Fruit of the Spirit

Initial thoughts about the sermon for Sunday 7.28. Wanting to share and get other folks thought and input.

Quotes from Practicing Resurrection by Eugene Peterson--from the chapter on the Armor of God

When the tactics of fear are used in Christian communities to motivate a life of trust in God and love of neighbor, habits of maturity never have a chance to develop (p. 252)

When the church reduces its preaching and teaching to punchy slogans and cliches, it abandones the richly nuanced intricacies that bring all parts of lives into a supple and grace-filled wholeness (p. 252)

The practice of resurrection is thoroughly pacifist, but never passive (p. 263)

"Let us take the devil by the rear, and surprise him with a dose of those gentler virtues that will be poison to him, At least when the world is in extremities, the doctrine of love becomes the ultimate measure of our conduct."--Herbert Butterfield (p. 265)

Behold your son!

A little over ten years ago, my father, his significant other, and I went to Mission San Juan Capistrano. It was the week that my sister was getting married. And while the bride and the mother of the bride were running around doing their thing, the three of us went to look at a little piece of history in Southern Orange County California. Besides, it is about 15 minutes from the area my sister lives in, so we could have run back to help with anything if we were needed. (We were not).

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Visiting Mission San Juan Capistrano was an interesting visit for us because it combined my father’s personal and professional interests with my own personal and professional interests.
My father had several starts and stops in his career before he retired. He served in military doing intelligence work on college campuses in the late 60s. He then moved into being an investigator for the State of Oregon. A few months before I was born my mother inherited a house in her hometown, and my father did not want to be an office worker. So they moved to Roseburg, Oregon where he worked as a carpenter when my sister and I were young.

A while after my parents divorced my father became a rafting and fishing guide on the Rogue River in Oregon. He did this for a number of years. During the off-season, he found a niche as a golf-course groundskeeper. Eventually, he found a way to make grounds keeping and landscaping into a career. Dad had always been interested in plants and flowers and growing things, so when he fell into the grounds keeping career for the last 20 years of his working years it was a perfect fit.

And Mission San Juan Capistrano is a wonder of plants, flowers, and gardens to walk through. So he loved it there. He was able to admire the different kinds of flowers and plants, including many plants and flowers that do not grow in Oregon’s cooler and more moist climate. It was fun for me because he was able to explain a lot about flowers and growing things and I was able to learn more about him.

It was nice for me because it was, for most of its history, a ministry center for the Catholic Church as well. And the history and development of ministry in a specific place is something that fascinates me. The Mission is full of history. It was a Franciscan Mission, and my one of my all time faith heroes is St. Francis. It had the oldest building still in use in California, which was an old chapel. My dad is interested in history, but not as schooled in religious history and the development of the church. So as things peeked my interest, he got to learn a little from me and about me in that moment too.

I think we all long to connect and reconnect with family. Especially those most closely related to us. We long to have their attention, their approval, their acceptance, and their heart. It is not always easy to find ways to stay close to family. Often family hurts us. They irritate us. They break our heart. Or we get along with family fairly well, but we don’t have family nearby. Maybe we have moved here from somewhere, or our children and grandchildren have moved far away.

Some of us don’t have the challenge of geography or drama to keep us from being connected to family. That is because some of us are related to half of the Arkansas Valley and are surrounded by family and love it. A couple of weeks ago I was talking with Lacy and Brandon McCuistion of how they are related to different people in the community. There were so many relations I lost track. I have also visited with Annette and Clair Lundy. Clair described a story about where she was dating a boy in high school, and the young man’s cousin walked in. He introduced this new young man as his cousin. Turned out It was Clair’s cousin too. Due to the marrying of different people to other folks, they were not related. Still, a surreal experience for Clair and a telling story of just how much family Clair had in this community.

Near or far, there is something deep inside us that longs for the comfort that a family kind of connection can bring. And, although this may be controversial, I think that each of us needs a deeper family connection than any family of marriage and a shared gene pool can provide. But to illustrate this I need to go back to the story I was telling.

Anyway, so I am with my family. One of the last places we visited was the gift shop. It was a Catholic gift shop, so I figured not much would hold my interest. I was wrong. One crucifix captured my attention. The crucifix has Jesus with one hand nailed to the cross, and his feet nailed to the cross, but one hand is free. And in that hand is a dove he is releasing into the world.
It is a powerful little statuette, because it speaks to several truths about what happened when Jesus was on the cross. One of the things that is teaches us about is something that happened when Jesus spoke that third word as he was dying. When Jesus said “Mother, behold your Son.” And “Son, behold your mother.” he was creating a new family. An eternal family that is more important than one’s family of birth. That family has a unique name. It is called the church.
The Theological Focus of the third word from the cross is encapsulated in one small five letter word. That word, again, is CHURCH.

So let us examine and meditate on these short verses just a little bit more. And let us see what we can learn about the church. Specifically the church we see being formed by Jesus as he dies.

I. The birthday of the church is on GOOD FRIDAY not Pentecost.

While the body of Christ is being crucified on the cross, the body of Christ is being created by Christ through his words to the Apostle John and Mary the mother of Jesus on the cross. When Jesus says for Mary and John to become family together, he is calling into a being a reality that has not existed before. He is speaking the church—called the Body of Christ--into existence.
Without these words, it would be easy to assume that God’s work on the cross was all about each person’s individual salvation, and that was it. With the words, “Woman behold your son,” and “Behold Your Mother”, we hear that the cross also is given to form a community. Jesus’ blood was shed to give birth to the church.
Theologian Fleming Rutledge puts it this way, “The saying is not about being nice to your mother. It is about the new community that comes into being through the power of Jesus.” The first two words speak to what God’s work on the cross means to me and you. This word teaches us that the cross is not just about me and you, but us together. When we hear these words from the cross, we realize that Christ did not come only to save and redeem us as individuals. This moment at the cross teaches us that Christ came to save and redeem a church.

Like that crucifix demonstrates, even as Jesus is crying out in agony from the cross, barely able to breathe, in more pain than most of us could bear, even then he reaches out to form a new family. The family of God.


Which brings me to point #2

II. The church is A FAMILY.

It is no accident that Jesus tells John and Mary that they are each other’s mother and brother. Jesus creates the church to be a spiritual family. The church is a family that takes higher precedence than our biological family. This is clear throughout the gospels.

At one point, Jesus comments become controversial, and his family comes to give him a break from his ministry. People come to Jesus and say his family is at the door and wanting to speak to him. Jesus says, “Who are my mother and brothers and sisters? Those who do the will of my father are my mother and brothers and sisters.” And he refuses to go see what his family wants. That is found in Mark 3.

Another time, when someone needs to go home to deal with funeral arrangements of their deceased relative Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead…follow me.” This is found in Matthew 8.

Jesus said, “I have come to turn father against son. Mother against daughter.” He said this in Matthew 10.

The church brings together people of different races, backgrounds, and biological families, and makes them one family through the blood of Christ. Galatians 3:28 says, “There is no male or female, Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Hebrews 2 says Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. Romans 8 says that Jesus is firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

When we pass away, Scripture says that people will not be married or given in marriage. We are not going to have separate families. On the other side of eternity, we are going to be one family with God as Father. Through the church, God is trying to bring this reality into how we live and breathe and practice our faith among one another. We are family brothers and sisters. We are family.

We need a family that is bigger than just our biological family. We need that family to have a culture where we can learn from each other, support each other, love each other, grow with each other. Where we can be even more of a family that our biological family can provide, because our forever family shares everything that we hold most dear.

Furthermore, the family of God unites those that would otherwise fight against one another and exclude one another. One of the things that solidified my commitment to becoming an American Baptist was going to the seminarian’s conference. One of things our denomination does to train and build up our ministers is to have them go to Greek Lake Conference Center in Wisconsin for a long weekend with every other person in the middle of their studies for the ministry. As you are there, you discover not everyone in American Baptist churches look like you. If you are Caucasian, you make up somewhere around 45 percent of American Baptist Churches and ABC seminary students. About 25 percent of the students are African Americans. Another 15-20 percent are Hispanic. The rest are Asian or Native American. You get to fellowship with one another. Worship with one another. About half the students are women. We hear one another’s struggles and joys. Learn one another’s songs. And you hold hands and sing Amazing Grace in four different languages. You support one another in pursuing our calls to ministry. And you have an experience of the family of God that is much bigger than you have experienced before. And you see and hear that the family of God transcends all sorts of barriers that we might assume it has. And you know that you have this deep sense of family within the church that transcends geography, race, language, and gender. This spiritual sense of a global family we call church.

In the early church this sense of family was very important. If one was to trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior, one was often shunned by their families. If you were to accept Christ, your church had to be your family support. Your earthly family was not going to talk to you any more. This shunning thing happens today with strict Mormons, Muslims, and many other religious groups.

In the early church this sense of partnership in the family of God was very important as well. Sometimes a person was a slave, but also a deacon in spiritual authority over his master. Sometimes a person of Roman, African, Greek, and Jewish heritage worshipped in the same church, and called one another brother and sister.

Today, as families spread out geographically, and as families fall apart for a variety of reasons, people are more and more lonely. And they are seeking families. Families that choose to be families of healing instead of abuse. Families that offer us the opportunity to grow and change. Family that loves us when we feel unlovable. Family that helps us find our way home when we feel lost. Family that loves us. Family that leads us to our heavenly Father that created us and loves us more than we could ever know.

Many people who are on the cutting edge of evangelism say that people need to “belong to believe”. This means that even before people can trust Jesus as savior, they need to see the Holy Spirit at work in a healthy church family.

I don’t know when we stopped calling each other brother and sister in the church. We certainly did this when I was growing up. Brother Paul had the bass voice in the back of the church. Brother Kent led the music. Brother Mark was our pastor. Sister Eileen led our Sunday School. I don’t know when we stopped talking like that…but I miss it. Because it reflects the reality that Jesus was creating a FAMILY called the church when he went to the cross. And we need to live in that reality, not just SUNDAY, but EVERYDAY.

The blood that unites us is not the blood that holds the code of our DNA if we are believer, but rather our appropriation of the blood that flows from the cross to form a family of the Spirit.

III. The church family is modeled after the example of love we see on the cross.

The kind of church that Jesus wants to create from the cross is the kind of church that models its love out of the love it sees on the cross. Love like Philippians 2 describes when it says:

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature[a]
God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own
advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature[b]
of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a
man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

The kind of example of love we see on the cross is sacrificial love. It puts others in the family above themselves. It thinks about the needs of the people in the pew in front of them and the pew behind them when it comes time to make a difficult decision in the church. It sees a brother and sister in need, and finds a creative way to help them out of their difficult circumstance…even at significant cost to themselves. It is the kind of love that asks “what do we need to do to reach others”, before it asks “what am I comfortable with”. It is the kind of love that finds ways to encourage folks with a little card or a note through the week just to show they care.

The example of love we see on the cross is painful love. It loves to the point where it actually hurts a little. It is vulnerable enough that it often faces rejection. It is sensitive enough that it cries with the hurting instead of judging those in distress. It is the kind of love that has sleepless nights praying for someone in distress. It is the kind of love that leaves many of us needing a week to recover after a Backyard Mission Project. It is a wonderful beautiful, painful, sacrificial kind of love—this love we find Jesus calling the church to live out on the cross.

It is the kind of love, this cross-like love, that people have died for. That others have been so desperate to share that they have followed God’s call to gang-infested urban neighborhoods, and tribal villages across the world.

It is the kind of love that we need to learn to practice right here, in our little place. In this small part of God’s family. With heart. With passion. Remembering that he died, me and you, and for us—and He has given us a call to live for him. Together. In the family he died to create from the cross. Amen.

One Heart and One Mind

Scripture: Acts 4:31ff

In 1894 a famous French tightrope walker came to the border of the United States and Canada, to a place called Niagara Falls. A tightrope was set up over the falls between the United States side and the Canadian side of the falls. Blondin got up on his tightrope, and he walked from the Canadian side to the American side of the falls. The crowd began to shout, “Blondin! Blondin! Blondin!”

The tightrope walker shouted, “I am Blondin! Do you believe in me.”

The crowd began to shout from varied quarters of the large crowd, “We believe! We believe! We believe!”

Then Blondin asked, “Do you believe I can walk across this tightrope with someone on my shoulders?”

Again the crowd shouted, “We believe! We believe!”

After that Blondin said, “Who would like to be that individual?”

There was dead silence. Finally one man walked up and got on Blondin’s shoulders. They walked back across the tightrope to the Canadian side of the falls. To be fair, the man who stepped up was his business manager.

However, the point is really the same. A lot of people will shout that they believe from the middle of the crowd. Very people will take the step to exercise their belief if it appears like it might cost them anything.

When we left off with the early church last week they were praying. They had been warned by the powers that be that they should not preach about Jesus. Thus, the early church knew that if they were going to be faithful to what they believed they were going to encounter further persecution from religious authorities. They were praying for boldness to witness, and courage to carry out the tasks that God had set before them. As they prayed the room shook.

The Bible says that this experience of prayer led to the result of the church being bold in their witness. It also says that the believers were “filled with the Spirit”. It was this filling of the Spirit that allowed them to be bold in their witness. It was also this filling of the Spirit that allowed them to be the kind of church we read about in these later passages today.

The Bible says that the church was of one heart and one soul. This is something that Luke says more than once in the book of Acts about the church. It means something very significant. You see when we talk about heart what we usually are talking about is someone’s emotional health or investment. But in the Bible when someone talks about heart they are talking about their personal will. So when the Bible talks about the people being of “one heart and accord”, it is talking about people sharing a common goal, having a common desire, being committed to a common vision.

John Wesley put it this way, “Their hearts, their loves, their passions, were joined.”

The next thing that the Bible says is that the believers shared everything in common. Hmmm. Interesting. What does that mean?

The next verses how this “sharing things in common” worked out. The Bible says that nobody really lacked for anything. When there was a need for money, someone in the church that had land or something to sell would go and sell it. The Bible says that they would lay their gifts at the apostle’s feet. This is a way of saying that they would give the money to the leadership in the church, and those in leadership in the church would distribute the gifts as they saw fit.

Why would they do this? What was the point of sharing things in common, of selling one’s belongings and sharing it with the church? Is it the model of how we should live together today?

The answer to that question is….well….yes….but perhaps not in the way that you think. People shared everything in common because they believed in the mission that was before them. They were not like the spectators that rooted on Blondin, the ones that were more than willing to say what they believe, but were unwilling to act upon what they believe. These believers were passionate about the mission of sharing the good news with people, and loving people in Jesus name. And we know this because they didn’t just pray about the mission that God gave them, they didn’t just talk about caring for one another, they put that belief in action. And they did it by making sure everyone was taken care of, and nobody who was choosing to accept Christ was going broke because of it. The people of God loved God. They loved each other. They believed in their call to reach out to others. And they put their money where their mouth is. The Bible says as a result of their generous spirit the gospel message went out with “great power” and the “grace of God was upon all”.

Perhaps a way to explain what was happening in the church is is by looking at a smaller scale example from the business world. Federal Express is now a multi-national multi-billion dollar corporation. It was not always that way. At one time, Federal Express was a small, struggling company barely able to pay the bills. And people wondered if it was going to make it. But the people who worked for Fred Smith believed in what was happening. So, at times drivers filled up the delivery trucks with their own credit card on the way home, and sometimes people worked extra hours they didn’t get paid for. People gave to what they have a passion for. And the company grew and thrived, in part because these people who began Fed Ex agreed with the vision and the dream of what Fed Ex was about.

The fact that the early church cared for those that were poor among them was essential to who they were. The Bible says that people will know that we are Christians by the way that we love one another. In the Old Testament law, the Bible says that God’s will for his people was that there would be nobody that would be in need among them. Jesus said in his mission statement that he has come to bring good news to the poor and to set the captives free.

But when we look at this passage we see that the church’s generosity was a result of the church being of one heart and one mind. In other words, the church’s unity was built on their shared vision and their shared passion for loving the Lord with all their heart, loving their neighbor as themselves, and preaching the gospel to the whole world.

As a pastor, it is easy to tell when a church is in decline. As a person being who has been interviewed by several churches, one of the questions I often ask a search committee is what their passion is as a church. A church that is decline will often talk about the church’s ability to care for one another. Church fellowship and caring for one another is a noble thing, but is designed to be a byproduct of a healthy church, not a goal of it.

This is because unity in a church, and fellowship in a church is a byproduct of being a church that shares common goals and a common vision to make a difference in the world as a congregation.

Fellowship isn’t about everyone all getting along. It is about everyone being on the same side of the battle. In the struggle together. Standing together. Supporting each other as we move forward together. It is when we have that bond that we are eager to give, eager to share, eager to make sacrifices, because we are working toward a vision, a goal, a dream if you will that is bigger than any one of us.

Community life is never an end in itself. A vibrant community is a community in mission.

Look at the word fellowship. The word fellowship, at its root, is not about having yummy potlucks and cozy teas with one another. Fellowship is about being “fellows” if you will. It is about being partners in a world changing vision that we will give about anything to make happen.

When I was a youth pastor in Montana years ago, the church had a building project. In order to save money, many of the men in the church did a lot of finish work on the buildings in the evenings and on the weekends. They would crawl down into the basement and frame in rooms, hang sheet rock, install toilets and doors, and more. As they worked together for weeks, they began to bond with one another. They began to look after one another, and to care for each other in a way they had not before. They confronted each other about drinking too much. They helped one another through marital issues. All because they were building a bunch of classrooms that were going to reach children for Jesus. They shared a mission. They worked together. And as a result they began to sacrifice for one another, care for one another, support one another. Fellowship is a byproduct of shared vision and shared mission. Not a goal in and of itself.

The same is true at times during our Backyard Mission Project. What touched my heart this year was not as much the projects we did as how the work we did together seemed to bring people together in unique ways. It was hard to get people out of the church Saturday night, and not everyone visiting were people who usually talked with one another. The same thing happened on Sunday morning. As people served, there was a joy in working together. It was neat.

Another thing that was neat was that some resources that we received this year came from places that we did not expect. Some people, excited about the fact that people were caring for one another, and working hard to love their neighbors, made contributions to the Backyard Mission Project that were unsolicited.

When self-care or “in-reach” becomes the primary goal of a congregation, that is when that congregation begins to struggle. When our goal becomes all about making everybody happy and everybody feel good, when community becomes an end itself, community implodes. Everybody haggles for what they want to make them happy. The church becomes more about traditions than the true gospel. And it is not long before we are arguing about petty things, because we begin to think the church is about us, what we want, instead of what our mission is.

When a church finds meaningful vital ways of fulfilling its mission, the opposite happens. Everyone may not get what they want, but more and more you find the congregation being of one mind and one soul because they are living the vision that God has set before them. As we work together, we see and recognize needs and concerns among the brothers and sisters in Christ that we work with. Instead of focusing on what we can get from church, we focus on what we can give of ourselves to the cause.

In the coming months, we are going to have discussions about things that we are going to do in an attempt to better define and fulfill the vision God has given us. Some of them are going to be uncomfortable. It is vital that you speak your mind and share your concerns. It is also vital that we get outside of ourselves and what we want, or what we feel comfortable with. Instead ask if this will contribute to the mission that God has for this church to reach others in the name of Jesus. And if we agree that it will, then we need to give ourselves to that vision, and beg God for his blessing.

Like Blondin, Jesus is crying out, do you believe, do you believe I can do this? And many of us cry out, “We believe!” “We believe” “We believe”. The question is, will you have the courage to jump on his shoulders when he invites into his mission in the world. I hope you will. Amen.

Final Sermon at FBC Colorado Springs: Be A Reciever

Will you be my
Will you be my
Will you be my
Will you be….my neighbor?

Generations of us were raised hearing those words sung by the Presbyterian minister who loved children. He wore a sweater vest nearly every day. He spoke in hushed tones to us as he changed his shoes. Then he went on to follow model trains through his house, talk to puppets, and visit with the mailman. Mr. Rogers was a calming influence who taught children about tolerance and never got angry or frustrated. My mother-in-law thought he was child molester like and creepy, and refused to let Jennifer watch him. However, many of us watched him with children and grandchildren, and have good feelings about the things he taught, the characters he introduced us to, and the authenticity he had in real life with the character on television. Mr. Rogers was a good man.

I liked Mr. Rogers.

I like Jesus more.

When we read this passage about Jesus with the children our first instinct is to think Jesus is a lot like Mr. Rogers. He is sitting on a little stump in an olive grove somewhere, with a sweater-vest over his flowing white robe. He wants the children to sit around him, and he wants to speak to them in hushed tones about how it will be good for them to be kind to one another and do what their synagogue teachers told them. He gets out his flannel graph and tells them some age appropriate story from the Old Testament, and then prays for each of them and sends them on their way. As they leave he sprinkles glitter in all of their hair. The children’s lives are never the same again.

This image may be a good image. It may even be the image of a faithful disciple of Jesus. It is not, however, the picture of Jesus that we have in this passage. Jesus is much more angry, forceful, and driven to teach people a point about the kingdom.

He wasn’t a member of the sweater vest crowd speaking in hushed tones hoping people would listen.

He was directly asserting the gospel is not a managed and controlled program. No matter how much we try to force it to be just that. The gospel is Christ’s gospel, not ours. We come to him on his terms.

The last month I have been teaching the CHOW Bible Study group how to do word study, and identify important words in a text of Scripture. It has been fun. We have learned a lot. The key to this passage is a few key words.

In this passage, there is a very important word that shows up to describe Jesus’ emotions. That word is “indignant”.

The Bible says that as Jesus was INDIGNANT. That is pretty strong language. It certainly is not Mr. Roger’s behavior.

Why was Jesus indignant?

The Scripture says that Jesus was indignant because little children were being brought to him so that he could place his hands on them and bless them, and the disciples were rebuking people for making this imposition on Jesus.

The disciples thought that Jesus had more important things to do. They thought he had a more important agenda to pay attention to.

The disciples were missing the point.

The disciples believe that the kingdom of God is theirs for the taking. They believe that if they manage things right and control things right, if they get things figured out right, if they find the right system, if they play their politics just right, then they will be able to claim a position of power in the Christian movement.

If we look at the context of this conflict, we can see this back and forth goes on for chapters. In chapters 8, 9, and 10 Jesus predicts his rejection and death 3 times. Jesus tells the disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod. In other words, after feeding the five thousand don’t get puffed up with ideas of power and popularity. They don’t get it. They can’t control it.
He tells people not to tell others about who he is and what he has done. Following Jesus is not about riding his coattails to success.

A man says, I believe, but lord help my unbelief. He comes to Jesus needy and incomplete. He receives health for his son. He receives it.

The disciples get angry that other people are casting out miracles and doing wonders on Jesus’ behalf. They think they are losing. Jesus is happy, and says that whoever does these things are on the same team. People are receiving the grace of the kingdom. The kingdom is winning.
Eventually we come to Jesus with the children. The disciples are still trying to manage and control Jesus’ agenda for their benefit.

Jesus will have none of this pettiness. He is indignant. He lets the disciples know. Looks a little more messy and feisty than a Mister Roger’s show.

He is indignant because of the other key word that shows up in the passage. RECEIVE.

The kingdom of God isn’t something we take. It is something we receive.

The grace of God isn’t something we attain to. It is something we receive as a gift.
The power of God isn’t something we control through doing or saying the right thing. It isn’t something we earn or are entitled to. It is something we receive as needy people open to have whenever and however God wants to give it to us.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I want to share with you how this receiving has worked in our lives lately.

One of the reasons that Jen and I trust that God is calling us to Fowler is because it is not a ladder climbing move. It does not pay more. It is not a position with higher status. The total church budget is about 1/6 of First Baptist Colorado Springs. You open up guides for travelers to Colorado Springs, and it does not even show up on the map! Right now we are living in a parsonage where the shower does not even work yet, and the computer in the pastor’s study is over 10 years old.

That is not to say we did not try to push our agenda, and make a call of God what we wanted it to be. I interviewed at churches closer to Jennifer ‘s family and my own. We interviewed with churches that had more attendees , larger budgets, and better salaries and more status. Sometimes the door slammed shut on their end. Sometimes we had a deep, mystical sense that God was not leading us in that direction.

When we visited with the folks down in Fowler, we both had a sense that this was where God was leading us. We asked for God to give us open doors, and to point the way. In situation after situation, before and after we accepted the call to go there, we have received confirmation after confirmation that God has led us to Fowler.

God’s call to a new ministry in Fowler was something we received by grace, not something we controlled (in spite of my best efforts), or something we claimed by force.

Receiving is hard. We want to be strong. We want to be in control. We want to earn what we have. We want solutions and answers.

Jesus says to receive like little children.

When Jesus says this, he is not adopting our modern sensibility that children are innocent. Any one who has raised children knows that they are adorable, at times sweet, but far from innocent.
What Jesus is saying is that we need to come to him with nothing in our hands, nothing to claim, no negotiations to make, and simply receive the blessing that he is offering.

The other day, in the last word study we did with our CHOW group, we looked at the actions of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. One thing that really stuck out to each of us was the the discussion of the action of the Holy Spirit filling people. Filling, we discussed, is a receiving kind of action. And it seemed that the people who were most receptive were filled up. Once they were able to receive to the point of being full, then their filling resulted in ministries of grace and renewal around them.

So often we think God wants us to do stuff for him. Run errands for him. Attend meetings for him. Lead church activities for him. We think that our busyness and our activity level makes God happy. We think that we are good because we give more than we have to, or because we make a really special effort as forgiving someone who hurts us. We may not think that God grades on a curve, or that he demands that we get everything right. But we do think that God has a report card like I did in elementary school and middle school, where there was a grade for achievement and a grade for effort. And that God is really assessing us by our effort grade, so we must look very busy and try really, really extra hard.

What if we stopped trying so hard and just started to honestly receive from God? What would that look like?

What if instead of trying to control all of our life circumstances, we received the situations we are in and used them as opportunities to seek and discover God’s grace? What might God be trying to teach us that we are missing?

What if instead of trying to cover up and fix our mistakes we acknowledged them, and were conscious about completely receiving grace and forgiveness? Maybe forgiving those who hurt us might be a little bit easier.

What if we looked at what we do in service of the church as an opportunity to be received as well? What might God have to teach us as we prepare lessons? How might God grow us as we work with people we have never gotten to know?

What if instead of coming to worship to see what we can “get out of it”, we came to worship receptive to whatever God may be doing, even if God is not necessarily doing it specifically for us?

What if instead of thinking we have to earn God’s salvation and approval, we soaked in the fact that he wants to love us, grow us, mold us, and shape us. And that what he wants from us is to be receptive to him as he lays his hands upon us and begins to mold us and make us anew?
First Baptist Church, this will be the last Sunday that I get to share with you as one of your pastors. As I go, this is my prayer for you:


My prayer for you is that you will be receivers.
My prayer for you is that you will drop any hopes you have of earning God’s approval.
My prayer is that you will set aside any guilt or shame or sense of obligation you have with your faith.
My prayer is that you will come to Jesus like little children
That have no wealth
That have no achievements.
That have no power.
That have no control over much of anything in their lives.
My prayer is that you will be brought to Jesus.
And you will allow him to set his hands on your shoulders
And let him look in to your eyes
And that you will let him bless you
That you will receive that blessing from Jesus you need
That blessing of approval.
That blessing of acceptance.
That blessing of hope.
That blessing of empathy.
And that when you receive from Jesus,
This hope
This grace
This love
Then you will experience
This compassion
This love
This power
This flood of God-life in you
That will not simply fill you up
Like you have never been filled before
But that will overflow from you
To one another
And this church will be so full
From being open enough
To receive from God
That this God-life we received from Jesus
Will overflow
In a stream of grace
Into a thirst world around
You.
This is what I pray for you.
That today
At this table
And each day as we are parted
That you will receive
New hope
New truth
New Grace
And
New Life
From the God
Who is the same
Yesterday
Today
And Tommrrow
And the God
Who is always
Flowing out
And flooding forward
In an unpredictable
Torrent of
Amazing love.

Out of the Darkness--Light

My work life has been a little chaotic lately, and thankfully this time it doesn't center around me. Although it does present challenges to everyone in our church.

The first Sunday in November (which coincidentally was both the week after our church planning meeting and the week of the fiasco at New Life Church with Ted Haggard), a couple of men started attending First Baptist. These men arrive together and leave together. They sit next to one another, and they have the same address. They are impeccably well-groomed, and they have jumped into the life of our congregation almost immediately.They especially enjoyed jumping in with our church decorating party, as well as our choir.

Now, our choir has always been an "open" choir. What I mean by that is that anyone can join our choir. It is not a leadership position, it functions more as a church small group than it does a deacon board. Thus, when these men joined the choir the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we were not prepared for what was about to unfold.

What did unfold? Well, because two men who appear to be homosexual (though nobody knows if they are or they are not) have joined the choir, about 12-20 of our 200 regular attenders have left the church. Some of those regular attenders are long time members with deep pockets. Others are people who have regularly attenders who have invested a lot of time in nearly every facet of our congregational life. Most, though not all, are members of one influential family that helped found our denomination at about the same time our nation was founded. Last Sunday, with our other ordained pastoral staff on vacation, several of them chose to leave our congregation. Some wrote letters saying they were leaving.

Others chose to take their last Sunday leading their sunday school class to explain why they were leaving and convince others to join them. This surprised us. We expected that is was a possibility they would leave. But we felt ambushed. And when they left before the worship service we felt violated.

Too be honest, I have mixed feelings about their departures. On one hand, in part through difficult tensions, I have become friends with several of them. On the other hand, most of the insults, frustration and difficulty that has come my way over the last 3 1/2 years has been spearheaded by the meanspirited nature of those that left and/or are leaving. I am sad to see them leave, I am scared about our church finances, and I feel a heavy burden has been lifted from being the target of their annialating contempt all at the same time.

Most of our congregation is a conservative church in their theology, but compassionate and open-minded. So, wheras they believe that homosexual behavior is immoral, they at the same time recognize that they themselves have moral struggles as well. Thus, most are open to welcoming anyone into our choir and even membership. However, many are struggling.

Into was into this environment that I was assigned to do preach on Sunday. There was also a blizzard earlier in the week, so several of our more mature members were struggling to dig out. So many people were sad, discouraged and low. You could physically feel the congregational sadness and depression.

At the same time, I felt led to at the same time acknowlege our difficulties and remain enthusiastic and positive about our church and mission. I preached a very average sermon on the flight of Jesus to Egypt and God's desire to deliver us---both his church and those who are outside of his church (It will be posted in segments below).

At the end of the service, two unexpected things transpired. First, at the end of the service, the congregation erupted in clapping. This has never happened to me, and this has never happened in anyone's memory in the history of the church. So this was both very encouraging and very disconcerting. The second thing that happened was that members of the congregation came forward during the invitation simply for prayer and to connect with God.

It seems that out of difficult circumstances, good things are happening.

A Deliverer

Please follow along with me as I look at our screen and read our Scripture text for this morning.
(Turn and read Matthew 2:13ff with fine art)

This morning I want to take you on a different kind of journey as we look at what God has to say to us this morning. I want to take you through my process of discovering what exactly this short story seems to be about. For some of you this may feel more like Bible study than your normal preaching fare, and that is ok.

This method also means that you are going to have to pay careful attention, because we are going on a journey to discover what God has to say to us together, and like a good detective story or mystery, each thing we will learn will help us build toward our ultimate discovery of just what God seems to be saying to us through this text.

Are you ready?? I hope so.

I originally felt led to do this sermon because of a Christmas song I was listening to. Bruce Cockburn was the person I heard it from, but I am sure several other people sing the song as well. The song that really captured my heart was “Mary had a Baby”. It is a Negro Spiritual about the birth story of Christ and the deliverance of slaves to freedom through the underground railroad. Toward the end of the song it talks about coming out of Egypt. Over the last month I have pondered, what has Christmas to do with deliverance? And what role does Jesus’ impromptu road trip to Egypt have to do with the overall message of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

So I started exploring Matthew 2:13-26.

One of the most interesting things that we notice as we start looking over the passage are these Old Testament quotations that Matthew 2. There are three of them in the passage that we have chosen.

Out of Egypt I called my Son—From Hosea 11
Rachel Weeping in Rama for her children who are no more—Jeremiah 31
The passage that says Jesus will be from Nazereth—Isaiah 11



As we dig deeper we notice that these quotes are very significant for a number of reasons. Throughout Matthew 1-4, Jesus is presented to us as Israel personified. Israel is referred to as the Son of God in several places in Scripture including the one quoted here from Hosea. In fact, as you dig into the geneology in Chapter 1, it is organized in triplets of fourteen, to personify the three stages of Israel’s history—the period of the patriarchs, the period of the kings, and the period of the exile.

The implication from Matthew is clear. The history of the people of God is like a funnel. And slowly all of his people who are faithful has been slowly whittled down to a remnant of one. And when I use the word remnant, I don’t mean to use this word like we do in sewing circles where it is the scrap left over. I mean to use the word like we would understand it in Luke Skywalker Star Wars or Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings. Where there is only one who is worthy to stand for us all, one worthy to represent us all, one able to save us. And in the history of that universe that one that stands for us all is Jesus. In other words, what we see here is that Jesus, by fulfilling the prophecies, by going into exile, by being delivered from the sword of Herod and the pain of exile, and by doing so in faithfulness to the instructions of God, proves himself worthy to be our deliverer. Our messiah.

Its interesting isn’t it? That the cross shows up so quickly in the story of Jesus. We tend to think of the manger and the early years of Jesus as some peaceful, blissful experience. Yet, as we see here, Jesus is a marked man from early on. He begins his life as a refugee and as the focal point of a brutal massacre. Mark Lackey was gracious enough to do our little powerpoint scripture reading at the beginning of this message, and it was interesting. We kept looking at pictures of the violence that Jesus was born into, and it took a long time to find the right picture. Couldn’t have too much nudity. Couldn’t look too violent. Might offend people’s sensibilities.

Jesus as our deliverer has no such qualms. He is born a middle eastern peasant is a barn full of manure with animals in a ruckus over a screaming woman trying to find anyplace with any sort of shelter and privacy to give birth. Far away from home because of the government made them traverse over rocks and around robbers to go register themselves to give Rome more money in taxes and tribute.
From the cradle to the cross he is surrounded by thieves and murderers, and the masses longing and seeking for something to hold on to.

Our time is no different. We need a deliverer too.

And whether it is in Bethlehem or Colorado Springs, God has no qualms in looking at our messy, confusing lives and entering into them in an effort to deliver us.

We tend to think that we have to have ourselves and our churches all cleaned up before we can be “God’s people”. And we look at our lives, and sometimes at our church and wonder why it is full of so many sinners. We wonder why there are so many people with wrongheaded ideas and sinful lives.

I remember struggling to build a young adult ministry in a previous church. We had a number of launches and restart. Finally, one time we caught fire with a core group of about six people. Half of them were related to one another. One of them was a former member of my youth group. And I will be direct with you…there lives were not where they needed to be. They were recovering drug addicts, mothers who had their children out of wedlock, racists, they were belligerent drunks who got into fights on the weekends and who called me to help deal with drugged up friends at 2 in the morning. And sometimes they helped out at church to do their court ordered community service.

As I tried to get other people involved in joining this group I found we had another struggle. And it had nothing to do with the rough and tumble lives they lived the rest of the week. It had to do with the fact that our core group could not get through our meal and bible study without a smoke break in between.

As we went this went from a concern of mine to a concern by some of my young adults and their parents that were involved in the church. And I shared my plight with a mentor of mine. And as I finished sharing she said something very wise. She said, God calls us to be fishers of men, and yet so often we expect the fish to leap into the boat of the church cleaned up and ready to go. But, she said, if we follow Jesus’ command to be fishers of men we should expect it to be difficult, messy, smelly work full of people who have all sorts of problems and in needs of all kinds of deliverance.

I would add to what my mentor said. It is about time you as a church become more real and honest about how you are here at First Baptist. You are a people desperately in need of deliverance. And it about time we become the kind of church that enthusiastically welcomes other people, like me and hundreds like me, who need deliverance as much as you do.

I need a deliverer. So do you. Even though things look bleak, we are called to have the hope that Jesus is preparing to deliver us. That is the first thing we learn when we look at the flight of Jesus.

A Battle

As I continued to look into the Scripture, I noticed that angels’ wings were fluttering all around the first few chapters of Matthew and all through the narratives of the conception and early childhood of Jesus. And I wondered what this might have to add to the truth that I discovered about Jesus being declared as our deliverer from the very start.

The root word for Angel is messenger. Angels are simply messengers of God if you go simply by their name. And this truth is both helpful, and somewhat deceiving if you just stop there.

One of the books I utterly hated when I went to a Christian college was a series of novels with all sorts of angels and demons called THIS PRESENT DARKNESS. From the moment it came out, everyone seemed to be seeing angels and demons in everything. If something went bad in their life, it was because of demons. If they narrowly avoided car accidents, it was because a host of angels protected the vehicle. I remember a friend invoking angelic protection as we were about to drive from Sterling, KS to Lawrence in a small hatchback in the middle of a blizzard. I kept wondering why God did not advance the angels ahead of time to give him a vision to get snow tires for the death trap we called his vehicle. Providentially, we made our journey safely.

There is a lot of angelology and demonology that is based on extra-biblical philosophy and experience. But much of these stories reflected a truth I often ignore, and that I rediscovered in preparing for this sermon.

You see I did a little study on angels through the Bible and biblical history. And one thing you notice right away about the angels in scripture is that they are always in the middle of a cosmic battle. Read Daniel and Revelation. Look at what is implied in the passage on spiritual warfare in what Paul said to the Ephesian church.

As we look at this passage, we see right away that there is a power struggle happening. From the beginning, Jesus is under attack. From the beginning, Jesus is in the middle of a battle.

This should not have surprised me, because deliverers often are engaged in a great struggle or battle in order to deliver those in bondage. But it was a surprise nonetheless.

As a young Christian, I used to think that when I became more mature and knowlegable in my faith, that somehow following Jesus would become easier. That it would go from being a daily battle to second nature.

I have since come to agree with renowned Christian leaders like CS Lewis and Thomas a Kempis who say the opposite. The more I grow in my faith, the more it is a battle to continue to strive to be faithful. With increase in faith, I also find increase in temptation. The more I seem to press forward in my journey of faith, the more acute the attacks of the enemy seem to be at the same time. And the more attractive running away from everything I have built my life on seems to be. Because even though I am called into the battle of faith, a lot of times it seems easier to be a coward.

One of my favorite modern Christian leaders, Eugene Peterson, puts it this way. He says that there is no place in the universe that is not contested ground. Each and every moment is a battle. Each and every decision has not only personal but cosmic importance.

At the risk of being overly direct and transparent, or sounding weak or complaining, I feel compelled to share something with you. My experience in ministry has felt like a battle. There is not a year that I have not struggled with the fear that all of my efforts have not made a bit of difference. There has not been a year in over 11 years of ministry where I have not been ambushed by an unexpected attack. I have been lied about and lied to. I have been picked at and picked apart. I have been criticized about everything from my svelt physical appearance and my choice of footwear to how peppy or somber I am to the fact that I am not married. And everything in between. Sometimes these difficult experiences that feel like attacks are used by God’s grace to allow him to work victory in my life and my ministry. Other times they can be classified as nothing more than spiritual attack in my mind. Either way, I guess I see part of being called to ministry and to follow Jesus is a call to be a good soldier in the spiritual battlefield I am assigned to.

It’s interesting. In continuing in the struggle, at least in my ministry and spiritual journey, I have over and over seen the grace of reconciliation and forgiveness at work. Through persisting in love and hope I have seen students who were dead set on doing everything they could to see me fired by my church (and some have made valiant efforts) become friends, supportive youth leaders as they got older. In fact, one such student now meets with a mutual friend and prays for me and my family specifically on a weekly basis. The same has happened with parents, church leaders, peers in ministry, and even leaders in the community. And this is no surprise to us. The thing is, I don’t get deserve any credit for this. My deliverer does. Because his invasion into this world is about this kind of thing. This is because even though Christ comes as our deliverer, and joins into spiritual battle along side us to deliver us, he is a different kind of leader than the leaders of this world. And he fights a different kind of battle than we expect.

One of my favorite sermon quotes

  

Urgency

Today was a good day. I had a wonderful time with my mother, my uncle and my neice at church.

Getting ready to go to church I felt a little strange this morning. Why did I want to get all dressed up? And what is this with me dressing up all the time lately. I am worried that I have been conditioned by my environment toward preppiness. It kinda scares me. I went to church in a town where half the people are wearing levis and hoodies to church and I did not feel right going out without dressing up in my suitpants and sportcoat. Is that weird? I am not sure if it is or isnt?

I thought the service was ok. Not great but ok. The sermon was a little scattered but I got something very meaningful out of it. In particular, it made me think about the urgency of Matthew 28. The resurrection account.

The angel commands them to hurry and to get where they need to be next. They run. At the end they are told to "go into all the world and make disciples". Then I watched Sahara. Again...the emphasis on urgency of moments and situations.

Now there are people I know who make everything a crisis and every situation an urgent one. They are passionate and dramatic about something needing to be done right now. And, most of the time those people are using their emergency to provoke your urgent response for their benefit.

But there are some things that we would claim as priorities in our life that need more time in our "urgent" box, but we push them down the road and we push them away because...well...because we think we can.

Christ's message of the kingdom of God is an urgent one. It was urgent to Jesus. It should be urgent to those who choose to follow and obey him. Not necessarily urgent in the sense that we pressure and coerce people into believing and living like we do out of fear and manipulation. But urgent in the sense that it is todays news and todays traffic report. The message of Jesus is something people need to hear right now. The kingdom life is something people need to see right now.

Furthermore, the resurrection is something we need to live in light of right now. Right now we have hope. Right now we can live with purpose.

Ok...now I am sounding like a Van Halen song so I will stop...

Sunday's Sermon--Not my best work but.....

Not a Fan Club

Before I get started with digging into this passage, I want to give you a few instructions. First, you may want to keep your Bibles open to Mark 1, because we are going to spend a lot of time referring back and forth to the passage. Also, I will be giving you the option of writing some things down as I go, so you might want to get a pen and paper if you like doing that sort of thing.

My mom and I are both readers. My father was as well, but as his eyesight has declined he reads less. I think it is something about wearing those pesky glasses. Anyway, Mom and I like different types of reading. Mom likes the mass produced paperback novels. Mysteries by authors who write stories for each letter of the alphabet. Romance Novels with pictures of Fabio on the front. Grisham courtroom dramas. She likes fast-paced entertaining stuff that moves from one thing to another fairly quickly.

I like different books. First of all, I read a lot more non-fiction than fiction. Forget Danielle Steele, I would rather read Freakonomics. Or some analysis of Catholic writers Thomas Merton, Flannery O Connor, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day, and their realationships to one another. I like books that make me think about and analyze things that I have never thought about before. In other words, I am a little bit more of a nerd than my mother is.

We are the same ways with movies. I will want to talk about this or that with the movie, and how a certain scene was organized. Or what all of it made me think about. My momma plays along for about 5 or 10 minutes. Then she looks at me and tells me to be quiet. “Can’t you just enjoy the movie?” she says. Movies are about escapism and enjoyment!”

Then I wait until I get home and go write something about it for myself. And include it on my weblog or write something up for the church newsletter that it made me think about.

Different Gospels have different moods to them. And while the Gospel of John and Matthew could read a little bit more like the things I want to read, the Gospel of Mark reads a lot more like a Grisham novel or a one hour documentary of Jesus’ live that we would watch on Biography or the E! channel. Which….is why it is a challenging book to preach out of.

Our readings out of Mark today are almost fractal. Small little snippets of things pointing us to a bigger story that it reflects.

If you have ever sat down with one of our middle schoolers or one of our freshman in high school, it reads a little bit like they talk from the Gospel of Mark.

There was this demon. And he was like really mean. And …then….Jesus cast him out, and everyone was all WOW….and then he was like really popular. So he went to a friends house cause he was all tired…and then he saw someone was sick and he healed her…and we were all like THAT’S HOT…and everyone was bringing possessed and sick people to him and all the sickness and demons were like GONE. And that made him even more popular…..

Anyway you get the point. Lots of action. Not a lot of explanation.

From Mark 1:21-45 Jesus has two full days of healing and exorcism. A healing of a disciples’ relative, an exorcism of another evil spirit, a prayer retreat, a healing of a man with leprosy, and a mission trip into the rural outskirts of the modern world, and a camping trip where he was followed by a whole bunch of stalkers. How are we to deal with all this information? What is the point?

And, as I approach this passage an even bigger question comes up. Why is Jesus being so secretive? He shushes the demons. He avoids the big cities for small towns. He tells the man he heals not to tell anyone what he did. He seems to be going out of his way to tell nobody who he is? What’s up with that? Aren’t we told not to hide our light under a bushel?

You may wonder, Clint, is this going anywhere? Yes it is. So, here is what we are going to do this morning. This sermon is going to feel a little different. Instead of just preaching at you, I want you to join me on my journey to understand just what God is saying to us through his word this morning. Let’s explore Mark 1!

First, and I will say this very quickly and point it out over and over again through our conversation this morning, first, we need to notice that Jesus is very clear about his mission and purpose. We don’t start with a birth, or with creation of the earth. We immediately start out on a mission. John the Baptist prepares the way for the mission. Jesus immediately begins on his mission. He does what he does with clear intent, even at one point saying “this is what I came for” or this is what I came to do”. That doesn’t mean Jesus was a concrete-sequencial type, but God wants us to know through Mark that right off the bat Jesus has a very clear purpose for his life and what he is doing.

POINT 1: Jesus carries out his life and mission with purpose.

Also, as we begin to explore we notice, as I said earlier, that we are right in the thick of the action. But it is interesting to note the type of action we are a part of here. And within a couple of moments Jesus is being baptized. And then he is immediately being tempted in the wilderness. His miracles all have to do with healings and with demons.

Healings and demons? Yes, healings and demons! Which gets us started with our first point that we get from God through the gospel of Mark. Jesus’ ministry is about conquering sin and death. Jesus’ message, from the start, is about spiritual warfare. His purpose, from the start, is take ground for God’s Kingdom. His purpose, from the start, is to do battle with the Enemy of our souls, namely Satan and his forces.

God could have eased us into this truth. He could have had Jesus dancing through and orchard talking with birds and kitty cats with flower petals falling all around him. But God doesn’t allow Mark to sugar coat his gospel. Life is not easy. As a matter of fact it can be very ugly. There is evil in this world. Life is a struggle. Jesus comes to heal and to deliver.

We are involved in a very real struggle. A struggle where souls hang in the balance. The Bible is clear. There is a heaven, and there is a hell. A place where we spend eternity with God, and a place where people spend eternity separated from God. And the Bible is also clear, it is up to us which side of this battle we want to be on.

This truth of God’s Word is reiterated over and over again in the New Testament. It is so essential to Christian faith that it is mentioned in the Apostles Creed as one of the biggest reasons Jesus came to earth. To crush Satan under his feet. In the Gospel of John Jesus puts it this way; “The thief comes to kill and to destroy. I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.”

And as we look at our lives, and begin to follow Jesus, we notice two things.
1.) The war is won with the work of Christ on the cross.
2.) The battle still rages
Evil is still at work in this world. As Eugene Peterson says, “Every inch of ground is contested ground”.
All of you know this. And if you don’t….well then….maybe you are not in the battle.
Try to allow to do some small or large great thing with your heart and your life and you will notice two things:
1.) You will have a sense of peace and purpose and power like never before AND
2.) At the same time you will experience more challenges and heartache than you ever anticipated.

POINT 2: Jesus comes to engage Satan in spiritual warfare

Because of this, the fact that Jesus keeps shying away from the crowd starts to make a little bit more sense.

Please follow along.

Jesus is on a mission.

His mission, to a large part, involves defeating evil, and those forces who seek to enslave the world to sin and evil.

So……..

Jesus needs more than a fan club. He needs kingdom workers.

I see nowhere where God is impressed with our church attendance, as important as that may be. I see nowhere in the Bible where God is interested in flattery or lip service for their own sakes.

Why does Jesus have the demons keep silent, and why does Jesus tell a man he healed to tell nobody. Why? Lots of scholars have come up with lots of reasons for this secrecy motif. Here is what I think God is saying through Mark.

I think he is saying..”I don’t need a fan club. I am not here to play to the crowd. I did not come to earth to be popular. To be a diva or an icon. I didn’t come to earth simply to be a bumper sticker on the back of your car, or a t-shirt slogan. I did not come to be a supernatural endorsement for a political point of view, or to be used for someone’s agenda or power trip. I didn’t come to earth to form a sanctified social club!”

I think Jesus is saying, “I came to set people free. To set people free from sin. To heal them. To offer them eternal life. To make their world a better place.”

I think Christ say to us, “I came to show them that longsuffering love has more to offer than a surge of adrenaline and/or hormones. I came to show them that being compassionate to their neighbor is more important than having more money and more power. I came to show you that living with integrity and honesty is more rewarding than always trying to be what everyone else expects of you.”

Why do I say Jesus doesn’t need a fan club? Because I occasionally listen to sports radio…that’s why.

Whether it be in Denver or KC, to a Seattle Seahawk booster, the fans are obnoxious on talk radio. You turn on the radio in the middle of the winning streak and the fans are all about how they carried the team to victory because they sat in front of their TV and screamed and yelled for two hours. But, that is not the bad part. The bad part is when they lose.

In the week after a local team loses on talk radio, these ravid die-hard fans turn fickle. The quarterback needs to be traded or cut, the coach needs to be let go, the turf of the field needs to be changed, the uniforms from a decade ago need to be brought out of moth balls and used again because the new ones are jinxed.

The fan club is always fickle.

Churches had a pretty big fan club after 9-11. That lasted a few weeks. Maybe a month or two for some. Folks started feeling like they were going to be more earnest in prayer or devoted to church life. That soon changed though.

Jesus does not need a fan club, he needs committed disciples that know him, are loyal to him, who are committed to serving him.

He needs people willing to join him on the mission. Willing to engage the Enemy in spiritual battle so that he can remake this world more in his will, and remake our souls more in his image.

POINT 3: Jesus does not need a fan club, he needs kingdom workers.


So then, what is Jesus’ method of carrying out his mission? Is it a mass-marketing scheme? Is it wowing people with his healing powers and his charismatic speaking voice? Is it gathering throngs of people around him?

No. As we have seen he seems to avoid this. Even when he feeds the masses, he tries to send them away to get food at first.

What is the way of Jesus? The way of battling the tide of evil and sin in our world? What is the way of being true to his mission?

It is laying hands on individual people and touching them.

Think about it, Jesus could heal anyway he wanted. But most often he does so by personal address, personal touch, personal teaching here in the first chapter of Mark.

He reaches out and loves individual, unique people with unique histories and unique joys and struggles.

He did and he still does.

He avoids the popularity trap so that he can touch each of us and make each of us whole. He avoids the crowds so he can spend time with God…yes. And he avoids the crowds so that he can have children sit on his lap and he can bless them. He avoids the crowds so that he can sit and listen to our hurts and our happiness.

He wants to whisper in our ear:

You are the apple of my eye!

Before the earth was formed I was thinking of you!

I love you so much I know how many hairs are our your head!

I have made wonderful plans for us to be together!

A couple of weeks ago we did this imaginative prayer thing in our CHOW group. And we asked Jesus “what do you think of me”. Now usually, when I am leading this exercise I do not get into it as much as the people I am leading, because I am too focused on leading.

This is also hard for me, because it is hard for me to clear out all the accusations of myself I have in my mind. The memories of my sin. Of my failure. I never get past the place of feeling frustrated and unworthy.

But this time was different. I asked Jesus, “What do you think of me” and all of the sudden I was in a room. A very large room. Like a mansion or something. And almost immediately, Jesus seemed to answer, “What do you mean…what do I think of you?...You should mean when do I think of you…and the answer is I think of you all the time..”

And I looked around and the walls were full. FULL! And they were all pictures of me. Me running. Me smiling. Me praying. Me ministering with teenagers. Me doing things that only God and I knew about. Me crying. And there was that picture of me going to the bathroom in the river that always embarrasses me when my mom pulls it out of the photo album.

And it is those moments, those rare moments of clarity we see what the Bible is teaching us here today I think.

Jesus does not need a fan club, but he wants to be our #1 fan. He wants to be even more actually. He wants us to come home. He wants us to be his.

That is what we celebrated here at the altar. That is why we eat the bread and drink the cup.

That is why it is necessary that we do whatever we can on Christ’s behalf to tell people of the new life we can have through choosing to follow him.

And so he fights through the battlefields, and he avoids the fickle crowds, so that he can make his way to us….to each of us?

Won’t you open your life to him?

Bono at the National Prayer Breakfast

Read his utterly brilliant sermon here

Life Lessons for this week

Life Lesson #1--I May Do Well Under Pressure, But I am miserable while the pressure is on

When I was in football in high school, and even the first time I got in the game in college, I played well under pressure. But, I dont deal well with stress. I used to get more sorry for myself the more pressure I was under, but these days I am just....as Whoopie Goldberg's character said in Kingdom Come "downright surly".

Specifically, I have been feeling a lot of pressure at work this month with my responsibilities on Sundays. I have to coordinate and organize 6-12 grade Sunday School, as well as lead it. Then the next half hour is spent between counseling folks about issues, trying to get in to practice for choir, and running upstairs to put on the robes and pray with the boss and whoever is the worship assistant. I then do announcements, run back, change into a different robe for choir, get in the loft to do choir, run down, change back into my suit, and listen to the rest of the sermon. I run home, grab a quick bite to eat, change clothes, and then run back out again to get ready for the evening. The evening includes a meeting with the youth workers, getting supplies for youth group, leading youth group. So far so good. This is the typical Sunday I have had for most of my career.

The next thing is what puts it over the top. I have to then lead our NEW WORSHIP SERVICE CALLED EDGE after leading youth group. I have to do all the last minute stuff in the middle of Sunday afternoon as well. And then there are always people who just do not show up for commitments they have made. And although I try to delegate and include everyone else, the presssure is ALL ON ME to make things go well, to get everyone in the proper place, to give everyone their strokes. And since we are trying to do CREATIVE AND NON-TRADITIONAL types of things...that means more work....not like a normal service where you kinda do the same thing every week.

So there is all this pressure, and people are pretty pleased with things, but I feel a little overwhelmed.

Throw in trying to plan two trips and help with camp planning at a new site for the summer, people wanting me to teach LEVITICUS (read lots of study) on Wednesday night and make it interesting, choir practice on Thursday nights, and I feel a lot of pressure to perform in a lot of different ways. And to get really well organized with everything. And that....by every Sunday afternoon....has made me DOWNRIGHT SURLY.

Life Lesson #2--I am not a very likeable person

So these people on Wednesday night are all talking about MUNICH. And all of the sudden I come to the realization that there were all these people who were invited and I was not. It put me into a bad funk.

You see, on several occasions asked my friends here, who are married to one another, if they want to do something. You want to catch a movie? Can I drop by and say hello? Do you want to get a bite to eat after church? And generally they say, "That would be great! Not tonight but could you call tomorrow between such and such a time." I then call them. And they do not answer the phone. We do not get together.

Then they complain how another co-worker comes by after work all the time and eats them out of house and home. But when I ask if I can drop by it is like....maybe later.

These are people who had me do a prayer and be a groomsman in their wedding. They talk about how we are friends at times. But more and more I am feeling....But you do not act like friends.

The frustrating thing is that they pretend like they care. They want me to think they care. But they dont. Which is frustrating for me, since they are my only friends here.

Then there are these other acqauintences I have. They work at a place I shop at. We were all going on a diet together...and I joined them at their insistence. Without getting into too much of the drama, I had a big argument with one of them because she accused me of being a weak person because I was not doing as well as she was after three days. I had a rare moment of being assertive, and told her in no uncertain terms that if she wanted to get in a pissing match about who had more discipline in their life I think I would win hands down. That was the wrong thing to say. Never get in a pissing match with a redneck woman from Arkansas. (Point of interest: I dated this woman for two months before I moved here. She has since married someone else.) She went out for a smoke. The other guy told me about how he couldn't argue with either of us because he has some gay trist about once a week and hasn't been in a committed relationship in a year. And I left. I have not seen either of them since.

I guess I just dont deserve to have good friends that care about me.

Life Lesson #3--I need to be more courageous

This has been a challenge I have set before myself during the last year. Even though I have become more bold at times, I still have a little growing to do.

Generally I am more cowardly in two situations. One is in asserting myself at work, and the other is in having the gumption to ask women out on dates.

The work stuff is evidenced by what I wrote above. And what I have written previously.

As for the dating stuff, I am just a wimp. I don't like rejection, so I look for signs. Currently, I have a little bit of an interest in someone. So, I try to drop by and say hello when she does not look busy. We talk. She makes me laugh. She teases me a little. And tends to flirt with me a little. (If saying, "Well look...if it isnt my Prince Charming is flirting...I think it is general friendly flirting). So I have decided I am going to ask this woman out several times in the last few weeks. I try to do it. And I wimp out. Last time we got into a big discussion about the REV in front of my name on my mail. (That REV thing seems to be a big strike against me with the ladies....almost worse than being overweight).

Life Lesson #4--I seem to have a strong resume for people looking to hire someone at bargain basement salaries

Enough said.

Life Lesson #5--Just showing up scores points

I got some encouraging words from some former parents this week. And the comments taught me, among other things, that just being there and showing up is half the battle. This is especially true in a ministry where I was the 5th person in 5 years. If I were to hang around as long as I have already been here, I would have the longest tenure for my position in the history of this church.

I still however, feel like I am RUNNING TO STAND STILL as long as I am here.

Sermon for Sunday--Part 1

GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET

(Read the Scripture, Ezekiel 37: 1-14)

When I was in seminary there were folks of all ages, skills, and abilities there. One of the people that I went to school with was named Gloria. Gloria was in her late forties or early fifties. I am not sure how old she was exactly, except she got very offended when employees from McDonalds assumed she was ordering with the Senior Citizen discount. Gloria’s eyesight was not all that good, so she asked me to drive her from Kansas City, KS to Olathe, KS—a suburb of Kansas City. About 20 miles away. While I was waiting for her to purchase Jeanette Oke book or some other cheesy Christian romance I stumbled around the rest of the bookstore. I found a book on the bargain rack that caught my attention. It is entitled I Dream of Peace. The book is a book about the images of war as illustrated in war torn Yugoslavia in the early 90s. Listen to a couple of the letters.

The soldiers ordered us out of our house and then burned it down. After that, they took us to the train, where they ordered all the men to lie down on the ground. From the group, they chose who they were going to kill. They picked my uncle and a neighbor! Then they machine gunned them to death. After that, the soldiers put the women in the front car of the train and the men in the back. As the train started moving, they disconnected the back and took the men off to the camps. I saw it all!
Now I can’t sleep. I try to forget, but it doesn’t work. I have such difficulty feeling anything anymore.
--Alik, 13, refugee
(p.59)

It’s all so strange! Suddenly, it’s so important, everybody is asking who you are, what you do, where you come from.
So many people have been killed fighting for justice. But what justice? Do they know what they are fighting for, who they are fighting?
The weather is growing very cold now. No longer can you hear the singing of the birds, only the sound of they children crying for a lost mother or father, a brother or a sister.
We are children without hope.
--Dunja, 14, from Belgrade
(p.27)

Can you hear their cries for justice, help, and deliverance? Can you feel their hopelessness?

Maybe if it’s hard to relate to the cries of the children in the former Yugoslavia, then you can relate to some children a little closer to home. Dana is one of the street children in this country that are estimated to be one million strong. Dana was 16 years old. At a young age, her father abandoned her. Later, in her teen years, her mother had told her that she needed to get out of the house because she could not support both Dana, and her five younger brothers. So, Dana was left to live on the street, fending for herself. Dana did whatever she had to do in order to get by. She said, “I used to be from somewhere, but I am not from anywhere anymore.” 1
Can you hear her pain? Her sense of abandonment and God-forsakenness?
(Pause)
I don’t know if you hear their pain, and I have an even bigger question. Does God? That is the concern that our Biblical story addresses today. You see, Israel, unlike the examples above, was suffering because of their sin. They had turned away from God. They had ignored the cries of the poor, the widow, and the orphan. They had bowed their knees to idols. Thus, they had been drug across a desert to a strange land. There, they had been slaves and servants to the people of Babylon. To the mind of the people of Israel, the Babylonian people who were more cruel and wicked than they ever thought of being. Yet, like the examples above, they too were crying out, feeling abandoned and forsaken by God. The Israelites were also wondering if tomorrow was worth dreaming about, if there was any hope. In Ezekiel 37: 1-14, God intends to answer these cries and questions.
The Bibles says that God brought Ezekiel out by his hand, and the Spirit brought him smack dab in the middle of a valley. As he was getting adjusted to his environment by rubbing his eyes and blinking a few times, he noticed that there were a bunch of bones in the valley. Dry bones. Bones of people who had been dead for a long, long time. God walks Ezekiel back and forth across the valley, and he sees bones, piled upon bones, piled upon bones. Then God asks Ezekiel if the bones can live. Ezekiel ponders the question for a while. Can the Lord make something good out of this situation? Can the Lord make something good out of this ugliness, lifelessness, and death? Ezekiel responds, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know!”
Then, God tells Ezekiel to prophecy to the bones. To tell these dry, stale remnants of human bodies that they will once again have muscles to move with, lungs filled with oxygen, and skin to cover them. God tells Ezekiel to tell the bones that they will once again bear life!
So Ezekiel did what God said, and something amazing, something miraculous happened. The bones made a clacking, rattling sound as they raced to be attached to their original skeletons. Then, flesh and skin came upon these bodies. Finally, Ezekiel prophecies that they should have breathe, and they all stand up before him. All of the bodies were like a huge army. Can you imagine? Would you be speechless? Would you be jumping up and down for joy? Or, would you be falling on your face, begging for mercy from such a powerful God?
It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for breathe that is used in this text is used in this passage only one other time in all of Scripture, the creation narrative. The parallel is obvious, and it is reiterated by verses 11-14 (reread that portion of the Biblical text).
What is the message? The message is that God is in the business of recreating. Recreating nations! Recreating people! Recreating his people! You see, God had a message for the people of Israel. That message was that GOD LOVES THEM, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH THEM YET.
This world is in a sad state. We need only think about the things we have heard on the news. 35,000 children head to their death writhing from either starvation or dehydration, or both. Terrorist cells are springing up in little villages all over the Middle East, Asia and in Africa, and with youth on the margins in big cities in the West. Ruthless dictators rule in all corners of the world, whether it is Kim Jong IL starving his people so he can make nuclear weapons in Korea, or the ruler of Iran doing similar things, or the nation of Sudan persecuting the Christian minority of their population in the Darfur. In the last year there have been killer tsunamis in the Pacific and record numbers of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. The avian flu threatens to mutate and has the potential to turn into a pandemic that kills millions. The AIDS virus may mutate as well, and possibly even hundreds of thousands of children will be orphaned in the next several years. Child slavery in much of the third world, and even in America is increasing at alarming rates. In the midst of this the scientists warn us about things like overpopulation and global warming. This world has lots of problems. But I have a message for this deeply troubled world—GOD LOVES US AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.

Sermon Part 2

As I look at this country, it is easy to get depressed. We are less and less able to trust one another, and since September 11, we have to be more and more concerned about passing a security check when we come into airports, or even ballgames for that matter. Look at our political situation. We seem to be stuck in perpetual gridlock, with more and more politicians and political activists who care less and less about the common man, and more about lining their pockets. While certain drug rates are going down, uses of drugs like heroin, crystal meth, and ecstasy are on the rise. With every trailer in the rural Midwest a possible drug den. After situations like Katrina, racial tensions seem on the rise. Street children are estimated to be one million strong. One-eighth to one-fourth of all women in this country will be the victim of a heinous sex crime. Fifty percent of all marriages in this country end in divorce. In many ways it might seem kind of hopeless. Yet as people of the good news of Jesus Christ we have a message for this nation of ours—GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.
I wish I could tell you that the stories in the churches are a lot different, but they are not. How many churches have we heard of that have been scarred by clergy that violated their trust through stealing from them, or sleeping with vulnerable members of the congregation? How many times have we walked into churches and saw only about 20-30 senior citizens, and wondered where the hope for our future is and what the future of that churches witness would be if one bad flu bug hit the congregation? And what the church of the next generation is going to look like? Is there even going to be any young people in churches like ours in 20 years? How many churches have settled for a social club and a pretty meeting space instead of insisting that the gospel is about following Jesus no matter the cost and the discomfort? How many times have we been in churches that have been lulled into a sleep of complacency and half-hearted Christianity? Or that spend most of their energy arguing about who is right and who is wrong instead of spending their energy asking who is hurting and alone, and how can we introduce the grace and goodness of God to them through our life together? How often do we see churches building human kingdoms instead of participating in the Kingdom of God. The picture can sometimes seem bleak. And I am a firm believer that for revival to come in this city, in this nation, in this world, it needs to start with a radical sense of repentance from within the church. It seems we are far away from that happening. But we still have a message for our churches. That message is that—GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.
Garth Brooks describes the hopelessness that we see and feel in his song, The Change, when he says that trying to go against the hopeless flow of selfishness and evil is like “trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss”. Yes, as this song goes on to remind us, as ministers, it is this flood of hopelessness that we are called to strive against. We, like Ezekiel, are called to share the good news of God’s faithful lovingkindness in the midst of the suffering cries of the people around us.
There are many ministers that could serve as examples to us of this. Think of an example that is known to all of us, the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. At 26, he led a whole city in a non-violent bus boycott. He went on to inspire a nation. How did he do that? Through a message of hope, that is how! Hope that love is stronger than hate. Hope that can suffer through imprisonment, beatings, and suffering. Hope that justice would come in the morning. Hope that the dream of racial and ethnic barriers would crumble under the power of a dream. Hope that—GOD LOVES US, AND GOD AIN’T FINISHED WITH US YET.
Yet, this message does not just apply to the big picture issues. It applies to the ordinariness of our everyday lives. Many of us are dealing with struggles in our own lives. We are teenagers that wonder if the day will ever come when our parents will actually listen to us and understand us. We are parents that wonder if our children will ever appreciate us. We are single people wondering if we will ever get married. We are married people wondering if we are going to be able to survive another year in a marriage where it doesn’t seem that our spouse loves us. We wonder if we will ever do more than live paycheck to paycheck. We wonder if we will ever get out of debt. We are in midlife wondering if our life is really amounting to much. We are growing old, and wondering if anybody will value us or listen to us any more. We are lonely people. We are people who fill our lives with half-hearted obligations instead of setting Christ-centered priorities. We are people who struggle with depression and anxiety. We are people who struggle with anger and rage. If statistics are right, at least half of us men in the church have some sort of struggle with internet pornography. Even more with lust in general. We judge our friends and our neighbors for not living up to our impossible standards. We steal by taking long lunches at work, and taking shortcuts on our taxes. We eat too much and we exercise too little. In other words, most of us can look at our lives and see sin and struggle. WE ALSO NEED TO KNOW IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES THAT GOD IS LONGING TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES. IN OTHER WORDS, GOD LOVES US AND GOD IS NOT FINISHED WITH US YET EITHER.