Church: A Community of Service
Question: What is Faith? How would you explain faith?
Intro: Tattoo story and the visibility of faith.
I found a story on-line this week about a church that was celebrating it’s first year anniversary with tattoos. Yup, that is right. No anniversary tea’s or pot-lucks, no guest speakers or special organ concert’s. This church, made up of mostly 20 and 30 somethings, celebrated their church anniversary by throwing a tattoo party. Along with loud praise music, and food, they lined up for tattoos. It’s actually a growing sub-culture in the tattoo world, Christian tattooing. What is it about tattoo’s.
We could be a bit cynical and say that once again the church is capitulating to popular culture. That these churches are more interested in being cool or hip than in being faithful. We could say that because the church in America has been steeped in a radical individualistic culture of self-expression that the traditional expressions of faith are being rejected for an expression that is no rooted in the Christian story and its history. In other words, these new young Christians do not become a part of the church, but instead completely make the church part of themselves… instead of conforming to Christ, Christ is forced to conform to popular culture.
While you could say those things and have a point, I do think there is something to learn from young Christians and their ink, and not just because I have a couple of tattoos myself. Because the act of getting tattoo’s does symbolize something that young adults and teens today are asking us, the established church to provide for them.
You see faith has long been thought of mostly as something interior and personal. I ‘have’ a faith and that faith consists of my beliefs and the ‘feelings’ I have when I pray, or worship, for example. Just the language I used, which is often the way people speak to me, shows how individualized faith is. It is deeply personal, it is mine. And as I have reflected on before, one of the phrases I hear so often, and which if I am honest drives me nuts, as much as I love the person saying it to me is… Pastor I haven’t been to church, but I still believe. Faith is interior, a system of ideas, an intellectual exercise at best, a feeling of warmth in its worst form really.
Tattoos symbolize what young adults and teens are begging us for… a faith that is not just inside me, but outside, not just in my thoughts, but in my actions, in my practices. A faith is isn’t something that I ‘have’ and therefore control, but is something that has me and controls me, compels me, drives me. Young Adults and Teens want a faith that isn’t something we have, but instead something we practice and pass on. They want, in other words to be passionate, not only in thought or word, but in deed. Faith without works is dead, James would tell us… and teens and young adults are begging us to make that verse our motto. Tattoos, as odd as they are, tell us something about what kind of faith young folks want… a faith that is visible and not private, a faith that is a part of the body and not just the mind or the heart, a faith that costs something, is even uncomfortable, for this reminds us of sacrifice.
The question is, are we passionate about practicing our faith? And the answer, as we talked about last week, is that young adults and teens are telling us that we are not. Faith is not worth sacrificing over. We squirm if we are asked to sacrifice more than an hour of our Sunday morning. Instead of faith being something we will sacrifice for, faith is often the first to be sacrificed. Worship for a walk in the woods or the beach. Sunday morning sacrificed for a good time Saturday night. They are watching folks and they are seeing and reflecting for us just what we are teaching them… Worship, Faith, is a option for feeling better, but it is simply one option among many others, and these others arouse more passion than practicing faith.
II. Back to interactive sermon time: What four things did Christ command us to do? Now three of these we actually do practice and one of them lies often forgotten or is optional. A hint. One of the three that we get, Baptists call ordinances and we practice them regularly.
Baptism
Communion
Love One Another
Jn 13:1-15
13:1 It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.
2 The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"
7 Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
8 "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet."
Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."
9 "Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!"
10 Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. 13 "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.
What do you suppose Jesus was trying to teach the disciples here? What specifically was he commanding them to do?
He was commanding them to live lives of compassionate service. Faith in him was meant to be practiced… and the washing of the feet was meant to be a regular reminder of all the acts of service that Jesus had showed them in his time with them…
Acts of service such as…
Feeding the starving thousands with bread and fish
Healing the sickness and disease of so many (not forgetting that poverty and malnourishment was the cause most likely of this sickness)
Again through healing taking lepers from the isolation of being outcasts and leading them back to home, to family
Placing himself between an angry crowd and a woman caught in sin
This foot-washing story and command is meant to remind us of the life of sacrificial service that Jesus lived, and to inspire us to acts of sacrificial service. Our faith is not complete in acts of piety such as prayer and worship, although these are vital aspects of faith. Our faith has not grown to its potential if it consists of warm thoughts, or a feeling of self-satisfaction, or in being nice when the occasion presents itself. The foot-washing story reminds of Jesus whose entire ministry among was was focused on seeking those in need, and serving them. Putting himself in harms way to provide for them. That is a lot more than just ‘nice’ I think you will agree. Our faith is not complete unless it is practiced in diakonia, in service to others. And not just occasionally. Service is meant to be the steady drum-beat guiding our lives just as worship and prayer is a constant part of our lives.
This, I believe, is something that young people can believe in.
This is something the early church believed in and struggled with.
Ac 6:1
6:1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
NIV
Ac 2:44-46
45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
NIV
Ac 4:33-35
34 There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
NIV
Ro 15:25-28
25 Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the saints there. 26 For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem . 27 They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.
Distributing food, selling possessions to offer assistance to the poor, churches tithing not only for their own ministry, but to send back to Jerusalem… the early church understood what the foot-washing command meant… that they would live lives of service.
As I said before, a faith that does not include a passion for service and regular component of hands on service is not a complete faith.
And I think that we grow in this area by beginning with a change in our language. Instead of asking people to join a committee, lets start asking people what ministry they feel passionate about. Instead of asking new members what committee they are interested in (because whether we like it or not, committee’s are not going to raise new Christian’s passions) lets ask them what mission God is calling them too.
We have many… a clothes closet, a hygiene closet. We have a nutrition ministry. And let me pause there for a moment to say we are re-visioning that nutrition ministry. We will need a new coordinator for that ministry and we are considering working with the RI food bank, and opening the food closet twice a month instead of just having it available by emergency appt. But in order for this to work we will need many people who feel passionate about feeding the hungry, called to give time and energy to this mission.
Although our AI Visioning process revealed to us another mission, I would like to suggest that first and foremost our goal for the next couple of years is focusing on this nutrition ministry. I would like to suggest that our goal for the next couple of years is to widen the circle of those who regularly participate in these works of service, such as the food closet and clothes closet and Holiday food baskets and Summer meal programs. Not only encouraging more of us, the members of the church to get hands on involved in these ministries, but also more community members involved, for in inviting them to serve, we are inviting them to follow Christ. And in including our children we are not only teaching them to serve, we are teaching them to follow Christ.
Now our AI goal is to create a ministry partnership with an American Baptist Missionary and a community perhaps in central America; to get to know the people, to learn about their struggles and then to create a plan, a long term plan to serve them, visit them, but not just to serve them, to create a relationship with them.
I’m asking you to pray for both of these missions of service; the nutrition ministry and the sister relationship with a foreign missionary and church; pray for a coordinator for the nutrition program, pray for the families that we serve, and pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal to you your passion for service. Pray that the Holy Spirit will show us show us how to grow in faith, how to grow from a faith that believes into a faith that serves, how we all together should grow from a faith that we hold, into a faith that we practice and pass on.
Jn 13:17
17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
So let us also, in these 100 days of prayer, pray that we will be blessed with the courage and commitment to wash other’s feet as Christ has washed our own.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Mission of the Church is to be a Learning and Teaching Community; Bible; Word of God
The Church as a Community of Teaching and Learning
Acts 2:42/Deut 6:4-9
Intro:
The Question(s) we start with this morning are… Who taught you about faith? What did they teach you? How?
[time of sharing]
Part I: The Apocalypse of Faith?
The Book of Eli is a movie starring Denzel Washington who plays a character on a mission. He lives in America, but it is a post apocalyptic America, an America after the destruction of nuclear war. If you have ever seen the Mad Max movies you can imagine the landscape… no vegetation, little food, little clean water, small colonies of disfigured survivors, ruined and abandoned cities, rubble. As with any post apocalyptic movie you have to have cannibals for the good guys to fight and Denzel fights more than a few cannibals.
We don’t know much about his mission, not at first. He carries a book. A rare book. He needs to get it from the East Coast to the West Coast where the last enclave of civilization stands.Carnegie is the bad guy. He is looking for a book. He controls a little settlement because he controls a supply of clean drinking water. He wants the book because in the book are words with power, words that would enable him to take control of what is left of the America.
As we go along we find out two things. The book that Denzel carries and that Carnegie seeks is the Bible. The last Bible. There is no more religious faith of any kind in this apocalypse. Denzel has to save the last Bible and Carnegie wants it for his own purposes. There is no prayer, no faith.
I’m not recommending this movie necessarily. It’s ok, some good fight scenes. But the thought of an America without any memory of the Bible or the Christian Faith, accept for one lone man on a mission to save that tradition, to save the Word of God, intrigued me.
But its only fiction.
Right?
Part II:
A new book just came out about youth ministry. It is based on a study by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton who work for the National Study of Youth and Religion. The book is by Kenda Creasy Dean and it is called Almost Christian.
I am going to read to you, from an article about the study and the book, by the books author, as found in the Christian Century.
I don’t generally read long quotes but I think we need to hear this…
Smith and Denton reported ‘seeing an alternative faith in American teenagers, one that ‘feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours’ established religious traditions. This faith, called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,… is affiliated with traditional faith communities but… [leads to teens] practicing a very different faith than historic orthodox Christianity. If teenagers wrote out the creed of this religious outlook, it would look something like this:
• A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible…
• The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.
• God is not involved in my life except when I need God to solve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.
Smith and Denton claim that MTD is ‘colonizing many historical religious traditions and , almost without anyone noticing, converting believers in the old faiths to its alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness’… It may be the new mainstream American religious faith for our culturally post-Christian, individualistic, mass-consumer capitalist society….A significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that it is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into… Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.’
Dean summarizes the report in this way:
“American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith — but it does not concern them much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.” [Quote from her book]
Then she adds this: “One more thing: we’re responsible.”
Part 3:
I grew up in a very conservative evangelical church, American Baptist, but very different. From childhood I was bombarded with stories from Revelation of the rapture, the anti-Christ, the Tribulation, war and suffering… and it scared me to death. It really did.
I grew up and went to seminary and learned what I think is a better way to read Revelation and it doesn’t frighten me any more. It challenges and convicts and inspires me, but it does frighten me.
This frightens me.
It frightens me because my experience tells me that Smith and Denton and Dean are not Henny Penny running around crying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. We’ve are watching it happen.
Dean writes ‘we ‘teach’ young people baseball, but we ‘expose’ them to faith. We provide coaching and opportunities for youth to develop and improve their pitches and their SAT scores, but we blithely assume that religious identity will happen by osmosis and will emerge ‘when youth are ready ‘ ( a confidence we generally lack when it comes to, say, algebra). ‘
Dt 6:4-9
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Part 4:
Last week, we talked about the Vision of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Do you remember that Vision? God tells Abraham that he will be blessed and that he will be a blessing. He will have child, who will have a child and eventually many and they will have a land…
What we read today was the conclusion of that part of the blessing… Moses and Israel, the descendants of Jacob have reached the Promised Land…
And now the next stage of the Vision unfolds. All the peoples of the earth will be blessed… that is what God promised, that was the next stage of the Vision…
That Israel would be the people that God entrusted with the very words of God for all the nations; Who would devote themselves to being shaped by that word into a living witness, In their practice of prayer and worship, in their practice of justice and righteousness.They would not only have the word but hold it in their hearts and minds and be before a watching world The embodiment of God’s word and the life it brings.
Deuteronomy is a Mission statement. Carry my Word to the People.
Wake up to It, and go to bed with it… walk with it and talk about it, and fill your home with it Take it to work and above all, impress it upon your children…the Hebrew word translated impress literally means pierce… a permanent mark
the Word of God, given to Moses and the people of Israel…
the word of God, the faith, the Christian lifestyle handed down to us…
entrusted to us by; [the list of our church's saints and those people they told me about to open the sermon]
The Word of God Entrusted to us by the word made flesh Jesus
Mt 28:19-20
Therefore go 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. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
We have been entrusted with this Word.
Our mission is to be a people devoted to it, to reading it and learning it and discussing it and living it and in so doing passing it on…
I heard an Imam respond to the threat to burn the Koran and he said something that I found very inspirational. He said that you could burn the books, but that the Koran was in the hearts and minds of the Muslim people and that could not be burned.
In the end of the movie, Book of Eli, the bad guy gets the Bible, Eli, looses the book, it is lost…
Incidentally, Carnegie gets the Bible but he can’t read it. Eli is blind. The Bible is in brail and Carnegie can’t interpret it. There is no one to explain it to him. (Which I think is a startling metaphor of the fact that the Bible itself is not enough… it takes a community to interpret it, explain it and live it so that it can be taught. Which is what the text from Deuteronomy is telling us. Read it, Learn it, Live it, Teach it)
But all is not lost. Eli doesn’t have the book, but he has memorized every word.
And his last act before dying of the wounds inflicted upon him by Carnegie and his evil henchmen
Is to dictate the Bible to a scribe so that the word is not lost.
Friends, the Word is not lost.
We can pass it on to our children and to all the un-churched and de-churched folks who enter our doors…
The saints we remembered have dictated it to us through their lives of faith
Christ has entrusted it to us…
It will take all of us…It doesn’t matter if your children are grown and no longer here, it will take all of us…It isn’t enough to believe that the Bible is God’s word or to be of the opinion that the Bible is important.
Convictions, wrote James Wm. McClendon, are not just beliefs or opinions, … for our convictions show themselves not merely in our professions or belief or disbelief, but in all our attitudes and actions…
And if that were not challenging enough, McClendon goes on to say of the church…no mere collections of the curious will count.
James William McClendon, Jr.
Doctrine p 29
John Howard Yoder wrote similarly contrasting two choices for the church… ‘run-of-the-mill’ devotion or a ‘heroic’ level of devotion.
J.H. Yoder; The Priestly Kingdom
The Kingdom as Social Ethic, p. 83
These are serious times my sister’s and brothers. We are not living in the post Apocalypse described in the book of Eli, the land with no faith and with no Bible and with no one to teach what it means and what it looks like in action. But Denton, Smith and Dean suggest that we are slouching toward apocalypse. This is not the time for casual or curious Christianity. This is the time of Conviction and Heroic Efforts.
This is our Mission. To be the Heroic and Convicted Community of Learning and Teaching.
Will we accept it?
Acts 2:42/Deut 6:4-9
Intro:
The Question(s) we start with this morning are… Who taught you about faith? What did they teach you? How?
[time of sharing]
Part I: The Apocalypse of Faith?
The Book of Eli is a movie starring Denzel Washington who plays a character on a mission. He lives in America, but it is a post apocalyptic America, an America after the destruction of nuclear war. If you have ever seen the Mad Max movies you can imagine the landscape… no vegetation, little food, little clean water, small colonies of disfigured survivors, ruined and abandoned cities, rubble. As with any post apocalyptic movie you have to have cannibals for the good guys to fight and Denzel fights more than a few cannibals.
We don’t know much about his mission, not at first. He carries a book. A rare book. He needs to get it from the East Coast to the West Coast where the last enclave of civilization stands.Carnegie is the bad guy. He is looking for a book. He controls a little settlement because he controls a supply of clean drinking water. He wants the book because in the book are words with power, words that would enable him to take control of what is left of the America.
As we go along we find out two things. The book that Denzel carries and that Carnegie seeks is the Bible. The last Bible. There is no more religious faith of any kind in this apocalypse. Denzel has to save the last Bible and Carnegie wants it for his own purposes. There is no prayer, no faith.
I’m not recommending this movie necessarily. It’s ok, some good fight scenes. But the thought of an America without any memory of the Bible or the Christian Faith, accept for one lone man on a mission to save that tradition, to save the Word of God, intrigued me.
But its only fiction.
Right?
Part II:
A new book just came out about youth ministry. It is based on a study by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton who work for the National Study of Youth and Religion. The book is by Kenda Creasy Dean and it is called Almost Christian.
I am going to read to you, from an article about the study and the book, by the books author, as found in the Christian Century.
I don’t generally read long quotes but I think we need to hear this…
Smith and Denton reported ‘seeing an alternative faith in American teenagers, one that ‘feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours’ established religious traditions. This faith, called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,… is affiliated with traditional faith communities but… [leads to teens] practicing a very different faith than historic orthodox Christianity. If teenagers wrote out the creed of this religious outlook, it would look something like this:
• A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible…
• The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.
• God is not involved in my life except when I need God to solve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.
Smith and Denton claim that MTD is ‘colonizing many historical religious traditions and , almost without anyone noticing, converting believers in the old faiths to its alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness’… It may be the new mainstream American religious faith for our culturally post-Christian, individualistic, mass-consumer capitalist society….A significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that it is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into… Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.’
Dean summarizes the report in this way:
“American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith — but it does not concern them much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.” [Quote from her book]
Then she adds this: “One more thing: we’re responsible.”
Part 3:
I grew up in a very conservative evangelical church, American Baptist, but very different. From childhood I was bombarded with stories from Revelation of the rapture, the anti-Christ, the Tribulation, war and suffering… and it scared me to death. It really did.
I grew up and went to seminary and learned what I think is a better way to read Revelation and it doesn’t frighten me any more. It challenges and convicts and inspires me, but it does frighten me.
This frightens me.
It frightens me because my experience tells me that Smith and Denton and Dean are not Henny Penny running around crying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. We’ve are watching it happen.
Dean writes ‘we ‘teach’ young people baseball, but we ‘expose’ them to faith. We provide coaching and opportunities for youth to develop and improve their pitches and their SAT scores, but we blithely assume that religious identity will happen by osmosis and will emerge ‘when youth are ready ‘ ( a confidence we generally lack when it comes to, say, algebra). ‘
Dt 6:4-9
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Part 4:
Last week, we talked about the Vision of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Do you remember that Vision? God tells Abraham that he will be blessed and that he will be a blessing. He will have child, who will have a child and eventually many and they will have a land…
What we read today was the conclusion of that part of the blessing… Moses and Israel, the descendants of Jacob have reached the Promised Land…
And now the next stage of the Vision unfolds. All the peoples of the earth will be blessed… that is what God promised, that was the next stage of the Vision…
That Israel would be the people that God entrusted with the very words of God for all the nations; Who would devote themselves to being shaped by that word into a living witness, In their practice of prayer and worship, in their practice of justice and righteousness.They would not only have the word but hold it in their hearts and minds and be before a watching world The embodiment of God’s word and the life it brings.
Deuteronomy is a Mission statement. Carry my Word to the People.
Wake up to It, and go to bed with it… walk with it and talk about it, and fill your home with it Take it to work and above all, impress it upon your children…the Hebrew word translated impress literally means pierce… a permanent mark
the Word of God, given to Moses and the people of Israel…
the word of God, the faith, the Christian lifestyle handed down to us…
entrusted to us by; [the list of our church's saints and those people they told me about to open the sermon]
The Word of God Entrusted to us by the word made flesh Jesus
Mt 28:19-20
Therefore go 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. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
We have been entrusted with this Word.
Our mission is to be a people devoted to it, to reading it and learning it and discussing it and living it and in so doing passing it on…
I heard an Imam respond to the threat to burn the Koran and he said something that I found very inspirational. He said that you could burn the books, but that the Koran was in the hearts and minds of the Muslim people and that could not be burned.
In the end of the movie, Book of Eli, the bad guy gets the Bible, Eli, looses the book, it is lost…
Incidentally, Carnegie gets the Bible but he can’t read it. Eli is blind. The Bible is in brail and Carnegie can’t interpret it. There is no one to explain it to him. (Which I think is a startling metaphor of the fact that the Bible itself is not enough… it takes a community to interpret it, explain it and live it so that it can be taught. Which is what the text from Deuteronomy is telling us. Read it, Learn it, Live it, Teach it)
But all is not lost. Eli doesn’t have the book, but he has memorized every word.
And his last act before dying of the wounds inflicted upon him by Carnegie and his evil henchmen
Is to dictate the Bible to a scribe so that the word is not lost.
Friends, the Word is not lost.
We can pass it on to our children and to all the un-churched and de-churched folks who enter our doors…
The saints we remembered have dictated it to us through their lives of faith
Christ has entrusted it to us…
It will take all of us…It doesn’t matter if your children are grown and no longer here, it will take all of us…It isn’t enough to believe that the Bible is God’s word or to be of the opinion that the Bible is important.
Convictions, wrote James Wm. McClendon, are not just beliefs or opinions, … for our convictions show themselves not merely in our professions or belief or disbelief, but in all our attitudes and actions…
And if that were not challenging enough, McClendon goes on to say of the church…no mere collections of the curious will count.
James William McClendon, Jr.
Doctrine p 29
John Howard Yoder wrote similarly contrasting two choices for the church… ‘run-of-the-mill’ devotion or a ‘heroic’ level of devotion.
J.H. Yoder; The Priestly Kingdom
The Kingdom as Social Ethic, p. 83
These are serious times my sister’s and brothers. We are not living in the post Apocalypse described in the book of Eli, the land with no faith and with no Bible and with no one to teach what it means and what it looks like in action. But Denton, Smith and Dean suggest that we are slouching toward apocalypse. This is not the time for casual or curious Christianity. This is the time of Conviction and Heroic Efforts.
This is our Mission. To be the Heroic and Convicted Community of Learning and Teaching.
Will we accept it?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Vision of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob
A sermon on Vision
Texts: excerpts of the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Intro:
As many of you know, the leadership team and many active members of Berean Baptist Church recently finished the planning stage of a process called Appreciative Inquiry, which is a exercise in discerning our Vision for the next 5 years or so. The process actually produced enough ideas to keep us going for 20 years, but we will revisit out vision at least every five years.
Anyway, this process started with group meetings. All the members of the church were invited to attend small group meetings in which they were asked questions such as: When have you felt most a part of the mission of Berean?, When have you felt that you have grown most spiritually at Berean?, and When have you felt proudest to be a part of Berean? These questions didn’t just lead to simple answers, but to stories. People began sharing stories of their best experiences at BBC and we wrote them down and collected them all. Then the leadership team read through all the stories and highlighted the themes that these stories held in common. Then the leaders summarized all the stories that went with each theme and these all became pieces of the story of Berean. Next we imagined, what will the next generation of BBC tell as their story. 20 years from now, what stories will the members be telling? We wrote what we imagined for each theme and that became our Vision. From that vision we created a list of Goals and tasks.
I want you to notice the fact that stories played an important role in both our discerning of who we are at Berean and who we feel God is calling us to become. Stories are the key.
I recently heard an interesting story on NPR that explained that the human brain is ‘wired’ , created, in such a way as to make sense of our struggles and troubles, and to create goals for ourselves, through story. The brain stores and makes sense of information through stories. The example they gave was the true story of a man who wanted to become a writer and work in Hollywood writing movie scripts. But his father grew very ill and so he needed to let that story go and create a new story, a story where he helped his father. He connected to the story of King Arthur and the movie Camelot. This is how he made sense of his world. The point is that we do, whether we are conscious of it or not, connect to the books, movies, plays. We probably all have had the experience of saying, after finishing a book or movie, ‘that story is my story, that character is me.’ God has created us to make sense of the world we live in, by connecting to stories and telling stories and seeing our lives as a story. Which brings me to a couple of stories from the Bible.
Ge 32:22-30
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
What is Jacob wrestling for? A blessing. Ok, now follow me back to Genesis 12.
Ge 12:1-3
The LORD had said to Abram , "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
To really make this point though we have to remember that Abram’s father was Terah and that Abram had a brother named Haran. In chapter 11 we learn that Haran dies and later Terah dies in Haran. Scholars think that this is just a coincidence, that Terah dies in the village or land called Haran, and that he had a son named Haran. I just can’t help believe that it is more than coincidence. To me it seems like a window opening this story up so that it becomes more than just past history. If we read this, imagine ourselves in this story we know exactly where Abram is in Haran. We know what it is to experience loss and to wonder where we are and even who we are. We know the shock to the spirit of the loss of a loved one, a divorce, getting laid off, or fired. We know the pain and the disorientation that these events cause, and so we know where Abram is.
Which makes hearing the voice from the dark night sky promising ‘blessing’ , a promise, a glimmer of hope, the good news that will help us to navigate the strange, painful and confusing times of our lives.
As I thought about these two stories, Abram hearing the promise of a blessing and Jacob wrestling for a blessing, and the many times in between, it occurred to me that this was the Vision, the Story that allowed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to make sense of their lives. As Abram awaited the birth of a son, he could remind himself that he was a man ‘blessed’ by God. As he wandered and wondered, sometimes fought the aggressive tribes that surrounded him on his sojourn, Abram could remind himself that he was a man blessed by God. Even when his own decisions (like that incident with Hagar) caused he and his family pain and anger, Abram could rely on the story, the Vision, the one blessed by God.
Jacob most surely must have been raised with this story and told that was the grandson of the man blessed by God. Jacob’s story offers hope and warning, as I read it. As the second born son, the promise of a blessing not for the eldest, Esau, but for the youngest, Jacob, is a promise for all those who are considered ‘less than’ unimportant, ill equipped, and expendable, that God blesses whom God chooses, not based on wealth or prosperity or popularity.
It also warns us against hubris. Jacob and his mother both work to manipulate Isaac and trick Esau. That we are a people who carry a Vision, the Vision of God’s Kingdom as proclaimed by Christ, does not mean that we understand the Vision completely. God’s will and way is still a mystery to be explored and not a weapon to be used for our own power or benefit.
Still I don’t think it too much of a stretch to imagine that throughout Jacob’s life, that story, of Abram hearing the voice from the heaven’s offering blessing, was remembered, in times of trial and struggle. And even though it was a struggle, and the story, the vision didn’t protect Jacob from pain and challenge, it did always give him the hope to carry on, and a sense of direction through confusing and painful times.
The other day I listened to an interview with an author on the radio. I was driving so I couldn’t write down his name or his book. What caught my attention was the point he made about the source of his vision as a husband and father. As a writer he looked to the great writers, the important pieces of literature to explain the beauty and the brokenness of our humanity. And he found wisdom there. But he then learned about the lives of these great writers and to his disappointment, so many of them could not live up to the beauty they observed, nor could they avoid the ugliness they described. He went on to observe the same phenomena among those who shape the opinions of so many in our country, tv pundits and radio talk show hosts, who proclaim a vision, but cannot live up to this vision.
I think he touched upon something important. As we approach election time, ‘change’ seems to be the election campaign slogan of choice. Everyone seems to be about change, which is really a one word story, a one word vision that promises a new and successful path ahead, that this or that leader can take us to. It worked for President Obama. My point is not to be cynical about politics, but to point out the deep need among people who are looking for a vision. All of these things point to the need many people feel, for a vision, for a story to make sense of their world and offer a way ahead.
I think it is time for us to boldly proclaim our vision; that we have a vision that will not disappoint as politicians, celebrities, and philosophies all eventually will. We know of a man who could proclaim a vision and live up to it, a man named Jesus who created the Kingdom where-ever he traveled, who died as a result of his vision and who was resurrected so that we might be empowered to pursue his vision.
This is a time for vision. So many churches in our state are struggling financially and find it hard to agree upon mission and ministry and so loose more members than they gain. I consult with them. So many don’t have a Vision. Or their vision is for things to either stay the way they are (if they are reasonably good) or go back to the way they were 40 years ago. But God’s vision for us is the same as it was for Abram, it calls us forward into the future, away from what is, not matter how comfortable that is for us, and toward and what is yet to be, with all of its promise and all of our fear of the unknown.
This is a time for vision Berean, a time for us to leave behind what once was and move boldly on to the future God has created for us and is empowering us to realize.
God bless you all.
Texts: excerpts of the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Intro:
As many of you know, the leadership team and many active members of Berean Baptist Church recently finished the planning stage of a process called Appreciative Inquiry, which is a exercise in discerning our Vision for the next 5 years or so. The process actually produced enough ideas to keep us going for 20 years, but we will revisit out vision at least every five years.
Anyway, this process started with group meetings. All the members of the church were invited to attend small group meetings in which they were asked questions such as: When have you felt most a part of the mission of Berean?, When have you felt that you have grown most spiritually at Berean?, and When have you felt proudest to be a part of Berean? These questions didn’t just lead to simple answers, but to stories. People began sharing stories of their best experiences at BBC and we wrote them down and collected them all. Then the leadership team read through all the stories and highlighted the themes that these stories held in common. Then the leaders summarized all the stories that went with each theme and these all became pieces of the story of Berean. Next we imagined, what will the next generation of BBC tell as their story. 20 years from now, what stories will the members be telling? We wrote what we imagined for each theme and that became our Vision. From that vision we created a list of Goals and tasks.
I want you to notice the fact that stories played an important role in both our discerning of who we are at Berean and who we feel God is calling us to become. Stories are the key.
I recently heard an interesting story on NPR that explained that the human brain is ‘wired’ , created, in such a way as to make sense of our struggles and troubles, and to create goals for ourselves, through story. The brain stores and makes sense of information through stories. The example they gave was the true story of a man who wanted to become a writer and work in Hollywood writing movie scripts. But his father grew very ill and so he needed to let that story go and create a new story, a story where he helped his father. He connected to the story of King Arthur and the movie Camelot. This is how he made sense of his world. The point is that we do, whether we are conscious of it or not, connect to the books, movies, plays. We probably all have had the experience of saying, after finishing a book or movie, ‘that story is my story, that character is me.’ God has created us to make sense of the world we live in, by connecting to stories and telling stories and seeing our lives as a story. Which brings me to a couple of stories from the Bible.
Ge 32:22-30
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
What is Jacob wrestling for? A blessing. Ok, now follow me back to Genesis 12.
Ge 12:1-3
The LORD had said to Abram , "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
To really make this point though we have to remember that Abram’s father was Terah and that Abram had a brother named Haran. In chapter 11 we learn that Haran dies and later Terah dies in Haran. Scholars think that this is just a coincidence, that Terah dies in the village or land called Haran, and that he had a son named Haran. I just can’t help believe that it is more than coincidence. To me it seems like a window opening this story up so that it becomes more than just past history. If we read this, imagine ourselves in this story we know exactly where Abram is in Haran. We know what it is to experience loss and to wonder where we are and even who we are. We know the shock to the spirit of the loss of a loved one, a divorce, getting laid off, or fired. We know the pain and the disorientation that these events cause, and so we know where Abram is.
Which makes hearing the voice from the dark night sky promising ‘blessing’ , a promise, a glimmer of hope, the good news that will help us to navigate the strange, painful and confusing times of our lives.
As I thought about these two stories, Abram hearing the promise of a blessing and Jacob wrestling for a blessing, and the many times in between, it occurred to me that this was the Vision, the Story that allowed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to make sense of their lives. As Abram awaited the birth of a son, he could remind himself that he was a man ‘blessed’ by God. As he wandered and wondered, sometimes fought the aggressive tribes that surrounded him on his sojourn, Abram could remind himself that he was a man blessed by God. Even when his own decisions (like that incident with Hagar) caused he and his family pain and anger, Abram could rely on the story, the Vision, the one blessed by God.
Jacob most surely must have been raised with this story and told that was the grandson of the man blessed by God. Jacob’s story offers hope and warning, as I read it. As the second born son, the promise of a blessing not for the eldest, Esau, but for the youngest, Jacob, is a promise for all those who are considered ‘less than’ unimportant, ill equipped, and expendable, that God blesses whom God chooses, not based on wealth or prosperity or popularity.
It also warns us against hubris. Jacob and his mother both work to manipulate Isaac and trick Esau. That we are a people who carry a Vision, the Vision of God’s Kingdom as proclaimed by Christ, does not mean that we understand the Vision completely. God’s will and way is still a mystery to be explored and not a weapon to be used for our own power or benefit.
Still I don’t think it too much of a stretch to imagine that throughout Jacob’s life, that story, of Abram hearing the voice from the heaven’s offering blessing, was remembered, in times of trial and struggle. And even though it was a struggle, and the story, the vision didn’t protect Jacob from pain and challenge, it did always give him the hope to carry on, and a sense of direction through confusing and painful times.
The other day I listened to an interview with an author on the radio. I was driving so I couldn’t write down his name or his book. What caught my attention was the point he made about the source of his vision as a husband and father. As a writer he looked to the great writers, the important pieces of literature to explain the beauty and the brokenness of our humanity. And he found wisdom there. But he then learned about the lives of these great writers and to his disappointment, so many of them could not live up to the beauty they observed, nor could they avoid the ugliness they described. He went on to observe the same phenomena among those who shape the opinions of so many in our country, tv pundits and radio talk show hosts, who proclaim a vision, but cannot live up to this vision.
I think he touched upon something important. As we approach election time, ‘change’ seems to be the election campaign slogan of choice. Everyone seems to be about change, which is really a one word story, a one word vision that promises a new and successful path ahead, that this or that leader can take us to. It worked for President Obama. My point is not to be cynical about politics, but to point out the deep need among people who are looking for a vision. All of these things point to the need many people feel, for a vision, for a story to make sense of their world and offer a way ahead.
I think it is time for us to boldly proclaim our vision; that we have a vision that will not disappoint as politicians, celebrities, and philosophies all eventually will. We know of a man who could proclaim a vision and live up to it, a man named Jesus who created the Kingdom where-ever he traveled, who died as a result of his vision and who was resurrected so that we might be empowered to pursue his vision.
This is a time for vision. So many churches in our state are struggling financially and find it hard to agree upon mission and ministry and so loose more members than they gain. I consult with them. So many don’t have a Vision. Or their vision is for things to either stay the way they are (if they are reasonably good) or go back to the way they were 40 years ago. But God’s vision for us is the same as it was for Abram, it calls us forward into the future, away from what is, not matter how comfortable that is for us, and toward and what is yet to be, with all of its promise and all of our fear of the unknown.
This is a time for vision Berean, a time for us to leave behind what once was and move boldly on to the future God has created for us and is empowering us to realize.
God bless you all.
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