it and really only need a little help catching up. It’s like the characters in the story walk around with cartoon bubbles over their heads that say, “Womanizer”, “Doormat” “Convicted Felon”.

Some people in real life live like they have a label hovering over their heads that everyone can see. Mike must have felt like that after a while. What do you have to do to get rid of the label?

Teenagers probably feel the label more than most. By the time they’re in the eighth grade they’ve been labeled – nerd, jock, band nerd, cheerleader, druggie, loser, slacker.
There’s a scene in the movie Juno where Juno goes over to the adoptive parents house and hangs out – the adoptive mother finally says, “Your parents are probably wondering where you are. Juno says, “Nah, I’m already pregnant. What other shenanigans am I going to get into?”

We’ve all got labels. Like the discount clothing bin at your favorite store. The clothes are discounted cause their odd sizes, or faded, or marked in some way. And so the bin is marked, “As Is.” There’s no other way to buy them, but “as is.” We’re like that. We all come “as is.” And here’s the thing teenagers need: they need to know that they are loved as is, and they are forgiven for their mistakes and for their sins, as is.

Now, forgiving is not excusing. It’s not saying it was okay to do wrong. Forgiving is saying what you did is wrong but I won’t make you pay the price. It is the first step in the remedy for sin. There is this great truth:

“And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4.32

There’s this brief episode in Acts where it says that Paul and Barnabas, the great missionaries to the whole non-Jewish world, are getting ready to go on another missionary journey. Barnabas wants to take a young man named John Mark. But Paul says no because Paul thinks John Mark is immature and unreliable. Paul and Barnabas argue about it the disagreement becomes so intense that they split over it. Barnabas ends up taking John Mark with him and Paul finds another partner in Silas.

Now, Paul had his reasons. But Barnabas did what was needful. John Mark may have been unreliable and immature, but he didn’t stay that way. Because he knew he was forgiven. He knew that because Barnabas showed him that. John Mark was a young man who became what God wanted him to be because someone decided to forgive him his faults and help him to grow. Barnabas name, by the way, means “son of encouragement.” Our kids need more Barnabases in their lives.

2010-11-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

Teenagers Need Parents

Point: Parents Provide Rules and Relationship

“Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22.6

When I had kids nobody specifically told me that I would also have to train them. But you do. It’s like getting a puppy. They are cute and cuddly, but cute and cuddly only go so far. Then you have teach them where to go potty and what they can and cannot chew on. This is what parents do for their kids. One of the best images of parenting also comes from the animal kingdom and the example of the Emperor Penguin. The female Emperor penguin lays an egg and transfers it to the male. The female goes to sea for weeks to feed and replenish. She’s exhausted. While she’s gone, the male Emperor penguin sits the egg on his feet and then just waits and watches. . .for weeks. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t hang with the other penguins. He doesn’t watch tv. He just stands there warming this egg on his feet. Seemingly nothing happens. But he stays there. He’s a parent.

-Show clips of baby penguins first steps and battle scene from Braveheart

Parents must be patient and giving. Parents are called to protect and nurture their kids. Parents do this by providing rules in the context of relationship. Now, this maybe a little easier to do when our kids are in the cute and cuddly stage. But many teenagers don’t want to cuddle, at least not with their parents. So parenting teens looks less like papa penguin with baby penguin and more like an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. Even so, teenagers still need training. They need to be provided with rules in the context of nurturing relationship. Teenagers need parents to do this. They are not going to get what they need from parents anywhere else.

It’s difficult being a parent of a teenager today. Why is this so? Because it’s difficult being a teenager today.

“We have never been their age in this age.”

That awareness brings wisdom for us. We don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager in 2010. But we should also take some comfort knowing that as much as the technology and other things have changed, some things remain the same.

“Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people, and talk nonsense when they should be working. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table and tyrannize their elders.” Socrates, 500 B.C.

Our contemporary response to teenagers has tended to be one of isolation and separation – they are their own separate exhibit in the human zoo. We created this thing called adolescence in which, at best, we encourage youth to have their own separate activities, music and entertainments. But adolescence is a no-man’s land between childhood and adulthood, particularly where boundaries and rules in the context of meaningful adult relationships are lacking. We send them away to youth retreat, youth camp, youth dances. There is nothing wrong with these activities. There is a lot right with them. But what is often missing are the activities where adults mentor kids in specific skills and interests. What is missing in our culture are rites of passage for youth into adulthood.

Other times and cultures stressed rites of passage much more. The Gospel Story of the young Jesus going to the Temple during the Passover festival without his parents is an example of a rite of passage. For the Jews of Jesus’ day, it was the law that every adult male that lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem had to attend Passover. Also, a Jewish boy became a man when he turned twelve years old.

Let me say that again – a Jewish boy became a man at age twelve.

And when that happened the boy became a son of the law. This meant he took the obligations of the law upon himself. It was his responsibility, not his parents, to follow the law of God. So the twelve year old Jesus went to the Passover festival with his parents. They all went to the great Temple. But when his parents left, he lingered behind. Joseph and Mary were well on their way home before they realized their son was missing. And this is not that surprising. The people traveled as a caravan and the women traveled with the women and the men with men. And each parent probably assumed the boy was with other parent. But when they realize their mistake, they are alarmed and they go back to Jerusalem to look for their son. They find him still at the Temple where he is. . .

“sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions.” Luke 2.46

In other words, he is being a student. He is not dominating the conversation but he is learning from the teachers and engaging with them. And he is impressing them with his astute answers. His parents find him there and his mother says,

“Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been looking for you. We’ve been worried.” Verse 48

That sounds about right, doesn’t it? This is every mother’s response, which is not to be wondered at coming from the Blessed Mother. She points out to her son that he did something unexpected. He was supposed to be with them. Dare I say, he broke a rule. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that the young Jesus was probably a pretty good kid. I’ve known parents who thought their kids walked on water, but hey, Mary’s kid really did. I don’t imagine Jesus had many timeouts in his life. And yet, still, there was this family with these parents and this nurturing relationship of boundaries, and life, and expectations to be met, all expressed in the mother’s heart-felt question, Why did you treat us this way?

Now listen to what Jesus says, which, by the way, are the first words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels:

“Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Luke 2.49

I have been asked before when I thought Jesus first knew that He was the Son of God?
Here. This moment. His coming of age into a Jewish man corresponded to his coming to full awareness of being the Son of Man and Son of God. William Barclay notes that if it had happened to him as a baby or a young child he would have been a monstrosity. As a young man it came in a blazing realization, but it came gracefully and we must say, humbly.

Notice how gently Jesus uses the my Father with the capital F for the first time. He claims his identity without rejecting his earthly father and mother. This discovery of identity did not make him proud. Remember when the Beatles John, Paul, George, and Ringo, all barely out of adolescence, claimed to be bigger than God?

Well, the Son of God realizes, yeah, I really am God but. . .yes, mom, I’ll go feed the chickens and take out the garbage now. Here is the divine humility. Joseph and Mary didn’t quite understand it yet.

“He went down with them. . .and was obedient to them” verse 51

Our kids aren’t just like Jesus, yet. They have a lot of growing to do. So do we. It’s been said that, “The trouble with being a parent is that by the time you’re experienced – you’re unemployed.” We are all learning on the job, both teens and adults. We are going to make mistakes. Let’s give each other some grace. Rules are not the glue that holds relationships together. Love is the glue. Rules are tools. Rules are building blocks on the bridge that you are building with your teenager toward adulthood.

Our goal is not perfect teens or perfect parents – rather, our goal is nurturing relationships that use rules, boundaries, and rites of passage to help us all grow into what God desires us to be. With that in mind, what needs to change in your family? Does your family need more specific rules and boundaries? Do you need to make more time for rites of passage – like learning a new skill with your child or grandchild, going hunting together, or taking a special trip together?

We all know about God’s love for us. Do we expect to live in God’s house of love without any rules or responsibility? Are you a person that needs to start living into some rules and boundaries that God wants for you?

2010-09-07T13:25:00.002-07:00

Worship in Spirit

I want you to think of one of your favorite places. Go there in your mind’s eye. It could be a vacation spot. It could be a place you go camping. It could be your hometown. What about the place makes it special for you? Now, think about one of your least favorite places. Why is this place so unattractive to you?

Believe it or not your favorite and least favorite places have at least one thing in common – they have the power of place. They elicit feelings and emotions from you. For example, I sat in the car of a world-class roller-coaster the other day. This coaster speeds you up to 120mph in four seconds and then goes straight up in the air. As I waited for the ride to start, my feelings of anticipation and nervousness rose. The boy sitting next to me asked me if I was scared. Places bring out different feelings in us. The controversy over the proposed mosque at the site of the World Trade Center memorial comes to mind. The place is stirring strong emotion and heated debate. There is power in “place.”

We come upon this idea as we listen to the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman who is drawing water at her village’s well. The woman broaches the subject of where is the best place to worship God.

“Sir, I see that you are prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” John 4.19-20

When the woman says “this mountain” she means Mount Gerizim. Gerizim was a place where Abraham and Jacob had made altars. In Deuteronomy it says that Gerizim is the place where the people are to go to be blessed. So for the Samaritans, who lacked most of the Old Testament outside of the first five books, anytime scripture referred to “the good mountain” they took it to mean Mount Gerizim. They had strong feelings about it. The Jews had equal or greater feelings about Jerusalem. The woman points out to Jesus, “ you (as a Jew) say Jerusalem is the right place to worship God.” It’s an interesting side note to mention that the Jews didn’t always believe this. Well, at least not all of them. There was controversy during the time of the Judges, during David’s day and the building of the Temple under his son Solomon. Some other sites, “high places”, were touted by some as the right place to worship God. But eventually the Temple in Jerusalem won out. If you were a true worshiper, at least once, you made the trek to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple.

Jesus response to the woman’s question is pretty revealing. First, he tells the woman that times are changing.

“The hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.” John 4.23

The woman is interested in the place to worship and Jesus turns the conversation to the better way to approach God. Earlier in this Gospel John describes the scene of Jesus angrily clearing out the money changers from the Temple. The zeal of the Lord was upon Jesus as he made the point of saying you’ve made this place a flea market instead of a house of prayer. So certainly, the Temple in Jerusalem was not unimportant to Jesus. But then he refers to a new temple, the temple of himself.

“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2.19

Not only did Jesus fulfill this promise, but the fact is his death and resurrection meant the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem as a viable religious system. “After Jesus offered the sacrifice that would put away the sins of the world, what place would there be for a temple in which the central act was the offering of the bodies of animals on the altar? When Jesus died, the temple died as the center of a religious system.” (Leon Morris) This was true not just for Jewish Christians but relatively soon for all Jews, where the sacred place of worship moved from Temple to local synagogue, each viable community having its own sacred space.

So the answer to the question of where is the right place to worship God did indeed change. It went from high places, Mount Gerizim and Jerusalem, to synagogue and, in the case of the early Christian Way, the house church. But Jesus introduces a new idea – the way you worship is more important than where you worship. The right way to worship is “in spirit and truth.”

What does this mean? It means we worship the Jesus way. Jesus is the way to the Father. So in our spirits we approach the Father not “by buildings made with human hands” but by a spirit right before God.

Psalm 24 speaks of this reality – “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. . .such is the company of those who seek him.” 24.3-6

Likewise in the New Testament , the one who worships the Lord is the one who presents themselves utterly and honestly before God.

“I urge you brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12.1

To worship in spirit is to be completely present before God. We present ourselves – this is “spiritual worship.” St. Paul continues on this theme in the first letter to the Corinthians:

“Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” 1 Corinthians 3.16-17

You are the temple of God. Not some high places. Not some holy mountain. Not even Jerusalem. You are the place where God’s Spirit lives. You are that temple. All this has been made possible by “the mercies of God” revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The old hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, speaks of the experience of the believer who calls upon the presence of God in worship. It speaks of “raising an Ebenezer” which is a makeshift stone or wood altar. Where do I raise this altar? Here. Wherever I am, (I don’t even have to have stone or wood), I raise my heart as the altar of worship to a holy God. Take my heart, Lord and seal it. The believer can call upon God anywhere, anytime.
We are living temples. We are literally the moving church. It’s not that places and spaces aren’t important. It’s just that they are not as important as the way we worship God. How do we worship God rightly? How do we “ascend the hill of the Lord with clean hands and a pure heart?”

We honor God with our best in worship. So our best might start with how we get ready physically, emotionally, intellectually. Are you showing up for worship rested and ready or are you drained and dead? Some people get ready by putting on their best clothing. Some people don’t feel ready to worship unless they have a suit and tie on or their best dress. For others, being ready is being comfortable, and discomfort would stand in the way of being real before God. I say, dress the way that best readies you for worship.

Are you showing up for worship with an openness to God’s Spirit and God’s Word? Are you teachable? Is your mind quick to engage and ask questions? Do you present yourself humbly and willingly before God? Do you sing with passion even if you can’t sing? You do pray with intensity even if you don’t know how to pray?

When I asked you to imagine your favorite places, did any of you keep your eyes open because right here is one of those places? If not, I wonder, is it because of the place or is it because of us?

Let me take you back to one of my favorite places – to that rollercoaster seat. Imagine the anticipation and excitement you feel. You are nervous. You are even a little bit scared for your life. You know you are not in control. But it starts, maybe slowly for you at first. You ascend, clink, clink, clink. . .and before you know it you are up higher. You see things you didn’t see before. You are awed and amazed. And still you anticipate what comes next. Because now the ride really begins and it’s humbling and thrilling at the same time. And you feel alive. You laugh and scream and you raise your hands. Nobody tells you to do these things. They just happen naturally, from your spirit, if you will. And every twist and turn, up and down, you are fully engaged, gripping and holding on for your life. The ride comes to an end and it seems so short you are disappointed. But you are pleased and grateful and you turn to the person next you and smile and say wasn’t that amazing! Maybe you even get right back in line to do it again.

This is how worship should be. This is what it means to worship “in spirit.” For worship is a giving of yourself completely. It is putting yourself in the hands of the living God, which is always a dangerous thing to do, but also a very thrilling thing to do. When we worship in spirit, without a doubt we know that we have been in the presence of God. We leave changed by the experience. We leave awed and grateful. We leave wanting more. What would our church and community look like if we came ready to worship every week? What would we look like?

2010-09-07T13:25:00.001-07:00

The Gift

Have you ever been given a gift you didn’t want? It’s happened to me. I’m sure it’s happened to you. What do you do with it? You can’t throw it away. Do you wait an appropriate amount of time and then regift it to someone else? My sister once received what she described as an ugly dinner plate. She had a yard sale and put the plate out for sale, cheap. And guess what happened? The friend who gave her the plate showed up at the yard sale. My sister was mortified, especially when the woman asked how much is that adorable dinner plate? My sister said, “For ten cents, it’s yours.”

Not receiving a gift with graciousness can be very offensive to the giver. In the movies you have those scenes where the intrepid traveler is in a foreign land among aboriginal peoples and the traveler is offered a banquet of roasted insects and worm sushi. He doesn’t want to eat it but knows it would be deeply offensive to the natives of he doesn’t. When you were a kid and Aunt Edna made her awful tuna noodle casserole, you didn’t want to eat but you knew you had to. All eyes were on you. What’s more, you had to say thank you Aunt Edna and sound like you meant it.

We all know about bad gifts. But is there ever a time in our lives when someone wants to give us a good gift and we refuse simply because we do not understand the value of it?

There was a man named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a ruler, and a teacher of Israel. He was by these standards, the standards of his day and culture, simply one of the best people around. We have every reason to believe that he was a good, honest, and wise man. He certainly was respected by his community. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking some understanding. He begins the conversation with:

“Rabbi, we know you are teacher sent by God; no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” John 3.2

Nicodemus was saying, look, anyone in their right mind can see that there is something special about you, that God is with you. Nicodemus is showing that he is a seeker. He wants to understand.

Jesus is good at knowing what people need and getting to the heart of the matter. He says,

“Very truly I tell you no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
John 3.3

Another good way to translate that last part is, “unless he is born from above.” John often uses words with multiple meanings is this is one of those times. Let’s look at “born again” first. Because this is what Nicodemus picks up on. He questions Jesus, what, I must climb back into my mother’s belly? Nicodemus is being facetious. He is learned man and teacher well acquainted to truth expressed in metaphor. But that doesn’t mean he understands what Jesus is saying to him.

“Very truly I tell you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I told you you must be born again.” John 3.5-7

The language of water and flesh and even Spirit have something to do with the forgiveness of the one who believes. If we believe in Christ we will be forgiven. But Jesus is saying much more than this. This language he uses is the language of origin. If you put earth and water and an acorn together you get an oak tree. If you put human flesh together you get a human. But, what if you want the human to be more than flesh that will by its nature, like the sturdy oak, eventually die? You must birth it with something that is spiritual, eternal. It must be birthed from above.

Jesus didn’t come to start a religion in which decent people could strive to be better, or even, that bad people might become good. Jesus came so that dead people could become alive again. Jesus came so that we can have New Life!

In the movie Forrest Gump there is that scene where Forrest and Lieutenant Dan are in a bar near Times Square on New Year’s Eve. And they’re in this bar with a couple girls who are, shall we say, of low repute. But they are there watching the ball drop on television and the one girl dreamily stares at the tv and says, “Don’t you just love New Year’s. It’s a chance to start over. Everyone gets to start over.”

But the problem with that is, yes, the year might be new, but I’m still the same person starting the new year. Nothing about the calendar turning can change me. I need some outside help. Some spiritual help. Some help from above.

What if there was someone willing to give us this gift of a new start and a new life? Wouldn’t we want that? Wouldn’t that be worth unwrapping?

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him in this way no longer. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 2 Corinthians 5.16-17

This is the reality of what it means to believe and trust in God through Jesus Christ. God does something in us when we believe. The word believe is found 98 times in this Gospel, in part, to emphasize that the believing and trusting is our part, but the saving is God’s part. There is no amount of human effort that can earn or attain salvation and new life. This is God’s doing. And John has a word to describe this great thing:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3.16
This is perhaps the best known verse in the whole Bible. Don’t let over-familiarity allow you to miss it. Did you catch it? God so loved the world that he gave. He gave the world a gift. And when He gave he didn’t hold anything back. It was the very best gift he had to give. He gave his Son.

I know many of you pray for and honor our service men and women who are serving around the world, particularly those who are in combat. With sorrow we look at names and faces in the paper and on the news of those who have fallen in the line of duty. In their deep grief, the families of those soldiers must wonder if they have given a gift that has gone unappreciated by many in this country and around the world.

The story is told of a man who during the difficult days of World War I took his boy for a walk. The small boy noticed that there were stars in the windows of some of the houses they passed.

“Dad, why are there stars in some of the windows.” His father replied that is comes from this terrible war we are in. The stars show that these people have given a son.”

The boy went on silently for awhile. Then he looked up and there was the evening star, shining brightly in the sky. The boy said, “Dad, God must have given a Son, too.”

God gave a gift. Could it be a gift that some have not receive because they don’t know what it cost and how good it is?

Can you see why Jesus was so forceful – Ýou must be born again.

This is it. This is the opportunity, Jesus is telling us. There is no one other way. Money can’t help. Power can’t help. Self-improvement won’t get it. You must receive the gift. Believe and receive. If you are in your forties or older, would you consider that you can have a new life and become the person you were meant to be? If you are young, would you consider you are meant for God’s life and that to wait any longer is to just cheat yourself out of the best gift you could ever receive? What would our church look like if we all received the gift God is offering? And what would happen in our community if we all began to live in God’s life and power today?

God gave us the great gift of new life. Who wouldn’t want that?

2010-09-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

Beginnings

“First this, God. . .” That’s how Peterson’s The Message states the beginning of the Bible.

First, God. That’s the premise. “He is before all things and in him all things hold together,” is how Colossians puts it (1.17)

Hebrews chapter 11, that great statement on faith says:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things are not visible.” Hebrews 11.3

We are going to be studying the Gospel of John for the next month. John’s Gospel begins with an intentional echoing of Genesis 1:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1.1

This is a difficult statement to understand because it comes from a way of thinking that we are not used to. It comes from the ancient Greeks and a word for “word” called logos. Logos had a couple of meanings or emphases. Logos was the spoken word, the word going out from someone or written to communicate. No problem there – we get that. But there was another sense in which the Greeks understood logos – the word that was not spoken or written or uttered in any way. And yet it was there.

“It was the word that remained in the mind.”

It was something like our reason, signifying that which is rational and intelligent. You could almost say, the word that was present, or a presence. This presence is in all things and behind all things. The soul of the universe. Just as the Spirit of God was a brooding presence over the dark waters at the beginning was Creation, so the Word is present in all things, unspoken, except by the nature of things.

Norman Maclean, in his beautiful book, A River Runs Through It, touches on the mysterious relationship between the creation and words and the Word.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

That is from the soul of an artist. From the mind of science we find this expression of Logos in DNA and the sheer amount of information that sustains the natural world, the human body being a prime example. There seems to be unspoken, unseen words behind all that is visible in the world. What I am trying to say is that there seems to be a plan. Just like you don’t build a house without a plan, so there seemed to be a plan when this world came into being.

Not long ago I heard a junior high age girl remark, “That’s so random!” I like the expression. Kids use it. “That’s so random” means it’s unexpected. It’s odd. But in a good way. Different is good. Random is good. Like a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, levels and angles that stretch the normal rules of design. It seems almost random. But it’s not. In fact, there is more design and plan involved.

When random comes along in our lives, it’s mostly good because there was an order to begin with. If everything was random then we would have serious problems.

My sister Kristin and her eleven year old daughter took a trip to China this summer with a group from their church. They went there to do mission work among the poor. When she got back I phoned her and asked how the trip went. She said it was good and how her daughter didn’t want to leave when the two weeks were up. But the one real disconcerting thing was when they arrived there and met their host, they expected to be given an itinerary of how they would be spending their time and what work they would be doing. What they got instead was their host smiling and saying, “So, what do you want to do?”

My sister thought, we traveled thousands of miles to get here and when we do, there is no plan? That was frustrating to her. Things were too unstructured, too random. I just read in Newsweek that it costs like $286,000 to raise a child to adulthood. I’m not daunted by that figure. But the money is only the half of it. How do you bring a baby into the world and see them grow safely and successfully into what they are supposed to be? What’s the plan for that? It can’t be accidental. It can’t be random. If everything were random there would be no story, no music, no building, no growing, no beauty, no truth. We would be lost. Because total randomness is Chaos. That’s what Genesis chapter one says the universe was like when God started to create.

“The Word was with God. And the Word was God.” John 1.1

The unspoken Word started to speak and there was light and order and definition. Waters were separated from land, sky from earth, light from dark. And God said this is good. This is very good.

Now the Jews had a different understanding of “the Word, than the Greeks. They identified Word with “Wisdom.” The Word was the Wisdom of God and wisdom is talked about in the scriptures like a person. Proverbs 8 is an example:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. . .Before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. I was there when he set the heavens in place. . .I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” Proverbs 8.22-31

What’s God trying to tell us. There is a plan. Not just for the Universe but specifically for you and me and us. God’s not just telling us – He is fairly shouting it at us. In fact, in Proverbs Wisdom personified “Shouts out in the streets to get people’s attention.”

We are the Lord’s special delight. We are the apple of His eye. Move over sun, moon, stars, hills and rivers – God has even better plans for us.

“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29.11

There a lot of people out there living lives of quiet desperation, thinking that everything is random. Thinking there is no plan. If you are in that place in your life right now the Lord wants you know that there are good things coming. There is a future. There is hope. This is God’s Word to you:

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. . .But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1.10-13

If we believe we receive adoption as God’s own children. If we believe we receive power. The same Word that hung the stars and caused the rivers to flow comes to us and changes us. That’s the beginning of eternity for us, when we believe. Or, first, God.

2010-09-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

My Father’s Business

Do you have your shoes on? I assume you do. But this question is one that gets asked a lot at my house. Before we go anywhere, we want to know if the boys are ready to go. Being boys, they don’t have to worry about having their car keys, or wallets, or driver licenses, or purses or favorite Barbie dolls – all that we ask is that you have your shoes on when we are ready to walk out the door!

There is a similar instruction in the Gospel: Gird your loins.

We don’t often say that one around our house (although this too, along with the shoes, is probably needed). But it has the same intent as the command to get your shoes on. In fact, the force of the command is stronger.

“Gird your loins and have your lamps lit.” Luke 12.35

The command to gird the loins refers to the clothing a servant might wear in those times. “The long flowing robes of the east were a hindrance to work; and when a man prepared to work he gathered up his robes under his belt to leave himself free for activity.”
(Barclay)

In other words, “Be dressed for action,” as NRSV translates it. Don’t be in your pajamas lounging around. Don’t be in impractical clothing. Be dressed in work clothes ready to work.

Why? Because the Kingdom of God is here.

“It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12.32

And what is the Kingdom? It is wherever and whomever God rules. To be ready for the kingdom is to have the knowledge and understanding as well as the experience that God is in control. So example, as Jesus teaches in the preceding passage, you don’t have to worry about your clothes and your food – our heavenly Father knows that we need these things. God is in control and he’ll take care of it. But let’s be clear – this is a not teaching to use as excuse for laziness or passivity. The citizen of the kingdom has the understanding that we don’t have to worry over these things and the acquisition of clothing and wealth is not our highest priority.

John Wesley used to teach the Methodists to earn all they can, save all they can, and give all they can. He instructed them to do this so that their lives could have maximum impact on the world around them. They could feed themselves by their hard work, and by their diligent saving they could give all they can to those in need around them.

In his book, Financial Peace, Dave Ramsey merely restates Wesley for today –
Avoid the worship of stuff, Plant Seeds by giving money away, Live substantially below your income, Sacrifice now so you can have peace later.

If you trust God and do it God’s with our finances, for example, then the child of the kingdom can freely “Sell their possessions, give to those in need and make their treasure (what they would die for) something much more valuable than money and possessions.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Verse 34

“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Verse 37

The servant cares about what the master cares about. The servant is ready. He is dressed for action. He is doing the master’s will whether the master seems close or far away.

And do hear the note of urgency? We’ve got to work while there is time to work! We are burning daylight. “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” Church, we have to the good steady work of understanding and experiencing the Kingdom. But we most of all have to do the urgent work of proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom to an unsaved world.

This past Monday morning a few of us came to the church to do Kingdom work and discovered a dead boy right here outside our building. He took his own life because he didn’t see anything good about his life. He was hopeless. He was in a dark pit and couldn’t see anyway out. He listened to the lies.

One of your church youth remarked that it was particularly sad that this boy died within feet of a place of hope.

I have before used the phrase “people are dying without the saving grace of the kingdom.” Lord, please, no more reminders like this one. As we gathered Thursday in the parking lot, I told the group of about sixty teenagers and young adults that no one is to blame for Adam’s death. But church I’m going to say to you this morning that we are responsible. We are in some sense responsible for our community and these generations and a young man who lived across the street from our building and took his life in our parking lot. How are we responsible you may ask?

We are responsible to care and to do everything we can to bless our community with God’s love so something like this doesn’t happen again. We have to work hard to bless people near and far. As we heard last week from Matt Keiser, missionary in La Ceiba., Honduras, people are living in garbage dumps and thinking that’s what life is. We have work to do. We have to show that for the lie that it is.

As Jesus said, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Luke 2.49

Jesus is urgent about the work the Father gave him to do. Why isn’t the church of Jesus urgent about the work?
Finally, we must be ready because the part of the Kingdom that hasn’t come yet, the Judgment, is one day coming, and that very soon.

Bob Dylan has a song called “Are You Ready.” Here are a few of the lyrics:

Are you ready to meet Jesus ?
Are you where you ought to be ?
Will He know you when He sees you
Or will He say, "Depart from Me" ?

Am I ready to lay down my life for the brethren
And to take up my cross ?
Have I surrendered to the will of God
Or am I still acting like the boss ?

Am I ready, hope I'm ready.

When the destruction cometh swiftly
And there's no time to say a fare-thee-well
Have you decided whether you want to be
In heaven or in hell ?

Are you ready, are you ready ?

Have you got some unfinished business ?
Is there something holding you back ?
Are you thinking for yourself
Or are you following the pack ?

Are you ready, hope you're ready
Are you ready ?

Are you ready for the judgement ?
Are you ready for that terrible swift sword ?
Are you ready for Armageddon ?
Are you ready for the day of the Lord ?

I’m convinced that when we live in the Kingdom and seek to work diligently and urgently, God will give us opportunities to proclaim and show good news. God will give us opportunities to have tremendous impact for the Kingdom in our world – if we are ready.

So gird your loins. Get your shoes on. Dress for action. Be about our Father’s business.

2010-09-07T11:20:00.001-07:00

Who Will Stand in the Breach?

We are going to go Old Testament today. The Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, is a complex story of God’s activity chiefly through his uniquely chosen people, Israel. A short part of this history describes Israel as a glorious nation under the rule of the beloved David and his wise and wealthy son, Solomon. That’s only a small part of the history. By far a greater chunk of the history sees Israel as a small potatoes nation being tossed around by the ruling powers surrounding them – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia all take their turns at subduing or outright conquering of Israel.

At one point the king of Assyria has overrun much of Israel and all that remains unconquered is Jerusalem, the holy city of David. But just as the Assyrian army is poised to invade lower Judah and Jerusalem, it is hit by a plague of rats and some unknown disease that severely cripples its army and forces them to call off the siege of Jerusalem. Not coincidentally, the chief prophet of Israel at that time, Isaiah, had predicted it and proclaimed that Jerusalem would never be taken by a foreign power. Most Jews believed this – they had seen it powerfully demonstrated before their city walls. Somehow the greatest army in the world at that time had to turn around and go home without a battle being fought!

Everyone in Israel believed that Jerusalem would never be conquered. The great prophet Isaiah said so. Isaiah was right about many things, but he was wrong about that. Roughly a hundred years later the Babylonian armies of Nebuchadnezzar were outside those same walls of Jerusalem, but this time no plague came to rescue Israel. The only plague they saw was the plague of Babylonian soldiers busting through and over their city walls. The walls were breached. Jerusalem fell.

What this event did to the faith and psyche of the Jewish people cannot be overstated. But what I want to focus on is what happened to them physically. Their cities were destroyed, their economy ruined, and their leading citizens were killed or deported. And that’s what became of God’s people for the next fifty years to a hundred years; until a man appears on the scene who will lead the rebuilding of the Temple and city of Jerusalem and the restoration of a nation of Israel. His name was Nehemiah. He was a Jew in exile in the royal court of the king of Persia, the country that had conquered Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. Nehemiah heard of how poor and destitute was the homeland of the Jews. He heard that work on the rebuilding of the city walls and temple had begun, but twelve years later it had not progressed beyond the foundations and, in fact, had stopped altogether. The people were too poor and harassed to do the work.

So Nehemiah got permission and financial backing from the king of Persia to go back to Jerusalem and take up the work. He also stopped in Babylon and gathered a small number of Jews who would return with him to their homeland. When he got there what he saw was discouraging. There was really no city there. Jerusalem was virtually uninhabitable. The Jews who had remained behind after the fall of the city were scattered mostly in the countryside and were fearful of other peoples on their borders.

The first thing Nehemiah had to do was to give the community physical security.

“So we rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height; for the people had a mind to work.” Nehemiah 4.6

It took well over a hundred years to happen, but Jerusalem’s walls that were breached by foreign armies were finally being rebuilt again.

Sometimes we overlook this very fundamental truth that sometimes people can’t be moved to great spiritual faith, wisdom, and work if they don’t know where they are going to sleep at night, if it will be safe to sleep there, and what if anything they will have to eat when they wake in the morning. We the Church have to admit that sometimes we are preoccupied with what is going on inside the shelter of our buildings while outside the storm rages and the people scatter.

The other weekend I attended the annual conference of our United Methodist Church in Williamsport that was previously mentioned. It was near lunchtime and I had arranged to meet for lunch that day with a small group of pastors that I regularly meet with. I walked outside the Community Arts Center, crossed the street and waited outside the Bullfrog Brewery and watched for my friends to emerge as well. As I sat there reminiscing about those streets where I grew up (my junior prom was held at the Genetti Hotel just down on the corner) I saw a young man walking briskly up the sidewalk in my direction. He was talking loudly on his cell phone and I noticed an expression of anguish on his face. I can’t repeat exactly what he said but his end of the conversation was laced with expletives and he said, “I feel like taking a gun and shooting everyone I work with.”

I heard this and saw his face and I knew that he meant it. And then he said why he felt that way. “I just got (bleeping) fired!”

I would like to say that I followed him and talked him down from his anger and hysteria and counseled him to believe that God was in control. But I didn’t do that. I said a prayer for him that God would help him in his anguish. And I noticed a security guard who had been standing across the street and must have heard what I heard, follow the young man as well. Maybe that was part of the answer to my prayer.

Friends, as the church was meeting inside the Community Arts Center, the world was going on outside the way it often does – people are losing jobs, and fighting with their families, and feeling harassed and helpless. Obviously, I’m not saying the church shouldn’t meet. I am saying that what’s going on in the world is motivation and information for our meeting. We intercede for the world and we strive for God’s work in our community.

Here’s one of the ways that the Church intersects with and is dependent on the services of people like the Police and Fire and EMS in our community. Our First Responders are, in some sense, like the Nehemiahs of our towns and cities. They build the wall, or at the very least they stand on the wall and make sure that no enemy breaches its security. You stare down all enemies of security and safety so that the Church can fight other enemies – things like poverty, addiction, greed, ignorance, selfishness, and loneliness.

If the battle was easy or predictable, that would be one thing. But Nehemiah found out that building a wall wasn’t just about mortar and stone. He had to deal with enemies inside and outside the walls. His enemies tried to mock his project to undermine morale. When that didn’t stop the work, they incited criminal bands, the gangs of their day from among Philistines and Arabs, to make raids on the area. Nehemiah’s enemies tried to lure him from the city with the intent to kill him. When that didn’t work they actually hired a false prophet to convince him his situation was hopeless and he should run for his life. Nehemiah had enemies on all sides!

With all that adversity he might have asked himself was it worth it. He might have asked, “God, are you sure this is what I’m supposed to be doing?”

But Nehemiah continued the work. When things got real bad he divided his work force into two shifts – one shift would lay stone while the other stood guard with swords and spears.

“So in the lowest parts of the behind the walls and in the breaches, I stationed people according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. After I looked things over I stood up and said to them, ‘Do not be afraid of your enemies. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your kin, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” Nehemiah 4.13-14

At the Blair County Policemen’s Memorial Service the other evening the guest speaker told the moving story of one of the officers who died in the line of duty last year, Sgt. John Pawlosky. Pawlosky was a veteran officer in Philadelphia who got up one morning and went to work like every other workday, except that this day, unbeknownst to him, something terrible was about to happen. He was called to the scene of a disputed taxi fare. What Sgt. Pawlosky didn’t know about was the threats the criminal had already made to the taxi driver and any police who would come. Pawlusky didn’t know that this man’s violent anger and his handgun would intersect with his life that day.

Maybe somebody had thanked him earlier that day for serving. Maybe no one had. I can imagine that many of you have days when you wonder if there are only enemies around and you wonder what happened to your friends. I know there are days when you feel unappreciated and unthanked. But you continue to get up and do your job. You continue to answer the call and go to the fire. When everyone else is running away from the crisis you run to it.

I want to tell you that you are doing God’s work. You are standing in the breach of the walls of our community. You are putting yourselves out there as servants of the people and I want to tell you that serving God’s purposes in our community is the highest work.
Jesus himself put it this way:

“No one has greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Matthew 15.13

2010-09-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Who Is My Neighbor?

“The boys despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death. They boasted of injuries and wore their scars with pride, and they reserved their special admiration for mutilation: a boy with a finger missing could be their king. They loved violence; they would run miles to see bloodshed; and they never missed a hanging.”
Ken Follet, The Pillars of the Earth

When you listen to that you could apply most of it to our times and say it accurately describes the attitude and character of many contemporary youth raised on Call of Duty and other violent video games. They’ve grown used to violence and cultivated a dismissive attitude and disdain for most forms of authority. We shake our heads at this generation and wistfully remember what it is was like when we were kids.

Problem is, the boys described by Follet lived in the year 1123 – they predate our own year by close to a thousand years. Those were the “old days,” although clearly not all was good about them. It as always been thus to some degree, whether we are talking about the present year, or the 1970’s or the 1940’s and ‘50’s. We create a skewed memory of a better, simpler time. But human beings are human beings. In a time closer to 2010, 1964 to be exact, New York City, a place infamous for its violent crime, was shocked by the murder of a 28 year old woman named Kitty Genovese. What was shocking about her murder was that it happened in front of her own apartment building, in the presence of multiple witnesses, none of whom cried out for help or sought to stop the violence in any way. The indifference of the bystanders came to be known as “the bystander effect” or “the Genovese Syndrome.”

A young woman was killed and people watched it out their windows, but nobody lifted a hand to help.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Luke 10.30

Did anyone see it? Yes, the narrator says. . .

“By chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed on by the other side.”

Before we try to answer why the priest ignored the man in trouble, it may be helpful to consider a little of the physical context. William Barclay says that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a notoriously dangerous road. The road traversed the mountains around Jerusalem to the relative coastal area of Jericho in a short distance, dropping 3,600 feet in twenty miles. It was steep, narrow and rocky; full of canyons and sudden dropoffs. It was geographically forbidding. But it was dangerous in a still more deadly way. It was the hunting grounds for many criminals and outlaw bands. It was so bad it garnered the nickname “the Bloody Way” and was called that for five hundred more years. If one had to travel that way, you did it in groups for protection. No one in their right mind traveled it alone. It’s like you know you don’t walk around certain parts of a city after dark by yourself. It’s just not done. Everyone knows this.

And so as Jesus told this crime story about a traveler on the Jerusalem to Jericho road, his listeners would immediately think, “Fool.” He deserves what he gets.

Jesus knows all this of course. It’s his story. He could have picked a more righteous and sympathetic victim just as he could have picked a more popular hero. But he didn’t. Why? Remember what prompted the story in the first place. An expert on the law asks Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life. The lawyer is testing Jesus. He wants to show his superiority over the rabbi. He wants to “justify himself.” The lawyer is not really interested in living a life that questions his selfishness. You can hear it in the follow-up question, “Who is my neighbor?” He is like many who just want to be congratulated for their right opinions.

But Jesus has other ideas. The priest in the story is obviously not excused simply because the victim had been foolish, likewise the Levite in the story. The hero of Jesus story is an anti-hero in the eyes of his Jewish audience – this not so special Samaritan, this “certain Samaritan” fulfills the great commandments of God to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Who is my neighbor? The Samaritan demonstrates Jesus teaching that our neighbor is not just our friends, our family, or our racial tribe.

My neighbor is anyone who needs me.

So who is your neighbor? Is it just the people you like to hang around? Is it a very close and closed off social network into which you will allow no others to enter? Have we, like the lawyer questioning Jesus, separated our good beliefs from any responsibility in our neighborhood and town? Will we help only those people we think deserve our help?

Timothy Keller says that when people ask him, “How can I become a Christian?” he answers, “It takes two things and a third.” The two things are repentance and faith. The third thing is not so much a separate thing but how you live out the first two things. You can’t just think or believe in repentance and faith, it must be lived out individually and in community. Everything in the New Testament indicates that a person must confirm their individual faith decision with the public and communal acts of baptism and life in a community of faith. And the church is the community of faith living in the community of our neighborhoods and towns. The church isn’t the building. It’s the living, breathing witness of the believers in every locale. Remember the test of spiritual growth – are you loving more these days? Is your heart growing bigger? Are your arms open wider toward others, or are they wrapped around yourself? Do you have room for anyone else in your life?

This group of people we call the church is a great but underutilized asset. We can be a force in our community. Our neighbors need us. We can do great good for them. We can make our world a better place.

But as much as our neighbors need us, we need them more. As we live and serve in our community do you know who we’re going to meet? Jesus, buddy, we’re gonna meet Jesus.

Let’s start by meeting our neighbors: arrange people into neighborhood groups.

2010-09-07T11:17:00.001-07:00

Making News in Heaven

These past weeks we have been reimagining what evangelism could be like in our lives. We have talked about how being a “witness” is simply “recommending Jesus to our friends.” We have talked about the importance of friend to friend invitation. We have noted that Jesus is our contemporary and so he speaks to us in the lives we are now living through the Holy Spirit. We have also looked at how telling our story of faith is perhaps the most effective and usual way God speaks through us.

Today I want to start by thinking about our local community and what Hicks Church is doing here. Duncansville has many fine small businesses – Best Way Pizza is a place that some of us frequent. I don’t know if it’s the best way but it’s a good way. I go to Fine Cut to get my haircut. Duncansville Pharmacy provides prescription and over the counter medications for our community. Donnelly’s Antiques provides statues and other old stuff. D.P. Oppel New York Life provides life insurance and financial services.

What does Hicks Church offer to our community? What do we offer that these other establishments don’t? We offer eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord. He is the one mediator between God and humankind. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the only name under heaven by which we can be saved.

“For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life.” John 3.16

My question is for us today is do we believe this? Do we believe that Jesus Christ is the unique way of salvation for all peoples, regardless of race, nationality, or religion? I don’t know, to be honest, how Jesus saves people that have grown up in a Muslim country not knowing anything else. I don’t know how God-fearing Jews will finally be converted. I don’t know how Jesus will reach, in his words, “other sheep not of this fold.” But I do know he is the Cosmic Christ given for the whole world and not just for a privileged few.

Today many people subscribe to the view that all religions are equal/ all religions are the same. Well, no person who takes their religion seriously believes that. We know that to be false. G.K. Chesterton once wondered if the man who was being boiled in a pot over a fire by cannibals because of their religious beliefs thought that all religions are equal. It puts it in another light doesn’t it? It seems to me that we are wrestling more with feelings than true knowledge and the feeling we have is, “What right do I have to tell others that Jesus is the truth for them?”

The first disciples of Jesus doubted too, even after the resurrection.

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Matt. 28.16-17

What, exactly, at this point did they doubt? That he was standing before them, alive and well, that he did rise from the dead as he said he would? No, they couldn’t doubt that. Their doubts were of a more general and vague variety- what now? What does this mean? Where do we go from here? Jesus sensed their doubt and his immediate answer was:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matt. 28.18-20

Jesus is saying, look, the Father has put me in charge. There is no other authority to appease or to consult. I’m it. Go, therefore, and be my witnesses. I have the authority, and now I am giving you authority to speak on my behalf.

The other truth we need to embrace is that there is not only such a thing as eternal life with God, but also eternal life apart from God. There is such a thing as separation from God forever – we call it Hell. And, beyond my understanding or yours, there will be some (Lord, may it be few) but some who choose that reality. Nonetheless, we are to do everything we can to call all to salvation through Jesus Christ. We are called to rescue the perishing, save the dying, and call the lost home again.

Lost people matter to God and so they matter to us. In his book Direct Hit Paul Borden writes that, “Perhaps the greatest sin of denominations and most congregations is the lack of urgency to bring the good news to lost individuals.” He goes on to say of his work as a church consultant, “as we work with dying congregations, we often tell the people that their congregation is not merely dying but also disobedient.”

If we truly believe that unbelieving people are in real danger of spending eternity apart from God then we will have a passion to reach the unchurched and unbelieving with the Good News of Jesus Christ!

God so loved the world. He is not wanting any to perish (2 Peter 3.9) He is the God of all who cares for all. “He did not sit in splendid isolation demanding that all worship and obey him. He reaches out and calls them to himself.”

“The eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him.” 2 Chronicles 16.9

God is working overtime to see that all can know Him and be known by Him.

“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay according to our iniquities. . .As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion on those fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103.10-14

These verses in Chronicles and the Psalms speak to the primacy and sufficiency of the right heart. We must return to the religion of the heart. And I’m not talking about feeling, or good intentions, or wishing. I mean the heart, the center of the will, that is given in complete surrender to God by the grace of Jesus Christ.

If your heart is right before God, God will find you.

This is the plan of salvation, that we who have been found by God will in turn be his witnesses to the whole world, starting in our backyards. The early church was a nobody church. They weren’t smart or rich or powerful. But they were witnesses. And by God they witnessed to amazing results by their way of working, speaking, and being.

We can have similar effect today – why wouldn’t God want to do this and more for lost people of today whom he loves? And we his church, we are his witnesses today. We’re it.

“We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.” John 3.11

We recommend Jesus. That is what we do as responsible believers. That’s what any responsible person does when they know something to be true. It’s your duty to share your knowledge with others.

“If you know the house is on fire, you must share your knowledge with others. If you know where the bargains are, you tell your friends. If you know how to stop global warming or cure cancer, you have a duty to share that knowledge.” Dallas Willard

Is the Good News of eternal life through Jesus Christ of less value than these?

There is a scene in the film, The Apostle, in which a holiness preacher is driving down the highway, his mother in tow, and they come upon a bad wreck. The police are already there. There is wreckage and emergency personnel everywhere. This preacher pulls over, grabs his Bible, and begins searching for the victims of the accident. He finds a car in the field beside the road. He leans into that car and finds a young man and a young girl badly hurt, barely conscious, still trapped in the vehicle. The preacher begins to pray. And he begins to talk to the young man and tells him that God loves him. The preacher asks him if the Lord takes him now will he be ready. And then the preacher invites to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and the young man says yes and thanks the preacher. A state trooper comes up and tells the preacher he has to leave but the preacher finishes what he has to say to the young man. The preacher finally walks back to his vehicle and tells his mother, “Mama, we made news in heaven this morning. We made news in heaven. . .”

I don’t know many Christians who have the salt to do that. But we are called to be salt and light. Maybe it’s time the church is turned upside down and shaken. Maybe some salt will pour out. It’s time we made news in heaven again.

2010-04-27T07:12:00.001-07:00

What’s Your Story?

Last week we looked at how Jesus is our Contemporary. Jesus speaks to us in our lives, the ones we are living. He speaks to us by the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. He speaks to us through our culture. He speaks to us through other people. He speaks to us through the Scriptures. Jesus speaks to us. If Jesus speaks to us, he also wants to speak through us.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1.8

A witness speaks on behalf of someone. You can be a witness for the prosecution. You can witness a great ballgame. You can witness to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. We are witnesses for Jesus Christ. We speak on his behalf. We recommend Him to all kinds of people.

But what should that witness look and sound like? What is the substance of our witness?
Our witness is mostly story. It is our story of what God has done in our lives through the grace and presence of Jesus Christ the Lord. We speak to what God has done on our behalf. Now, this witness will contain elements of scriptural truth, reasoning, even tradition and doctrine. But mostly our witness is our story. This is biblical witness – to tell the world what a living, personal God has done for you and others. If you read the Book of Acts you read about Paul’s conversion on three separate occasions – the first is the record of when and where it happened and the second two times are when Paul is witnessing to others. He simply told others how he met Jesus and how that forever changed him. Here is Paul writing to the Hebrews about life-changing faith:

“And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets – who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice . . .shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign enemies to flight. . .” Hebrews 11.32-34

And so on. What is Paul doing but telling the stories of faith recorded in the Scriptures? He is deliberately connecting those stories to his story. There is power in stories of faith. Through stories people hear how God is not just God of the past but of the present. He is living and active. God can speak to people through doctrine and argument, logic and reason, mathematics and biology. But the way God usually speaks to people is through Story.

“And Jesus told them many things in stories, saying: Listen. A farmer went out to sow his seeds. . .” Matthew 13.3

The fact that God speaks truth in stories is certainly a profound opportunity for the Gospel to connect with fresh power in our times and in this postmodern culture. Much has been made of research and trends suggesting that recent generations are not as swayed by classical Christian apologetics and doctrine as perhaps previous generations. The way to reach people today is through the witness of personal stories of salvation and new life!

There is a program on called Who Do You Think You Are? It features celebrities who through the show’s resources trace back their family history and find out things that they didn’t know or nobody knew about their story. They discover stories about their family’s slave past, or their role in the Civil War, or stories of the Holocaust or a link to royalty. It is a compelling narrative. It teaches something fundamental about who we are – we are, in part, the people whose stories have contributed to our story. I am my grandfather and father, my mother and sisters and brother, my little league coach, my camp counselor, my high school English teacher. They all wrote chapters in my book.

Everybody has a story. But not every story is a faith story. Jesus gives an example of a man who was not living a faithful story. He was prosperous but he was foolish and so he said to himself:

“Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
Luke 12.19

But in God’s eyes the man was a fool. He was living the wrong story. He was not dealing with reality. He, in fact, did not have much time left. His story, in this world, was soon ended.

Our stories will have a profound effect on our world view and vice versa. I think how we view the world, that is, what we consider to be real, “determines the orientation of everything else we think and do,” Dallas Willard writes. So like the farmer in Jesus’ story, there are many people who have to change their story, their worldview, or both. There are many people you and I know who are not living good stories. And I don’t mean exciting or dramatic stories as our culture defines it. I mean there are a lot of people that are not living stories full of faith. They are living stories not worthy of them as children of God.

Donald Miller muses on this and asks the question, “If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end of the movie when the guy drove off the lot. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie. . .The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo. . .

“But we spend our years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

No one would accuse Yukio Shige of not having meaning and purpose to his story. Shige, a retired detective in Japan, spends his time walking the the Tojinbo cliffs on the coast of the Sea of Japan, an area known for a great number of suicide attempts. If Shige spots someone who is considering jumping, he offers them a gentle “hello” and engages them in conversation. He says things like, “You’ve had a hard time up til now, haven’t you?” He touches them on the shoulder. He invites them for a cup of coffee back at his office. Back there he offers to make them a traditional rice dish with relish called mochi.

“When people come here and eat mochi, they remember their childhood – father, mother, siblings, hometown. They remember they’re not alone,” Shige says.

The ringtone on Shige’s cell phone is “Amazing Grace.” The man is literally saving lives by the story he is by grace now living. We may not have that dramatic an impact with our stories, but people may need to borrow our stories for awhile just to have a little faith. They need the encouraging word, the word of hope that we can give. Our stories may remind them that they’re not alone.

When I share my story I talk about my troubled relationship with my father that ended in grace. I talk about my grandfather who showed how good a man can be. I talk about Bruce, my Little League coach and Sunday school teacher who opened up the scriptures to me. Sometimes I talk about an English teacher or a pastor who saw gifts in me that I didn’t initially see. These people all helped make me who I am, at least the good stuff, and these people were all used by Lord to do his work. They are characters in a story that is not even really about me. The story might have my name attached to it, but the story is a Jesus story. It’s one he’s telling through me, in my life. It’s about him and his kingdom. My story is being caught up in the Big Story.

You’ve got a faith story to tell too. And there are people that need to hear it. They need to start living a better story and they may have to borrow a bit of yours to get started.

On our Communication Card we have these Next Steps:

Make a List of the Influential People In My Life – thank God, thank them.

Pray to Invite Jesus into my life as Savior and Lord – time to live a better story

Tell my Story to someone - write it down first if it helps, but above all, share it.

Invite a friend to worship with me – a first step maybe in a new chapter of someone’s life

Jesus wants to speak through us to people He loves and died for which he died.

2010-04-27T06:56:00.000-07:00

Jesus Our Contemporary

On American Idol one of the comments the judges make to the contestants has to do with whether their performance was judged to be “contemporary.” A contestant can see a good song and have a great voice, but sometimes the performance, even when done by a 17 year old, will come across as old fashioned and dated. Simon will say “it wasn’t contemporary,” and therefore didn’t connect with the audience. A performer who is not contemporary won’t win, won’t get on the radio, won’t be “relevant.”

This same critique is often applied to religion in general and Christianity in particular. It’s old-fashioned. It’s not relevant to life today. It doesn’t connect with people. . . I’m not even going to try to dispute that. What I will say, what I’m fairly confident of, is that in contrast, Jesus is very relevant today. Jesus is our contemporary. Through the Holy Spirit Jesus is speaking to us, in our lives, today. He is speaking and acting with us on how live really is and is experienced.

“It is in this contemporary world where we must meet him and know him if we are to meet and know him at all,” Dallas Willard writes.

As I mentioned last week, Jesus is already here. He already belongs to humanity. In spite of our stumbling, bumbling, mangled presentations of him, Jesus is powerfully present in our culture. Remember, they like Jesus, they just don’t like the church. Now, I like the church and I believe that Jesus loves the Church. But that’s really beside the point for our purposes today. As we consider how to be witnesses for Jesus, we must look to Jesus our Contemporary. We need to help people get over their mistaken notion that being a Christian believer is mostly about knowing facts about this person, mostly facts of long ago.

Peter Berger notes that if you asked the question, “Can a truly contemporary person be a Christian? Many Europeans would answer, “Of course not!” They answer this way because they believe that Christianity has only to do with a dusty and brutal past – togas and robes and religious wars. Many Americans, even those who consider themselves sort of believers have trouble in locating Jesus anywhere other than in a distant past and existence. But that is not the message and Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. Nor did Jesus talk about a Kingdom that was some gigantic event in some special place. That is human thinking. Jesus said think (repent) again.

“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look! Here it is! Or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is right where you are.” Luke 17.20-21

Jesus teaching in the Gospel is actually an extension of an Old Testament teaching:

“The Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when. . . .you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Surely, this commandment I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away.

“It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” Deuteronomy 30.9-14

The word is very near to you. Jesus is telling us that eternal life is close and all who want it may have it but we must seek first His kingdom to have access to life as it is truly meant to be. This is how we know Him as Savior and Lord. This is how in the fullest sense Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14.6). St. Paul puts it this way to the Romans:

“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10.9

Again Willard, “But this is not a thing you say to get you into heaven after death. It is what you do to live in Christ’s kingdom now. What is saved is our life, and of course we along with it.”

Many seekers and skeptics today, I think, need more than a kingdom that is a distant event, no matter how gigantic. They need to know what, if anything, Jesus can say or do about their rocky marriage or their son’s addiction. They want to know if Jesus “lives in the real world.” One thing that never ceases to interest me is the reaction I get from people when they find out that I am a pastor. They may express some surprise or even disinterest but what usually happens then is I am put in the same category as their picture of the historical Jesus, the bearded one in the robe and sandals. I am a guy somehow disconnected from how life really is but concerned with proper language and good morals. I don’t think some of these people would be shocked if I grew a beard and dressed in white robe and sandals! But you know, as a citizen of the kingdom my life is about much more than good morals (yes, that must be there) But hey, my dog has good morals. My dog never swears or lies or cheats. My cats on the other hand. . .are creatures of low morals I’m convinced.

Contemporary people have the So What question on their minds. So what if religion has some interesting or truthful claims, so what difference does that make to my life here and now? Jesus has an answer for them. Jesus is passionately interested in living with them, their lives, the lives they are actually living here and now. How is Jesus with me on the jobsite? How is he in that office with me among my coworkers? How does he go on the road with me? The answer to these questions can be known and experienced. Any who would follow him don’t have to travel back in time culturally to know him and live in him. Jesus meets us in the time and place and life in which we now live.

Malcolm Gladwell is a very successful author today who writes stories about culture and social dynamics. You might say he has a finger on the pulse of contemporary society. And he says that one of the things that holds true about people from the time we are infants and all through adulthood is our curiosity about other people’s lives. In infants, psychologists call this the Other Minds Problem. Infants don’t understand that what they are thinking about, like, hate is not necessarily what others are thinking about, like, or hate. As adults we continue to be curious about what goes on in other people’s minds. We don’t just want to know of a doctor, “What do you for a living?” We want to know what it feels like to be a doctor and see patients.

“Curiosity about the interior life of other people’s day-to-day work is one of the most fundamental of human impulses,” Gladwell writes.

Can I suggest that Jesus, Son of Man, is at least as curious as we are about the lives people are living? He not only meets people at church, but out fishing, on the road, at the tax collector’s office, at a dinner party, in the hospital. Jesus likes to be with people.

Jesus is our contemporary. And he is interested above all in people and seeing them change in heart, mind, and life to become God’s people. Jesus will speak through contemporary methods and mediums to get a hearing with all kinds of people. This is the whole point and the only point of changing our methods and styles of worship and evangelism, music and youth ministry – to let Jesus speak in a language that contemporary can understand and to which they can respond. But don’t confuse the style and methods with the message and certainly not the person of Jesus.

Jesus will not be boxed up by any faction, any age, any culture. He is the misfit. And so he is available to any and all who would seek him. To take one example, how is it that the hippie generation of the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s that turn to Christ and became known as the Jesus People worship the same Lord as the stereotypical straight-laced church types of the previous generation? Is it because these two very different generations happened to arrive independently in choosing the same religion? Or, perhaps is it because Jesus, the Son of Man, is able to speak in time at any time He so chooses?

In what ways do see Jesus speaking in contemporary culture today?

How might the church use the language/methods of our culture to give witness to the Lord?

How can you show the people in your life how the life of Jesus is real in you?

2010-04-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

Re-imagining Evangelism

We’re starting a new teaching series this week called “Re-imagining Evangelism”. This title comes from a book of the same name by Rick Richardson. Richardson notes that the word evangelism has become a bad word in our culture. It is “something you wouldn’t do to your dog, much less a person you like.”

The word evangelism has an image problem and the image is one of a slick salesmen.

Show pictures of televangelists.

In this image the evangelist is a salesman trying to close the deal on a person. What do I have to do to get you in this nice car? Substitute the words church, flock, heaven for the car and that’s basically what an evangelist is, in this image. In this paradigm some Christians feel like if they haven’t dumped the content of their belief on someone then they haven’t witnessed for Jesus Christ. I suspect many others of us feel even further left out if we are not extroverted or highly knowledgeable about the Bible or very persuasive in our sales pitch. Perhaps we don’t share our faith because we assume it has to look like this image. If so, it’s understandable that we would not be very enthusiastic about doing it that way.

Another problem with the sales pitch image is that we give people information about Jesus but we don’t actually invite people know Jesus. Facts or information about God is not the same thing as knowing God. Certainly, we need more knowledge of God and many times the Church hasn’t done a very good job at this very basic, fundamental level of spiritual life. There are more than a few dying congregations that wistfully look back to the heydays of the 1940’s and ‘50’s when their Sunday schools and services were packed. But what they may not remember is that people began leaving the church in droves in the sixties because these churches weren’t teaching fundamental knowledge of Jesus Christ. Many young people began looking to Eastern mysticism as a way to view “how life really is.” The Church must become the teacher of the knowledge of God and how life really is according to the Creator of life.

But this knowledge of God must not be knowledge at a distance. We must “press on to know the Lord.” Dallas Willard calls this knowledge by acquaintance. This is kind of knowledge only comes through an active relationship. To paraphrase the words of Job who spoke out of his own experience of God:

“ I had heard about you. . .but now my eyes see you. So take back all I said, and I repent by throwing dust and ashes upon myself.” Job 42.5-6

Thomas was of the first disciples and friends of Jesus. He heard about Jesus being alive after his crucifixion, but Thomas needed more than just heresay. He wanted to touch the wounds. He wanted to see for himself. Thomas is often scorned and nicknamed “Doubting Thomas.” Leon Morris calls the disciple a “robust doubter.” He needed touch, he needed sight, he needed to know for himself. He needed personal acquaintance with the truth. This kind of robust doubt is a good thing. It can lead us into personal knowledge of the truth and personal knowledge of Christ himself. Would that more were like Thomas the Doubter.

“The way of Jesus Christ is a way of firsthand interaction –knowing by acquaintance-direct awareness of him and his kingdom,” Willard writes.

Jesus wants to be known this way. The resurrected Christ came and “stood in the middle of them.” Though he was in a glorified body he came close and invited his friends to see and speak and touch. This is the only way Christ will be known by anyone. Jesus shows up where he is wanted. He breathes his life into our lives when he is invited.

John, the same disciple who recorded this post-resurrection scene, writes in chapter ten of Jesus words in temple in Jerusalem,

“You do not believe because you are not one of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” John 10.26-27

So if we are considering how we can witness to our faith in Jesus, we start by casting aside the old image of the sales pitch. We are not marketing the Church or Religion. Even if we wanted to our culture is remarkably uninterested in that product. I’ve often been reminded of that in my life. Last year I coached Seth’s Little League team and though our season started with promise, it quickly began to go south. Like any good coach. . .I blamed the players. They didn’t play very well. But regardless of who was to blame I knew that I wouldn’t be winning any Coach-of-the-Year Award. I did, however, hold out hope that I would win a new award the league was giving to a coach and that was the Sportsmanship Award. I figured, hey, I’m a nice guy. Who doesn’t like me? And what’s more, I am a religious guy. I was pretty certain I knew more about religion than the other coaches. But the day they announced the award, they began “to the coach who best exemplified the qualities of sportsmanship, the award goes to. . .” and I have to admit I was halfway out of my seat when they said, “Rich. . .Hollingshead!”

See apparently, they didn’t care that I knew more about religion than the other coaches. They were interested in actually, you know, seeing character and sportsmanship. They don’t give out awards for religion in our culture today or no doubt lots of churches would be recognized. What is recognized are churches that are effectively reaching people in their community for the sake of the Kingdom. That kind of witness still gets attention. It’s been said of people today, “They like Jesus. They don’t like the Church.” You can still buy t-shirts that were very popular a few years ago that have a picture of Jesus on the front and read “Jesus is my homeboy.” You’ll be hard pressed to find a t-shirt that says “Hey, let’s go to Church!”

Jesus is not a religious product we are peddling. Jesus already belongs to humanity. In spite of how badly we have garbled and mangled his message, he comes through in spite of everything. Richardson suggests a new image to replace the old one – witnesses as travel guides. Instead of trying to push a sale, we can invite people to join us for a walk. We can point out things that known, things that can be obviously seen, things that can be seen if you know where to look. That’s what we are going to explore a little further with this series, how to invite people to see the clues of God. How to discover what God is up to in their lives.

One of my favorite things is when I get to introduce an old friend to a new friend. This doesn’t happen every day but when it does it is such a good feeling and experience for me. I love connecting good people. It gives me pleasure to get people that I care about in the same room together. I had a birthday party years ago and I said to Jennifer that the present I wanted from her was permission to invite anyone I wanted to invite. And I invited different friends from different places. I invited friends I had known for many years and I invited the neighbors across the street with whom we had just formed a friendship. I invited friends in their twenties and friends much older. I purposefully mixed it up to see if anything interesting would happen. And it did! I loved it.

To witness for Jesus is really just figuring out a way to get Jesus and your friends in the same room together, to mix it up, to have party, and to see if anything interesting happens. It will. It will. It’s not a science. It’s not a perfect system or process. But it is
amazing what happens when we intentionally enter into this acquaintance with Him. For the next several weeks, let’s see what happens as we learn to say, “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.”

2010-04-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

Wait, There’s More!

“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.. .but these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.”
Luke 24.6-11

You know what an idle tale is don’t you? We hear idle tales all the time. I get a lot email forwards come my way, stories that have been circulating around the Internet. Ryan Stumph sent me a good story a couple months ago about a man who went on safari in the African bush. He encountered an aggressive bull elephant who seemed ready to charge him. But then the man noticed that the elephant had a wood splinter sticking in his foot and somehow the man managed to remove the splinter and the elephant moved away in obvious relief. Fast forward years later and this same man is at the Central Park Zoo and comes upon the elephant enclosure. One of the elephants looks familiar. This elephant keeps staring at the man in an overly curious way. Slowly, it dawns on the man that this elephant may be the same one that he helped in the African bush years ago. The elephant stares at the man and stamps his foot as if beckoning the man closer. So the man throws caution to the wind and climbs over the barriers to the enclosure and walks up the elephant to pet it. The elephant charges the man and stomps him to death. Apparently, it wasn’t the same elephant. The story ends with, “Quit sending me these crappy heart-warming stories!”

I laughed when I read that the first time. The story teaches a truth through it’s fiction: there is real truth and then there is Internet truth.

Is this what the resurrection story is like, internet truth, a nice story but loose with the facts? Some thought that at the time when they first heard about it. They thought it a tall tale, invented by his disciples.

It seems to me that people have similar reactions to the Easter story today. One response to the Easter story is to fail to appreciate the implications of the event. My son captured this response one time as we were discussing the importance of resurrection, “Yeah, but he just died on Saturday.” He was only dead a day. No big deal. Maybe that is your feeling. Maybe you’ve heard the story so many years that it fails to make an impact anymore.

Another response to the story can be a sort of belief as a matter of religious faith, but not belief as real knowledge. And if it isn’t real knowledge, real truth, then it doesn’t have much of an impact on your life. We relegate the truth of Easter to mere symbols. But symbols don’t raise dead men from the grave. And symbols alone don’t change lives.

As Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “If the Lord’s Supper is just a symbol, then to hell with it.”

If the resurrection is just a symbolic idea, then today is a big phony nothing.

And yet another view of the Resurrection Story is that the Church is trying to sell us something. Like that guy on those infomercials, we have the greatest thing in vegetable slicers, it cuts and cooks your food for you, it slices, it dices, it tells time. It shamwows you. But wait, there’s more! And if the story is not true then surely the Church has accomplished the greatest sales fraud in the history of the world.

But I want you to consider another way of looking at this story. I want you to consider if it might be, you know, true. Not internet true, or symbolic true, but really, truly, true. Because that’s what the Bible claims it to be. That’s what Jesus always said was going to happen. He said it. He said it again. He did it. And after he did it he showed up and explained to them what just happened.

I want you to consider that God did the impossible. I want you to consider that Jesus demonstrated before thousands of witnesses that he had the power to do the impossible. He routinely seemed to bend the rules of nature. They didn’t seem to apply to him. He made the blind see. He healed people of leprosy. The paralyzed got up and walked at his command. Because Jesus seemed so real and so comfortable in his skin, it always startled and amazed people when he would suddenly so something obviously supernatural. He walked on water! Like Alice in Wonderland, Jesus seemed to think of six impossible things before breakfast, and then he would spend his day doing them.

Now, as I said earlier, you can believe all the supernatural stuff up to and including the resurrection as a matter of religious faith but still not be radically changed by this truth. It can be a good religious story and not much more, except for one more thing.

Some of you know that one of my favorite stories is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. As a kid I read those books over and over again. To my great excitement, in the late 1970’s they came out with a film version of the books. It was an animated version. For animation back then, it looked pretty cool. I managed to convince my sister and her boyfriend to take me to go see it. They weren’t fans, but to their credit they took me anyway. They had never read the books. But they gamely tried to buy into my enthusiasm for seeing the film. How was it? It was horrid. It skipped over huge sections of the story to the point that I, who had memorized the story, couldn’t make heads or tails of what we were actually watching. And then, suddenly, it ended. In the middle of everything, long before the ring had ever come close to Mt. Doom, the movie was over. Roll credits. I couldn’t believe it! I stood up in the theatre and shouted, “What? That’s it? What a ripoff!” What made it worse was the whole way home I had to endure dirty looks from my sister’s boyfriend.

Have you ever been in the midst of a good story and it suddenly and prematurely, ended? You know how disappointing that feels. Well, isn’t your life like that? Isn’t your life a pretty important story, that at some point, from your point of view, will prematurely end? Why should it end? Yeah, my body will wear down. Things are already falling apart. But my spirit won’t. Spiritually, I feel young. It doesn’t seem right that at some arbitrary number years, everything should end. Death is a bad ending to this movie.

It’s not an accident that you or I should feel this way. The Bible says we feel this way because God has implanted this desire in our hearts. It is right and God-given to want to live forever. In fact, it’s a clue that we will live forever. When we were kids we always had someone watching out for us. We still do. We have this friend who, no matter what is happening to us in life, is watching out for us. He’s on our side. And he doesn’t stop watching out for us. He’s in it for the long haul.

Someone once said that when you die, you die alone. That’s not true. Jesus is the friend who stands by us at death. The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, is that Jesus didn’t die on the cross and rise from the dead just for the whole world; he did it for you and for me. It’s personal. The Lord doesn’t want to see our story end. And he has made sure that it won’t. You and I, we’re going to live forever!

That personal and strong a love demands a strong response from us. Whatever used to be important to us in this life is not important compared to knowing the One who has made eternity for us. St. Paul is getting at this in his letter to the Philippians:

“Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. . . I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3.7-8, 10-11

I want to know Christ, Paul says. I want to know the One who has power over death. I need to get to know Him. He would be a good One to know. It would be good to have Him on my side. Because this story is like the one about the woman who called her pastor in to make funeral arrangements. This woman explained to her pastor that she had been told by her doctor that she her illness was terminal. She wanted to talk about her funeral service with the pastor. They went over hymns and scriptures and then she said,

“one more thing, pastor. When they lay me in the casket I want you to make sure that a fork is placed in the casket with me.”

The pastor thought that was an odd request and said so. The woman explained, “I always loved the dinners at our church. The food is always good. But as good as the meal is, my favorite part is when the ladies come around to clear off the dirty dishes and they say to me, “now, save your fork.” I know that when they tell me to save my fork, dessert is coming. And I know that it’s not just jello or a cookie, but it’s something good like cake or pie.”

“I want a fork in my hand as I lay in the casket so people know that I know something better is coming.”

2010-04-26T08:54:00.001-07:00

The Knowing/Doing Problem

There’s a show called Undercover Boss. The premise of the show is the head of the company “goes undercover” posing as a new employee at the bottom rung of the company. These undercover bosses find out a couple things: bosses often make bad employees; some of their rules are stupid and unworkable in the real work environment; and, some of the core values of the company are being woefully neglected. That last one is the one I’m concerned with – just because people know what to do doesn’t mean they’ll do it.

Or how about this: the Gold Coast off of Australia has some of the most beautiful beaches and best surfing anywhere in the world. It also has some of the most treacherous waters in the world. You could mention the danger of sharks, saltwater crocodiles, and deadly box jellyfish, all of which are real. But in addition to these dangers are the fearsome rip tides that claim more tourists in drownings than any animal predators. The beaches are posted with signs warning of the rip tide dangers but people who shouldn’t be swimming in those waters routinely ignore the danger signs. Fortunately, the beaches of the Gold Coast can boast of probably the finest lifeguards in the world, who routinely rescue up to six thousand distressed swimmers a year. Dave Bryson writes about one lifeguard he interviewed who himself had rescued one hundred people in one week, including one tourist whom he had saved twice. He saved the man. The man went back into the water and the lifeguard had to save him again.

In the words of that great thinker, Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

I’m glad none of us ever have a problem putting our knowledge into action! In his Great Talk, Jesus says that not only must we learn from him as the Master Teacher in the School of Life, but we must put his words into action.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them is like the intelligent person who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them is like the foolish person who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. And great was its ruin.” Matthew 7.24-27

Remember that Jesus concern is with the Kingdom of God and his contention that this is not only the way life is meant to be but it is in fact the way life really is. Of course, Jesus sees what you and I see, how life in this world is far less than what God wants and in many ways how the ways of this world are set against God’s rule. Jesus sees all the problems in this world and how this life can be cruel and random. Jesus sees and knows this. But Jesus sees and knows things we don’t.

Jesus sees what is possible for ordinary human beings when God’s rule is honored and God’s resources are used. For example, we often talk about how going to church services is not the fulfillment of the Christian life. Full transformation of persons into God’s image is our goal. Getting to that full maturity won’t happen without the help of church. And so, a first step for a lot of people is learning the spiritual practice of weekly worship. For some folks, this is a difficult first step indeed. It’s difficult because maybe they never developed the practice as kids, and no one helped them develop it. So now here they are as fully-formed adults. And you know we adults are change-resistant. It’s difficult to learn new things period and why should this be any different for the ways of the spiritual life? But the Holy Spirit is working in persons, and so perhaps mom wants to get to church. She sees the kids getting bigger every day and she has a tug on her heart that they should know about God. But Dad isn’t as motivated at the moment. He likes to do other things with his time. He doesn’t disagree with his wife about maybe the benefits going to church would bring, he’s just not prepared to, you know, actually go. So weeks go by,, then months, and then years. And now the kids wouldn’t be caught dead in church. And the thing is, now maybe dad really wants to go and its mom and the kids who drag their feet.

This family has both a knowing and doing problem. They don’t know what they don’t know. And what they suspect would be good about church isn’t enough to move them to do anything about it. They need help. What does Jesus tells us to do when we need help?

“Ask, and it will be given you; search,, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened.” Matthew 7.7-8

See, God wants to help. God is rooting for this family to do something with the vague stirrings of their conscience and heart. But the Lord won’t force himself upon this family. They have to ask. Dallas Willard says that the way of the request is the way that leads us into praying.

“Asking is indeed the great law of the spiritual world through which things are accomplished in cooperation with God and yet in harmony with the freedom and worth of every individual,” Willard writes.

Take our example of the family trying to get to church. If the wife makes demands of her family and tries to control their behavior, at best, she may be able to drag them to a few services, but they won’t be on board with it. They will resent her and resent the experience of church. But if she asks her family and she asks of God, better results can happen. I’m not saying there is a guarantee but there is a better likelihood. Because her request of her family has respected their humanity and “created space” for them to consider the goodness of going to church together.

In his Great Talk Jesus devotes a lot of attention to our judging and condemning of each other. Our need to control others with our good intentions (our pearls) has the effect of pushing people away from Kingdom blessing. God has so made us that we can’t find our true meaning and purpose in life without asking for His help. Prayer shows us some of what we do not know (what Jesus knows) in promptings of the heart and mind. Prayer opens up the power of Kingdom resources to accomplish the good things of God in our lives and in the lives of those around us. This is what is often called “the power of prayer.” And the heart of prayer is the request.

“In many ways it is the life of prayer that discovers a space in which all can live,” Willard writes.

But what if never occurs to anyone in this family to pray? This goes back to our double-sided problem of knowing and doing. Many people don’t know to pray. They don’t know to do this. This makes the prayers and actions of the church on behalf of the spiritually lost so vital. It also points to lives hanging in the balance of the spiritual realm. So many people live at the mercy of their desires and their idols. Take gambling, for example. No rational and responsible person gambles their money away. They won’t do it. That’s why Las Vegas bills itself not as gambling, but as entertainment. You’re losing your money, lots of it, but look how much fun you’re having! Las Vegas wants to disguise what it really is – desire and idolatry with nice accommodations.

“When desire conflicts with reality, sooner or later reality wins.”

Jesus is interested in calling us back to reality.

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matthew 7.13-14

The narrow gate is not having the right belief. Nor is the narrow gate merely finding forgiveness. (Though it is that.) The narrow gate is the choice to fully follow the Master of Life and allow Him to transform you completely. The Lord what to see all people become the kind of people who are genuinely at home in His world. Remember, Jesus is describing a Kingdom of Life, how Life actually is. And the life I’m living, and the life you are living are the ones we’re going to be living for eternity. People who don’t know better assume that the Jesus Way is boring and depressing and not worth it. If you think that, you have another think coming.

When the crowds lined up along the road into Jerusalem and called out a thousand praises to Jesus the King, they spoke rightly. They were in touch with reality. More than they knew, obviously. Their praise wasn’t the problem. The problem was they did not understand the nature of the choice before the them, the life before them. They didn’t understand the Anointed One who came among them. What could bridge the chasm between knowing and doing? What could make this clear? Someone had to die. And now that choice and this Life is no longer unclear. We can know who Jesus is and the life to which he calls us. Will you follow Him to Calvary? Will you pray with Him in Gethsemane? Will you believe in Resurrection? Will you live the New Life He offers now to you?

2010-04-26T08:53:00.001-07:00

Race and Grace

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. . .”

Again in his Great Talk Jesus deals with specific situations in Kingdom living with the “You have it heard it/but I say” form. Jesus is showing how different the Kingdom looks like in our behaviors compared to the Old Law which is often now the Generally Regarded Practice Remember, Jesus isn’t giving us a list of rules. He is describing how a citizen of the Kingdom will live in particular situations. So, when you have an enemy, what do you do?

The Situation Old Righteousness/GRP Kingdom Response

Have an Enemy Hate Your Enemy Love Your Enemy;
Pray for Them;
Welcome the Stranger

The Old Righteousness says the situation is simple. Hate your enemy. They hate you. It’s only right to reciprocate in kind. Likewise, reserve your love only for your family and your kind and perhaps others who treat you right. This is the morality of the Mafia. This is the moral system of terrorists. And on a less extreme scale, more subtly, this is how most people live. Like the people who like you.

There is the story of Jonah which is a insightful tale into the prejudices of this prophet of God. It’s not just a story about a whale. It’s the story of a man confronted with his prejudices. Jonah is a prophet in Israel during Jeroboam’s reign. Jeroboam spent his reign trying to expand Israel’s borders, which he did. The prophets Amos and Hosea, who were contemporaries with Jonah, denounced corruption in Jeroboam’s administration. But Jonah seemed willing to overlook all that and encouraged Jeroboam’s expansion agenda.

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah 1.1-2

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the most powerful empire in the world at that time. Assyria stood firmly in the way of any further plans of expansion for Israel. And here God is telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach against it. Now that sounds like it fits in with Jonah’s pro-Israel stance, but Jonah saw something else. He knew that if God told him to go call Nineveh to repent, there was a chance that Nineveh actually would repent. So when God told him go, Jonah went – only in the opposite direction. He booked a boat for Tarshish. If he had said, Timbuktu, he couldn’t have made it any plainer that he didn’t want to do what God told him to do.
Why was Jonah resistant? A couple reasons: he was afraid of failure for one. The people of Nineveh were notoriously wicked and irreligious. They would certainly mock him and maybe do violence to him, he thought. Jonah had the very common idols of success and need for influence. He wanted preach in the Bible Belt and God was sending him to Las Vegas. But perhaps the more compelling reason that Jonah resisted God’s command was that he was afraid of success. What if he preached to Nineveh and they did repent? Well, in Jonah’s world that was a bad thing – because God would show mercy on a people and tribe that Jonah didn’t like and didn’t have any respect for. They were the enemy. God’s mercy would interfere with his hating. In addition to the idols of power and success, Jonah was worshipping the idols of moral self-righteousness and national and racial bigotry. Jonah thought he was too good for them.

Clip from To Kill a Mockingbird.

I grew up in a not very large town, but one large enough to possess some racial and religious diversity. I am thankful for that. I am also thankful that I was never taught to hate anyone just because they were different than me. But despite these advantages I know that I subtly accumulated certain prejudices that I have had to wrestle with from time to time. I looked at people of different races and faiths, to some extent, as the Other. It was rarely obvious to me or others, but it was there, in the back of my mind and recesses of my heart.

Timothy Keller says that if you want to know if there are rats in your basement, down walk down the steps slowly making a lot of noise. Then you will look around and see nothing. If you want to know what is really down there, you have to surprise it in a rush. Then you will see tails scurrying away.

“And so,” Keller says, “it is under stress, in real life experience, that the true nature of our hearts is revealed.”

I remember being at a Promise Keepers Rally years ago and hearing a message on the need for racial reconciliation and true grace in the church. I knew I wasn’t a racist and so I was perplexed by not only how passionate the speaker was about the topic but how central he said it was to the Gospel. And then not long after that I was in a church in back home and I wondered aloud why the church wasn’t more reflective of the diversity of the community – the church was all white. And someone told me about a time when their son brought their African-American friend with them to worship and one of the so-called pillars of the church told these friends that their church didn’t want their kind there.

We all have our own tribes of which we can be duly proud. But when that pride is taken to the degree of condescension and fear of the Other tribes, then our own racial and national identity becomes a powerful idol in our lives. Racial pride and narrowness cannot coexist with the Gospel of grace. They are mutually exclusive. Jonah knew this.
He knew if Nineveh responded to his preaching with repentance then his idol of racial and national pride would be affronted. And that’s exactly what happened. Jonah’s preaching was a success. And boy, did this make him angry!

“He prayed to the Lord and said, “Didn’t I tell you? That’s why I ran. I knew that you are gracious and merciful. I knew that you would probably change your mind and end up loving those people.” Jonah 4.2

Jonah knew that God couldn’t be trusted to leave his idols alone. God was too gracious. God looked on the city and saw people “who didn’t know their right hand from their left.” And He felt compassion for them. Jonah saw a city of strange people. And he wanted them all dead.

There will be people and tribes that we simply at first, don’t get. But here’s the thing – we are called to “get them.” We’re sent out to live and to love and invite. If we’ve been saved by grace then by God we ought to offer grace. The Great Commission in Matthew 28 is a command to go and make disciples of all ethne, peoples, every kind of people. This is what it means to be the Church. We are the Here Comes Everybody organization. And we ought to look like it and act like it.

“If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the worst sinners do that much? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, your family, what more are you doing than anyone else in the world?

“Be perfect, just like our Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5.46-48

2010-04-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

Promises, Promises

Words are powerful. Words have the power to influence people and change reality. Look at the great movements and empires in history - it’s not guns that start them; they are started by words. A well-spoken word is a beautiful thing. A misspoken word can be, at the very least, misleading, and at the worst, very damaging. Words are blessings and words are bombs. Words are fire.

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. . . no one can tame the tongue – a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” James 3.5-9

James has a negative view of things here obviously, but he does note an important truth – words can be used to bless or curse. And a lot depends on that choice – so choose your words carefully. In this age of the twenty-four hour media cycle and this wealth of technology we have the ability and seem to have the desire to express ourselves all the time to everyone about everything –

A real message on Twitter or Facebook looks like this – “I’m going to the bathroom now.”

Brilliant. Great. Thanks for sharing. That’s what’s known as Too Much Information. In the age of Too Much Information we would be wise to conserve our words. There is so much meaningless chatter in our lives today that I think a lot of times we experience our world like Charlie Brown used to hear his teachers at school – Waa, waa, waa. . .

There is a danger that we will lose the ability to listen to what really matters and the ability to discern what is true and what is nonsense. I mean, sometimes, nonsense gets repeated so often that we start to believe it.

Here’s an example: this week’s edition of Newsweek features stories on the state of our public school system in this country. They noted that our school system has been in decline for the last thirty years or so. Our schools used to be the envy of the world. Now we finish behind Lithuania in student test scores. But how we fix the problem? What is the problem? Whatever it is, it’s not a new problem. We were talking about this in the eighties when I was getting an education degree. And I remember quite clearly that the problem was defined at the time as a societal problem – poor students are produced by poor parents and under-funded and overcrowded schools really can’t make up that difference. Do hear the problems? The home is a problem. Lack of funding for schools is a problem. And too many students for too few teachers is a problem.

Let me emphasize that these factors were discussed so much and so often that everyone believed it. It became something that everyone knew. Only it wasn’t exactly true. Oh, it’s true that some parents do an abysmal job at helping their kids learn anything. And it’s true that some schools need more funding and it’s true that some schools are overcrowded. But mostly, that’s not the problem. We spend more per student than almost every country in the world. Our class sizes aren’t bad. We have Head Start and other programs to help kids from disadvantaged situations excel in learning. But we found out that the real problem was probably the most obvious – we need better teachers. Good teachers produce good students. Bad teachers can have all the funding and bells and whistles and all the students from solid homes and small class sizes and still not do a good job. But take a good teacher in plunk them down in a pit of a school with worn out textbooks and a few rocks and chisels and the good teacher will have their students learning. Sometimes what everyone knows is wrong. Sometimes it’s better not to say anything if we are not sure where the truth lies. Conserve your words. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Jesus uses the “you have it heard said/but I say” form again when he looks at the meaning and power of an oath. It was customary from ancient times to call upon “holy things” and “heaven itself” as witness to a promise that you were making. This was considered acceptable and right as long as you didn’t swear “in vain”, that is with no intent to keep your promise. But Jesus says, “Don’t swear at all.”

Don’t call heaven as witness. Don’t even call something as holy as your own head. Just say Yes. . .or No. Jesus is saying we don’t have to call God or heaven as a witness because they are already witnessing what we say and do in this life. Our words and actions matter more than we realize. We don’t have to up the ante with some oath.

That’s our problem today. We have too many people who make a living saying yes that doesn’t really mean yes and no that doesn’t really mean no. For example: Why don’t you kids listen when I tell you no? Because they know that your no doesn’t really mean no. Or, why don’t you believe me when I promise you that I’m going to be there? Because you have broken too many promises in the past for me to trust you now. Promises from the lips of the untrustworthy are just so much spin, a song and dance routine.

Let’s face it: we live in a time when making a pledge in a church or placing our right hand on the Bible doesn’t really bind people to the truth anymore. Unless. . .

Unless there is a desire to live in the presence of a God “who desires truth in our inner persons,” as Paul phrased it. Remember the importance of the order of Jesus talk – we first have to deal with anger and contempt in our lives. Then our words can come from a good place and our words can carry blessing instead of curse. So what can we do then?

1. Conserve your words
2. Tell the truth. Lies, even small ones, do damage.
3. Fulfill commitments. Make your word valuable by your actions.
4. Let God’s word always come before your word.

2010-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

Angry

There’s an old Saturday Night Live skit where they simulate a Folgers instant coffee commercial. You may remember those commercials where they served restaurant patrons instant coffee and fooled them into believing it was real coffee. In the SNL skit though, the patron is played by Chris Farley. And when they tell Farley’s character that the coffee he is drinking is not real but instant, he gets this look of instant mean, “WHY YOU!. .” and he goes on a rampage in the restaurant, overturning tables and vowing revenge on those who lied to him. At the end, they show a bloodied and bandaged Farley and ask him how he’s feeling:

“Angry,” he slowly replies.

It was always a funny skit to me because of Farley’s over-the-top reaction to this little trick. His anger is funny. But we know in real life, anger is rarely funny. Anger is anything but funny.

In his great talk Jesus speaks to specific issues of how the new life in the kingdom changes us. He begins by addressing anger and condemnation.

“You have heard it said in ancient times, ‘You shall not murder and whoever murders shall be judged. But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. . .” Matthew 5.21-22

This is the first of several “You have heard/but I say” statements that Jesus makes. What he is doing is pointing out what Dallas Willard refers to as the GRP, the Generally Recognized Practice. The GRP is the moral standard of the day. Jesus then puts the standard of the Kingdom side by side with the current standard and shows how much more fundamental and demanding a standard there is in the Kingdom. This is where our righteousness must go significantly beyond that of the Pharisees. The GRP is based on the Old Testament Law (in ancient times).

So a chart of situations and behaviors might look like this:

Situation Old Standard or GRP Kingdom Standard

1.Irritation with one’s No murder No anger or contempt,
Associates but desire to help

2. Sexual attraction No intercourse No cultivation of lust

3. Having an enemy Hate your enemy Love and bless your
Enemies, pray for
Them, as God does

The Old standard is pretty basic. Your irritated with someone? Just don’t kill them. Everything else – go ahead. When you see blood flowing, get concerned. That’s the GRP of the day. But Jesus says if you get angry with someone, you have probably already sinned. Why?

Well let’s think about what anger is. It is an emotion and as such is legitimate to feel. In fact, in one place, the Scriptures say “Be angry. . .but sin not.” Ephesians 4.26. And “do not let the sun go down on your anger.” You can hear the caution in these words. Anger is dangerous. It’s explosive. It’s only safe in the hands of God. In one sense, the feeling of anger, apart from any acting out, is already an injury to another person. Anger crosses someone else’s will and often provokes a response of anger in return When anger is acted out it becomes very destructive. Nobody “suddenly snaps”. It may appear that way on the outside, but the anger has been brewing inside for a long time.

The gun man who goes and shoots up a building has been in the making for a while. It is always premeditated in some sense. Actions do not emerge in a vacuum. Our actions proceed from what our minds and hearts have been meditating upon. What kind of thought life precedes murder and adultery? I think we all know. This is true with anger, lust, and fear; as well as joy, peace, and kindness.

Anger is a feeling and so we want to say we can’t control it. But we choose to receive it and indulge it. We decide to be an angry person or to not be an angry person.

Most people carry a supply of anger around with them.

Why is this? Because anger is related to fear and a wounded ego. We indulge anger because of vanity and pride. Everybody gets angry sometimes but the feeling can be waved off instead of indulged. The habitually angry person is a wounded ego that chooses to indulge those feelings as a way to defend their selfishness.

Likewise with condemnation. To condemn someone is to hold them in contempt. To hold someone in contempt is to write them off, to devalue them. It is a studied degradation of another person. Jesus refers to the word raca and says whoever says this to his brother shall stand condemned. In Jesus day this was the word to express ultimate contempt for someone. It was serious. Jesus says don’t use it. We don’t say raca today. We have our own words. And these are words that we should not use on other human beings. These are the word that often precede violent actions. But the words are damaging enough in themselves.

How do we change? From the inside out. We must change the heart. We must get to the root. Take care of the tree and the fruit will follow. Look to the order of the Great Talk. It begins with the Beatitudes that tell us we are all blessed by God. If we don’t own that much that nothing that follows, like don’t be angry, will make much sense. But if we truly believe that we are blessed by God, then we can begin to love God. We can become thankful people. The heart and mind begin to find new patterns and new meditations. When our meditations are on good things then good behaviors will follow.

The Lord aims to make us into the kind of creatures from whom good things naturally flow. That’s why the standard is so high. If our hearts are changed then amazingly good actions will follow.

We are reminded that the way of the world is against us, but we must not conform to it:

“We must not be like Cain who murdered his brother because his brother was good and he wasn’t. Don’t be surprised that the world hates you. We know that we are alive because we love each other. Whoever does not love is dead.

“ All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our live for each other.” 1 John 3.11-16

That is an amazing passage. This is the plan. The world hates us but we’re going to just love them back. That’s the plan. No matter how bad it gets, we’re going to do what Jesus does. We are not going to indulge our anger or throw judgment around. We’ll leave that to God. We know that God has given us the mission of love and mercy.

So where is the irritability in your life? Where is the anger coming from? Who do you need to forgive? From whom do you need to seek forgiveness? How can extend grace to one another today? I know Jesus does. He’s ready to do it right now. In fact, he invites us to the His Table.

2010-03-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

What Makes Salt Salty?

We continue this week with our series on the Greatest Talk Ever Given. That’s probably a better way to phrase it than the Sermon on the Mount. Because as Jesus addressed his outdoor audience spread out before him on the grass, it felt more like a summer festival than a church sermon. It was a talk. But what a talk!

Last week we looked at the meaning of the first part of the talk, the series of “Blessings” known as the Beatitudes. We said that the Beatitudes are not conditions that we should aspire to, or rules that we should try to follow, but rather Jesus is teaching us that God can bless anyone - the spiritually zero, those wracked by grief, the outcast – and therefore the Kingdom of God is open to everyone. This is the Good News of the Kingdom. Nobody need be excluded.

The importance of this truth has the implication that the availability of the Kingdom is here and now. It is crucial for us to understand that when Jesus referred to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, the phrases are interchangeable, he didn’t just mean the place believers will go to when we die, he was talking about an immediate reality.

The Kingdom of God is wherever and whenever God rules.

When we were getting ready to move to Duncansville from Huntingdon County we prepared our boys for the move. We explained that we were going to this good church in this town called Duncansville and that we would live in this nice place. And so the boys were excited about it. We came up to meet with the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee and to see the parsonage for the first time. And we are driving into town and Michael, who was two years old at the time, said, “I want to go to Duncanville.”

And I said, “Son, we are in Duncansville. It’s all around you.”

So it is for the follower of Christ, the Kingdom of God starts from the moment you “drop your nets” like those fishermen disciples and start following Jesus. The Kingdom of God starts an inch from your face. You are walking in it. You are breathing it in your lungs. It is all around you. We’ll come back to why this is so important in a bit.

Think again about to whom Jesus is preaching. They are not the best and the brightest. They are rough and uneducated. They are smelly, and impious, and poor and rude. They have bad teeth. But Jesus takes time in his teaching to point out the natural beauty of every human being. Think of the most glamorous person you know, (Solomon in all his glory), and they are not as ravishingly beautiful as a simple flower in a field.

“Yet if God makes even the grass so beautiful, won’t he clothe you of little faith even more beautifully?” Matthew 6.30

Jesus is telling us that we are good and valuable because we are blessed by God, not because of what we look like on the outside or by how successful we become according to our cultural values. God’s blessing is for ordinary people. Jesus is telling Israel that not only are they blessed but they can be a blessing to others. In fact, this promise was made at the beginning of their history as a people:

“The Lord said to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. . .and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Genesis 12.2-4

So God’s people are to be a conduit of blessing to others. Jesus again uses a “Show and Tell” method to illustrate this point. He pulls out a salt shaker and says:

“You are the salt of the earth.” Matthew 5.13

In the ancient world, salt was a vital necessity. It was not optional. It not only provided flavor for foods but it preserved. There was no refrigeration and Decay and rot were the great enemies of life in the ancient world. Salt was the only power to arrest decay. Mothers would rub salt on the skin of their newborn babies as a disinfectant. Salt had almost magical properties. And so it became a major item of trade. Rome would pay its soldiers in salt. We get the word “salary” from the Latin sal or salt. The Bible is full of references to salt. In the Old Testament is the story of a man named Lot who with his wife is fleeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But Lot’s wife is disobedient and she is turned into a ____________. And they took her with them on the journey and that’s where we got the first salt lick from. Just kidding.

Jesus is saying I want Israel to be a people of blessing to a world full of corruption and decay and death. You will arrest the decay. You will preserve what is worth preserving. You will give flavor and life to this world.

How will God’s people be this good to impact the world like salt? If we are salt, what makes us salty?

Well, it’s clear that our saltiness has little to do with our inherent goodness. If it did, then we wouldn’t be able to lose it, and Jesus suggests that this does happen.

“but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?”

In fact, Jesus is suggesting that this is what has happened to Israel. They have lost their saltiness. There were different ideas then about Israel’s purpose. Rome had a vision for Israel that was pretty much tax her for Rome’s benefit. The Zealots had a vision that involved a violent overthrow of Rome. The Sadducees had a vision that was an accommodation of Rome. Jesus really didn’t have a lot in common with those visions. The group and vision that he had most in common with was the Pharisees. And it was with the Pharisees that he had his strongest argument.

The Pharisees believed in reforming the world through God’s Law. Jesus also wanted to change the world and Jesus loved the Law. Nobody loved the Torah of God more than Jesus. Jesus was accused of breaking the law or introducing new ones but to this he responds:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

“Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, no one letter, nor one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until it is accomplished.” Matthew 5.17-18

In the Hebrew language the smallest letter is called a yodh. It made by two small strokes of a pen. When God changed Sara’s name from Sarai to Sara, it was done with the removal of a single yodh, two strokes. Jesus is saying that is the attention that he gives the law and every stroke of the law will be obeyed and will be completed.

But – here is his argument with the Pharisees – the Pharisees obeyed the law in its form and outward behavior but they missed the purpose of the law, which is to direct the heart to its right love. Jesus taught that the point of the law is the transformation of the heart.

“The greatest commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second great commandment is you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Mark 12.30-31

The Pharisees were very pious, very religious men. In fact, in terms of being religious they were the finest people of their day. But when it came to loving people, they were failures. They were lousy at it. And so their righteousness was not really righteous, it was just religious. The Pharisees thought they loved the law, but they didn’t love the God who gave them the law. And so the law couldn’t save them, it couldn’t only point out their lostness.

“The law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.” Dallas Willard

So Jesus says in his talk, if your righteousness isn’t better than the Pharisees you won’t enter the Kingdom. In order to have a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees we must be transformed in the heart. We must receive the blessing of God in order to be a blessing. We must not only act good, we must be good. And that can only happen by accessing all the power and the resources of the Kingdom that Jesus makes readily available to his followers. Jesus makes us salty.

We are the salt of the earth. No one can argue with goodness. No power can defeat love. No one can prevent you from being the salt of the earth. But we have to be out there. Rebecca Manley Pippert wrote a great book called Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World. It reminds me that Jesus called us not the salt of church but the salt of the earth.

2010-03-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

The Greatest Talk Ever Given

Bridge to Terabithia is the story of two young teenagers who are linked by their kindness and imagination. The boy, Jess, is shy and has a gift for drawing. Leslie, a girl, is brave and bold and has a gift for story. One Sunday she asks if she can go to church with Jess and his family. Leslie confesses that she and her parents never go to church. She would like to go with her friend to his church. When she tells Jess this, he looks at her like she has just said, “I am a dodo.”

But Jess agrees to take Leslie with them and they all go to church together. They sing hymns. They hear a sermon. And on the ride home they talk about it. Leslie says,

“I’m really glad I came. That whole Jesus thing –it’s really interesting, isn’t it?”

Jess’ little sister responds, “It’s not interesting. It’s scary!” and she goes on to talk about God damning people.

“You have to believe it and you hate it,” Leslie tells her friends. “I don’t have to believe it and I think it’s beautiful.”

Now, they may be confused about some things concerning Jesus and the Bible but no more confused than many adults. I’ve used this scene before as an example because I think it comes pretty close to capturing the attitude of that crowd of people who came to hear Jesus preach this talk called the Sermon on the Mount.

The people didn’t come because they had to. They came because they wanted to. They were the sinners, the tax collectors who cheated people of their money, the prostitutes, the criminals, the losers. These are not the bright shiny people. They are the masses of humanity. They are smelly and rude and impatient and impious. Nobody ever asked them to come to church and hear a good talk about God’s love. But from the moment Jesus began to talk it was clear that he was talking not above them or around them, but to them.

The Sermon on the Mount is the Greatest Talk ever given by the most influential person who ever lived on this planet. Jaroslav Pelikan says that Jesus has influenced so much of history and culture that if you removed everything that he has touched in some way, how much really would be left?

The people that heard this talk realized right away that they were in the presence of a person who taught like nobody else. His words were compelling. They spoke to real life and with the authority of one who knew what he was talking about. Here was a person of great wisdom and ability, greater than they had ever encountered. They didn’t listen because they had to- they concluded that they would be fools not to listen and follow. John Ortberg says that nobody in the crowd took notes. Today, a person may take notes to remember the information. When I go hear a speaker that I respect, I often take notes on the talk. But nobody took notes in this crowd, Ortberg says, because the words were so powerful that it changed their lives forever. And you don’t forget that.

What were you doing on September 11 2001 when you heard the news? I bet you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. You didn’t have to write it down.

“When something changes your life, you remember. You just know.”

Jesus sermon was like that. Nobody who was there forgot it. And He began. . .

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

Jesus begins his talk with a series of blessings that have been called the Beatitudes. The beatitudes have become very pious sayings that people put on their walls but many do not really understand what they are about. First, of all they are about real people. Like most of his preaching, Jesus uses a “show and tell” method. Some of the people in the crowd he has probably spent time with and even healed. He might use someone in the crowd as an example and say, “Here, here is what I am talking. . .”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. . .” The poor in spirit are the people who don’t know anything about church. They don’t talk the language. They don’t know their Bibles. Gallup did a poll a few years back asking people who gave the Sermon on the Mount. You know what the number one answer was? Billy Graham. Many people thought it was called the Sermon on the Mount because it was given from the back of a horse. The poor in spirit aren’t going to win any Bible trivia games. They are the spiritual zeros. There is nothing spiritually attractive about them. And Jesus continues this pattern of pronouncing blessings on people in unattractive and unenviable positions.

“Blessed are those who mourn. . .” Does this mean its good to be in mourning? Is it good to lose someone you care deeply about? No, of course not. Jesus is not saying you are blessed because of your mourning or your spiritual poverty – you are blessed in spite of. . .The Beatitudes are not a set of instructions who what to do or be, they are an announcement of Good News to all people.

This goes against the grain of our beliefs, religious and otherwise. Deep down, we subscribe to what I referred to the other evening as a theology of “Good things happen to good people/bad things happen to bad people.” If our lives are going fairly well then subtly we begin to believe that we deserve it. We’ve earned it. Of course things are going good – I’m a good person.

This is not really the way life works and the Bible tells us this. In the Old Testament book of 2 Kings we read the story of Naaman. Naaman had a “designer life.” He was commander of the army of Aram, what we now call Syria. He was one of the most powerful men of his time. He was the equivalent of prime minister. He was wealthy and well thought of. But there was a great challenge in Naaman’s designer life:

“The man, though a valiant warrior, suffered from leprosy.” 2 Kings 5.1

Leprosy was fatal in those days. If you got it, you went through a gradual wasting that slowly crippled, disfigured, and finally, killed you. The word had the resonance that cancer has in our day. All Naaman’s success and accomplishments couldn’t help defeat this enemy in his own body. But one day a young girl from Israel is taken captive in a raid by Naaman’s soldiers. The girl becomes a slave to Naaman’s wife. The observes who new master’s condition and says:

“If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 2 Kings 5.3

Naaman has nothing to lose really. So he decides to try to go see the prophet. And Naaman does it in a way that he knows best. He sends letters of reference through his king to the King of Israel. He brings a lot of money with him as well to give to the king. He figures with the money and the references, the King of Israel will command the prophet to cure him.

Naaman believed that if you live a good, successful life then God must bless you. If you show you are successful, you can get whatever you want from God. I mean, it worked in Naaman’s dealings with other successful people, why wouldn’t it work with God? But the man is in for a shock. Naaman goes to the prophet Elisha’s house and is greeted at the door by a messenger who says, “the prophet said to go wash yourself in the Jordan River seven times and you will be cured.”

Good news, right? Not to Naaman. He was angry. He was angry because he didn’t believe it could be that simple. He was expecting some kind of elaborate ritual. He was expecting that he would have to pay the prophet some money. He was expecting to have to do some mighty thing, as Timothy Keller says, “like bring back the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West or return the Ring of Power to Mount Doom.” Naaman took this as an insult. Any idiot can go splash in the river. In Naaman’s world, the mighty and successful are in the control.

“Just wash yourself,” was the answer he got instead.

Jesus looks at the unwashed and says, God doesn’t need you to do anything. There is nothing you have that God needs. God doesn’t bless you because you’re good looking or you’re wealthy or you’re successful. And God doesn’t bless you because you’re unattractive or poor or sorrowful. Here’s the good news: God blesses you because his kingdom is for everyone.

What might God’s blessings sound like today? Blessed are the those with bad breath. Blessed are those with no fashion sense. Blessed are those who can’t sing. Blessed are the divorced. Blessed are the unemployed, underemployed, overemployed, and unemployable. Blessed are the HIV positive. Blessed are the homeless. Blessed are the perpetually angry. Blessed are the lonely. You get the picture. No one is beyond God’s blessing. No one is excluded from the kingdom. Now it’s possible that you can be these things and turn your back on Jesus and His kingdom. God won’t force his blessing on anyone. But if we would see and hear what those first crowds saw and heard we will remember and not forget. We will begin to understand the words of the prophet Isaiah:

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation. . . Isaiah 52.7

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. . .” Isaiah 61.1-2

Someday we’ll see the feet of One who comes down from the mountain to tell us - Good news friends - it’s here! The kingdom is finally and fully here!” Who is that One? Some of you may recall that passage in Luke 4 when Jesus reads that scripture “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. .” in the synagogue and he finishes the reading and says, this scripture is fulfilled right now in me. He is the Lord’s anointed.

Over the next month we will continue to study Jesus’ great message of the kingdom. I encourage you to read it for yourself. I invite you to pray with me now.

2010-03-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Love is not all you need

Jacob loved Rachel, but he didn’t love Leah. On closer inspection, Jacob’s “love” for Rachel was more lust than love. His behavior was that of an addict. He invested so much false hope and expectation in Rachel’s beauty that the idea of this woman became his idol. If you get married as Jacob did, putting the weight of all your deepest hopes and longings on the person you are marrying, you are going to crush them with your expectations. It will distort your life and your spouse’s life in a hundred ways.

“No person, not even the best one, can give your soul all it needs. You are going to think you have gone to bed with Rachel, and you will get up and it will always be Leah.” Timothy Keller

We have idolized romantic love in our culture. We have taken a good thing, and made it an ultimate thing, which is the definition of idolatry. When we idolize something, we love it, trust it, and obey it. Ernest Becker says we have elevated romantic love to the point where we expect it to rid us of our faults and our feeling of nothingness. We expect romantic love to justify us, to redeem us. “Needless to say, human partners cannot give this.”

As C.S. Lewis noted, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

There is a prophet in the Old Testament named Hosea and his story is like no other story in the Bible, and maybe anywhere else. God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. Why does God say this?

“because the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord.” Hosea 1.2

Hosea is a prophet in a dying kingdom. He sees the last gasp of success in Israel followed by a period of weak kings and disastrous decisions. In a period of twenty years six different kings reigned in Israel until Israel was no more. Hosea lists the last good king of Israel, Jeroboam, and he also lists the kings of Judah at that time. He leaves out these six kings in Israel. He’s too embarrassed for Israel to mention them.

What is also happening, not coincidentally, is Israel has become a spiritually unfaithful people. They have mixed the true worship of Yahweh with the pagan worship of the Baals, the localized fertility gods. The worship of Baal centered around each region having its own god for success with the crop harvest. You gained favor with your Baal by cultic prostitution and orgies. This was thought to manipulate the god in a magical way to reward your land with a good harvest.

When God tells Hosea the land commits great harlotry he means it almost literally – the people are debasing themselves for the god of the land.

God tells Hosea to marry a harlot and so Hosea marries a woman named Gomer. It is implied that Gomer was perhaps a prostitute in one of the Baal cults. The prophet of God marries a prostitute and they have children. And their marriage and family becomes the story within the story of God’s love for his people Israel. This image of God’s relationship with his people played out in this strange marriage is one uniquely Hosea’s own. One commentator notes that Hosea’s marriage is a “tragic mismatch.” In other words, you won’t get this match on Eharmony. Nonetheless, Hosea and Gomer’s marriage seems to convey a tenderness and a fidelity that weathers the storms.

Their first child is a boy whom the Lord names for them. (He’ll name all their children) When God gives people names, this is always a sign that this person will serve a divine purpose. The boy’s name is Jezreel, which is Hebrew for “punishment.” In other words, punishment is coming to Israel for her unfaithfulness.

The second child Gomer and Hosea have is a girl. She is named Lo-ruhama, which means “she is not pitied.” God has no pity for a wicked people.

The third child is another boy called Lo-ammi, which means “not my people.” And at this point, Israel is perhaps hoping that Gomer and Hosea are done having children.

What is God up to here? That’s always a good question to ask, especially when reading the Old Testament. I think we answer that by using the very modern acronym of DTR – define the relationship. Young adults and teens that are dating today often come to the moment when they have to “define the relationship.” They want to know who they are, what they are, and what they can expect. That’s what God is up to here in Hosea. God what’s to have a define the relationship conversation with his people. Let’s call this what it is. You show more interest in the gods and lusts of your imaginations than you do in the God who brought you out of Egypt into the promised land. So let me be honest with you. You will be punished and I don’t pity you. You stopped being my people some time ago.

The commandments Moses delivered tell us that our God is a jealous God. He won’t be cuckholded, or cheated on forever. Anytime we put something in place of God, whether that thing is a person or a passion, we are cheating on God.

I was watching the NFL Network the other day with the boys and they were showing a recap of the Steelers glorious run to the Super Bowl last year. At one point they interviewed Troy Polamalu. They’ve just shown Troy making some spectacular hits and interceptions, and at every moment playing with passion and reckless abandon. Then they cut to this quiet, humble man who says,

“I don’t love football. I love life. Football is a part of life and so I appreciate football and play it with passion.” He went to talk about the more important loves of his life, his wife and kids, and his ultimate love for the Lord.

The point is not that we have to hate sports, or shopping or whatever our interests are. The point is not that we should love our spouse less, but rather that we should know and love God more. Nothing can come close to what our love for God should be. Because no one or nothing else is as beautiful as the Lord is. Hosea is not the only place in the Bible where God describes his love for us as a marriage.

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 5.31-32

Here’s Paul again:

“If then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3.1-4

Timothy Keller tells the story of a woman named Sally. Sally, Keller writes, “had the misfortune of being born beautiful.” Even as a child she could see the power that her physical beauty had on people. At first she used her beauty to manipulate others. But then others began to use it to manipulate her. She came to feel powerless unless she some man was in love with her. She could not bear to be alone. This made for a lot of unhappiness and disappointment in her life. More than that, she felt her life slipping away as she worshipped the god of romance.

One day, though, Sally got her life back. She came across this passage in Colossians that we just read. She came to realize that neither men nor career nor anything else should be “her life” or identity. What mattered was not what men thought of her, but what Christ had done for her and how he loved her. So when she saw a man was interested in her, she would silently say in her heart toward him, “You may turn out to be a great guy, and maybe even my husband, but you cannot ever be my life. Only Christ is my life.” When she began to do this, Sally got her life back.

That is the promise of God. That if we allow our lives “to be hid” in Christ, when Christ begins to appear, the real you appears with him in glory. The good news is that, though the Lord may become jealous and angry, he is also forgiving and gracious and above all, full of love for us. When it comes to his people, God’s love won’t be denied.

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” Hosea 2.14

“And in that day says the Lord. . .I will have pity on Not Pitied, and I will say to Not my people, You are my people and he shall say, “Thou art my God.”

2010-02-09T13:38:00.002-08:00

Have No Fear

The boys and I went fishing one day last summer. We tried down at the park but had no luck. So then we crossed Third Avenue at the bridge and went back by the railroad bed. There is a deep hole there that we thought might yield a few fish. We joined Sam Holsinger, who was already fishing there. And soon, we were joined by a group of five or six boys who came to swim in the hole. They waited patiently until we were done fishing.

I said, “Go ahead boys, we’re done.” And they jumped in – from the top of the railroad culvert where the creek ran under the railroad bed.. It’s a big jump. It’s a little scary. But those boys were doing it with little or no hesitation. Now, I knew most of those boys. And most of them aren’t really right, you know? Well, they’re boys. Take Ethan Butterbaugh, for example – he was there. Not only did he jump; but he climbed up on top of the round, inch-wide metal railing on top of the culvert and then jumped. I watched him do this once or twice, and as he climbed on that thin railing in his wet sneakers I told him I wished he wouldn’t do that. He asked me why.

“Well, your feet could slip on that metal and you could fall off balance face first into that cement.”

He said no, that wouldn’t happen.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Because it hasn’t happened to me yet, he said, with supreme confidence.

And that my friends, is the invincibility of youth. No fear. Nothing will happen to me. Cause, it hasn’t happened in the last five minutes. I’m not picking on Ethan or the other boys. When I was younger I did plenty of stupid things on dares, and plenty of stupid things on my own initiative. Growing older hopefully provides us with the wisdom to refrain from not doing as many stupid things as we used to do. As we get older, there is an opposite danger from the danger of youth – we learn to play it safe whenever possible. And when life isn’t safe, we grow afraid. In fact, when things aren’t as secure as we are used to, we not only grow afraid,, but we become afraid of that feeling of being afraid. And we will do most anything to avoid feeling that way.

God tells us not to be afraid. He doesn’t say don’t take risks, because that would be saying don’t live. Life is full of risk and unknown danger. But life is also full of opportunity. God tells us that we are meant to live in a reality, not of fear, but of love.

“God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them. . .There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. . .” 1 John 4.16,18

I have often wondered what this means. . .perfect love casts out fear. How does love get rid of fear? Well, think about fear. Not all fear is bad. For example, if are walking the woods, and you come upon a bear with cubs, fear puts you on alert, and tells your brain, “Now is not the time to be stupid.” Fear has a purpose. But too often, fear ends up controlling us. I was listening to an interview on the radio with former NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski. Romanowski played most of his career for the Denver Broncos. Steelers Fans may remember the AFC title game in which “Romo” spit on Kordell Stewart. I never liked Romanowski after that game. But as I listened to this interview, I understood him a little better. He talked about always playing angry.

“Why did you play angry all the time?” he was asked.

“Because I was always afraid,” Romanowski responded. “It was either play afraid or play angry.” That choice between anger and fear makes sense if you are an undersized linebacker in the NFL. But that choice doesn’t make sense for the rest of us. Unfortunately many people do make that bargain with the devil. Many people live much of their lives angry because mostly, well, they are afraid.

The secret of conquering our fear is to know that we are not alone. We are loved.

It helps to know that you are not alone. Fear tends to separate us from others and fear magnifies are sense of loneliness. We live lives that are more isolated. Robert Putnam’s classic book on our modern society, Bowling Alone, notes that volunteerism and participation in community groups are at their lowest levels in the past fifty years. The result of our not joining is our not belonging. We feel more isolated and are prone to distrust others and distrust our future. There is a confidence that comes with serving alongside others at Kiwanis or Little League or Bowling League. There is power in community. That great theologian, Yogi Berra, put it this way, “If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.”

Now, just being with people helps, but it doesn’t get us all the way out of the valley of Fear. The Israelites in the Wilderness of Sin are an example for us. They had each other, and they had Moses, and they had a string of success stories in their immediate past to give them confidence – and yet they feared. Their fear manifested itself in their complaining. They complained because they feared. They were low on water, in the desert, and they were afraid. They said, “What, they’re weren’t enough graves in Egypt? You had to bring us out into this wilderness to die?”

And the people were getting angry. Moses thought they were about ready to stone him to death. Moses was beside himself.

“Moses called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Exodus 17.7

This test of water was one of three tests that came to Israel on the journey in the wilderness. Two the tests concerned water and one concerned food. At a place called Marah, they found water, but it was too bitter to drink, until God showed them how to make it sweeter. Marah is Hebrew for bitterness. Then they came to a place called Elim that had fine water and nice shade, but they were hungry. So God sent the bread from heaven called Manna. Manna is Hebrew for “what is it?”. This was fine until they got tired of bread and wanted meat. So, to recap, the places where they went they ended up calling Bitterness, What is It?, Quarreling, and Testing. Do you see a pattern here?

Was it the places themselves that were unpleasant or did the people bring their unpleasantness with them?

Their question, “Is the Lord with us or not?” reveals everything we need to know about their spirits. They were afraid. They tested God. They acted like God had never done anything for them.

I hear this attitude today. We get caught up with all the trouble on the news and the 24/7 blame game that so-called commentators play. Folks, it is possible to watch too much news and listen to too much talk radio. Because too much leaves you with the wrong attitude. Too much leads to cynicism and despair. And friends, that is simply not permissible for the believer. No matter how hellish this world appears, this world is still my Father’s world! This world is still in the hands of the Almighty, who suffers no rival gods to be in charge. Even the Devil himself bows and comes calling when the Lord God summons him. The present troubles, no matter how great and terrifying, are nothing to be afraid of.

“Beloved do not believe every spirit, but test them to see whether they are of God. . .Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4.1, 4

So the believer knows that no matter how bad things seem, God is in charge. God is here.! We may have to fight the battle, but we know the war has already been won.

Philip Yancey recounts the story of a German prison camp in World War II. Unbeknownst to the German guards, the American POWs had built a makeshift radio. One day news came that German high command had surrendered, ending the war – a fact that, because of a communication breakdown, the German guards did not yet know. As word spread among the prisoners, a loud celebration broke out. For three days, the prisoners were hardly recognizable. They sang and waved at the guards, laughed at the guard dogs and joked over meals. On the fourth day, they awoke to find that all the Germans had fled, leaving the gates unlocked. The time of waiting had come to an end.

Yancey asks this question: “As we Christians face contemporary crises, why do we respond with such fear and anxiety? Why don’t we, like the Allied prisoners, act on the Good News we say we believe? What is faith, after all, but believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse?”

Say: God is here!

2010-02-09T13:38:00.001-08:00

Love Grows Along the Path of Obedience

There are a lot of people, more than would care to admit it, who have gotten what they know about Love and Life from pop songs and television shows. Could I suggest that maybe those are not the best sources for information on Love and Life? Most of what we hear about Love is garbage. It’s time to sift through the refuse and hold on to what is true and pure.

John the Apostle writes in chapter four of this letter,

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. . .”

Because we have been fed less than stellar stuff on love by our culture, we have get behind the words here. Is John telling us to be nice to each other? Is he telling us to feel a certain way? Well, he may be, but he is telling us more than that. In fact, John makes it clear what he means by loving each other.

“By this we may be sure that we know God, if we keep his commandments. He who says “I know him” but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” 2.3-4

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” 5.2-3

The one who loves, obeys.
When you choose to love someone you choose to voluntarily limit yourself. You limit our options and your freedom. This is not imposed on you. You impose it on yourself, because of love. The person who will never receive correction, never compromise, never submit in obedience is a person who does not love, or maybe, loves no one but themselves.

This is a lesson that we strive to teach our children. When the parent took the paddle to the child, the old saw went, “Son, this hurts me more than it hurts you.” In other words, I’m doing this difficult thing to help you. You’ll thank me later.” We provide boundaries and rules for our kids when they are too young to provide them for themselves. Every home needs boundaries and rules.

Cesar Millan has proven that. Do you know who he is? Cesar Millan talks to dogs. He is the Dog Whisperer. Millan is called that because he seems to have an almost supernatural ability to communicate and train problem dogs. Millan says that often, where there is a problem dog, there are problem people. Millan was called into the home of a Chihuahua named Bandit. He was a little thing but he was a terror, threatening people and other dogs. His owner was Lori who had a husband and a son. Lori would let Bandit sleep under her shirt every night. Millan asked Lori if her husband was okay with that. Her reply was, “Well, he is our baby.” Lori had Bandit on her lap and her son, Tyler, was sitting next to her. Tyler reached over to try to pet Bandit and Bandit lept up and attacked the boy, snapping and growling. Lori reached out and held the dog and caressed him soothingly.

At this point, Millan took charge. “Enough with the dogs attacking humans and nobody really blocking him.. The dog is only becoming more narcissistic. It is all about him. He owns you.” Millan was angry now. “It seems like you are favoring the dog. If Tyler kicked your dog you would correct him. The dog is biting your son, and you are not correcting the dog. . .I love dogs. I’m the dog whisperer. You follow what I’m saying? But I would never choose a dog over my son.”

We’ve grown afraid of discipline. We don’t discipline ourselves and we don’t expect discipline out of others. We have a muddled notion that somehow all discipline is cruel and unloving. Discipline and obedience are not the opposites of love but in fact, when used properly, the very expression of Love. Jesus tells a story about a father and two sons. The father went to the first son and said, “Son, go work in my vineyard today.” The son answered, “No thanks dad. I have other things to do.” But then, the son later changed his mind and went and did the work. The father went to the second son and said the same and the second son answered, “Yes, certainly I will go father,” but then never showed up for the work. “Which of these two sons,” Jesus asks, “did the will of his father?”

Notice that Love and Obedience do not depend on how we feel in a given moment. Sometimes the choice of obedience is a painful one. But that is sign, not of disapproval or aggression, but of care and love.

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12.7,11

We are trained by obedience. Sort of like a dog. But don’t let that notion offend you. Most everything that is good is worth training for. We who have been born into this nature bent on sinning have been precondition, pretrained, to be selfish and disobedient to God and to others. We need retrained in Kingdom values and Kingdom living. Eugene Peterson writes that what is needed is “a long obedience in the same direction.” He borrowed the phrase from Nietzsche, of all people. The quote is this:

“The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is. . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

Peterson adds this from Jeremiah, “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?”

Our world has this assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. But who will take the path of a long obedience in the direction that Jesus leads us?

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. . .for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.” 1 John 2.15-17

John’s letter, like Paul’s to the Corinthians, ought to be known as “the Love Letter.” John teaches us that daily obedience and responsibility to God and others is the way of love. Obedience teaches us more about love than any emotion, poem, song, card, or oath. Picking up dirty socks. Picking up milk. Extending patient courtesy, showing honor and respect – these are the building blocks of Love. These are Cupid’s arrows. A wise man once wrote, “It is not Love that sustains a marriage. It is the marriage that will sustain your Love.” Ted Haggard was a successful pastor of evangelical megachurch. He was president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Lots of important people listened to what Haggard had to say. But Haggard was living a secret life of adultery and drugs. It his sin, as sin always does, came out. Haggard’s world came crashing down. But a couple years removed from this meltdown, Haggard and his wife appeared on Oprah the other day and talked about how they have learned to love and trust each other again. Haggard said, “I don’t ask my wife to trust me blindly. I have to earn her trust.” And he went on to list some of the rules and boundaries he lives by now. He was careful to add, “these are not imposed on me by my wife, like a sentence. I freely choose to do them out of love for her and she for me.”

The point of boundaries and rules are not the rules themselves, but the kind of person they are helping us become. Dallas Willard asks these two questions when he wants to measure his spiritual health:

“Am I growing more or less easily irritated these days?”
“Am I growing more or less easily discouraged these days?”

There is a pain and duty in obedience. But the person who commits their way to the long obedience finds that duty yields deeper and richer experiences in life. Joy shines through this path. Duty becomes delight.

2010-02-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Build Community

Show video clip “the awe factor of God” from crazylovebook.com

“When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Psalm 8.3-4

I am a speck in the universe. What am I that the Creator of the Universe should notice me at all? There is an old philosophical question, “How angels can sit on the head of a pin?”. Maybe the miracle is all these people on a planet the size of a pinhead in the needle of a galaxy in the haystack of the universe. To think of the shear numbers of stars and galaxies in the universe boggles the mind. My mind is boggled.

Here’s a number – seventy. Seventy was a symbolic number for the Jews. Seventy was the number of elders chosen to help Moses with the task of leading and directing the people in the wilderness. Seventy was the number of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews. And seventy was, at that time, held to be the number of nations in the world. The seventy disciples sent is connected in Luke with the mission of the Good News of Jesus Christ for the whole world.

There is an interesting side note here. One of the towns on which woe is pronounced is Chorazin. It is implied that Jesus did many mighty works there. Yet Chorazin is never mentioned in the gospel history outside of this reference. We do not know one thing that he did there or one word that he spoke. This vividly demonstrates that there is so much of Jesus life that we don’t know. And at the end of his gospel John says this – “You would need a world full of libraries to contain all the books that could be written on His life.” The gospels are not biographies but merely sketches of his life.

Think about how many lives Jesus impacted with his message. He started his public ministry and gathered twelve disciples, twelve men he would invest most of his time with. That number twelve is also an important number. Twelve has psychological and relational force. For example, think of a list of people whose death would leave you truly devastated. Chances are you will come up with around twelve names. At least, that’s the average answer that most people give to that question. Psychologists call that our Sympathy Group. Why isn’t that group larger? Because twelve is the number of people you can probably be very good friends with. To be a good friend to someone requires a minimum investment in time, and additionally it requires an emotional investment as well. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting. Twelve is also our Relational Group, Our Friend Group. Twelve is the number of a Small Group.

Our church has a Facebook Group. Facebook is an enormously popular social networking site. It feels like it’s been around a long time but actually only started in 2004. I know someone who has 696 “friends” on Facebook. Does this person really have 696 friends? Well, no. She probably has around 12 friends and she has many more acquaintances and people that she doesn’t have time and energy for. (When my sister created her Facebook account she got a screen that said, “You have zero friends.” That can be dispiriting. Good news – she has since found many friends.) The outsized number of friends listed on Facebook for many folks does say how connectional our lives are; how the twelve people you know are strongly connected to twelve others, and so on and so on. You can multiply the numbers out to the point where you get lost and feel insignificant. Or, you can consider how relationally potent you can be. You are the connection between so many people in your community and your world. In fact, in one sense, “your world” is you because you are the glue that holds it together. Have you heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? The idea behind the game is to try to link any actor or actress, through the movies they’ve been in, to the actor Kevin Bacon in less than six steps. So for example, O.J. Simpson was in Naked Gun with Priscilla Presley, who was in Ford Fairlane with Gilbert Gottfried, who was in Beverly Hills Cop II with Paul Reiser, who was in Diner with Kevin Bacon. That’s four steps. You could almost play this game with yourself and the people that you know who know others who know others. It’s Six Degrees of You.

What does this matter? You are a relational force for the Kingdom. You are an army of One. And if we use the authority and power given to us in the Holy Spirit to live and proclaim the Gospel then we will impact our community.

Now, when the seventy were sent out, they went as taught, prayed for, and trained disciples. They were the beginnings of what would be realized in more fullness in the Holy Spirit-baptized Church that we find in Acts 2, of whom it was written:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2.42

The Church from the very beginning was a relational force of small groups for spiritual formation and a larger worshipping community. By living in the power of the Spirit they made new converts every day – “every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (2.48) These people experienced the awe and wonder of God in their midst together.

The Seventy in Luke’s Gospel experienced the same kind of thing on a smaller scale. They came back to Jesus lit up with joy. They never expected such power to change lives and to affect the spiritual and eternal realm. Jesus confirms that they are doing Kingdom work, cosmic work.

“I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning. See I have given you authority. . .over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.” Luke 10.19

We have the power to change lives. We have the power to affect eternity. But do we have the urgency that lives are at stake? Will we commit to the training and the doing that it takes to become a relational force for the Kingdom? Or will we be like the people of Chorazin who ignored the visitation of Christ among them?

Are you in a class or small group where you are learning and growing and serving? We’ve made it pretty easy for you to be in one. We now average roughly 100 people involved in small groups. That’s about half of our worshipping attendance. Our goal is to have every one in the church be in a small group. We can do it. It’s achievable. But we need the disconnected to connect. We need you to carve out an hour in your week to give to a group of fellow travelers on the Journey. See what happens if you do it. See what happens if we get a hundred percent participation. I know what will happen – people will come to Jesus; lives will be changed. We’ll experience Awe and Wonder. Didn’t Jesus come to bring us a sense of wonder about life?

I want to close with a testimony that perhaps you’ve heard before. It’s called One Solitary Life.

He was born in an obscure village, a child of a peasant woman.
He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty.
Then he became an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book.
He never held an office.
He never did one thing that usually accompanies greatness.
He had no credentials but himself.
While still a young man, public opinion turned against him.
His friends ran away.
One denied him.
He went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
His executioners gambled for his only piece of property – his coat.
He was laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone.
Today he is the centerpiece of the human race.
All the armies that ever marched,
All the navies that ever sailed,
All the parliaments that ever sat,
And all the kings that ever reigned put together,
Have not affected the life man upon this earth as powerfully as that
One solitary life.

2010-02-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

Rebuilding Trust: Trust Others

I went over to the Altoona Hospital the other day to see someone. I drove into the parking garage and I could tell it was a busy day. I ascended the levels looking for the first open space. I got about midway up the garage when I thought I spied an open space ahead on the left. As I pulled closer I saw there was no car in the space but there was something in the space - an old lady was standing at the head of the space. She stood there firm and proud, reserving the space for someone. She stood with her cane firmly in spot, like a climber planting a flag on the top of some mountain peak. Have you ever watched a show or movie where someone is driving a car but they look at something on the sidewalk and the camera slows the action down so whatever is on the sidewalk can been seen clearly – as I drove slowly by the space and looked at the old lady, she did this (eyes close, shaking her head no).

Apparently she looked at me and decided it wasn’t enough that she was standing in the space, she felt she needed to do this. She didn’t like the look of me. So I keep driving up the garage to the top, turn around and start back down and find a guy pulling out of a space. I sit there and wait and then start to pull when someone tears around the corner and slides into the space ahead of me! When it comes to spaces in a parking garage, courtesy and trust, well, they have to wait their turn like everyone else.

We’ve been talking about trust this month. When trust is broken - and we’ve all broken trust and had trust broken with us – we must change to become trustworthy persons. That’s the first step. The next step is to take steps to trust others. It’s been said that liars are always accusing others of lying. Likewise, untrustworthy people often have trouble trusting others; because they know what they themselves have done.

It’s not easy to learn to trust again. When things have been broken it’s hard to see how they can be whole again. G.K. Chesterton said, “When you break the Big Laws, you don’t get freedom. You don’t even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”

He is saying that our first response to distrust is to make more rules, rules that were once not necessary. When I registered for annual conference the other year, Jason Garman was going as a youth delegate. I inquired if I could have Jason Garman room with me. The lady in charge of room arrangements said that we couldn’t do that because of Jason’s age. Because of Safe Sanctuary Policy Jason couldn’t room with me, an adult, but had to stay with the youth delegation. I understood the policy. Because Big Laws had been broken, I had to abide by small laws.

In Matthew 7 Jesus is reaching the climax of his teaching opus, the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon he is teaching what the kingdom is and how to live in it. As Stanley Hauerwas notes, there is no difference between what Jesus teaches and who He is. And clearly, to be his person and live in the kingdom, you have to forgive and trust.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” Matt. 7.1-2

Jesus is diagnosing the human condition in which we habitually respond to critique and judgment with a counterattack of criticism and judgment. On American Idol the other night a man was interviewed just before he auditioned for the judges and in this interview the man expressed his excitement and his admiration for the judges, especially for Mary J. Blige, was a great singer and star she was. The contestant also said he welcomed their suggestions and he was a person that was very accepting of constructive criticism. Well, you know where this is going. His audition for the judges didn’t do very well, and when they suggested he wasn’t good enough and had work to do, he got very defensive and angry. And cursed the judges and went on to say they didn’t know what they were talking about. He said Mary J. Blige couldn’t sing herself!

Most people have responded to criticism this way at one time or another. The only way to avoid the “reciprocity of condemnation” as Dallas Willard puts it, is to refuse to play the game. This is what Jesus is telling us. Forget about the character faults you see in your sister until you get a new heart for yourself. Families can be particularly hard on one another.

“Most families would be healthier and happier if their members treated one another with the respect they would give to a perfect stranger.” Dallas Willard

The decision to trust another person is a decision not only to put away vengeance and anger, (which are best left up to God), but a decision to extend yourself in love. Love extends outward. Love becomes vulnerable.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13.7-8

Jesus taught and modeled this. He shared his life with his disciples. He trusted the witness of the gospel and his mission with seventy disciples. In Matthew 10 you can read how he sent them out.

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Matthew 10.16

What does it mean to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves? You extend yourself in Love and make yourself vulnerable, knowing that you may suffer because of it. You risk something because you believe that people that Jesus died for are worth the risk for you too. Trusting others doesn’t mean you become foolish. You don’t loan money to a compulsive gambler. You don’t bare your soul in confidence to a gossip. Be wise (as serpents) in the ways of people in this world. Don’t rashly throw your pearls before swine.

But having said this, remember the power of Love. And remember that Love trusts. Steven Covey tells about a hotdog vendor in a city who did a good business in the busy downtown. People stood in lines at lunchtime waiting to buy a couple hot ones and hurry on their way. The vendor noticed that at times the lines were so long that people would leave. He was losing business because he couldn’t keep up. So he came up with an answer. He wouldn’t worry about taking their money. He put out a basket with a sign that asked them to make their own change. He would just focus on cooking and serving the product. He trusted his customers. And what happened? His profits soared. He found that often people would leave more than the cost of the hotdog. People responded generously to his trust.

Dallas Willard talks about the Unity of Spiritual Orientation. He says that we must realize that deep in our spirits we cannot have one posture toward God a different one toward other people.

“There are few one-way streets in the kingdom: for example, God forgives me but I do not forgive, or Jesus confesses his friendship to me before the heavenly company but I do not own him before those less glorious ones around me, and so on.”

The same applies to trust. Trust can not long stay a one-way street. It must run both ways. The great news is our experience of trust can be like what that hotdog vendor experienced only much more personally with much greater reward than mere money. I’m talking about healed relationships and changed lives. We can rebuild trust and see the power of love in new ways. The God of love works to make this happen. And his love never fails.

2010-02-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Trust Yourself

Show the Fray video “You Found Me.”

We live in a culture of seeming contradictions. People consider themselves spiritual and yet don’t want anything to do with church. Rick Richardson talks about a pastor friend of his who went to work at a Starbucks simply to meet unchurched people. What he found out surprised him. The first surprise was that all twenty-one people he worked with believed in God. They all considered themselves spiritual persons. The second surprise was that they were all interested in spiritual things but not in Christians, Christianity, or the church. Rick’s friend soon found out that all of these people had experienced a breach of trust somewhere along the way in relation to Christianity.

One day Rick’s friend asked a coworker about her feelings about a relationship with God. She looked at him and then blurted out: “I want to know where God was when I was fourteen and somebody raped me.”

What can you say in a moment like that? Nothing. But, we can learn that rebuilding trust in God, in Christians, in the church, in ourselves requires time and patience and effort. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

Begin rebuilding trust by trusting yourself. Let’s pause a moment. Let’s be still and know that I’m not God. When I said, “trust yourself,” some of you may have thought, yeah that’s true; I need to trust myself. But others of you thought that’s the stupidest things I ever heard. I got into most of the junk in my life because I trusted myself. And myself is the wrong person to trust. You are right, of course. Our fundamental problem is that we can’t be trusted, as we are. But the hope of the Gospel is that we can be changed. We can be changed into persons that are trustworthy.

We begin this process of change by keeping commitments to ourselves and to God. We must shape our souls and persons with the practices and disciplines that will produce not just superficial or even felt change, but real change.

Homer Simpson, that thoroughly contemporary man, has faced this problem countless times in his life. He wants a better life but realizes that he is the biggest obstacle in the way. In one episode of the Simpsons, Homer is having chest pains and Dr. Hibbert tells him that there is a serious concern. “Mr. Simpson you need to lose weight, start eating right, and start exercising.” Homer’s response to this is classic:

“Yeah, but whaddya gonna do?”

Nobody, I mean nobody changes into the person they can be without practices and disciplines. This is especially true of the so-called “spiritual life.” In Acts 10 we read about a Roman soldier named Cornelius. We are told that Cornelius is,

“a devout man who fears God, as does his whole family.” Acts 10.2

Cornelius is a Gentile, a non-Jew. And yet he is exemplary in his religious devotion, a devotion to rival that of many Jews. We are told that he is a soldier, but not just any soldier. He is a member of an elite unit called the Italian Cohort. So he was accomplished. He was disciplined in his life. And this discipline was also evident in his religious devotion. By “devout”, the scripture doesn’t only mean that he “went to church” or that he felt spiritual but that he “gave alms (charitable giving) generously to the people and he prayed constantly to God.”

One day, Cornelius is praying. It’s about three in the afternoon. And he has this vision of an angel from God who speaks to him. Cornelius is probably almost as surprised as you or I would be.

“What is it, Lord?”

The angel answers – your prayers and your giving has not gone unnoticed before God.

This is an excellent word – when we enter into the way of seeking God intentionally through prayer and other spiritual practices, God notices. God does things. Do we believe this?

When we pray and read scripture and give and serve, well, what happens? God changes us and invites us into the work he is doing. In Cornelius case, he becomes the one who helps change Peter’s mind about the mission of the Gospel. It’s the most extensive story in the book of Acts. Without Cornelius, Peter never takes the Gospel beyond the Jews. Maybe there is no missionary Church. Maybe you and I aren’t sitting here today. All because one man decided it was important to pray and to give, day after day, year after year.

There is a scene in the film, Behind Enemy Lines, in which a navy pilot by the name of Burnett turns in a request for transfer to his superior officer. The Admiral, played by Gene Hackman, calls him into his office and asks him why. Burnett responds that he thinks all the endless drills and schedules and preparations are boring and meaningless. He signed up to go fight somebody. But nothing is happening. He wants out.

The Admiral responds that the drills and discipline that he calls boring is the very thing that prepares him and makes him ready when the real fight comes.

Not much good happens without practice and discipline. We know this is true in the military. We know this is true in sports, in music, in academics. But for some reason we don’t give it much due when it comes to religion and spirituality. We want everything to be mystery and forgiveness and feel good story. Religion, at least the Christian religion, contains those things, but is essentially more than those things. C.S. Lewis uses the example of nature. Most spiritual people get a mystical feeling from nature. But Lewis writes:

We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us
Fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all
The leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it
Will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When
Human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the
Inaminate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory
, or rather the great glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

Lewis says that we are on the outside looking in when it comes to how things ought to be. We can be inspired by nature or music or books; but it is the practicing of the presence of God, the living of a devout life, that helps us enter into the life of the Holy Spirit. What did John the Baptist say? Hey, I’m baptizing you with water but He, He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Following Jesus by engaging in regular spiritual practices immerses us in the life of the Spirit. We get in tune with what God is doing around us and in us. Don’t you think God is rooting for us to live this way? Don’t you think his Holy Spirit power is at the ready, waiting for us to pray, just like Cornelius did?

We maybe have wasted a lot time and opportunity in our lives. Maybe we should be a lot further along in this spiritual journey than we are. But we can’t go back and get that. We start where we are. We start by doing. Maybe we don’t feel it. Maybe we only half believe it. But if we start doing it, we may just find a person that we can trust.

Will you begin to arrange your life around the activities that Jesus did? Will you begin to do the things that every spiritually mature Christian has always done? Will you immerse yourself in the Jesus Way? Will you put in the effort it takes to become trustworthy again?

2010-02-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Rebuilding Trust: Something’s Broken

Gallup just came out with their poll for 2009 of most trusted professions. Nurses top the list again, followed by pharmacists, high school teachers, medical doctors, policemen, clergy, and . . .who cares after that. I just wanted to say clergy. That was pretty much the top tier. The middle tier includes journalists, contractors, and real estate agents. The bottom tier has the usual suspects – lawyers, congressmen, used car salesmen, and below that, telemarketers and lobbyists.

Keep in mind, this poll is the results of a phone survey asking for people’s opinions and perceptions. This doesn’t mean that car salesmen or telemarketers are untrustworthy. And it doesn’t mean that all nurses or pharmacists are highly ethical. But the poll does say a lot about our perceived level of trust in different professions. Do you know which profession took the biggest hit in trust from last year to this year? Bankers. The events of the last year or two continue to have ramifications.

Who do you trust? I asked this question on Christmas Eve because it’s an important one. Trust begins and ends with God. The question is not just, “Do we believe in God?” but, “Do we trust in God?” Trust is stronger than belief. Because our understanding of belief is often no more than “give mental assent to.” Our idea of belief is watered down from what the Bible says believing is. It’s probably more helpful to us if we talk about trust. Trust is really what the Lord is asking of us.

But as we also mentioned, trust gets broken in this broken-down world. You don’t have to look to a national villain like Bernie Madoff or Eliot Spitzer – we can find broken trust in our own lives. What do we do when someone breaks trust?

Last week we mentioned how Jacob, son of Isaac, went to his kinsman Laban’s country and there saw Laban’s daughter Rachel and instantly fell in love. Rachel was the most beautiful woman Jacob had ever seen. Jacob told himself that he was going to marry this girl. And indeed he did. But it didn’t happen the way he planned. Laban manipulated young Jacob, mostly because he could. Jacob was so full of raging desire that he would do anything. We have a saying for someone who has fallen in love: “he worships the ground she walks on.” How destructive this can be when it is literally true. Jacob was looking to Rachel to be his Savior. So Laban tricked him into working seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, and then Laban tricked him into marrying Rachel’s older sister, Leah, first.

Don’t pity Jacob too much. Remember who he was and what he had done. Jacob had himself tricked his brother and father out of the family inheritance. Jacob had lied and tricked his way to get advantage. Sometimes we read the Bible very simplistically. We look for the Bible heroes and we declare them utterly good or utterly bad. But our Bible heroes do some bad things sometimes, like lie, cheat, steal, kill, commit adultery. We shouldn’t consider that these things are now good because Bible people did them. We should understand the Bible tells the story because it happened. And then the Bible shows us how God will redeem and bless, not the sin, but the sinners. Jacob and his family had some problems that would continue to fester in the next generation.

The best thing that could have happened to young Jacob was for his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, to say Stop – you lied and cheated. We don’t do things that way. We are a family. Let’s try this again. But they didn’t say that because Rebekah had been complicit in the trickery.

Are there lies and wrong behavior that we tolerate in our own families? The effect of lies swept under the rug is to chip away at the foundation of trust that families and relationships absolutely need. Weakened trust in relationships is like a weakened immune system in the body – we become more susceptible to all kinds of sickness.

Frederick Buechner is known as a great writer who happens to be a Christian. Buechner’s faith comes through his writing, especially when he talks about his own life. And it is also clear that his faith has been hard won. Buechner’s father was an alcoholic who committed suicide. Immediately after his father’s death, his mother whisked him out of state to start somewhere else. They didn’t even stay for the funeral. What’s more, Buechner’s mother didn’t talk about his father and wouldn’t allow him to do so either. Buechner soon realized that his father was not the only one in the family who had problems. He looks back on what he couldn’t have understood as a child, that covering up problems only makes them worse.

“We not only have secrets,” Buechner writes, “we are our secrets.”

Every family and relationship has problems and areas to work on. And it would be a big mistake to think that you can fix people like you can fix a car. That is the way of legalism. And it is deadly.

I get tired realizing that the “work” of spiritual growth in myself and in my family never ends. The need to grow doesn’t end with the year. It doesn’t take a holiday. We must be persistent especially with the poor attitudes and behaviors that seem rooted in us.

One mother decreed to her family that she was no longer writing thank you notes on their behalf. They could write their own. The immediate impact of this was that grandmother didn’t receive thank you notes for the generous checks she had written to her grandchildren. The next year, things were different

“The children came over in person to thank me,” grandma enthusiastically told a friend. “How wonderful!” the friend replied. “What brought on that change?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” grandma responded. “This year I didn’t sign their checks.”

Naming the problem and refusing to enable the problem can have remarkable results. But our problems are rarely solved this easily.

Look at what Jacob did to his new family. He has two wives but not enough wisdom and love for even one. Leah, especially, suffered for this. She was used to being ignored by people as they fawned over her beautiful sister Rachel. But that couldn’t have lessened the sting as her father bartered to get her thrown in the deal of Jacob and Rachel’s marriage. Leah was the girl nobody wanted.

“Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.” Genesis 29.30

Leah had a hole in her heart as big as the one Jacob had. And just as Jacob idolized the beautiful Rachel, and pinned all his hopes on her, Leah began to do the same with Jacob. She made her life trying to get her husband to love her. Listen to what is surely one of the most plaintive passages in the Bible.

“When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son, and she named him Reuben; for she said, “Because the Lord has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.”

Leah kept on bearing children, having sons, each time thinking that this time, Jacob will love me instead of Rachel. But Jacob never does. Leah experiences a lesson we all must learn in life, and that is that this life is bound to disappoint. Leah was made with a heart to love and be loved, but life broke trust with Leah. It happened with her father. And it happened with her husband. The men in her life kept letting her down. Few could blame her if she ended up bitter and angry at her lot.

But Leah chose a different way. She learned something. She is the only person in this story to show spiritual growth. When she had her fourth son her attitude was different.

She said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” No more praise for Jacob. No more pleading and longing for his love. This time Leah will look to the God of her hope who is personal and gracious. She gave her heart finally to the Lord. And in so doing she got her life back. God not only changed Leah but did something very significant for her. She may have had an intuition that God had done something special with the gift of this child. The writer of Genesis knew it. This child was Judah and in Genesis 49 we are told that through Judah the true King and Messiah will someday come. God had come to the girl nobody wanted, the unloved, and made her the ancestral mother of Jesus.

As Timothy Keller writes, “Salvation came into the world, not through beautiful Rachel, but through the unwanted one, the unloved one.” God loved Leah. He is saying I am the real bridegroom. I am the husband of the husbandless. I am the father of the fatherless.

When trust has been broken, can it be rebuilt again? God says yes.
When we realize that something is broken in us then we are ready to take the first steps with him.

2010-02-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Trust

Here is a picture of a hopeful, innocent child. He’s a good-looking guy, isn’t he? I look at this picture and think of all the potential that was there. What could he have been? How could he have used his time when the years were stretching out before him, inviting him like a new found friend?

I probably will never know what could have been. But instead of regret, I give gratitude for what is. Who can wash away my sin? Who can make me whole again? That boy is gone and all that remains is a man in middle age. What happened to me and I think what happens to all of us to some degree is that we experience love and loss, trust and distrust. We succeed and we fail. We let people down. People let us down.

Growing up on Newberry Street we didn’t have a lot and it seemed like the things we asked for as kids were mostly out of reach. Our requests were most often met with this answer by my mother, “Well, we’ll see.” Can we ask the neighbor to let us swim in their pool? We’ll see. Can we get pizza tonight? We’ll see. It used to exasperate my siblings and me. Sometimes we got what we wanted. Many times we didn’t. The unintended lesson that we were taught about life was Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.

Ray Romano tells the story of how he started out doing stand-up comedy. He was in his late twenties, living in his parent’s basement in Jersey when he went to a comedy club in the city that was having amateur night. Romano tried it and he was a hit. So he went to another club and did it again. But this time he bombed. He said it was one-thirty in the morning and the last two people in his audience got up and walked out on him. He felt humiliated. So he went home and woke his mom and dad and asked them, “How could you guys walk out on me like that?”

Life humbles you. People disappoint. And somewhere in there we start to lose trust.

There is something about Christmas that reveals this broken trust. I just heard somewhere that divorce lawyers experience their busiest time right after Christmas. Maybe Christmas builds our hopes up too much – maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Maybe we shouldn’t trust.

But something bad happens to us when we lose the ability to trust. We find cheap substitutes. When we stop trusting God and hoping in life, we begin to make idols instead. The Bible teaches us that the human heart is an idol factory. We can make idols out of money, people, sex, power, anything. Timothy Keller writes, “Anything can be an idol and everything has been.” What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.

Abraham was a man called by God who left home and family to go to another country. According to the Bible, God came to Abraham and made him a huge promise, if you follow me faithfully I will bless all the nations of the earth through you and your descendants. This suited Abraham just fine. Like any patriarch of his day he wanted a son and heir to carry on the family name. But as the years stretched into decades, Abraham and his wife Sarah experienced the pain that any couple struggling with infertility can attest to. God’s spectacular promise became difficult to believe. Finally, after Abraham was over 100 years old and Sarah was over 90, she gave birth to a son, Isaac. It was pretty miraculous. And so, his name meant laughter, referring to their difficulty in believing the promise and their joy in seeing the promise fulfilled. It’s safe to say, both Abraham and Sarah loved Isaac, but especially Abraham. Abraham’s years of waiting had been rewarded. His patience had refined him in crucial ways.

But there was this question – had Abraham been waiting and sacrificing for God or for the boy? Was God just a means to an end? Had he learned to trust God alone, and love God for himself, not just for what he could get out of God? No, not yet.

Many couples think that having a child will bring unremitting happiness, love to a rocky marriage, the answer to all their problems. Abraham must have thought, I will be happy for the rest of my life. But God was about to call on Abraham again, and it could not have been more shocking.

“Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
Genesis 22.2

God could not have asked for anything more precious to Abraham. Isaac was everything to him. His happiness and meaning in life were bound up in his son. Was God saying to Abraham you can’t love your son? No, not at all. But you must not make an idol of your son. Any parent who does that hurts themselves and smothers their child. Many people have objected to this story over the years, saying it is irrational, it makes no sense. But in a certain sense, it does. In an individualistic culture like ours, a person’s sense of worth is often bound up in skills and achievements. But in ancient times, all the hopes and dreams of a family rested in the firstborn son. The call to give up a firstborn son is like a surgeon giving up the use of his hands or an artist losing their sight. That’s why God’s judgment on Egypt in the time of Israel’s captivity would be so severe. The firstborn’s lives were forfeit because of the sins of the families and nations. Why? The firstborn was the family.

So when Abraham heard God this time, he was shocked, knocked over. But he was not uncomprehending. God was not asking him to go over to Isaac’s tent and murder him. God was saying make a burnt offering of him. God was calling in Abraham’s sin debt. His son was going to die for the sins of the family. Abraham comprehended but that did not make the command less horrible. Abraham must have been thinking, God promised to bless all nations through my descendants. But if I do this thing, how will this be? How can God be both holy and just and still graciously fulfill his promise to me. Abraham didn’t know. But he went. He was like another Old Testament figure, Job, who was tested in countless ways with no explanation. Job says this about the Lord,
“He knows what he is doing with me, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold.” Job 23.10

Abraham went up that mountain with his son. It wasn’t with willpower. It wasn’t with crazy, blind faith. He didn’t say I can do it. He said rather, God will do it, though I don’t know how. He said to himself, “I know God is both holy and gracious. I don’t know how he is going to be both – but I know he will.”

“When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” Genesis 22.9-10

And the voice of God called out in that moment - Abraham! Abraham! Stop. Do not touch the boy. Now I know you fear God.

What is this all about? It is a test, not of fear, but of love. That’s really what “fear of God” in the Bible means. To fear God is to be whole-heartedly committed to Him. Abraham proved more to himself maybe than needed to be proved to God, that he truly loved God above all. Walking up that mountain with Isaac was the last agonizing stage in a journey that God had used to turn Abraham from an average man to a great man, a man from whom over half of the human race would claim as their spiritual father.

Is coming to church a pure expression of our love and trust in God? Or is God a means to some other end for us? These are murky waters.

To say you ought to love God too is not the freshest message you ever heard. You know this. The problem is many people cannot find any feeling of love for God in them selves. And they don’t know what to do. As C.S. Lewis writes:

“The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do? When you have found the answer, go and do it. . .He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.” Lewis, Mere Christianity

But what happened to Abraham’s sin and the sin of the family? A substitute for Isaac was provided in the form of a ram. But did the ram’s blood wash away Abraham’s sin. No. Many years later, in those same mountains, another firstborn son was stretched out on wood to die. But there on Mount Calvary, when the beloved son of God cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” there was no voice from heaven announcing deliverance. God paid the price for everyone’s sin by giving up his own son.

Before that son died, he was born to a young virgin who was not expecting to have a child so soon. And when she was told the manner in which she would conceive, surely, this was even harder to believe for her than the promise made to Abraham and Sarah. But that young virgin believed and treasured those things in her heart. And then she obeyed. She trusted. She said, I don’t know how God is going to do this, but I know he will.

I don’t know how you have been disappointed in life. I don’t know when you lost trust. But I know that we must begin and end by trusting God. Maybe you need to take your own walk up into the mountains. Maybe you need to identify your “Isaacs.” Maybe you need to say to God, “I see that you may be calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without. But if I have you, I have the only wealth, health, love, honor, and security I really need and cannot lose.”

You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. My Christmas wish for all of you is Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less.

2009-12-11T06:40:00.001-08:00

We Lead for God’s Change in Our Community

Cats do what they want. So do people. Have you ever tried to lead people? People are challenging. People are difficult to lead. They make you wish for a herd of cats. For example, if I asked you to do something out of the ordinary right now, like stand up, many of you would stand up. Because many of you are very cooperative and willing. You’re team players. I appreciate you. I appreciate you all the more because much of the time I’m not like you. I resist instructions from others. I’m a “why” person. I always have to know why I am being asked to do something. It has to make perfect sense to me. If it doesn’t immediately seem compelling, I resist and get cranky. I mention this because some of you here I like me. If I tell you to stand up, your initial impulse is to resist. You don’t want anyone telling you what to do. You may do it, but you’ll show your protest by being slow about it. By your slowness in getting up, you will show what an independent thinker you are. I understand. That’s me, too. I understand it. Though that doesn’t make it necessarily much easier to lead people.

Sometimes I feel like Kevin Bacon in Animal House, shouting “All is well!” while people run over me. Have you ever felt like that?

People are difficult to lead in a single direction with a common purpose.. Any leader has to learn lessons of leadership to accomplish that awesome task. Moses had to learn his lessons. Moses, of course, is recognized in the Jewish faith as the greatest leader and prophet ever in their history. But Moses wasn’t born a great leader. He learned some leadership along the way.

In our Exodus reading we find Moses surrounded by people who have come to him with their problems. He is their judge and arbiter over all their problems. You are fighting with your uncle? Go see Moses. Your neighbor has encroached on your tent? Go see Moses. You don’t have enough food? Go see Moses. Moses was the leader and the only leader for easily, thousands of people. There may have been a half million Israelites at this time. Moses is trying to lead this many people by himself. And Moses is exhausted. How do I know this? You can tell by reading the story. Earlier in the story (chapter 17) the people are grumbling about lack of water. Guess who they come to? Moses answers them, “Why do you come to me? How about complaining to the Lord?”
Moses was so frustrated he named the place, “Testing and Quarreling.” (17.7)

I think I’ve been on vacation at that place.

But Moses keeps on leading the people, doing things the same way and hoping for a different result – which one wag has said is the definition of insanity. Moses is probably feeling a little bit crazy when his father-in-law, Jethro, pulls him aside:

“Moses, what’s going on here? Why are you doing all this, and all by yourself, letting everybody line up before you from morning to night?”

Moses answers, “The people have problems. I try fix them. I’m doing it for God.”

Jethro responds, “You are going about it the wrong way. What you are doing is not good. You can’t do it alone. You need to get some help.” (18.13-18)

Moses couldn’t do it all himself. He needed other leaders to manage and organize and supervise and do the tasks that needed to be done both large and small. Listen to what else Jethro said to Moses:

“You need to keep a sharp eye out for competent men – men who fear God, men of integrity, men who are incorruptible – and appoint them as leaders over groups organized by the thousand, by the hundred, by fifty, and by ten. . .If you handle the work this way, you’ll have the strength to carry out whatever God commands you, and the people in their settings will flourish also.” 18.21-23 Eugene Peterson’s The Message

Perhaps the greatest task of a leader -besides casting vision - is identifying and raising up other leaders. This is true in business. And it is especially true in an organic, volunteer organization like the church. A few weeks ago I met with my confirmation class. There were fourteen students. I knew that I couldn’t lead fourteen students on my own. I needed help. So I recruited an adult for every student in the group to serve as mentors to these students. These adults are helping me teach the curriculum, develop relationship with the students, and most importantly model the Christian life. They are doing what would have been impossible for me to do alone.

How do I choose them? I looked for spiritual growth. I looked for evidence of living the life. I look for men and women who fear God and have integrity. There are many others who I could have chosen as well.

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great for the Social Sectors says that getting “the right people on the bus” is always the precursor to fulfilling a great vision. Vision proceeds from people who care about the cause and are ready to do what it takes to pursue excellence.

Raising up other leaders is a leadership lesson that I am learning. It doesn’t come naturally to me. For one thing, I’ve never like asking people to do anything. I never liked the phone. Dating, or at least starting to date, was always torture, because well, you have to first ask. As a pastor, I have always been afraid of asking too much of my church folks. I always made excuses and reasons to for people to say no before they have said no to me. But I have come around to the conclusion that when I ask people to step up and serve, step up and lead, I am not giving them a burden, I am giving them an opportunity. When I see potential in someone and I invite them to develop that potential, well, I’m doing what God wants me to do so they can do what God wants them to do. I am giving them the gift of leadership. The yeses and nos can be sorted out between them and God.

The church needs leaders. Because in a very real sense, becoming a leader is another way of saying becoming a disciple. Disciples are never bystanders. A disciple is always going and doing what the Master is doing. Disciples very soon become leaders through which the Kingdom’s power is mightily displayed. Disciples teach. Disciples counsel. Disciples pray. Disciples witness. Disciples organize. Disciples give. Disciples serve. These are the tasks of a good leader. We can’t have too much of that.

New leadership results in new energy and rekindled passion. Moses was “wearing the people out” with the way he leading. Raising up new leaders is a gift and sign of what God is doing among all of us.

You have heard it said, “Too many chiefs, not enough Indians.” Good leadership finds a way of involving more people and getting more accomplished, not less. Good leaders understand they are serving something bigger than themselves. Good leaders know, “This isn’t about me.” The church needs leaders who are humble, unselfish, and fiercely passionate about the mission of making disciples and creating community.

And our community needs great leaders. As I interact with our community I know good leadership when I see it and I know it when it is lacking. I see the effects of poor leadership, the costs in dollars and cents, and the cost in people and relationships. Those costs are hard to measure but that doesn’t make them less costly and dearly missed. We have in our midst some real leaders in our community.

“Leadership is influence,” its been said. And by that standard we have people who are positively influencing our community for God’s purposes and God’s change. Some ways are obvious, some are more subtle. But this is the witness of the church. If these leaders and this church were not here, what great a loss it would be to our community!

2009-10-27T08:33:00.002-07:00

Can I Get a Light?

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” What kind of light is he? There are warm lights. Think of the morning sunrise and how it gently bathes the landscape. Think of the setting sun and how it reluctantly releases the day into night. One of my favorite lights is a soft reading light from and old-fashioned lampstand like my grandparents had in their house. Keep your fluorescent bulbs to yourself. I’ll take that warm, incandescent glow any evening. The only thing better is candlelight – a single candle flickering in the darkness. And the only thing better than a single candle is the candles of sixty campers at a vespers service the last night of camp; or the sanctuary filled with worshippers on Christmas Eve, every face lit by candlelight.

I would like, now, to illustrate a different kind of light. Can I have two volunteers?

Harsh light. Harsh light is light that is unflattering. It’s not like the glow of a lampstand or candlelight which enhances everything. Harsh light makes things look hard and out of place. Harsh light accuses. It brings a glare but offers no warmth. There is a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry is dating a girl who, in good lighting, is a pleasantly attractive woman. But to Jerry’s surprise, when she is caught in bad lighting, her features turn harsh and unattractive, almost to the point where he doesn’t recognize her. It’s a different woman. Harsh light has a way of doing that.

There is quite a bit of difference between warm light and harsh light. What kind of light is Jesus?

I think many people fear God’s light. Like cockroaches fleeing the room when the light is turned on, we flee the light of God’s truth, afraid of what the light might show about us. Like the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, we are afraid that, “we can’t handle the truth!”

In John 8 we read that the scribes and Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman who has been caught in adultery. You need to know that in Judaism at that time adultery meant sexual relations outside marriage on the part of a married woman. Her husband could cheat on her, but it was only considered adultery if his affair was with another married woman. Another thing to keep in mind was that adultery was an offense very difficult to prove, especially by the standards of Jewish law, which required two witnesses to everything. You had to be “caught in the act” by not one, but two people. It had to be indisputable.

So they bring a woman who has supposedly been caught in the act by two witnesses. This raises an immediate question. Where is the man? It takes two to commit adultery. The woman can’t do it all by herself. Unless, this was a trap for the woman. Unless previous arrangements had been made to allow the man to slip out undetected and unpunished. Here was the woman, a known sinner, and the religious folk wanted to see her punished. The law said to stone her to death. Well, the law didn’t mention stoning in particular. That was a later addition. What the current law of the land, the Roman Law, said was that the Jews needed the Romans permission to execute anyone.

So the scribes and Pharisees go to Jesus and ask him, “What do you say we should do?” If Jesus says go ahead and stone her, he has not only come across as uncaring but also as teaching rebellion against Roman rule. If he says let her go, he is soft on sin and condoning of adultery. Not only has the trap been set for this poor woman, but the trap has been set for Jesus.

This is truth in a harsh light. This is the Pharisees brand of truth which tricks and hurts people. Their truth tells people how bad they are but never gives them a way to be better. It diagnoses disease but offers no medicine. Unfortunately we have our modern day Pharisees. We have people who use the Bible and God to beat others with “truth”. But Jesus never uses truth that way. The closest he comes is in preaching against the very hypocrisy of the religious leaders.

With Jesus, truth doesn’t harm us. Truth heals us. It’s true that the light of truth will reveal sin in us.

“You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.”
Psalm 90.8

The sinner’s biggest fear is that they will be found out. David was worried that someone would find out about Bathsheba. That was his biggest worry and he did everything he could to cover up his sin. Adam and Eve were worried that God would find out about their disobedience. They covered themselves. They hid. What David and Adam and Eve didn’t know was that the worst thing that could happen to them was if no one found out. While in their sin they are comfortably on the path of destruction. They are hidden from the light of truth. They are not found out. Which is another of way of saying, they are lost.

Having our secret sins revealed can be an uncomfortable, disconcerting experience for us. But it is not hurtful to us. It is the first step in healing.

David Seamands, who was a professor of mine in seminary, and wrote some fine books on Christian counseling, told us about a young woman he had counseled once. The woman had come to him because she couldn’t change her life and didn’t see anyway out. She lived a promiscuous life and was weary of it but didn’t know what to do. She felt like she was a slave to lust and need for physical love. Seamands counseled the woman that her behavior was sinful and damaging to her, but indeed, it was possible for her to change. He counseled that God could give her power over these sinful impulses. The woman’s response to this was telling.

She said, “You mean, I don’t have to do what I feel like doing?” The relief in her voice was evident. The burden was lifted by the truth of God. The darkness of her life had been lifted by the light of Christ.

Scholars tell us that when Jesus made this great statement, “I am the light of the world,” it was in the aftermath of the great Jewish festival in Jerusalem called the Feast of Tabernacles. Another name for it was the Festival of Lights. The highlight of this feast was the lighting of the great candelabra. There were four of them and they were filled with oil by young men who to do this climbed ladders that, according to the Talmud, were fifty cubits high. This light from the lamps was so brilliant that, the Mishnah says, “there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect the light.” Such brilliant illumination was a great occasion and seen but rarely in the ancient city. Have you ever been to Pittsburgh on Light Up Night? It was light up night in first century Jerusalem.

When the feast was over, of course, the great candelabra was extinguished. All the lesser lights were extinguished. Jerusalem went dark. And it was in this post-festival darkness that Jesus spoke:

“I am the light of the world.” It’s dark outside in the world, and Jesus is the candle.

We need to stop being afraid of truth and light. We need to stop believing stuff like, “You can’t handle the truth!” Lots of people live like that every day, all their lives, hiding from truth and light because they are afraid that the truth will be too hard, too ugly, too depressing. They want to keep the truth about themselves hidden in the dark.

But Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8.31-32

The truth and light of Jesus showed a woman in adultery and the crowd of accusers that there is a better way to live. There is forgiveness and there is healing. Go and sin no more. Surely this woman was ready for truth. It was the darkness, not the truth, that she couldn’t handle anymore.

Who are you going to believe, Jack Nicholson or Jesus?

“O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.” Psalm 43.3

“For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” Psalm 36.9

2009-10-27T08:33:00.001-07:00

Holiness of Heart And Life

Jesus has just told Peter “You are going to die a painful for the sake of the Gospel. Glory to God.” In fact, Peter would crucified. Tradition has it that Peter requested he be crucified upside down. He didn’t deem himself worthy to die in the exact same manner and position as his crucified Lord.

Peter gets this news and then looks at John and asks Jesus, “What about him?”
Jesus certainly implies no such death for John. In fact, Jesus says if I don’t want John to die at all, that’s my prerogative. Don’t you worry about him. You follow me.

Our first responsibility as disciples is always to follow Jesus ourselves. How and what others do to follow is ultimately not our concern. We can’t control other people’s decisions. We can only be witnesses to Christ and pray the Holy Spirit leads others as well as our selves. If we want to save the world, we must first convert ourselves.

What does a convert look like? Do you dress a certain way? Do you speak a certain kind of churchy language?

Ned Flanders is one the characters on The Simpsons. Ned is the one fully-devoted Christian among the cast characters and Ned is known for using lots of heydiddlydoodly goofy talk. He’s also known for using a lot of religious language often in ways that are incomprehensible to others. He’s the one that sent his kids, Rod and Tod, off to summer church camp “to learn how to be more judgmental.”

Homer Simpson is not anyone’s idea of a good Christian. Ned is lecturing Homer one day when Homer answers, “Cram it, churchy!”

Does a person have to become weird like Ned Flanders in order to be a good Christian?

Let’s look again at Peter, a real disciple. We mentioned a couple things last week about Peter:

He didn’t have his life altogether when he started to follow Jesus
Peter began to change as he lived with Jesus.
This change didn’t happen overnight but over the course of years.

Peter became the leader of the Church. He grew into his name, Rock. He writes to the church in his letters about new birth and a godly life:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to in inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.. .” 1 Peter 1.3-4

Peter taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ – you must be born again. You can’t drift into a relationship with God. You can’t just be religious. You must become new.

Listen to what he says later in that same chapter:

“as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct” 1 Peter 1.14-15

The word passion is used frequently these days. We want passion. We want passion in our work. We want passion in our marriages. We want passion in our leisure time. We even want passion in our down time. We want passion. We need passion.

But passion can be misdirected. Thus Peter says, “Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.” Before you met Jesus and began to follow, Peter says, you were passionate about all kinds of things that were not worthy of your passion.

What passions might not be worthy of us? Anything that leads us to sins of commission. Anything that leads us into sin and error. I read recently that the porn industry brings in between 10 and 20 million dollars in the United States alone every year, and $60 billion worldwide. It is everywhere. We see things all the time that would have turned our grandparents faces away in disgust and shame. Billboards and commercials use skin to sell everything. I find myself crying out, “Hey, my sons are here! Who’s responsible for this?” It seems today you need a naked woman to sell toothpaste and dish washing liquid.

Those people who do this should be made accountable. Who are those people? Those people are us. We allow this stuff in our homes and communities. One survey suggests that 90 percent of 8-16 year olds have viewed pornography online. Ninety percent.

So much for the holy mystery of the human body and God’s sacred gift. By sins of commission we pay the price “of our ignorance.” We lose innocence that cannot be regained. We damage purity and character that take so much healing and training to restore. We waste time in sin that could be enjoyed in holy living, joyful, fulfilled living.
Sin is such a waste of time and people.

The lie is that holiness is dull and difficult. Holiness may not be easy, but it is not impossible and it is surely not dull. Peter reminds believers that God’s power and resources are ready and available to everyone who seriously takes up the call to a holy heart and life.
“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” 2 Peter 1.3

How do we access this power? “Through the knowledge of him who called us to his glory and excellence.” 2 Peter 1.3b

Peter reminds us that true disciples gain access to resources and power for a changed life. If we truly want “the good life” then we must devote ourselves to the practices, attitudes, and passions that will produce holy living in our lives.

The disciple who knows Jesus will become like Jesus in purity and character.

I remember a few years ago for Duncansville Community days we provided cards with questions on them for people to answer at our display table. These questions were an attempt to get to know our community a little better. Two of the questions we asked were, “What needs do you see in our community?” and “What would you like to see happen?”

Several people responded with “Community swimming pool”, “free cable tv” “greater emphasis on Pastor Appreciation Month” Well, actually I was the only person to put that last one. I suspect many people didn’t know what to put. But I wonder if you found a way to get deep down in the heart’s desires of people in our community and asked, “What do you really need?” The answers you would get would be things like:

“I want my husband to stop cheating.”

“I want my daughter to know she is loved – she doesn’t have to go looking for it.”

“I want to have real peace in my life.”

“I want to know that what I do matters.”

Don’t you agree those are better desires than a swimming pool or cable tv?

If you could give people these things – faithfulness, love, peace, hope and meaning – wouldn’t you give it to them?

These are the very things that holiness of heart and life produce. A disciple of Jesus learns to live life in holiness and experiences the blessings that go with it.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be yours as well.” Matthew 6.33

2009-09-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Peter the Disciple

Since we are all about “Making Disciples and Creating Community” I thought we might look more closely at a disciple, the genuine article. In any list of the disciples in the Gospels, this man’s name comes first – he is, of course, Peter.

We pick up Peter’s story, not at the beginning, but much later, as he is leading the church and the mission of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Peter’s path crosses the path of a Roman soldier named Cornelius. He is described as,

“a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave generously to others and prayed constantly to God.” Acts 10.2

God arranges for Peter to be summoned to this man’s house so they could meet. It was not a chance meeting. God wanted Peter to meet this man. God had plans for the both of them.

To understand what those plans were you need to know that were some disagreements and controversies swirling around the church in those days. What?!! I know. Apparently even the New Testament Church sometimes had disagreements. This one was a pretty big one. It revolved around the question of whether a non-Jewish convert to Christianity had to practice their faith according to Jewish law and customs. Mind you, most of the church thus far was made up of ethnic Jews, the people of the circumcision, the Torah, and kosher dietary laws. But there were also non-ethnic Jews converting to the Jesus Way and the Apostle Paul was telling them they didn’t have to be circumcised and follow Moses. In fact, Paul was telling them they shouldn’t do these things, that they were free of the law in Christ.

But the Jewish Christians, not to mention all other Jews, believed there was only one right way to follow God, and that was through the law of Moses and the prophets. Why did they believe the Law of Moses to be so important?

Because God told them it was important! God told them the choice between obeying or not obeying the Law was the choice between life and death (see Joshua and Deuteronomy). Paul knew all this but believed that God was speaking a new word on behalf of not just the Jews but for all peoples.

Have you ever been stuck in a rut in your knowledge and opinions? It’s amazing how we become conditioned to see only what we expect to see.

On a cold January morning in 2007, a young man named Joshua Bell took his violin and went to a Washington DC Metro Station to play. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately two thousand people went through that station, most of them on their way to work. The musician played and only six people stopped to listen. A few people dropped dollars into his case totaling $32. He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. No one knew that Joshua Bell is one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where seats averaged $100. This is a true story and it was part of a social experiment on perception. Do we only see and hear what we expect to? How many things are we missing?

The leaders of church in Jerusalem wanted to put a muzzle on Paul. Paul was not doing what they expected to be done. Peter was sympathetic to his spiritual brother, but he felt caught in the middle and he wavered and vacillated. But God was already working on that.

“Peter went up on the housetop to pray at about the sixth hour, and he became hungry and desired something to eat. While he waiting for the food to be prepared, he into a trance. . .”
Peter was observing one of the daily prayer times for a devout Jew, the sixth hour. He was very hungry and soon fell into a trance. I know what a hunger-induced trance is like. I get them. I start thinking Arby’s. Or I look at my wife with a wild look in my eyes – she knows that it’s not romance on my mind – it’s a juicy sirloin, it’s a big plate of pasta I lust for.

I don’t know that it was hunger that caused Peter’s vision. I think Peter the disciple knew that intentional prayer, times of solitude, meditation, and fasting could bring understanding and a word from God. Peter had been trained in these things by a pretty good teacher, in fact,, the best.

So Peter was able to hear what God wanted him to hear and see what God wanted him to see. This is what Peter saw:

A vision of something like a great sheet falling from heaven and the sheet was filled with all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds. All kinds, not just Jewish, kosher kinds. All kinds. And then Peter heard God say:

“Come on and eat, Peter.” Come on over to the all-you-can-eat ham and bacon buffet. Now to you and me, that sounds pretty good and pretty right. To me everything tastes better with bacon. In fact, just the other day I suggested bacon-flavored ice cream. You heard it here first.

But this word to Peter, a devout Jew, was shocking. It went against everything he had been taught to believe. In fact, Peter’s first words were, “No, Lord.” Peter thought God had slipped up, maybe had a moment of weakness Himself. God would come to his senses. Peter would hold the fort until God came to himself.

But God said, “What I have cleansed, you must not call unclean.” Acts 10.15

So why did God tell Peter this? Why was it wrong for Moses and the Israelites to eat the very animals that God was now telling Peter to dig into?

Jaroslav Pelikan calls this, “the divine nullification and repeal of the Mosaic Law.” That’s a fancy way of saying God changed His mind. Or if you prefer, God decided to do a new thing, reveal a new part of his plan of Salvation for all peoples.

When my boys were innocent toddlers, they spent whole days going around touching things and holding things and licking things and generally getting to know the world outside themselves. It’s how we learn. But with this wonderful curiosity, I had to caution them to be careful about certain things. Don’t touch that flame, it’s hot, it’s hot. Be careful of that bee “it will sting. It will bite you.” Stay away from the lawnmower. It’s dangerous. It can cut you.

That was good teaching for them then. But now, it’s not the teaching they need. Now I’m trying to teach them – boy, this is the lawnmower. This is how it works. It’s not just for dads. You too, can learn to use the lawnmower. To which they try to respond, “But dad, you told us to stay away from the lawnmower. Dad you said. . .”

God teaches new things so that we can believe and learn and grow.

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43.18-19

Peter perceived that God was doing a new thing. It wasn’t just opening up the earthly buffet. Peter understood the implications of this for the Great Commission.

“Go and make disciples of all peoples teaching them the commandments” of God revealed in Jesus. Matthew 28.19-20

Peter said , “Truly I now see (perceive) that God shows no partiality but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Acts 10.34

Truly I now see. Disciples learn to see what God is doing now. Disciples learn to listen to the music, not just in the concert hall but in the metro station. A disciple can do this because a disciple is always following the Teacher. A disciple doesn’t stay put and pretend that they’ve heard enough. A disciple isn’t forever stuck on lesson one ten years ago. A disciple trains. She follows the Master Musician, the Lord of the Dance.

So let’s give praise to Peter, a true disciple. In the beginning he was thickheaded, loudmouthed, and cowardly. But he became thoughtful and wise, bold and gentle, a leader in tune with the workings of the Spirit of God. If God can grow Peter, maybe God can grow you and me. What is the Spirit speaking to you today?

2009-09-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Where Does Courage Come From?

The summer after my fourth grade year I went to church camp at Central Oak Heights, which by the way this past month celebrated a 100th Anniversary. Back then it was our main Methodist church camp. The week of camp I attended had well over 200 kids, just for elementary camp. And I was just another kid in a crowd. I would not have been noticed by anyone unless they were looking to give an award for the shyest, most introverted kid there at camp. Then I might have won.

For example, when we got to cabins that first Sunday afternoon, my buddy, Mike, whom we’ll call, Mr. Extrovert, wanted to immediately go visit the girl’s cabins. I suggested we just sit on our bunks and watch the bugs call around the floor. That’s how I felt most of the week, from what I remember. But something else happened that week. I know this because during the closing program I found myself standing up in front of the whole camp - the 200 plus kids, plus the adult staff, plus all the parents that had come for the program – and telling them what Jesus had come to mean to me.

How did that happen?

Last weekend was good in many ways. One way was Marlin Snider got us thinking about how God uses significant people in our lives to introduce us to a relationship with Him in Jesus. God calls us to trust, to fall into his arms, and to step out in courageous faith to be witnesses and make disciples of Jesus. Marlin shared this passage from the Gospel of Mark and I have been thinking about this passage every day. Let’s think about it together.

Jesus is telling the disciples and a larger crowd people that He would have to suffer greatly and then he would be executed. This was his message for the day.

“He said all this quite openly.” Mark 8.32

Too openly for Peter. Peter takes Jesus aside and says, whoa Jesus, what you doing? All this talk about suffering and sacrifice and death, it’s not really going over so well with the crowd. It’s too depressing. Can’t be a little more upbeat?

Jesus response to Peter was, “You’re the devil.”

Then Jesus, instead of shutting up, calls out like this:

IF ANYONE WANTS TO BECOME MY FOLLOWER, DENY YOURSELF, TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME. IF YOU TRY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE YOU WILL LOSE IT. IF HOWEVER YOU LOSE YOUR LIFE FOR MY SAKE AND THE SAKE OF THE GOSPEL YOU WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE.

Jesus didn’t need a megaphone or a sound system. His Word was its own megaphone, the Holy Spirit the sound system to broadcast to minds and hearts. Do you understand how powerful a punch was packed into this declaration?

Deny yourself and take up your cross. I’ve heard people reference this phrase in their own lives but usually in ways that have little to do with what Jesus meant. A man might complain that he works long hours at his job but is grossly underpaid while some other fat cats are living the easy live. He thinks he is getting the short end of life, he’s being cheated, but somehow in his cranky, bitter, complaining way, that should count as a credit to his self-denial, something for which he should be rewarded one day. Or a woman complains about her grown children who never treat her right, who never do what she thinks they should do, who have never properly thanked her for all she has sacrificed. She repeats this litany of complaint over and over in her mind and to whomever will stand to listen to it. She surmises, with a sigh of self-pity, “I guess this is just my cross to bear.”

That’s not what Jesus meant. These kind of folks have turned ordinary trials into things to draw more attention to themselves. Jesus wants us truly to turn our backs on the old self and its constant need for attention and validation. To take up your cross is to give your life away to God and others with increasingly less thought for your rights and your expectations.

“We need to take people off of men and put them onto Christ.” George Fox

If you try to save your life you lose it.

Taking up the cross and following Jesus involves practicing discipline. Dallas Willard says, “the real making of a person comes from disciplines that only they can choose and impose on themselves.” You freely choose to follow Jesus because, though the disciplines will not at first come naturally or easily to you, it has become clear to you on some level that the Jesus Way of life is superior to what you or others have going on.

You realize that you are a poor savior. I am a poor savior. I can’t even save money very well. How will I save my soul? How will I save my life? What do I gain in living life in this world if I lose myself in the process?

Our favorite TV shows these days are Man vs. Wild and Survivorman. Our opinions vary on which is better. Both purport to show the average coach potato how to survive in the extreme wilderness for days with nothing but a pocketknife and a string. There are skills they anyone can learn – how to build a shelter, how to make a fire, how to find things to eat – that will improve your chances of survival. One of our personal favorites is the episode when Bear Grylls, the host of Man vs. Wild, eats Reindeer “raisins”, if you know what I mean.

Bear Grylls knows how to live in the wild, but many of you may not know that he has learned some other practices and skills for life. He has taken and now promotes a course on Christian belief and discipleship called the Alpha Course, which originated in Grylls’ homeland of Great Britain. The man who has navigated dangerous rapids and faced hungry grizzlies says this about Alpha and following the way of Jesus:

“When you get a chance to be saved, you gotta grab it.”

I’m afraid we sometimes look at reading the Bible, praying, and other spiritual disciplines as something unreal, unconnected to real life. So if we’re going to do it at all, it’s something that we have to portion out in little pieces as “something that’s going to be unpleasant” and unprofitable, instead of what it is, something that could save our lives.

“We know that all things work together for the good for those who love God and called according to His purpose.” Romans 8.28

“Before you cash those checks,” Dallas Willard says, “notice they are made out to disciples of Jesus.”

It is possible to learn over time, with much discipline and practice, how to live like Jesus would live if He were you. It is possible, moment by moment to ask, “What, Father, do you desire to be done this minute?” This is what Jesus did. When we follow Jesus the Kingdom of God becomes more real to us and the ways of the world are exposed for what they are – a dog and pony show.

Whoever is ashamed of me and my words. . .of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

How does the unbelieving believe? How does someone who knows about God come to know God? You decide to follow. You lay down control and let Jesus take over. You practice the presence of God in your life continually. Live your life in the Kingdom of God now – my real life, the one I am actually living. Not just in church or on religious occasions.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and his kind of righteousness.”

How does a timid soul become a disciple who tells others? First step is know Jesus and love Jesus. You can’t give to others what you do not have.

What to do now? Convert the world? No. Convert the church? No. Your first move “as you go” is – convert me.

Convert me. When that happens Jesus will make us witnesses in ways we may not even see coming. I don’t know it happens, it just does. Witnesses, to wit, is to cause others to know. We don’t manipulate, we don’t force. But in a winsome way the light of Jesus shines powerfully through us. Courage comes from walking with Him.

We truly are the light of the world, a city set on a hill. May it come true here and now what Tertullian wrote of those first century Christians –

Men cry out that the state is besieged; the Christians are in the fields, in the ports, in the islands. . .we are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you – cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camps, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum; we leave you your temples only. Our numbers increase the more you destroy us. The blood of the martyrs is their seed.

2009-09-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

Soul Care

The goal of the Christian disciple is that we would be fully transformed in our character so to have the character of Christ. We said this happens not by trying harder, but by training as an apprentice of the Master, receiving his instruction and his power. To “put off the old person, as St. Paul says, and put on the new,

“Until Christ is formed in you.” Galatians 4.19

Your soul is something that needs more attention before you die than after. There is a lot to be said and learned about the soul, but for our purposes we will simply understand the soul to be the hidden or spiritual side of the person. It includes an individual’s thoughts and feelings, along with heart, or will, with its intents and choices. We may think of the soul as our essential self.

Spiritual formation, whether it is Christian, Buddhist, or atheist, is simply the process by which the human spirit or will is given a definite form or character. Make no mistake, it is a process that happens to everyone. The worst and the best persons have had spiritual formation. Their spirits have been formed, into something incredibly good and beautiful, fit for heaven, or into something utterly horrible and wicked, and only at home in Hell.

“There is a hidden dimension to every human life, one not visible to others or fully graspable even by ourselves,” Dallas Willard writes. “This is God’s gift to us in creation, that we might have the space to become the persons we choose to be. From here we manage our lives as best we can, utilizing whatever resources of understanding, emotion, and circumstance are available. It is here that we stand before God and our conscience.”

Christian spiritual formation is using any means available to help us do by training what we cannot do by direct effort, that is be made like Jesus. You might say, well what about the Holy Spirit, what about grace? This is all done in grace by the power of the Holy Spirit. Grace is opposed to earning not to effort.

“Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2.12-13

Christian spiritual formation is not only wanting to “be merciful, kind, and patient” (Colossians 3) but also planning and doing to become so. It must be briefly said that for many of us we have counted on listening to sermons and singing a few songs, and maybe even, attending a Sunday School class to form us. This strategy has not turned out well. We have multitudes of professing Christians who may be ready to die but obviously are not ready to live, and can hardly get along with themselves, much less with others. Worship, sermons,, and classes are necessary practices but are in themselves, very incomplete as regards to spiritual formation. They are particularly incomplete if they do not touch the soul, the hidden life of the person. How many of us have left worship and felt unmoved, untouched, or unchanged? A person without spiritual practices is hard soil for the Word of God of to find purchase on.

Good spiritual formation includes many practices and practices essential to the individual. It happens every day, not just one a week or twice a month. Spiritual practices or disciplines are all the tools in our tool belt available to us for our training to become like Jesus. As such, there is no complete list of spiritual practices, but there is obviously some core practices – worship, confession, study, prayer, solitude, silence, celebration, service, witness, fasting – that should be used by every disciple in training.

I want to focus just on three practices this morning, solitude, silence, and scripture memorization.

These practices are related and essential to us being freed from the tyrannical grip of our present culture. These, like all good practices, strive to put God constantly before our minds. One way spiritual practices change us is by changing our thought processes. Sinful people cannot stand to think about God and about who He is. So practice helps us to think about God on a regular basis in the midst of our daily lives.

Solitude - “go away by yourself.” Be still and know God. Slowing is the term for a related practice. Many people, well-meaning people, cannot succeed in being kind because they are too rushed to get things done. “Haste has worry, fear, and anger as close associates,” Willard notes. Get away from the talk, the noise, the electronics and “do nothing.” Dare to be by yourself. Being by yourself frightens some of you. I know people who, even when they are with others, have trouble sitting still, you can see it in their eyes and in the nervous movement of the hands and feet. Presumably it’s because “they have too much to do.” Let’s be clear – God never gives anyone too much to do. We do that to ourselves or allow others to do it to us. And when we live this way we are expressing no confidence in God and the fact that He is working at all.

When we practice solitude we are saying Lord I trust my life and my world in your faithful hands. Everything good that happens is because of your efforts. I rest at ease in you. Take solitude daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Get away to the woods, the beach, or simply your back porch.

Silence – Jesus knew when to talk and when to be quiet. He had this ability because he spent more than twenty years as part of a sometimes rancorous family. He was, for most of his life, a blue-collar worker, a tradesman, an independent contractor. He knew what it was like to “do business with the public.” Everything Jesus taught he had already practiced. His brother James saw and learned this. He later wrote about the power of patience in the daily events of life, manifested above all by an inoffensive tongue. (James 3.2) Many supposedly faithful Christians use vile language, and the vilest is when they strike others with their sharp words. You don’t have to use a curse word to curse someone with your tongue. How does the inside of your car sound when you are stuck in traffic or cut off by someone in front of you, or even in a tense moment at home? People say, “That’s just me. I can’t help it.” But this is giving undo power to our sinful ways. Hurting people with our tongue is not like the Law of Gravity. It’s not a law of nature that makes us assassinate the humanity of others.

We can change. We begin by asking God’s help to do this good thing. We continue by practicing controlling our tongue. Shut it when bad stuff is going to come out. That idea of venting to let it out – forget it, it’s wrong. Venting, at least in hurtful ways, only grows the anger in you. You call someone a jerk because it makes you feel like you have power over them. And calling someone a name lies on a continuum with shooting him.

“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. . .” Matthew 5.38-39

This verse lived out will feel very difficult for some and even impossible for others. But for the disciple in training the difficulty, with practice, will give way to nothing out of the ordinary, to the point where you stop thinking about it at all - because your heart and mind are on pleasing God.

Scripture memorization - the most effective way to get your mind on God is by getting God’s Word in your mind. Again, our usual way of limiting our exposure to the Bible to Sunday mornings isn’t working. What the Church used to do right we aren’t doing anymore. We need to recover the practice of Scripture memorization. And not just for the kids either.

“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.” Joshua 1.8

That’s where we need it, in our mouths. How did it get there? Memorization. Lots of people would stay out of trouble if they had been muttering scripture. When you hear stories about men and women who have, as they say, fallen, the sad thing is not just that they fell, but what has been in their mind all along, possibly for many years or even all their life. Think about, in Paul’s words, what is good and true and beautiful instead. Read a verse, a passage or chapter in the morning or the night before and keep muttering it through the day. Ask yourself if this is not better than the usual litany of silly songs and useless clutter our culture serves up to our consuming minds everyday. For example, the words of Psalm 23 are much better than the words to the Adams Family TV show that I found myself singing the other day. I’m going to challenge our classes and small groups on this point, to make scripture memorization a regular part of our life together. And I challenge you take that up in your daily devotion. If we do not know the Bible it cannot help us.

These practices, along with many others will help us to train for inward and outward change with the help of God’s power and grace. People in training learn the keys to life and the acceptance of the everyday problems of life. We become “grace-full” people. It eventually looks effortless, this changing of our personality, but the disciple knows the amount of training that is required.

2009-09-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

How Jesus Changes Us

Whatever is inside us will come out. Nothing stays hidden forever. I remember years ago an upscale restaurant in Pittsburgh, Poli’s, was getting ready for a grand reopening. The Mt. Washington restaurant had everything – a great chef, fine décor, a magnificent view of the downtown skyline, and a pricey menu to makes lots of money. But Poli’s had one other thing, a thing it didn’t want – a little bit of a rat problem. They were aware of the rodent infestation, but they did little about it. They hoped it would go away. The day of the opening came and the place was packed, people enjoying their cuisine, everything going along just as planned, until the ceiling crashed in, literally, from the weight of all the rats running around up there.

“Waiter, there’s a rat in my soup!” Check please!

Sin is like that. You can cover it up, but like so many rats, it will find its way out. We spend sizeable amounts of time and energy on trying to cover up our sin – Sin Management if you will. But Sin won’t be managed. It doesn’t really obey us. We end up becoming its slaves.

I was watching Oliver Stone’s Vietnam movie, Platoon, the other night and the ending monologue by the main character goes something like, “I see now that we were not fighting the enemy, we were fighting ourselves, for the possession of our souls. . .”

The enemy is within. St. Paul describes this battle so accurately in Romans 7:

“When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. . .I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” Romans 7.21-23

Sin lies close at hand. In fact, we have been trained in sin. Sin comes naturally to us. Its in our nature. No amount of will power on our own will change this. Remember the lesson of the Pharisees!

Look at the disciples at Gethsemane with Jesus. He asks them to watch and pray with him. Now, if there ever is a time when you want to stay focused and give prayer your best effort, this is the time. You are in the presence of Jesus! You are praying to the Heavenly Father in a prayer circle with His Son!

And they fell asleep.

“So you could not stay awake with me one hour? The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
Matthew 26.41

Even the disciples couldn’t do it by their own efforts. The flesh is too weak. We can’t even do the obvious right thing.

Our goal is not conformity of our outward behavior – that’s little more than sin management. Our goal is complete transformation of character and that comes from learning how to act in concert with Jesus Christ.

Dallas Willard writes, “Often when we do the right thing we have already done the wrong thing, because that is what was sitting in our body “at the ready.” Intention alone cannot suffice in most situations. . .we must be ‘in shape’. If not, trying will normally be too late or totally absent.”

This is important stuff. If I am a habitually angry person, anger is my default position. I am always at the ready to be angry. And there are countless opportunities in the course of a single day (driving in traffic anyone?) for me to feed my anger. If I am a habitually lustful person, then I have been trained in lust and my flesh will find opportunity to feed my lust.

Sin is always at the ready. But here is the Good News – Heaven is ready to help!

“Jesus came preaching, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Matthew 4.17

Heaven is not just or even primarily a distant location. Heaven is the kingdom of God’s power and rule. All His resources become available to us through Jesus Christ. Jesus has brought it all close to us and makes his power ready through the Holy Spirit.

When we repent of our sin and decide to follow Jesus then we are born again. We are given the life of Christ as our own life. We are given the keys to the kingdom that we may enter in. We are given the spiritual power that comes with regeneration.

“All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Romans 8.14

Spiritual growth is simply the process of training in Christ’s power and character. It is the process whereby the old Rich dies and Jesus in Rich grows.

“If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. . .set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things. . .put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed.. . .these are the ways you once followed when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of such things – anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practice.” Colossians 3.1-9

St. Paul describes the first steps of spiritual transformation like taking off old dirty clothes and putting on fresh, clean clothes. Strip off the old and put on the new!

“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. . . and above all clothe yourselves with love. . .” Colossians 3.12, 14

Remember, this is not just trying harder. The difference is the entering into and living in the power of the readily available Kingdom of God. And the difference is in this consistent living and training in said power. In the Spirit’s power I learn how to be patient and kind instead of angry and irritable. In the Spirit’s power my very members are train to be content and giving instead of greedy and self-serving. This is how Jesus changes us, this is how His character is formed in us.

“Until Christ is formed in you,” Paul wrote the Galatians (chapter 4, verse 19)

I cannot stress enough that this does not naturally happen even after we say the sinner’s prayer. Time alone won’t make me kinder, more generous, or more loving. Time alone won’t even make me wiser. I need the grace, power, and truth that Jesus gives to his consistent students. We must walk the road with Jesus. We must engage the practices and work of a disciple. Next week we will specifically look at some of this work and these practices.

When I became pastor of my first parish, I had no secretary and the church office was in the basement of the parsonage. The office was equipped with a desk and phone, a typewriter and an old Gestetner machine. I didn’t know what a Gestetner was. It was a machine for making copies. You put the master carbon sheet of whatever you had typed on the big drum and put your paper in over here, and there was a big crank handle and you cranked the handle and that pushed the paper through and against your master carbon sheet. When it worked well, you literally cranked out the copes one at a time. When it didn’t work well, which was often, you could spend hours trying to copy the Sunday morning bulletins.

I stared in wide eyed wonder at this machine and my instructor. I was sure I had seen this thing in the Smithsonian Institution one time. And then I glanced in the other corner of the small office. There sat what looked to be a brand new Xerox copier. I asked my instructor,

“Does that work?” Yes, of course.

“Why don’t we just use that, wouldn’t that be much better?”

“We’re saving it for later,” was the answer I got. They found they could “get by” with the old one, though it was troublesome and time-consuming and produced poor quality.

That’s about as much sense as it makes for us to invite Jesus to forgive our sins and then fail to learn how to follow him as Lord and Master of our lives. He gives us keys to the kingdom of life. He teaches us a better way, a more powerful way. Why keep putting in time and effort in a broken down machine when there is a new one waiting to be used?

2009-09-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

Someone Worth Following

I remember reading about a marathon in which, at one point, most of the runners took a wrong turn and ended up off course for a good bit of the race. They got lost in a marathon. Apparently, the lead runner took the wrong turn and everyone else followed him, figuring he knew where he was going – everyone followed except for one guy. That guy who didn’t follow ended up winning the race. Afterwards, the winner was interviewed and asked why he didn’t follow everyone else.

“I knew they had taken a wrong turn,” the runner said. “I couldn’t believe that many people could make the same mistake, but they did.”

It is possible for a lot of people to be wrong. And it is especially important to know who it is you are following. It’s important to know whether the one who is leading you knows what they are doing.

A disciple of Jesus is one who follows Jesus where he is leading. A disciple observes, listens, learns, practices, and does what the Master does. A disciple is an apprentice like someone learning to be a mason, an electrician, a musician, a doctor.

You can be a follower of many different people, philosophies, or things. One of the major problems of our time or any time is the problem of idolatry. Lest you think that is an outdated, Old Testament word, think again. Idolatry is, in Timothy Keller’s definition, “making a good thing and ultimate thing.” It is taking something of limited value and saying this thing is everything to me. You don’t have to dance around a golden calf to have an idol. Your idol can be television. It can be your investments. It can be sports. An idol is something you give worship-like reverence to that is unworthy of your worship and reverence.

Nothing in the creation is worthy of your worship. Nothing in the material world has enough substance, enough gravitas. Nothing in the creation can direct the creation to redemption and fulfillment. Nothing in the creation can save the Creation from the inexorable effects of the Fall. Nothing can put a stopper on death.

But there is one outside of the Creation, one who was begotten, not made, who is spoken of in Colossians as the firstborn of the Creation, meaning, He precedes all that was created.

“for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created. . .all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1.15-17

Jesus is Creator and Master. He brought this world into being, and to paraphrase an old Bill Cosby line, “he can take it out.” But he chooses to redeem all that would be redeemed.

He is the one who said, “I have been given say over all things in heaven and earth. So you go. . .” Matthew 28.18

The first people who met Jesus recognized the qualities of one who was truly Master.

“Jesus went through Galilee, teaching. . .and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread . . .and great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis (Ten Cities), Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.”
Matthew 4.23-25

The sin and weakness of the church today is that we don’t see that anymore. Jesus is nothing that special to us, at least in terms that make an impact upon us. Jesus is a mere icon, a ghost-like semblance of a man, barely conscious who inspires little but the weakest religious homage. If this is Jesus, then why would I want to emulate him or follow him?

It doesn’t make sense to sing “Fairest Lord Jesus” if Jesus is average or ho-hum. Maybe our worship suffers because we don’t see him as fair or pure or bright-shining?

But Jesus as he really is inspires crowds to follow, sick people healed, lost people found, ignorant people taught good news, indifferent people ready to drop all and give all.

Jesus is the smartest human being, the most capable, the most powerful, the most true and loving. He is the brightest thing on the human scene. There is no competition.

He is the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Colossians 2.3

Someone who chooses to follow Jesus believes that Jesus knows what he is doing.

People who met Jesus regarded him as master of every domain of life. Jesus is the one person whose deeds always matched his good words. The counterpoint to that is the Pharisees. Dallas Willard makes this striking statement about them:

“In many ways, the Pharisees were the finest people of their day.” He wasn’t being sarcastic or flippant. The Pharisees really were the best at living religious, moral lives. The problem is, that way of living doesn’t work. You can shine the outside the cup so often but it doesn’t clean the dirt on the inside. This is why when some guy goes crazy and takes a gun to work and starts shooting, almost invariably, it’s some quiet guy who never really stood out as good or bad. Nobody really knew him. The neighbors are interviewed and they say, “We had no idea he was like that. He always seemed okay. He kept to himself.”

You can present a façade. But what is really on the inside will eventually come out. Apples come from apple trees. Lies come from liars. Killings come from killers. It all comes from the heart. That was Jesus’ judgment on the Pharisees. Do what they say, but don’t do what they do. Their way doesn’t work. They are their own worst argument.

Human problems cannot be solved by human means. Human life can never flourish unless it pulses with the “immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe” Ephesians 1.19

Only the constant students of Jesus, in other words, disciples, will be given adequate power to fulfill their lives and callings. Next week we will look at how Jesus actually changes us into new people.

2009-09-09T07:48:00.002-07:00

Hometown Discount

He came to his country and to his hometown. They all knew him. They loved him they said. They knew his mother and father, his brothers and sisters. His power and wisdom were obvious. It left people asking, “Where did he get this? Where did this come from?”

Novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can’t Go Home Again. You can visit. But after you’ve left a place, the place will not receive back for good. Because you’ve changed. And the place has changed, though it may think it is the same.

Jesus is facing this reception. He is teaching like Messiah but they want to keep him the carpenter’s son. Jesus suffered from the hometown discount. They automatically discounted that he could be a prophet. There’s no way that he could be Messiah, because he’s from here. In words of a Keith Green song, “Prophets don’t grow up from little boys, do they?”

Can you imagine what it must have been like for Jesus’ brothers and sisters? How hard must it have been for them to believe that their brother was the Anointed One, the very Son of God?

There is a reason that in the United Methodist Church pastors are not appointed to their home church. It’s too difficult. There’s too many people that remember you as the kid who vomited during the Christmas pageant. You can’t go home again. It’s nice to visit. It was a nice visit we had with Mark Hecht last month. He obviously has a great ministry. You can be proud of him. But he couldn’t have stayed in Duncansville just like I couldn’t stay in Williamsport. I would have always been waiting for my sister Kathy to let the cat out of the bag, that in fact I’m not a holy man at all. I’m the one who once chased her around the house with a kitchen knife. Psychopath, maybe, pastor, uh, no.

In fact, Jesus’ brothers did have trouble believing that he was a prophet and more than a prophet. In John’s Gospel chapter seven it says that Jesus stayed in Galilee and refused to go to Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill and he wasn’t ready to be killed yet. His own brothers urged him to go to Judea to make himself known.

“No man works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. Show yourself to the world.”

Being a brother myself, and having observed my own sons, I know the thoughts that can creep into brother’s hearts. Jesus’ brothers may have genuinely wanted Jesus to “take it to the next level” in Judea, to go worldwide. And they may have also thought, Son of God? We’ll see. Let him stick out his neck in Judea. If he survives that, then we’ll believe.

“For even his brothers did not believe in him.” John 7.5

How did Jesus react to all this?

“He was amazed at their unbelief.” Mark 6.6

He may have understood it, but he was still amazed and disturbed by it. Which leads me to wonder what Jesus thinks of the Church today. It is easy for us who have grown up in the church to remember our favorite time or our favorite way to experience God. It’s fine to have these memories and fine to treasure them. But the church is not a museum to preserve old furniture and antiques. The church is not the Library of Congress here to preserve old records. We are a living community of people serving a living God!

In Matthew 12, someone asks Jesus for a sign and he says enough with signs. You’ve had the sign of Jonah, but something greater than Jonah is here. You had the sign of Solomon, but something greater than Solomon is here. The purpose of religion is to clean out the house of the human heart to allow room for the living God to come and dwell. If you clean out the house but don’t let the Master come in and live, then the ghosts that you chased out before will return in greater force and number.

Maybe our problem is one of geography. We’ve been in the same location for so long that we’ve forgotten, oh yeah, we are actually following that old boy, Jesus, and he’s still on the move!

There is a scene in Will Ferrell’s movie, Talledega Nights, in which his character, Ricky Bobby, prays to “tiny, baby Christmas Jesus” for success in his next race. He thanks God for KFC and the always delicious Taco Bell, for his striking boys and his smoking hot wife (who hasn’t prayed that prayer?) and continues, “tiny infant Jesus. . .” when his wife interrupts:

“Hey, umm, you know sweetie, Jesus did grow up.You don’t always have to call him baby. It’s a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby.”

To which Ricky Bobby responds, “Look, I like the Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace. When you say grace you say it to grown up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.”

The discussion continues. Ricky’s friend likes to picture Jesus as a rock star while Ricky’s son, Texas Ranger, likes to picture Jesus as a ninja fighting off Samurai. This may all seem silly to you, but the truth is we all like to picture Jesus in the way the is most comfortable to us – remembering him at a certain time of year (Christmas, Easter) at a certain time in our lives, or simply as an unseen spirit supporting our efforts and agenda.

Listen to Ricky’s wife, “Jesus did grow up.” In fact, Jesus is still living and hoping to grow the church, which he called “his body.”

Is the body of baby Jesus still growing? To paraphrase and old hymn, “Are we still alive?”

What would change if grown-up Jesus were walking around this building today? Maybe he has a beard, maybe he doesn’t. He’s dressed like you and me. He talks and laughs. Sometimes he shouts and sometimes he just gets quiet and thinks. He’s a real person and he’s really God.

But he’s walking around here with us. Hmm.

The problem with the hometown church is that we stop expecting and stop wanting walkin’ talkin’ Jesus to doing any thing new around here. We want eight pound six ounce Jesus. We want Christmas Eve Jesus because he’s warm and cute and won’t trouble us.

That’s want the people of Nazareth wanted. And because of their unbelief,

“ he could do no mighty work there. . .” Mark 6.5

In the book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse, Jesus speaks to the churches. To the church at Ephesus, this is what Jesus says:

“I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear eivil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, you have abandoned your first love. Remember then, from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.”
Revelation 2.2-5

Jesus judgment of the church is that the church has stopped loving Jesus.

Let us return to the love that brought us here to be the church.

2009-09-09T07:48:00.001-07:00

Fear Not

(show picture of crocodile)

G-day mates! I see some familiar faces from Crocodile Dock. I wonder if you remember our theme from the Dock?

Fear Not! That’s right. There are lots of things to be afraid of out there. I used to be afraid of crocs! I would see a croc and I would shout, “Crikey!”

But then one day I saw a crocs and I looked them in the eye and realized there was nothing really to be afraid of. . . (show pair of croc shoes)

There are lots of things that are more scary than these. The other day, believe it or not, there was this in our yard (show bear picture). A bear is a beautiful and usually gentle creature. But a bear is a wild animal. Using the good sense I taught them, my boys watched the bear from inside the house. A bear is a scary. But there are things more scary than bears.

What are you afraid of?

I knew this girl once who had a fear of flying. She had gone through a traumatic experience on a plane as a little girl and had never quite gotten over it. We were talking about her fear once day and we talked about how God can help us with our fears.

“Don’t you know, “ I told her, ‘that’s he’s with you everywhere? Some of Jesus’ last words were, ‘I am with you always.”

“No,” she laughed. “What he actually said was, ‘Low – I am with you always.”

In our Old Testament lesson we read how Moses has brought the people of God to the edge of the Land of Canaan. Remember, they had left Egypt and slavery years earlier, 40 years to be exact, to get here. It took them so long to make the journey because, well, they had been afraid to obey God, if that makes any sense. More on that later. But finally, after 40 years of traveling they arrive at the edge of their destination. This the Land of Promise. This is the Land where their dreams will come true. All they have to do is go in and take it.

So Moses chooses twelve men to go spy out the land, “see what the land is like and see what the people are like, whether they are strong or weak, few or many.” Numbers 13.17-18

What those twelve men saw when they crossed in the Jordan valley was pleasing to their eyes. Here is what they reported back to Moses:

“We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and here is its fruit.” Numbers 13.27

The Land of Canaan exceeded their expectations. Say goodbye to years of wandering. Say goodbye to the slavery of Egypt and the desert wasteland of Arabia. Promised Land- we are there!

Moses and the Israelites must have gone wild when they heard this report. Their eyes got wide. They were ready to pack and move. They were ready to dance – when the celebration was prematurely cut off by one of the spies – “but we can’t go there.”

What?

“We can’t go into the Promised Land. We can’t go there.”

Why not?

“There are giants. The people are large and strong and their cities and large and srong and compared to them we look like grasshoppers.”

Crikey! This is not what Moses wanted to here. These spies were hand-picked men, known for their derring-do and wits. And here they are saying we might as well turn around and go back to Egypt. In fact, let’s start making plans now. These supposedly brave men were simply convinced and paralyzed by the fear of what they saw.

Do you know what the most dangerous fear is? Fear itself.

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” Henry David Thoreau

Years later, in a time of anxiety for our country, President John F. Kennedy will tell the American people, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

It should not be a surprise to us that the single command in the Bible that occurs more often than any other – God’s most frequently repeated instruction- is stated in two words:

Fear not.

Yup. There are 366 “fear not” verses in the Bible, one for every day of the year, including one for leap year. Why do you think God repeats this command so often? Maybe because fear is the number one reason why people are tempted to avoid doing what God asks them to do. God tells you to go talk to that new family on the block and invite them over to your house, but you avoid it because. . .you’re afraid. God suggests to you that volunteering for that community mission project would be a great use of your time, but you avoid it because. . .you’re afraid. God prompts you to give more than is comfortable for you, but you avoid it because . . .you’re afraid.

Avoidance kills an inner sense of confidence and esteem. This is why praise from others, even when it is sincere, often does not help much. Avoiders become experts at “impression management” – pretending to be what they think will be acceptable to others. But even when we are successful at managing others’ impressions of us and eliciting praise, inside we discount it: If you only saw the truth about me, you wouldn’t admire me. You’re just admiring what I want you to see in me.

Those spies were big Avoiders. They presented their report with the classic good news/bad news formula. You know what I mean. It’s like the two baseball-loving friends who agree that whichever one dies first will come back and let the other know if there’s baseball in heaven. The first one to die contacts his friend and says, “The good news is that there is baseball in heaven. The bad news is that you’re pitching Friday.”

And in the case of the spies, their good news is totally overshadowed by their bad news. In fact, if their bad news is to be believed and acted upon, then their good news is really worthless news. It’s no news.

But here’s where and why this story turns – among those twelve spies were two men who were not avoiders. Their names were Caleb and Joshua. They brought a minority report – they said in effect, “Yeah, the people are pretty large and their pretty strong – okay yeah, their GIANTS, but we can take them.” Caleb and Joshua were challengers were the others were avoiders. Caleb and Joshua said “Fear not, we can do this! Are we not God’s chosen people? Won’t God surely deliver what he has promised?”

Folks, this is the point where you either believe and trust or you don’t. There are a lot of things to be afraid of in our lives – losing your job, losing a relationship, finding that lump, going through that surgery, facing that shadow of death – there are Giants in the land these days. But hey, aren’t you here because you believe God is bigger than the giants in our lives? Isn’t the One who has called you able to see you through gigantic problems and challenges?

The best way to handle giants is to confront them- take up the challenge and put your trust in your Creator and your Redeemer!

Joshua and Caleb were right and those ten others were wrong. If it was up to the ten there would be no Jewish people today. Or they would be just a small tribe wandering the deserts talking about what might have been. It’s no coincidence that when Moses died, God instructed the leadership to go to Joshua. Here was God’s reminder to Joshua when he took the reigns of leadership:

“I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1.9

(if there’s time, we’ll show Day 4 of the VBS slideshow before our prayer time)

2009-06-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

Say What You Need to Say

Our front porch was big and wide. When the late afternoon sun hit the wooden floor it made for the perfect place to read the sports section on an early summer evening. I’m thirteen years old, lying on my stomach, checking what the Pirates did last night. This is about my only way of knowing. There is no ESPN. No Internet. Just a small paragraph giving me the score and highlights – Stargell hit one out. My dad is sitting in a chair in the corner of the porch next to me, drinking iced tea. He is there, which means he didn’t stop at the bar after work. That’s a good thing. Through the screen door I can smell that my mom has supper on. My brother and sisters are around someplace but right now I am undistracted. I have sun on a porch, a sports section and my dad next to me. I have the whole summer before me. I’m about to be called to supper. What’s better than that?

I was about twelve then, which means that I hadn’t started thinking about girls yet. My big worries were what games were me and my friends going to play that day and did I have enough money to buy baseball cards. In a few years, things would get more complicated. My dad and I would start to have trouble talking to each other. We started getting angry at each other. We forgot how to laugh. There was a lot of silence.

We became tongue-tied. We cared about each other but we couldn’t find the words. And moments passed by that we couldn’t get back.

There’s a scene in the movie, My Best Friend’s Wedding, when Julia Roberts’ character has the opportunity to tell her best friend that she realizes that she loves him. She’s never told him this before. She’s been afraid to express her true feelings. Here best friend is, in two days, about to marry another woman. It’s getting late in the game for Julia. The moment comes. . .and the moment passes by.

Dave Matthews has a song lyric that speaks to the danger of silence:

He wakes up in the morning
Does his teeth, bite to eat, and he’s rolling
Never changes a thing
The week ends the week begins
She thinks, we look at each other
Wondering what the other is thinking
But we never say a thing
These crimes between us grow deeper

It’s important to say what you need to say to the people you care about. Saying the right thing at the right time is what we call a blessing, a benediction - bene = good, diction=words, good words.

Words have the power to shape events and people. Jesus said a word can move a mountain. A word can open the eyes of the blind and make the lame to walk. A word can make enemies become friends. Certainly there are times to hold your tongue and conserve your words. There are times when careless words do much harm.

“A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish anything – or destroy it! It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke, and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.” James 3.4-5 The Message

John Maxwell tells the story of a couple who went to divorce court over words:

“Why do you want a divorce?” the judge asked. “On what grounds?”
“All over. We have an acre and a half,” the woman responded.
“No, no,” said the judge. “Do you have a grudge?”
“Yes, sir. Fits two cars.”
“I need a reason for the divorce,” said the judge impatiently. “Does he beat you up?”
“Oh, no. I’m up at six every day to do my exercises. He gets up later.”
“Please,” said the exasperated judge. “What is the reason you want a divorce?”
“Oh,” she replied. “we can’t seem to communicate with each other.”

We’ve all misspoken and regretted it. We’ve burned and been burned by careless words. Sometimes it seems that we’d all be better off if we just shut it.

But then I read this: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the word was God.” John 1.1

God created with words. God comes talking. God is a hopeless talker. He talks so much because he has so much hope for us. God even speaks through us and does great things.

God’s word spoken through us is a powerful thing! Ladies and gentlemen, it’s good news!

One of the most telling events in the Gospel is recounted by Mark. Jesus and the disciples are traveling across the Sea of Galilee by boat at night. A violent storm comes up. There’s rain and thunder and lightning. Waves are swelling and crashing. And Jesus, well, he’s sleeping. The disciples, they aren’t sleeping. They are worrying. They are gripping. They’re waiting for Jesus to wake up and do something. They’re afraid someone’s going to lose their life and that someone could be them. So they shake Jesus.

“Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” Do something Jesus!

And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

Jesus knew the right words to end a storm. The disciples wondered, “Who is this that even the wind and waves obey?”

The Word has power. We don’t even know how much power. And that power can be used for good in us.

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

I have often quoted this verse with the emphasis on in love. I assume that people tend to hurt others with truth. But that is not necessarily the Apostle’s assumption.

Telling the truth to someone else is a loving thing to do. Sure, you can do damage “in the name of truth.”

“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels and but do not love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13.1

But a good word has the power to heal the present and change the future. I remember the times my father told me he loved me. I remember both times. The first time he was probably inebriated. But the second time he was very sober, very intentional, very tender. And it hit me like a warm shower washing away years of dust. I believe my dad changed our relationship with those words. They had been waiting for years to come out of him. Though I didn’t know it, I had been waiting for years to hear those words. I have peace today about my father because of those words. I confess, I probably don’t say “I love you” enough to the people I care about. But I when I do, and I get that smile from them that they know, well. . . .

“To make an apt answer is a joy to man, and a word in season, how good it is!” Proverbs 15.23

To say the right thing at the right time – beautiful.

So before you do anything else today, I want you to run, don’t walk, run to the person you need to talk to. It could be an apology you need to give. It could be a thank you. It could be the words, “Hey, I love you.”

Say what you need to say.

2009-06-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

No Doubt

There was a cartoon that appeared in a San Francisco newspaper. Two atheists are going door-to-door introducing their religious beliefs. They stand in front of an open door, and the man inside says, “This pamphlet is blank.” They answer, “We’re atheists.”

Many of us have had the experience of being visited by witnesses of the Mormon Church or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. These folks, especially the Mormons, are clean cut, polite and very sure in their faith. Sometimes we look at them as being very different from ourselves. We are different in beliefs. But we have faith in God in common. As Timothy Keller has suggested, the world is increasingly being divided into religious and irreligious people.

Keller is not and I am not suggesting that all atheists are bad people and all religious people are good and right. There are many “spiritualities” out there today that have little in common with the faith that was handed down from the Apostles. Newsweek magazine did a cover story this week on Oprah and the wacky ideas that she sometimes promotes on her show. To watch Oprah the past twenty years is have gone on a meandering journey with the talk show host looking for a personal way to authenticate your own soul. Back in the day it was not unusual to hear Oprah speak the language of orthodox Christian faith, of forgiveness, salvation, and growth in the Spirit. Oprah was not afraid to say the J word on national television. Today, well, let’s say Oprah has gone in a different direction. The Secret is Oprah’s latest attempt at her own salvation through personal fulfillment. The Secret is the latest power of positive thinking without the charm and rationality of Norman Vincent Peale. The Secret is more than, “If I think it I can be it.” The Secret talks about “the Law of Attraction.,” and says that whatever I want I can and should get. If I want a Cadillac I need only think positively enough about it and the Universe will see that get it. Conversely, if I am surrounded by negative people, bad things will happen to me. If I am surrounded by sick people, I will become sick. Sorry if you are a hospital patient or someone who cares for them. It’s like the saying goes, “I didn’t say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame you.”

GK Chesterton famously said that when people cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing, they believe in everything. They fall for everything.

As religious people, we may not always feel completely sure in our faith. Some days we may envy those rock solid Mormons. We waver. We doubt. Doubt always comes. But doubt and uncertainty can be a gift to us. They remind us that we are not God. We don’t have all the answers. We don’t know it all.

“Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.”
Fred Buechner

So doubt can be good. But doubt can only take me so far. I need faith. And faith comes from somewhere outside my Self.

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing, by the Word of God.”

Faith comes from God. So we not only have faith in God. We have faith because of God. The Spirit of God gives us life and faith. And that provokes a response – either commitment or rejection – but a response nonetheless.

The Apostle Paul tells the Romans that we are in debt, not to the flesh but to the Spirit. What does he mean by this?

He means that we who believe in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ have an obligation to God. The Spirit of God has given us life. The flesh, or our sinful selves, only brings us decay and death. We have no obligation to the sinful nature. It has no claim upon us. We owe it nothing.

You and I have been on a journey in the flesh for a number of years. We have come to believe, many of us, that our sinful selves are our true selves. We believe that our bad conduct, our malicious thoughts and hurtful words, are who we are and all that we are. This simply is not true. Our true identity is known by God and waiting to be revealed to us and in us. The Spirit wants to make war on the flesh in us and vice versa. The Apostle Paul wrote that the two are opposed to each other. But the choice is clear which one we should give our allegiance to.

“If you live according to the sinful nature you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Verse 12-13

That is, there is a kind of life which leads to death, and there is a kind of death which leads to life.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”

And that really is the rub. Do we believe that by the grace of Jesus Christ we are forgiven and are becoming our truer selves? Or do we continue to believe that our sin, and only our sin, defines us? I know that I am a sinner. I know the thoughts and attitudes, the words and behaviors, that have shown the sin in me. You know the same about yourself. And so, knowing our own histories far better than anyone else knows about us, we struggle to believe the Gospel, that we are sinners saved by grace; that we are children of God.

Have you ever struggled with this?

I have good news for you. God wants you to know for sure that you belong to Him. He doesn’t want you to be afraid. The Holy Spirit gives us the assurance we crave.

This past week I ate breakfast with a couple who adopted a baby from Korea about a year ago. Ethan Willis is a beautiful toddler now. He is growing in the obvious love and care his parents give him. Ethan’s mother has blonde hair. Ethan’s dad has no hair. But he used to have dark brown hair. Both of Ethan’s parents are of very fair complexion. Ethan’s skin is brown and his hair is black. At first glance, it’s very obvious that he is adopted. But in the half hour I sat with this family at breakfast I saw beyond superficialities to the reality – this was a family. When Ethan looked at his mom his faced shined for her, and hers for him. Dad was caring and proud. They have an assurance that they belong to each other now.

“You have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry “Abba, Father!” it is the very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Verses 15-16

Here’s a fact that we sometimes overlook – Jesus believed. He believed beyond a doubt that the Father was always with Him. They talked all the time. This doesn’t mean life wasn’t hard sometimes. It doesn’t mean that Jesus faced the disappointment stoically.

He never concealed his tears; he showed them plainly on his open
face at the sight of his native city. Ye he concealed something.
Solemn supermen and imperial diplomats are proud of restraining
Their anger. He never restrained his anger. He flung furniture
Down the front steps of the temple and asked men how they expected
To escape the damnation of hell. Yet he restrained something.
I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread
That must be called shyness. There was something that he hid from all
Men when he went up a mountain to pray. There was something that he
Covered up constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was
Some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked
Upon our earth. . .

Jesus had a Secret too. His secret was Joy. It was the joy of knowing what he knew about God and heaven. His secret was not the Law of Attraction, it was the Law of Love. Jesus was about fit to burst that God loves us so much and will do just about anything to be with us for the rest of eternity.

We may have trouble believing in ourselves or in God, but God never has trouble believing in us. That’s the secret. There’s no doubt about it, really.

2009-06-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

Together In One Place

Johnny Carson was late night television for so many years. And there will never be another like him. So says Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman writes on music, television, and culture for New York Times magazine. The reason Johnny Carson was important was not because he was funny or clever or cool, though he was all of those things. The reason he was important was because he was the last universally shared icon of modern popular culture. Everybody watched Carson. Even if you didn’t own a tv you watched Carson or knew about him. It was a piece of information that all Americans had in common. To care about Johnny Carson, all you had to do was be alive.

That could never happen today. There will never again be “cultural knowledge” that everybody knows, mostly because there is simply too much culture to know about. If you ask somebody, “Did you watch that show the other night.?” Most likely they will say no. Because they were watching something else. I get four thousand channels now on my satellite. Everybody is watching something else. It’s like I used to ask my friend Jim, “Did you ever read such and such. . .” I asked him that question different times until he finally said to me one day, “If the question begins, did you ever read. . .then answer is no.”

Culture no longer unites us the way it once may have. And that may be a sad thing. But there is a bright lining – culture couldn’t really change us much for the good anyway. There is something more powerful that can bind people together into community.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. . .and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2.1-4

The Holy Spirit brings unity. And unity is the better of half of community. The Apostle Paul compares to the church a the human body. When the body is working correctly, it is a beautiful thing to behold. All the parts are in place, functioning the right way. When the body is not united, it is not a pretty picture. When one thing breaks down, other parts suffer. The whole body suffers. The church begins to look like Mr. Potato Head as put together by a two year old.

How does the Holy Spirit bring us together in community?

We all come to the same place for the same purpose. How often can you say that about anything? We live in different places. We work all over the place. We eat, play, and shop at different places on a twenty-four cycle. But on Sabbath day, we all come together in one place to love God. It is so unique and compelling an idea that God shows up just to see for himself.

The Spirit gives us a new identity. I am no longer just a member of my biological family with the last name Morris. I am no longer just a resident of a certain town. I am no longer just the sum total of my bad deeds and good deeds. The Spirit calls me out of darkness into Light. I am a new person. I am baptized. That’s my name. When I get depressed over my failures, the Spirit lifts me up. The story is told of how when Martin Luther was despondent, he would touch his forehead and say, “I have been baptized,” by which he meant, I belong, by God’s grace, to Jesus Christ, and nothing can undo this truth.

The Spirit of Jesus Christ makes us like God who is three in One. God wants us to be one like He is one. If we are one, we will be a great witness to the world. If we are divided, our witness will suffer.

Jesus prayed, “May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe you sent Me.” John 17.21

One of the most compelling stories in sports in the last fifty years is the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team. They were a bunch of college amateurs who went up against the mighty Soviets and beat them. Nobody had given them a chance. The Soviets had just beaten an NHL all star team. The U.S. Olympic team was a bunch of no names. It was such a huge upset that it is now referred to as the Miracle on Ice. That name came in part from the now famous call from broadcaster Al Michael’s who screamed, “DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?”

How did they do it? The movie Miracle tells how coach Herb Brooks coached them into a team. They were guys from all over the country but he wanted them to forget about where they had come from and focus on what they were hoping to achieve. After one lackluster exhibition game, he made the players to a skate around. This is the equivalent of making a football team run laps after already playing a game. It was a defining moment for the team. During the brutal workout, one of the players yelled out, “I play for the United States of America.” With that, Brooks dismissed the players. It was a turning point. The group of individuals became one.

There is no higher allegiance for us than our allegiance to Christ and His Kingdom. So, who do you play for?

The Holy Spirit gives us one vision, one mission.

The Apostle Paul encouraged the church to be “thinking the same way, having the same love, sharing the same feelings, focusing on one goal.” Philippians 2.2

This kind of focus brings incredible unity and community.

Our vision is to make disciples and create community. Again, this really goes back to our baptism. We are not our own. We belong to God. It’s not about me. It’s about what God wants, about what God is doing.

“How can I help?” is a question we should ask. How can I be part of this community where the Spirit is at work?

Are you loving God in worship? Have you joined a small group to grow closer to God and closer to each other? Are you serving in ministry?

2009-06-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

Two Masters, One Servant

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Matt. 6.24

The question is which one are you devoted to, God or money?

The boys had some friends sleep over the other night. One of the guests, who had been to our house before but had never slept over, said to me as I ate my breakfast, “You guys have a lot of stuff.” The only answer to that is, of course, “Yes, we do.”

It may be that you don’t have as much stuff as I do. But I bet you still have a lot. I bet you are fairly well off, by most standards. Houses today are twice as big as in 1950, while family size is 25 percent smaller. It has already been noted, crammed attics and garages have spawned a growth industry that didn’t exist in 1960 – self-storage units. A couple weeks ago I said that this accumulation of stuff and wealth is bound to have a profound effect on our lives. There is power in this and we need to be aware of that power. If you are not consciously aware and proactive in having power over your wealth and stuff, your wealth will have power over you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “We do not ride upon the train, the train rides upon us.”

If we are not wise, instead of managing our wealth, our wealth will manage us.

How do I know if I am in control or the other way around? How do I know if I am truly in love with God or I am truly in love with my money? Andy Stanley poses this question to help, “Would you be more upset to find out there was no God, or that you had no money in any of your accounts?”

Here is another way to examine ourselves:

I see myself as an owner I see myself as a trustee

Place an x somewhere on that line.

A trustee is someone who has been given responsibility for something that doesn’t belong to them. A trustee does not own or even control something, but cares for it, holds it in trust.

Notice I am not saying you must be in poverty. Poverty is not a good thing for anyone. In fact, Jesus says that we should learn a little in how to use “unrighteous money” to serve the righteous ways of God.In Luke’s gospel Jesus tells the story of how a money manager had been accused of mismanaging his master’s funds. To get back in his master’s good graces, the steward quickly settles accounts with some of the master’s debtors on terms that they won’t refuse. So the steward releases people from the debts and gets the master a bunch of money in the process. Everyone likes the steward.

“I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous money, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.” Luke 16.9

This has been a notoriously difficult passage for the Christian church to get a handle on through the ages. But a few things are clear:

Notice in reference to money, not “if” it fails, but “when it fails. . .” Use it for better things than itself. Use it to accomplish good. Use it to make an eternal impact.

John Wesley interpreted this teaching and distilled it into three simple rules:

Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.

The earning part draws us out and keeps us out of poverty. The saving and giving draw us away from selfishness and turn our concern beyond our immediate wants to the needs of others both now and later. We can make impact far beyond what we thought possible. The effect this teaching had upon the largely lower class people of England in Wesley’s day was phenomenal. These people were largely factory workers and farmers. Yet, the people called Methodist began to face a problem that many of them had not faced before, a rising standard of living and how to faithfully follow Jesus with newfound wealth.

Greater faithfulness to the poor and those in need was the answer. They considered themselves stewards and trustees of this bounty rather than private owners.

When the subject of “our money” comes up, we want to know how much is enough to save, how much is enough to give? It’s like other areas of our lives when we are challenged by the word of Jesus, we want to know what is the least common denominator of a faithful response. We want know how much sin we can get away with, how much weakness will a forgiving Savior tolerate?

The question isn’t, “How much sin am I allowed? The question is “Am I moving toward the darkness or toward the light? Am I growing toward God, or away from him? Am I becoming more sensitive and responsive to Jesus?

“He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” Luke 16.10

God meets us where we are. Frank Laubach preached the gospel to a tribe that had a long history of violence. The chief was so moved by Laubach’s preaching that he accepted Christ on the spot. He then turned to Laubach in gratitude and said, “This is wonderful. Who do you want me to kill for you?”

That was his starting point. What is your starting point when it comes to being faithful with your wealth and income? Are you ready to move with Jesus?

The Lord is not looking for a dramatic gesture of sacrifice, as in, “Here Lord, here is a big check for you!” No, the Lord is looking for obedience and faithful steps.

“To obey is better than sacrifice.”

Jesus makes it clear that he is the one doing most of the work. “Consider the lilies. . .” I take care of them, won’t I, don’t you think I, will take care of you? You gotta love the sincerity of the question!

Bill Hybels preached a series at his church called, “Enough.” After one of the sermons, he challenged members of the congregation to raise their hands if they were willing to surrender their possessions and lifestyles fully to God and actually decide to use their resources to serve the poor and honor God. There was a time for public declaration of intent. Then Bill said he wanted to have a word with all the folks who did not raise their hands. And this is what he said:

“I hope you have a terrible afternoon. And then I hope you have a terrible evening. I hope the Holy Spirit keeps after you, and you have to keep thinking this one through, until you’re able to raise your hand as well.”

Friends, when I am less than faithful to God, God gives me a troubled conscience. That’s the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in me. The Spirit creates a holy discontent until I do the right thing. Friends, my wish for you is faithfulness and a clear conscience, but in the absence of faithfulness, I wish you a troubled conscience. I wish you the gift of holy discontent. I wish us all a terrible day and week, until we obey the Lord.

2009-06-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

Giving

Do you see yourself in one of these people? Are you the girl who finds reasons not to give based on how well the church seems to be doing? Are you the guy who congratulates himself over and over on how much he gives and what a humble tool he is?
Are you the girl who is motivated by guilt to give based on past failures? Are you the guy who wants to give out of gratefulness to God?

Our cultural gives us definite messages on giving:

Give if it benefits you
Give if there is anything left over
Give out of a sense of duty

The Scriptures give us a decidedly different picture of giving. But before we get to that, I want to mention some results from our survey last week.

Our survey revealed some interesting insights. Most of you understood tithing to mean “a planned and consistent commitment.” That’s good. Although a few of you also added “depending on my finances” or “depending on the need of the church”, which is contradictory. But maybe you were just being honest there.

Many of you have heard good and consistent teaching on tithing and giving. But many of you indicated that you had not heard much teaching on this. So it’s important for all of us that we know what the Word of God has to say on this matter.

The word and practice of “tithing” comes from the Old Testament, involving two persons of legendary status, Abraham, father of nations, and the mysterious priest named Melchizedek. Melchizedek is called priest of the Most High God.

“See how great he is! Abraham the patriarch gave him a tithe of the spoils.” Hebrews 7.4

Abraham, we are told, was a wealthy man. He regarded as a noble and prince among different nations. A tenth of his wealth was quite a gift. Tithing starts with Abraham and Melchizedek but is seen in connection with the fact that God has made us stewards of the Creation. Everything we have belongs to God.

David reflected this belief and also the practice of a tithe when he seeks to honor God by buying a threshing floor to build an altar to God. The man from whom he is buying offers to give it to King David for free. But listen to David’s response:

“No, I will buy it of you for a price; I will not offer to God that which has cost me nothing.” 2 Samuel 24.24

Tithing becomes a consistent practice among God’s people. In a largely agricultural society it was understood that people of faith tithed what the land produced. You tithed all the resources God gave you. Tithing practices became so detailed among the Pharisees that Jesus criticized their practices because they used them to ignore justice and love for God.

Sometimes people want to claim that tithing was only an Old Testament thing. But Jesus tells the Pharisees you ought to tithe and do these other things.

One the comments on our surveys was, “God doesn’t want more money.” Well, that’s true in a fashion. God doesn’t need our money. But when I hear that comment I think sometimes it’s used as an excuse to let us off the hook for lack of faithfulness. I’m not saying that’s what this person is doing. But I am saying that God clearly instructs his people to give and give with purpose, sacrifice, and consistency.

In the New Testament Church tithing was clearly practiced, but it was seen as a minimal step of faithfulness to God. How can I say that?

“And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.” Acts 2.44-45

The followers of Jesus were bringing it all to God. Did God need it? No, but the church did. Because the church was ministering and making disciples.

It was understood that not everybody would give the same amounts, but everyone would give faithfully. And faithfulness is understood as planned and consistent offering to God.

St. Paul writes to the church at Corinth, “For if the readiness (to give) is there, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he has not.” Chapter 8.12

He continues, ‘Arrange in advance for this gift you have promised, so that it may be ready not as an exaction but as a willing gift. . . Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.” 9.5-8

Did you catch that last part? God is able to provide us, so that we may provide an abundance for every good work.”

We are doing some great work at Hicks. We are living into a vision of

Making Disciples, Creating Community

When we see new babies and new adults baptized in Christ, we know that vision is moving here. When we see new people step into worship, fellowship, and service, we know that community is being created.

We offer help in thousands of dollars to families in our own fellowship who are in need. We help many more people in need in our community. We fund multiple ministries locally and globally. We tithe our budget every year so that we are always giving at least ten percent to needy ministries. We have a budget of over $260,000.

We are doing a lot. But we are lagging in faithfulness in our giving. Over sixty percent of us gave less than $1,000 last year to the church. Now, less than a thousand may still represent a faithful tithe for some; but not for many of us. We can look at the numbers any way you want and it tells the same story. Most of us are not approaching a tithe.

Many of you requested more awareness and information about our church needs and finances. We’re going to do that for you. But I want remind you that our first and best step is always to look at our giving from the biblical tithe perspective and only secondarily according to the budget and needs and so on.

There was a minority view expressed in the survey that we talk about money too much. Those who expressed that also tended to underestimate the amount of weekly giving we needed to fulfill the ministry of the church. (It’s at least $5,000 per week) If we talk about money too much, then apparently the right information is not getting through. Jesus talked about money a lot more than we do. That should tell us something about faithfulness.

“There is no such thing as being right with God and being wrong with money.” Ben Patterson

God wants us to know that giving will free us. Giving will make our lives a blessing. I’ve never talked to a person who tithes without hearing how God seems to always provide for their needs, even when its scary to give.

God shows up when we are scared, if we want him to. Let’s pray.

2009-05-05T07:18:00.001-07:00

Spending and Debt

We all know better than this. We know that you buy only what you can afford to buy. You spend only what you can afford to spend. We know this. But we try to fudge it. We think we can cut corners and we succumb to the values of the culture. We ignore the right thing to do.

In our Freed Up Financial Living Seminar we heard that the average household in the U.S. has $10,000 in debt. We have gone from being a nation of savers to a nation of consumers in just a generation or two. We do it because “it makes us feel good, right?”

We have bought into several myths that have emerged in this culture:

1. Debt is expected and unavoidable.
2. Things equal happiness
3. A little ( or a lot) more money will solve all my problems

What we have to ask ourselves is are these myths true? I think we can probably see from our own experiences that maybe they are not. But let’s look at some wisdom from the scriptures.

“The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth with gain. This also is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 5.10

So look at Myth #3, “a little more money. . .” Ecclesiastes says otherwise. Money can’t satisfy. It just can’t. It is a vain proposal. And those who pursue it, pursue it in vain.

Continuing in Ecclesiastes, verse 11 “When goods increase, those who eat them increase;” This is pretty straightforward. Oprah has been telling us this for years. The more we eat the bigger we get. But I think there’s more to this verse. We get bigger in other ways. We get proud, “puffed up.” Our lives become self-important and self-centered; even grandiose. But happiness eludes.

“And what gain has their owner but to see them with his eyes?”

This is the way of boats, and luxury cars and stuffed attics and garages. The only pleasure we get out of them most of the time is the looking. And then there comes a time when we stop doing even that.

“Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep.” Verse 12

The Church in America tends to teach that our attitude toward our wealth is the problem. The Bible tends to teach that wealth itself is the problem. “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom,” Jesus once said. The problem is the surfeit. It demands our attention. It demands that we look at it, think about it, manage it.

How many of us who have been in debt have thought, “If I could just pay my bills and get out of debt, how sweet would that be?” It would be paradise in comparison to the worry we have now. Now, we stay up nights thinking about money.

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says this, “Do not store up. . .”

We have ignored this teaching coming and going. We have stored up possessions and we have stored up debt. We’ve got two piles going. We’ve killed two birds with one stone. We’re killing ourselves.

Jesus says don’t store up because the things you are storing won’t last and even if they did, you are leading your heart in the wrong direction. Your heart follows the treasure. If your treasure is stuff, that’s where your heart resides. And it won’t reside in other places. If you pile up debt then your heart has to worry and linger over that pile. It’s distracted. It can’t go other places that maybe it’s supposed to go.

What if you didn’t have these piles in your life? What if you didn’t “store up”?

You would be free to make God and people your treasure. You would be free to be the blessing God created you to be. A freed-up life is possible. Living with piles is not normal. It’s not God’s way.

Psychiatrist Scott Peck author of the classic Road Less Traveled defines maturity as the ability to delay gratification.

“Delaying gratification is the process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live,” Peck writes.

When we delay gratification and meet “the pain” we say to God that we trust Him. We trust that he will care for us. We don’t have to pile up our private treasures because God’s world is a world of abundance.

We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He will supply our needs.

If you want to take a faithful step today I would suggest these things:

1. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need
2. Don’t buy stuff on credit
3. Enjoy the simple gifts God gives you: daily bread, meaningful work, loving people