Gettin Political

Romans 13:1-7

 

13Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.

7Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

 

            Three boys are in the schoolyard bragging about their fathers.  The first one says, “My dad is so fast that he can shoot a bow and arrow and outrun the arrow to the target.”

            The second boy said, “Oh yeah, my dad is a hunter and he can shoot a gun and outrun the bullet.”

            The third boy, not wanting to be outdone, said, “Well my dad works for the government.  He gets off work at 5:00, but he is so fast that he can get home each day by noon.”

            We give government employees a hard time, everyone from the president on down the line is subject to our jokes and complaints.  And just a reminder, my wife is a state employee, so you better believe I give her a hard time sometimes.  But scripture teaches us that we are to submit to the governing authorities and give them the respect that they are due.

            Today I want to look at Romans 13:1-7 to see that we are to respect the government when they are respectable and to submit to the authorities when they are not asking us to do something outside of our calling in Christ.  And I hope to show you that there are times when we are called to resist the governing authorities because we belong first and foremost to another kingdom.

            So I’ve been preaching through Romans over the last couple of weeks and I have a love/hate relationship with Romans.  I love Romans because there is some of the most beautiful scripture in the Bible found in these chapters.  I hate Romans because there is also some of the most challenging and confusing scripture in the Bible found in these chapters.  Today’s scripture is one of the more challenging scriptures in Romans for me.  And I knew when I started my series on Romans that I would one day come to Romans 13.

            As I try to understand Romans 13 today, remember that I am presenting my opinion and my understanding of what the Scriptures are trying to tell us.  You may very well disagree, and you probably will disagree with some of what I have to say.  But I want to encourage you to not simply get upset, storm out of the church, and never come back again.  If you disagree with me, let’s get together sometime for a cup of coffee and talk things through.  And maybe we will both come to a better understanding of who God is calling us to be as followers of Jesus Christ.

            Our scripture for today begins by saying, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”  I fully agree that there is no authority except from God and I believe that because God is the ultimate authority.  Therefore all authority on heaven and earth must submit to God.  Then Paul says that all authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Furthermore, if you resist those authorities that have been appointed by God you will incur judgment.  Judgment from whom?  That is a question we will have to come back to.

            I think we need to be careful how we read this scripture for a number of reasons.  If Paul is really saying that all governing authorities were put in place by God and that if you don’t submit to them that you will incur judgment, then all Christians living in Nazi Germany in the 1940’s were under obligation by God himself to serve Hitler, kill innocent Jews, and invade various neighboring countries in an attempt to take over the world. 

            Is that okay?  No, of course not!  If we look at what Paul continues in his writing, he says, “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good.”  Rulers are not to stop you from doing good.  In fact, they are there to be God’s servants for the good of the people.  So do what is good and the authorities should approve of our practices.  That simple.

            So what is good?  I think it is important that we read Romans 13 in its proper context.  Our Bibles are divided into chapters, verses, and sections so that it is easier for us to read and apply to our lives.  But sometimes these chapter divisions come at places that cause us a little trouble in understanding what was intended to be said.  Chapter 12, beginning with verse 14 says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.  If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  So I believe that Paul is laying out some criteria and saying submit to the governing authorities, as long as they stay within these boundaries.

            I think I have a pretty good example of this from my own life.  One of the Ten Commandments is that we are to honor our father and our mother.  Last Friday I had the opportunity to hear the heartbeat of my first child.  In just over six months I will be a father.  My wife is carrying our child, which we expect to meet on or around January 2^nd.  So we all know who will be playing the part of Mary in our Advent dramas.

            I desire to raise my children in a way that will teach them to love the Lord with all of their heart, all of their mind, and all of their soul as well as loving their neighbor as their self.  If I can instill those qualities in my children, I have been successful as a father.

            I believe that a part of loving the Lord with all of their heart, mind, and soul would include keeping the Lord’s commandments, such as honor your father and mother.  But I also recognize that I am a human being, a fallen one at that.  I make mistakes daily; I fall short of perfection.  And I recognize that I will not be a perfect parent, just as I am not a perfect Christian.

            But my hope for my children is that if I ever ask them to do something that in any way inhibits them from loving the Lord with all of their heart, mind, and soul and loving their neighbor that they will defy my and do what they believe the Lord is calling them to do.  Yes, I want them to honor me.  But I do not want them to honor me to the point that it keeps them from fulfilling the things that they are called to do as followers of Jesus Christ.

            Now please note, I am not saying that I want them to defy me because they just don’t want to do their chores, to wash the dishes, to go to school, or to do their homework.  I do hope that they don’t inherit too much of my stubborn streak.  But I do want them to stand up for what they believe in.  And in doing so, I believe that they will be honoring their parents and their God.

            So I believe that Paul isn’t telling us to mindlessly submit to those in authority.  We first and foremost belong to another kingdom, the kingdom of God.  And as long as these two kingdoms do not compete for our allegiance, we are to submit to the secular government.  Paul did this in his day.  He was living in a time when the Roman government had taken possession of a large part of the world as he would have known it.  And Paul does not deny his citizenship to Rome, in fact he uses the benefits of being a Roman citizenship on a number of occasions to save his own hide.  But yet Paul was killed for preaching a different kingdom with a different king.  Paul made it well known that Jesus the Christ was his Lord, and that meant that Caesar was not.

            And we find other examples of this in the Bible as well.  For instance, when we read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we find that they were living during the time of the Babylonian exile under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar.  Nebuchadnezzar had erected an idol that stood about 90 feet high and all people were commanded to bow down before this idol at the appointed time.  And what did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do?  They refused to do what they knew was against their religion.  They refused to bow down before any engraved image.  And they were punished by the authorities for it.  They were thrown into a fiery furnace.  They were judged by those in positions of authority to be trouble makers, and a punishment was placed upon them.

            Should they have submitted to the governing authorities?  No, the Bible uses them as an example of how we should stand up against authority if those in authority ask us to do something against our faith.  The same thing is true with the Hebrew midwives that were to through the Hebrew babies into the river.  The Bible teaches us to submit to the political authorities when the authorities are inline with God’s will.  Otherwise we are to stand up for what we believe in.

            So what does this look like today?  Probably the best and one of the more controversial example of living within the empires of this world while first being a part of a kingdom not of this world would be that of conscientious objectors during times of war, especially during a war where there is a draft.

            I believe that it is wrong for a Christian to take the life of another person, whether that be in fistfight in an alley, on the battle field, in an abortion clinic, or even allowing a person to die of a treatable illness or hunger.  I call this a consistent ethic of human life.  God is the giver of life and we have no right to take it away or to turn our backs as it happens to our fellow human beings.  I see the pro-life bumper stickers that read “Choose Life” all over town and I say to that, “I am choosing life.  And life does not end after birth.”

            Now I realize that when people hear me saying that I don’t believe that a Christian can engage in war that those that have served in the military or have family members that have served in the military may take offense.  But I want to make sure that you are all very aware of this.  I am not against the military.  I am against killing.  I am especially against killing so that we might prosper at someone else’s expense.  I am against killing so that we might secure our economic and political ideologies at the expense of those already suffering in other countries.

            My maternal grandfather served in the army during WWII.  He was in a non-combatant role, serving as a cook stationed in Newfoundland.  Just a little side story that has no relevance to this message at all, my parents bought a billiards table for us for Christmas when I was in high school because my brothers and I liked to play pool.  After we had it set up we invited Grandpa to come down into the basement so that we could show him our skills.  I believe my older brother played Grandpa in the first game and Grandpa whipped up on him.  I don’t think my brother ever got a ball in.

            All three of us boys and my father stood there with our mouths wide open because we never even knew that Grandpa had even played pool before.  He told us, “Yeah, that’s all we did in the Army was play pool.”

            So when I say that a Christian should never take another’s life, please don’t hear me saying that I am against the military.  I am against killing; specifically I am against putting what your country tells you to do before what your God tells you to do.  I recognize that the military does a lot of good things, distributing food and goods during times of need, doing relief work during natural disasters, building sandbag levies and dams during floods.

            I personally believe that I cannot join the armed forces for various reasons.  My Grandfather and I would disagree on how a Christian might be able to be involved in the military, and I bet that you and I might disagree as well.  And that is okay, it is alright to disagree on things.  I just want to make sure that we all arrive at our positions based on our Christian convictions, stemming from the Bible and our theological perspectives and not from what we are told we should think.

For instance, a lot of Christians that are not pacifists would say that they adhere to the Just War Theory, which lays out very specific criteria for when it is okay for a Christian to go to war.  The criteria for a Just War, as defined by the Catholic Catechism, includes four points:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

So for a war to be just, the bad guy has to be inflicting damage that was not on accident, was serious, and has the possibility of continuing for some time.  You must try every other option to reconcile before going to war.  You must have a good chance of winning the war and not just going in and sacrificing lives.  And the weaponry used must not cause more damage than is necessary to eliminate the evil at hand, i.e. you can’t drop a nuclear bomb on a country because someone stole a loaf of bread.

            While I don’t believe that war is ever justified, I do believe that the Just War Theory is a step in the right direction.  Can you imagine how many wars and deaths could have been avoided if the countries involved would just look seriously into step number two and consider all other options to going to war?  So while I am not a Just War proponent, I do sympathize with those who are and can see their end of the argument.  And if you would be more in the Just War camp, I understand completely.  And I encourage you to encourage our government to keep war just.

            We could spend all day asking questions like, “Would you have killed Hitler if you had the chance and you knew that it would save thousands of lives?” or “What if someone was trying to harm your wife or your family?”  Those are tough questions.  And if you would pull the trigger with Hitler in the sights or if someone was trying to harm your family, I wouldn’t fault you for that.  What it all comes down to for me is following the ways of Jesus who said by his actions, “I would never take a life to save my own, but I would gladly lay down my life to save another.” 

            So I come back to this baby growing in my wife’s belly and I have to be honest, I am pretty excited about being a father.  I am looking forward to the new life that God has entrusted us with.  But I know that I will not be a perfect father, because I am not a perfect person.  And while my child should honor his or her parents, I don’t want them to blindly follow my instructions if I am ever leading them away from their primary allegiance to God.  Nor do I want them to submit to the governing authorities if they ever do anything to lead them away from God.  God has put governing officials in place for the benefit of the people.  I truly believe that.  But what benefit does it serve if the government is leading us away from our commitment to Christ?

            The Bible teaches us that kingdoms of this world will rise and fall, but the kingdom of God will stand forever.  I invite you to join me in reciting “A Christian pledge of allegiance” as we recognize that we are first and foremost citizens of a kingdom unlike the kingdoms of this world.

A Christian pledge of allegiance

I pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ,
And to God’s kingdom for which he died—
One Spirit-led people the world over, indivisible,
With love and justice for all.

By June Alliman Yoder and J. Nelson Kraybill

Not Our Lives, but God’s Lives

Romans 12:1-8

12I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. 3For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

 

            A sixteen-year-old boy comes home after getting his driver’s license and goes straight to his dad and asks, “Dad, can I borrow the car for tonight?”

            The father says, “Not so fast, son.  First I need to see your grades improve, you need to clean your room, and I need you to get a hair cut.”

            A few weeks passed and the boy brought home his report card and proudly handed it to his father.  “Dad, I got straight A’s and my room is sparkling.  Can I borrow the car tonight?”

            “Not so fast,” says the father.  “You still haven’t gotten a haircut.” 

            Thinking quickly the boy said, “But dad, Jesus had long hair.”

            “That’s true,” said the father.  “And Jesus walked everywhere he went, too.”

            Hopefully it is obvious that when it comes to being a Christian, the length of your hair doesn’t matter at all.  But as followers of Jesus Christ and as redeemed people working for the redemption of the world, there are certain things that we are expected to do with the lives that God has given to us.  Today I want to look at Romans 12:1-8 and look at three different expectations of those that are following Christ daily.  I want to look at Our Changed Lives, Our Humble Lives, and Our Gifted Lives.

Our Changed lives

            Our scripture for this morning begins with Paul encouraging the Roman Christians to present their bodies as living sacrifices.  Sacrifices made to God were common in the first century, not only in Judaism, but in other religions as well.  When they made sacrifices to God, they didn’t give God something that they didn’t need or want anymore.  It was always something valuable like the prize bull or lamb, finest grain, and so on.  If they were giving something to God that they really didn’t want anymore then I guess it would really be a sacrifice, now would it?

So Paul is encouraging the Romans to offer their bodies to God as a living sacrifice.  What Paul is saying is for the Romans to give their all to God.  Don’t hold back anything.  Don’t just give God what you no longer need.  Give him your body, your soul, your entire life.

I like the way Rick Warren talks about living sacrifices.  He asks the question “What’s wrong with living sacrifices?  They keep crawling off the altar.”  How many of us are guilty of this?  We offer our bodies, we offer our minds, souls, all of our being to God one day, only to take that offering back?  I hope you kept your receipt when you gave your body to God as a living sacrifice because you might want a refund.

            This is especially sad because we all do it.  We make a commitment to following Christ, and maybe we stick with it for a while.  A day, a week, a month, a year go by.  And then something “better” comes along and we crawl right off that altar.  We take that offering back from God.  And we don’t even try to justify it with God.  We don’t even say, “Oh, I was just joking.”  Or, “That was before I got this really sweet job offer making a bunch of money.”  Or whatever our excuse could be.  No, we just take back the lives that we gave to God.

            When we offer our bodies and our lives up to God as a living sacrifice, it is to be a life-long commitment to following and serving God.  Our desires for temporary and monetary satisfaction, our greed, lust, envy, yeah, they don’t go away, but we learn to fight and defeat those temptations because how we live as Christians matters.  Sure, we are saved by grace, but our faithfulness to Christ matters as well.  Believe me, I know that it can be hard, maybe even downright impossible to live a life anything close to the one that Jesus lived as an example.  Loving our enemies, forgiving others, caring for the poor and the least of these takes work.  And it is so opposite of the pursuit of the American Dream that every person is told that they are to put first.  This quest for money and power that our society seems to thirst and hunger for are so far from what Jesus calls us to.  And that is why Paul encourages the Roman Christians, and I would say us today, to not be conformed to the ways of the world, but to be transformed to the will of God.

            When I first really dedicated myself to serving the Lord, I found it very difficult because I was very much conformed to the ways of the world.  I was motivated by money, power, and fame.  And believe me, there are still plenty of worldly temptations out there that cause me to stumble to this day. 

            Furthermore, who has time to sit down and read the Bible and pray every day?  Who has enough money to live off only 90% of their income and give (at least) 10% to those in need?  Stop gossiping?  Buy fairly traded goods?  Live simply?  When I made the decision to follow and serve Christ I knew that it was a commitment that I should not take lightly because there were a lot of things in this world that I enjoyed being conformed to and that they would be difficult to change in my life.  So how did I go about it?

            I think a story is appropriate here.  Our back yard is extremely shaded.  There is row of about eight pine trees on my neighbor’s property that boarders our yard that casts a large shadow across our back yard most of the day.  This row of trees and the shade that it makes has dictated where I put my garden, what perennials I can grow, and how well (or how poorly) the grass grows in my back yard. 

            A few weeks ago my neighbor asked me if I would be able to help him take down the first tree in this row of trees.  It was the largest of the trees, by far.  He wanted to cut it down because it was overcoming the other trees, and it was leaning pretty severely toward my property.  So he thought that it would be best to cut the tree down before it fell down and caused some major damage.

            So this past Tuesday we began cutting down that big, old pine.  And how do you take down a big pine?  Do you just start chopping at the base of the tree?  If we were to just start chopping, we would have little control over where the thing fell.  It might have fallen into the fence, into my garden, or onto a smaller tree and caused significant damage (just the thing we were trying to avoid by cutting it down!).

            No, we started by cutting off many of the limbs.  Some were small limbs that came off with little effort.  Others were larger limbs that were a little dangerous and took a little more work and a little more planning.  Then we started to cut off the top of the tree.  And this was the part that scared me the most.  But my neighbor, a seasoned woodsman, dropped the top of the tree right where he had wanted it.  Then he cut the trunk of the tree into a number of smaller, more manageable sections.  Then once on the ground, we cut those sections up into more manageable sections and carried them off to be ground up into next year’s mulch.

            Our lives as living sacrifices, being not conformed to the ways of the world but being transformed to the will of God is a lot like cutting down that old pine.  We know that if we don’t do something about it, that our lives will eventually fall and cause damage.  Damage to our own lives and the lives of others.

            But it is scary to think of changing your life!  It is a daunting task, intimidating even.  And I believe that is why I was so slow to make a commitment to God in the first place.  I looked at the long list of “To Do’s” and “Not To Do’s” and the expectations were just too much for me.

            But it doesn’t have to be like this.  The good news, like with the cutting down of the old pine tree, is that you don’t have to do it on your own.  That is one of the greatest things about the church.  The church is a group of people that meets regularly to worship God and to care for one another.  And when there are others available, it makes these life changes seem more doable.  And we also have the Holy Spirit working within us to change our hearts.  So we don’t ever have to feel like we are doing it all on our own.

Also, like cutting down that old pine, we don’t need to do it all in one swift cut at the base of the tree.  We disassemble our lives that are conformed to the ways of the world piece by piece, limb by limb, into manageable sections.  Start praying daily.  Work on forgiving others.  Join a Bible study in a few weeks.  Start giving to those in need.  Practice hospitality.  And if you do these things in manageable sections, you will find yourself living a changed life.  You will become a living sacrifice, no longer conformed to the ways of the world.

Our Humble Lives

            Paul goes on to write that a part of being changed people is that we are to be humble.  In verse three he writes, “3For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

            Paul never says that we are to think poorly of ourselves, but we are not to think too highly of ourselves, either.  Paul isn’t saying that we shouldn’t have self confidence, that we shouldn’t be bold for Christ.  What Paul is saying is that each and every one of us has an equal amount of worth in the eyes of God.  Whether you are the president of the United States, the homeless man living on the street corner, the CEO of Kraft Food, or an out of work father each person, each living soul is worth the same to God.  What Paul is talking about here isn’t just humility, it is about equality.

Our Gifted Lives

            So Paul tells us that we are to lead changed and humble lives, lives that he will go on to explain further in the rest of chapter 12.  But between this charge to live lives fully committed to God as living sacrifices, giving an example of a changed life being a humble life, Paul launches into this section on giftedness.  Paul writes in verses 4-8, “4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.”

            Paul begins by using his famous metaphor for the church: a body.  And that metaphor applies just as well today as it did in Paul’s day.  Each of us is different, and each of us is important.  Without even one of us, the body would be less and would suffer because of it.  Whether we are gifted to prophesy, minister, teach, exhort, give generously, to lead, or to be compassionate, we are to use these gifts for the glory of God.

            And we must remember that anytime we see a list of Spiritual Gifts in the Bible that this is not an exhaustive list.  Not every Spiritual Gift is listed here.  I believe all of the things that we are talented at or good at is a gift from God.  The Psalmist writes in Psalm 139:13, “¹³For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  And a knitter knows the thread that they are using!  Psalm 139 is all about how God knows us inside and out, top to bottom.  “Oh Lord you have searched me and know me.”  Of course God knows you and your giftedness…God made you.

            Perhaps the most difficult part of using our Spiritual Gifts is to figure out what they are.  Especially after we are told that we are to be humble.  Okay, so we are told “don’t think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.”  But then we are told that we are given these gifts and that we are expected to use them to glorify God.  So if God had given me the gift of music, should I volunteer to sing a solo at church next week?  That has never been my style because this doesn’t seem very humble to me.  To say, “Hey, you will all benefit from me singing a solo” seems like I am a little on the other side of humble. 

            This is where the Barnabases in the church come into play.  The contemporary of Paul named Barnabas was given that name because it means, “son of encouragement.”  We need to be sons and daughters of encouragement to help people discern their giftedness and how they can use that giftedness for God’s church.  Every year we have a group called the Gifts Discernment Committee that meets to select people for various roles in the church including people that help plan worship, Sunday School teachers and administrators, and fellowship committees.  The job of the Gifts Discernment Committee is to see these giftednesses in other people and encouraging them to fulfill specific roles for the church.

            But this is tough to do sometimes.  I know that sometimes it is difficult when you feel strongly led to serve God in a specific role.  A friend of mine named Richard is now 90 years old and a retired pastor.  He felt a call to ministry at a young age, but it wasn’t until he was (I believe) in his forties that he started his first pastorate.

            He had grown up in a system that selected its church leaders by the lot.  Different churches do this differently, but the way I understand the lot is that two or three possible pastors are nominated from the congregation.  Then there are three Bibles placed on a table, one of which has some sort of marker in it.  The location of the marker is unknown by those who have been nominated.  They then each pick up a Bible.  The person that chooses the Bible with the marker in it becomes the new pastor.  (This process differs from denomination to denomination, but the point is that God will choose the right person for the job through what seems to be mere chance.)

            So Richard felt the call to ministry at a young age, but you didn’t dare say in those days that you felt called to the ministry.  That would be prideful.  If God wanted you in the ministry he would call you through the lot.  I think that Richard and the church missed out on twenty-some years of professional ministry because Richard was not able to voice his personal call to use the gifts that God had given to him.

            So where do we find middle ground?  How can we announce that we feel led to serve God in a certain way without boasting in our giftedness?  I believe that we need to test what we believe to be our giftedness with what other people believe to be our giftedness.

            A person from the denomination office shared me one day that she would often get people coming to her office saying that they felt called to pastoral ministry.  Her answer was always, “Great, who else says so?”

            When we feel called to use what we perceive to be our gifts, it is helpful to have other people encourage us to use those gifts as well.  Go to someone and ask them to pray for you, ask them their opinion to see if they see that giftedness in you.  Balancing a humble attitude and using our Spiritual Gifts doesn’t need to be a difficult task. 

            So we are called to live lives different from the world around us, lives conformed not to the ways of the world but lives conformed to Christ himself.  Those lives are to be humble lives, not considering ourselves better than others, but seeing all people through the eyes of God as equals.  And we are to humbly discern how we can use the gifts that God has given to us to glorify God.  Because the lives that we have been given are not our lives at all.  They are God’s lives.  That’s what being a living sacrifice is all about.

Eschatological people living today

Romans 8:18-27 (New International Version)

Future Glory

 18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

 26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

 

            We have lived in our current home for almost one year.  And though we have been here for almost a year we still have a room dedicated to those items that have not found a home of their own; the things that are still in boxes.  Many of those boxes are filled with my seminary books.  And it has been my intention for some time to build a book case to put in our living room to provide a resting place for those books to start to collect dust.

            So Sonya found a picture of a book case that she liked and I drew up some plans, bought some lumber, and started building it on our back porch.  And I tried to use the structure of our back porch to help me form those important first 90 degree angles in the frame of the book case by using a post in the middle of the porch as a guide for a corner.  I had attached two 2×4’s to the bottom and two 2×4’s to the top and my top and bottom 2×12 shelves before I realized my error: I had framed right around the post supporting the middle of my porch.

            Have you ever gotten so mad at yourself, yet you couldn’t stop laughing at yourself for what you just did?  I was so mad, but I was giggling to myself the entire time.  All I could do was let out a big groan and start taking out screws.

            Groaning is something that we do when we don’t have any other options, when we just need to let it out, and when it hurts.  Groaning is something that we do when there just aren’t words to say what we are feeling.  Groaning is something that we do when things just are not as they are supposed to be.  Today I want to look at our scripture from Romans 8 and look at three things that Paul writes are groaning because they are not as they were intended to be.  I want to look at creation, our bodies, and our relationship with God to see how we might go about trying to help these things return to the point that God had intended for them to be.

            Our scripture for today begins with suffering.  Paul writes that “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  I don’t think that the things that the Roman Christians were suffering from were all that different than the things that we struggle with today: persecution, misunderstandings, poverty, famine, and greed, just to name a few.  The Christians of Paul’s day and Christians today suffered at the hand of non-Christians as well as at the hand of other Christians.  And we also suffer because of our own poor choices.  The cause of suffering, as you probably already know, is difficult to pinpoint.  But we all share in our suffering and as hard as it is to hear, we all cause suffering.

            But Paul says that our present suffering isn’t worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us or some translations say to us.  Paul is saying, Yeah, we are suffering now.  But just you wait.  Something better is coming.  Something that is worth waiting for.

            And that is why I say in my title that we are eschatological people.  The Eschaton is the time when Jesus comes back to rule his creation and restore what once was pronounced “Good”.  We as Christians long for the day when all things are made new again, when there will be no more sorrow, when there will be no more tears, pain, and suffering.  We are eschatological people awaiting the day when God sets things right again.

            However, I wouldn’t say that our scripture for today is simply about trying to escape from the problems of this world and scurry off to heaven.  I think that when we read the writings of Paul and the other New Testament authors, we find that we are being called not only to wait for heaven, but to help bring heaven to earth and live as a part of the kingdom of God here and now.

            This is how I understand the Lord’s Prayer where Jesus prays, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Followers of Jesus are not simply supposed to wait for the kingdom of God in heaven, we are to help God establish and expand his kingdom here on earth.  That is why we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, work for peace, and love our enemy.  We are eschatological people, but we are living in the 21^st century.  And we are called to live as a part of a kingdom unlike the kingdoms of this earth.

I believe that is why Paul says that creation is awaiting the children of God to be revealed.  Here Paul is using the term “children of God” to refer to the people that we know as Christians.  And I believe that creation is awaiting the children of God to be revealed because it is the children of God that are called to bring about change in the world, to help usher in the kingdom.

            So how is God’s intermediate kingdom here on earth supposed to look?  I think we get an idea of that by looking at what is groaning in Romans 8.  The things that are groaning need to be addressed so that we can come closer to achieving what God had in mind for creation.

Paul writes, “20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

Creation has been decaying for some time now.  And it all began with a simple act of defying God.  In Genesis 3 we find the story of Adam and Eve.  Because they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.”

Cursed is the ground because of you.  Creation began groaning with the fall of humanity and it continues to do so today.  And if Paul thought that creation was groaning in his day, we can hear her crying out today.  We have depleted the earth of its natural resources, polluted the soil, water, and sky, and we have robbed our less fortunate brothers and sisters in the process.  We have paved over God’s creation, moved to the cities, and forgotten about what God has provided for us.  Groan away, creation.  Groan away.

I believe that heaven will look like what God had intended the earth to look like when he originally created it.  The end of times is said to be the time when God makes a new heaven and a new earth.  I believe that new earth will look like the Garden of Eden.  We will live off the land, the lion will lay down with the lamb, and we will see what God saw when he created the heavens and the earth and said, “It is good.”  And we will give God the glory all the day long.

So what are we called to do as Christians?  I believe that for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven that we need to try to reverse the trend of environmental exploitation.  Not simply for the sake of the earth, but for the sake of other human beings and our relationship with God.

I believe that one of the best things that we can do to care for the earth and for ourselves while growing closer to God is to plant a garden.  I live in town and we are blessed with a good piece of land.  We built a raised bed garden in our backyard to grow our own vegetables.  By growing our own food we prevent the burning of fossil fuels that a large scale vegetable farm would have used in the planting, harvesting, and shipping of the vegetables.  There is no doubt in my mind that we are helping to use creation as God intended it by growing our own vegetables.

The benefits of growing your own vegetables also include helping us connect with God.  When I first planted our garden, I would go outside with my iPod blaring music in my ears.  But lately I have gone out without any kind of music other than the music God has provided: the wind blowing through the trees, the birds and the squirrels nesting in those trees, the dogs barking, the neighbor kids laughing.  I am experiencing creation in a way that God intended it to be experienced.  I dig my hands into that soil, which is one of the most amazing inventions of God ever because of its ability to give a seed life, and I know that there is a God and that he is indeed good.

We laugh sometimes when we hear about little kids that are asked where milk, eggs, meat, and vegetables come from and they answer “the store.”  I think that is not as funny as it is sad.  Those things come from God.  Children that are so removed from the farm that they don’t realize how much we rely on God’s goodness for our daily sustenance are going to grow into adults that take the gift of life for granted.

When our food comes from the store rather than from God, we fail to realize the delicate balance and life cycles that go into growing and producing what we put into our bodies.  If it doesn’t rain, the corn, wheat, and grass cannot grow.  If we don’t have these grains and forages then we cannot grow cattle, pigs, turkeys, and other meat animals.  If we don’t have grains and forages, we don’t eat at all.  When we connect with the processes that go into making our food, we connect with God on an entirely different level.  And since I will never have livestock on Springhill Rd., I grow vegetables.  I’m not saying that you need to do the same, but I am saying that in doing so, I connect with God in a new way.

Creation is groaning because of what we have subjected it to.  I believe that by taking small steps, like planting a garden, we can experience God in a new way and experience God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven in a small way.  We are eschatological people living today.

            The next thing that needs changing that Paul finds groaning is our own bodies.  He writes, “23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” 

            I groan all of the time.  If I have been standing too long, I groan as I sit down.  If I have been sitting too long, I groan as I stand up.  Getting older hurts, and I know that it is only going to get worse before it gets better.

            But that is the good news, it will get better.  Paul says that we wait eagerly for the redemption of our bodies.  Again, we are eschatological people.  But we live today.

            Unfortunately we cannot fix all of the problems that we have physically.  My 89-year-old grandfather won’t be signing up to run in a marathon anytime soon and neither will I.  But I do believe that we are stewards of our bodies and as eschatological people living today, we should not only look toward the future redemption of our bodies, but also take care of what God has entrusted us with today.  And I don’t mean to make this sermon into a guilt trip for people to watch what they eat and to exercise more.  Believe me, if over eating is a sin (and I believe it is), there are no sinners greater than myself here today.

            Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.”

            Here Paul is talking about sexual sins, but the same relation can be made with all that we do with our bodies (Paul does this earlier in the chapter concerning food).  Our bodies are a temple for the HS because the HS lives within us.  We belong to God, yet we don’t always reflect that with the way we treat our bodies.

            As I have said, I am as guilty of this as anyone.  I eat too much and exercise too little.  I put things in my body that God probably never meant to be consumed.  Urban legend says that a Twinkie has an indefinite shelf-life.  That can’t be good for you.  Yes, we wait for the renewing of our bodies.  But until then, as eschatological people living today, we care for what God has given to us, for our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

            The final thing that I want to address this morning that groans is the Holy Spirit.  Paul writes in verses 26-27, “26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”

            That is reassuring to me, to know that the Holy Spirit, which resides in you and me, prays through me and for me when I don’t even know what to pray for.  The Spirit intercedes, or jumps in, to pray for us according to God’s will.

            Why is this necessary?  Because we don’t always know God’s will, do we?  I don’t.  Paul asks later in Romans, “Who has known the mind of the Lord?”  I have problems understanding the mind of my wife, the person that I am closer to than any other person alive. 

For instance, it was early February of this year.  Sonya’s birthday is on the 6^th of Feb.  And she tells me one day that she would really like a certain CD.  Excellent, I take that as a hint for a birthday present.  So I go out the next day and buy it.

            A couple days later I walk into our home and I hear music coming from the radio…and it is the same CD that I had purchased for her and had intended to give it to her on her birthday in a few days.  She had bought one for herself.

            As I said, if I can’t understand the mind of my wife, whom I am closer to than anyone else in the world, how am I supposed to understand the mind and the will of God?  That is why the Sprit intercedes on our behalf.  We don’t know God’s will and when we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us, groaning.

            But one day, our relationship with God will be restored to a place where we will be able to have conversations with God on our own.  We talk about being in full communion with God.  Maybe we will not know or comprehend God’s mind fully, but we will know God fully.  The God that sometimes seems distant from us and mysterious will be here with us in the flesh.

            As eschatological people living today, we await the day when we have full communion with God and we continue to speak to God through prayer using the help of the Holy Spirit.

            When I framed my bookcase around the post in my back porch, I groaned because I knew that was not that way that things were meant to be.  But with a little effort I could correct some of the mistakes I had made along the way and enjoy not only the finished product, but I enjoyed the time spent working on it.  We are groaning today because things are not how God had intended them to be.  But with a little work to correct the mistakes we have made along the way, we can enjoy not only the day when God sets everything right, but we can enjoy working beside our savior and our brothers and sisters for the kingdom of God.  We are eschatological people living today.

I Agree with Rob Bell (on this): Love Wins

Kevin Gasser

Staunton Mennonite

 

Romans 8:28-39

28We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

29For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

31What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NRSV)

 

I Agree with Rob Bell: Love Wins

Two brothers are terrible trouble makers. They are always breaking things, stealing things, lying, and making all kinds of general trouble. The parents have tried everything to get the boys to change, to no avail. Finally, out of options, they ask their pastor if he can help. He says he will talk to the boys, but only one at a time. The parents drop off the youngest and go home, promising to return to get him soon. The boy sits in a chair across from the pastor’s desk and they just look at each other.  Finally, the Pastor says, “Where is God?”

The boy just sits there and doesn’t answer.

The pastor begins to look stern and loudly says, “Where is God?”

The little boy shifts in his seat, but still doesn’t answer.

The pastor is starting to get angry at the boy’s refusal to converse and practically shouts “Where is God?”

To the pastor’s surprise, the little boy jumps up out of his chair and runs out of the office.

The boy leaves the church and runs all the way home, up the stairs and into his brother’s room. He shuts the door and pants, “We’re in BIG TROUBLE. God’s missing and they think we did it!”

            Where is God?  Well, God is everywhere.  Where can we go that God is not?  I haven’t found that place yet.  But I do admit that there are times when it feels as if God is absent, missing, and not with us.  But today I want to look at Romans 8:28-39 to see that even though God may feel absent, there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love.  I would like to see how God works for us, through us, and for us; how God is the ultimate teammate, and how we are more than conquerors in Christ.

God working for us, God working through us, God working with us

 

            Verse 28 of Romans 8 is one of the best known verses in all of the Bible.  Many of us probably have memorized this verse at some point in your life, maybe during periods of hardship.  Read with me verse 28 from the King James Version, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”  All things work together for good if you love God.  I can see how that can be comforting to someone like me that hasn’t really experienced a lot of hardship.  But do we really believe that?  Do we really believe that all things work together for good?  What about personal tragedy and loss?  Do these become good things?  I think we need to be careful with this verse.

            Many well intentioned pastors and Christians have tried to help a suffering friend by quoting Romans 8:28 at an inopportune time.  I have heard a story about a woman who was in the hospital after giving birth to a child that died a few hours after birth.  And her pastor came up to her and told her that all things work together for good for those that love God.  Through tears, the woman asked the pastor to leave her room.

            When I read this verse I think of a friend of mine that is going through a divorce right now.  He does not want to be divorced; he wants to continue to work on his marriage.  His wife is the one that wants out.  On top of this he just found out that his sister has left her husband because he beats her regularly and that the child that she gave birth to in April does not belong to her husband; her way of getting back at him was cheating.  And on top of all of this, that same friend’s grandfather passed away last week.  And he asks me, “Kevin, where is God in all of this?”

            How do I respond to this question?  He is a Christian man going through a lot of stuff right now and I know that his faith is growing troubled and weakening.  Would it help him to say that all things work together for good for those that love God, like these were all just puzzle pieces that God is trying to put together and we simply can’t see the bigger picture?  I don’t think so.

            As I think of all of the tragedies that have happened in this church over the last three years, I wonder if telling you that all things work for good will be helpful to you.  I think of Jordan going to prison, of Florence’s battle with cancer, of Peggy’s heart condition, of Janie’s undiagnosed issues, of Jim’s leukemia, and of Matt’s death.  Though some of you have experienced healing and victory, for those who continue to struggle, myself included, it probably isn’t too helpful to say that all things work together for good for those that love God.

            Thankfully we have other translations that I think help us to better understand what Paul was trying to get at in this scripture.  The NIV puts it this way, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

            God didn’t cause your suffering, but God is working through that suffering.  God is not the causer of all things, but God is always present and always working to bring about good things to those and through those who love him.

I found another translation that I like as well from a New Testament scholar.  He translates Romans 8:28 as, “28And we know that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good, with those who have been called according to his purpose.” http://www.mbseminary.edu/files/download/geddert1.htm?file_id=12815136

I like this translation because God is definitely not causing suffering, and God is not only present during our suffering, working through our suffering for the good.  But this translation says that God is working with all those that love him to bring about good.  This says that God not only comforts those who morn, but uses those who love the Lord to comfort those who morn as well.  This says that God not only works for good, but uses us to work for what is good as well.

            Which translation is correct?  People that know a lot more about Greek linguistics can’t agree on which is correct, so don’t expect me to give a definitive answer here, either.  But I would say that there is truth in each version.  I believe that God works for us, God works through us, and that God works with us.

God the teammate

            Verses 31-35 read, “31What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

            I love that part, If God is for us, who can be against us?  The point isn’t that we as Christians will not face opposition, that no one will ever be against us.  And when Paul says that God will give us everything else, he isn’t talking about money, wealth, and material things.  Actually, if we look at the entire chapter of Romans 8 and the context, we see that the latter part of the chapter is about current suffering.  So obviously Paul and the Roman Christians know something about suffering.

            We know that Paul didn’t receive “everything else”.  He asked three times to have some “thorn in his flesh” removed, and three times God chose not to do as Paul asked.  Surely Paul asked to not have to suffer imprisonment and torture.  But we know that Paul spent a lot of time locked up and he was martyred, killed for his faith.  So when Paul asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” and he says that since God has given of his very son, he will give everything else we ask, he isn’t talking about the things of this world.  He is talking about things that transcend the world as we know it: faith, hope, and love.  And as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13, the greatest of these is love.

            If God is for us, who can be against us?  Well, a lot of people can be against us.  We find opposition to Christians in our work places, in our schools, and in our own neighborhoods.  Though I don’t think that there is as much opposition to Christ as there is to Christians, I still believe that there are people and perhaps forces that are standing in the way of those that wish to spread the Gospel.

            But even though we might come up against some opposition, the point that Paul is trying to make here is that love will always win because God will come out victorious. 

            I am a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  And the Cavaliers have one of the best basketball players on the planet in LeBron James.  LBJ is a freak of nature, 6’8”, built like a truck, and as athletic as anyone to come before him has ever been.  LeBron led the Cavaliers to their best season ever and the best record in the NBA this season.  They were many people’s choice for the NBA champions this season and LeBron was named the leagues Most Valuable Player.  But what happened?  LeBron didn’t fail to meet his quota, he often scored 40 points a night.  But LeBron couldn’t do it all by himself and the Cavaliers went home early.  Everyone, or many people, had already penciled in the Cavaliers as the champions, but one person was not able to carry the entire team.

            Well I have my winner penciled in for the winner in this world, which is far from being a game.  I pencil in God, because as I said, love wins.  Love will win over hate.  Love will defeat evil.  Love will overcome oppression and violence.  Love wins because God is love.  And if God is for us, who can be against us?

More than conquerors

            This brings us to some of my favorite scriptures in the Bible, verses 37-39, “37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

            I mentioned a few of the things that have bothered me over the last three years, things that leave me wondering where God is: the illnesses, the broken relationships, the untimely deaths, and so on.  And while I have been discouraged through all of these things, I maintain my faith because I am assured that through all of this crap, we are more than conquerors.  We do more than just win in the end because neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

            Sonya is in Ohio this weekend because she wants to spend one more weekend with her sister and her family before she moves to Omaha, where she will live for at least three years.  And if you are wondering, Omaha is 1,158 miles from Staunton, Virginia.  That isn’t a weekend trip.  You don’t just drop into visit when you live 1,158 miles apart.

            I know that of the people of this church that are traveling this weekend, we have twelve people in Pennsylvania visiting family and another two in northern Virginia with their family.  If you are living close to your family, consider yourself blessed.  Various circumstances have led many of us to live in various places throughout the world and that can be hard…to be separated from people that you love and care about.

            But guess what.  Love doesn’t understand distance.  Love doesn’t understand boundaries, mountains, borders, rivers, and plains.  I guarantee you that Sonya will continue to have telephone conversations and email contact with her sister.  I still speak with my mother on the phone twice a week.  We travel to Nebraska to visit Sonya’s extended family at least once a year.  With the communication and travel advances over the last 100 years we can be connected with someone half-way around the world instantly.  Love can even defeat distance!

            And if our love, which is flawed, imperfect, and even weak, can overcome physical separation, then how much more can God’s love overcome all of these things!  Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

            So to all of my brothers and sisters at Staunton Mennonite that have, are currently, or will suffer, and I am going to guess that each of us has, where is God in all of this suffering?  He is loving us.

            I am convinced that God cries.  I am convinced that God cries all of the time.  How could God be love as 1 John 4:8 tells us and not feel our pain?  If God is love and God is with us at all times and nothing can separate us from the love of God then I am convinced that God feels our pain, endures our suffering, and is present in every moment, good or bad.  And believe me, I do not know why God doesn’t take away all or at least some of our suffering.  I believe He can and he has in many cases.  But God doesn’t always take away all of our pain and I believe God experiences that pain with us and has experienced pain beyond our comprehension.

            Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, says that the cross is God’s way of saying “Love Wins.” http://curtis.klope.googlepages.com/RobBell-lovewins.mp3  Jesus was confronted with every kind of evil.  He was beaten, he was tortured, he was stripped down to his underwear or less, he was spit upon.  The Roman soldiers took him and nailed him to the cross as a way of saying, “This is what happens to those who oppose Rome.”  The Jewish authorities and Romans government tried to defeat Jesus and his movement through violence and torture.  Yet Jesus responds by refusing to take up arms against the enemy or calling down legions of angels and instead he took the punishment upon himself that he did not deserve.

            But the joke was on those that had Jesus crucified because on the third day Jesus rose from the grave.  Not even death could stop the power that was at hand to defeat evil.  On that first Easter morning, God showed us that love wins.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

            So remember, maybe all things are not good, but God is present and working through all things.  And we have the best teammate possible in God, because we know that God does win in the end.  God wins because love wins.  Love wins in our homes, love wins in our places of work, love win on the busy highways.  Love wins because love has conquered death.

Three things we should say more often

Romans 1:8-17

8First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. 9For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, 10asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. 11For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— 12or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. 13I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles. 14I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish 15—hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

16For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

 

Three things we don’t say often enough

            There was a pastor that had been at a new church for about a year.  And, as was his custom, after the church service, he met the people of the congregation at the door on the way out of the sanctuary.

            One Sunday a little boy handed the pastor a handful of coins and dollars bills as he left the sanctuary.  The pastor said, “Thanks, but I can’t take this.”  Yet the boy insisted.

            The pastor asked him why he insisted on giving the pastor the contents of his piggy bank, to which the boy replied, “I want to do anything I can to help.  My daddy says that you are the poorest preacher we have ever had at this church.”

            Kids say the funniest things, but they are honest.  If they are feeling something, they tell you.  If they want something, they let you know.  But sometime between the time we start talking and the time we turn 18, we learn to guard our tongues and only say certain things.  Let me assure you, this is a good thing.

            But there are things that I believe we need to say more often.  We should tell our families that we love them more often, we should say we are sorry more often, and when I go to a buffet, I should learn to say “I’m full.” more often, or at least earlier.

            Today I would like to look at the first chapter of Romans to see three things that Paul teaches us that we should say more often.  Today I want to begin a series of sermons by focusing on these three things that we don’t say often enough, 1. Thanks for the church, God. 2. Let’s get together sometime. 3. I am not ashamed of the gospel.

Thanks for the church, God

            Paul begins by saying, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world.”  I don’t say that enough, and I bet you don’t either.  Paul is thankful for the church in Rome, for the body of believers and he says that he prays without ceasing for the Roman church.

            Well I do thank my God for you, each and every one of you that is reading these words today.  As the church, we are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, called to live out and share the message delivered through the prophets of old, through the authors of the New Testament, and through Jesus Christ himself.  And I give God thanks that his word is spreading and that disciples of Jesus Christ are being formed throughout the world.  Not only in Rome but even here in Staunton, Virginia as well.

            I do pray for you, but not nearly as much as I ought to.  Last weekend while Sonya and I were in Nebraska for a wedding, I made sure to pray for you as you were beginning the services here.  I prayed for Jim as he brought the morning sermon, for Susan as she led us in music, and for Ronald as the worship leader.  I prayed that your time would be an opportunity to connect with God, a time to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and a time to grow in knowledge of who God is.

            And much like Paul said that the faith of the Romans was being proclaimed around the world, the faith of the Stauntonians is being proclaimed around the world, or at least in certain parts of it.  In March Sonya and I traveled to Ohio to visit our families and as I said, last week we were in Nebraska.  And it is pretty hard for me not to brag about you all, because you have all shown great faith.

            People ask me everywhere I go, “How’s the church going?”  And I tell them, they are doing very well.  We are growing in numbers, we are growing closer to God, and we are growing closer to each other.  I get to tell stories of how you have reached out to provide meals for those who are sick.  I get to tell stories of how you have invited friends and neighbors to church.  I get to tell stories of how we have been able to host a popular men’s singing group.  Your faith is being proclaimed throughout the world, or at least the parts that I am coming in contact with.

            It is clear when we read our scripture for today that the apostle Paul was a man of prayer.  He prayed, not only for himself, but for all of the people that made up the church and all of those whose life might be touched by the church.  And Paul thanked God for the church.  Something that we don’t say often enough is that we thank God for each person that makes up the body of Christ, the church.

Let’s get together sometime

            Paul goes on to talk about how he wants to meet with the Roman Christians so that they can be mutually encouraged by one another.  There is something about surrounding yourself with positive people that are experiencing positive things that is contagious.  Now I am not saying that we avoid hanging out with negative people all together.  We need to love all people and spend time with all kinds of people.  I would just suggest that you make sure to get a healthy dose of positive attitude as well.  Balance is important.

            I am glad that we give the opportunity to share prayer requests and praises each Sunday at church.  I find this time to be a chance to get to know what is going on in peoples’ lives, to connect with others on a deeper level, and to show love and support for each other.  If everyone just sat here, sang a few songs, and listened to me talk for about 25 minutes, I think we would be missing an important part of worship.  Just as Paul talks about being mutually encouraging to the Roman Christians, we can and must be mutually encouraging to each other.

            I wish we had more opportunity to share with one another in church, but the whole way we do church doesn’t make it too easy to do so.  That is why meeting outside of the church building throughout the week is so important.  Whether it is at a coffee shop, running errands together, or having people over to your home, it is important to spend time with other people.  I believe that we should be hospitable, inviting people into our homes and into our lives.  Hospitality is such an important theme in the Bible.  Romans 12:13 tells us to practice hospitality and gives no reason for why we should do so.  Perhaps because it should be obvious: we are to practice hospitality treating others as Christ has shown us to.

            I know that Sonya and I have not done the best that we could inviting people into our homes.  We think of it often, and we have a long mental list of people we would like to have over.  But we allow the busy-ness of life to keep us from being hospitable.  And by doing so I believe that we are missing many chances to be mutually encouraged by our time together.

There are people in this church that are great hosts and hostesses.  I have a lot to learn from them.  And I hate that I have the mentality that sometimes I need to have everything perfectly clean and to have a great meal prepared before I invite someone over to my home.  As my mother told a friend of hers from Iowa when we were traveling through and wanted to stop by for a visit, “I’m coming to see you, not your house.”  Something that we don’t say nearly enough is, “Let’s get together sometime.”

I am not ashamed of the gospel

            Now the part of our scripture that I want to focus the most on today.  Verse 16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  Paul gives us a bit of a definition of the good news here by saying that the good news is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.  But I believe that this definition pretty vague.  And I think that is on purpose.

            Paul doesn’t lay out all of the details of the gospel in six bullet points or a brief synopsis, but he leaves it open for further and ongoing defining.  And if you haven’t figured it out, I like broad definitions that allow God to work, rather than boxing God in with a few words or paragraphs.

So how would I define the gospel?  Well, first of all the word we translate as gospel literally means, “good news.”  And I like to define the good news as saying it is God’s action, through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, to reconcile us to God and to each other.  Reconciliation, I believe, is central to the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Dictionary.com defines reconciliation as an action, “to bring into agreement or harmony.”  As a church that sings a lot of four-part, a cappella music, we probably know what it means to be out of harmony from time to time.

Last weekend at the wedding in Nebraska, all of the cousins and those who have married into the family sang a blessing upon the bride and groom.  Not all of those that have married into the family grew up singing four-part harmony…and it showedJ.

And I share that story, not to be critical because anyone that sits near me in church knows that I am not the best singer by any means.  But I wish to show you that when we are out of harmony with each other, things are less than they could be.

            It isn’t a secret that we as humans are not perfect.  We make mistakes, we fail.  We often call this sin in the church.  But we serve a God who is perfect and expects us to follow him.  So when we make mistakes, we are out of harmony with God.  And things become less than they could be.  Thankfully, through the reconciliation made possible by Christ, we are brought back into harmony with God.

            Not only with God, also with other human beings.  Jesus taught us that if we sin against a brother or sister in Christ, it is more important that we go and make things right with that person than to spend time worshiping God.  He tells us that if there is something between us and another person we are to leave our offering on the altar and go make things right before we go on with our acts of praise.  We are told to forgive others, not 7 times, but 70 times 7.  And that isn’t meant to say that we stop at 490 times, but that we keep on forgiving. 

            Jesus taught us how to live at peace with other people, making ourselves lower than them, being a servant to all.  Jesus stooped to wash the feet of his disciples, performing the act of a servant though he is a king.  The Bible teaches radical sharing; if you have two tunics, give one to someone that has none.  When we stop trying to make ourselves look better than other people, when we give up our selfish ambitions and live for Christ first, then others, then we can be living the life that God intended for us.

            Jesus provides the way to be reconciled to God and the way for us to be reconciled with our fellow brothers and sisters.  Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”  That is my understanding of the gospel.  That is my understanding of the good news.  And what good news it is.

            I am not ashamed of the gospel, and I really don’t see why anyone would be ashamed of the gospel.  That God came to the earth in human flesh to restore relationships between God and humanity and each other is not something that I am ashamed of.  But I will tell you what I am ashamed of.  And that’s what some Christians have done, and tried to justify by claiming that it is God’s will.

            The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, slavery, Colonialism, suppression of women, propagation of hate, war mongering.  I could go on and on.  People, people claiming to be Christians, have done these things “in the name of Christ.”

            And this isn’t just a trend that we see in the history books.  It continues today.  We have probably all heard about the church that has protested funerals, civil gatherings, and other non-threatening events to say that “God hates___.”  Just fill in the blank.  They recently protested a funeral in Wisconsin after three students died in a house fire saying that God was punishing the students and their parents because they were living un-Christ-like lives.  Of course nobody in the church had ever met any of the students personally.  Exactly what a person needs to hear at their 20-year-old’s funeral, right?

            Others have made public statements about God punishing 9/11 victims for the way that the United States has drifted from God’s teachings, or Hurricane Katrina, or what ever other natural disaster that has taken the lives of many.

            Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe that God calls His people to live by a certain ethic and I do believe that we need to be correcting an erring brother or sister.  We also need to be a prophetic voice to those outside of the church about God’s will and desire.  But is this how Jesus shows us to correct people?  By protesting, by printing something in a book, newspaper, or website?  I hope that we are always seeking ways to share the truth in love and not through hate.

            Jesus clearly teaches in Matthew 18 that if someone within the church sins against us we are to approach that person in private and seek to make things correct them.  Again, this is about reconciliation, not public humiliation.  And how does Jesus provide guidance for those outside of the church?  He builds relationships with them first.  He eats with them, he has conversations with them.  He loves them and calls them to follow him.

            I am not ashamed of the gospel, but I am embarrassed of some Christians.  I watched a pastor on television recently and he said something like this.  If I was walking down a street and someone punched my wife in the face, you better believe I would hit him back.  And you would too if you are any kind of man. I thought to myself, “Maybe I’m not a real man then, because I probably wouldn’t hit him back.”  First of all, we are taught to turn the other cheek when someone strikes us.  We are taught to forgive others, love our enemies.  And second, who in the world would just walk up and hit my wife in the face?  If someone did walk up and hit my wife in the face, there is a good chance that that person is mentally ill and they need my love more than they need my fist in their face.  I was embarrassed by the Christian that told me and everyone else that they need to hit someone in the face if they hit your wife first because that is what a real man would do.  If that’s what being a man is, then I guess I’m not one.

            But while I have been embarrassed by other Christians, I’m not ready to stop calling myself a Christian just yet. When I was in Seminary, a lot of my friends made the decision that they would no longer refer to themselves as Christians, but as Christ-followers.  Their reason for doing this is because of all of the negative stereotypes that are out there about Christians, stereotypes that exist for a reason…because some of us fit those stereotypes.  And I want to make sure that you realize that it wasn’t that they were ashamed of Jesus or ashamed of the gospel, but they didn’t want to be lumped together with some of the people that I just got done critiquing. 

            I understand what they were trying to say: If this is what being a Christian is, then I am not one.  But I say that rather than abandoning the name Christian, we should make sure people know what a Christian should look like.  We should be the ones feeding the poor, loving the lost, clothing the naked, mending broken relationships, and so on.  We should be leading our people in our care for God’s creation, living simply so that others might simply live.  I will admit that I am tired of Christians being known for what they are against.  But rather than taking the easy way out and abandoning the term “Christian”, we should transform what people think about Christians so that they will think of what we are for, rather than what we are against.  And what are we for?  We are for the kingdom of God and that all people might come to be reconciled to God and each other.

            Maybe we can work together to reconcile, to bring the term “Christian”, back to the point where a Christian will look like something like Christ.  Then we can live in harmony with God and each other.  And what a sweet sound that will be.

            Let’s take time this week to thank God for the church, let’s practice hospitality and be mutually encouraged, and let us never be ashamed of the good news.

Sons of the Day at SMC

Sons of the Day, a popular a cappella group, will be leading our worship on Sunday, the 17th of May beginning at 10:30 am.  Please join us as we worship God in music. 

You are also welcome to join us for a free meal in our fellowship hall following the service (around noon). 

I hope to see you there.

Well behaved women…

Exodus 1:15-2:10 (New International Version)

 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

 19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

 20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

 22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

 

Exodus 2–The Birth of Moses

 1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman (Jochebed, Ex 6:20), 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

 5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

 7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

 8 “Yes, go,” she answered. And the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

 

Did you hear about the three sons who left home, went out on their own and prospered? Getting back together, they discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly mother for Mother’s Day.

The first said, “I built a big house for our mother.” The second said, “I sent her a Mercedes with a driver.” The third smiled and said, “I’ve got you both beat. You remember how mom enjoyed reading the Bible? And you know she can’t see very well. I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible. It took elders in the church 12 years to teach him. He’s one of a kind. Mama just has to name the chapter and verse, and parrot recites it.”

Soon thereafter, mom sent out her letters of thanks: “Melvin”, she wrote, “The house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house.” “Gerald”, she wrote to another, “I am too old to travel. I stay most of the time at home, so I rarely use the Mercedes. And the driver is so rude!” “Dearest Donald”, she wrote to her third son, “You have the good sense to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious!”

Our mothers were, and maybe still are today, some of the most influential people in our lives.  They taught us to share, to care, to do our chores, to love the Lord, and much, much more.  Mother’s Day can be a difficult day for many people for many different reasons.  Maybe you have lost your mother, maybe you have wanted to be a mother and couldn’t.  Maybe you had a bad relationship or no relationship at all to your mother.  But today I don’t want to just focus on mothers, but on women, and on Christians in general.  And maybe not all of us are women, but I would bet that most of us know at least one woman.  Today I would like to look at the scripture above to see that we are not called to be submissive in all instances, but this requires knowledge of God.  I want to look at the Ministry of Motherhood, and I want to look at God as the perfect parent.

The Submissive Woman

Our scripture for this morning begins in Egypt while the Hebrew people were under the oppression of the Egyptians and Pharaoh.  The Egyptians, though they are in control, kind of fear the Hebrew people because they are getting too numerous and too powerful.  So the king of the Egyptians makes the decision that the Hebrew midwives should kill all of the male Hebrews to prevent the procreation of Hebrew people.  Without males (or females) the people will die out with the current generation.

But Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, fear God.  They knew that it was against the will of God for humans to kill other human beings, even though the king said to do so.  So instead, they make up a story about how the Hebrew women are able to pop out those babies so quickly that the midwives aren’t even able to get there before they have given birth.  Yeah, they lie.  But telling lies isn’t commended, serving God even when governing people order them to do something counter to the ways of God is commended.

This reminds me of when Peter and the other apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin for teaching the message of Jesus to the people after they had been told not to.  Peter and the apostles reply to the Sanhedrin, “We must obey God rather than human authorities.”  And this is exactly what the midwives do.  They choose to obey God, even though it meant disobeying Pharaoh.

We might call these women strong-willed.  They are so convicted of what they believe that they are willing do defy an authority figure.  And I hope that we could all be considered strong-willed when it comes to our faith today.  But I want to make sure before you go defying authority figures, even your parents, that you are doing so out of what you believe God is calling you to, not just in an attempt to be difficult.  This means we need to search the scriptures, pray, and seek the council of other Christians.  We need to seek to know God before we can even attempt to live out God’s will.  I’m sure that the Hebrew midwives and Peter and the other apostles didn’t just rush into their decision to serve God over the authorities rashly.

Well Pharaoh seems to catch on to the ploys of the midwives and he orders all Hebrew women to dispose of their male sons by dumping them in the Nile River.  So first he tells the midwives to kill the male children, and when he finds them to be too strong-willed for him to push around, he goes to the women themselves and tells them to do the dirty work.  And again, he finds himself outsmarted by another strong-willed woman.

We are not given the name of this Levite woman in out passage from Exodus, but elsewhere we are told that her name is Jochebed.  We commonly know her as Moses’ mother.  Moses’ mother delivers what is at least her third child, a boy we know as Moses.  And Moses’ mother turns out to be another strong-willed woman, and she isn’t about to kill her own son.  So she hides him for about three months, and when she can hide him no longer she finds a loophole in Pharaoh’s edict.  He said to put the male babies in the Nile.  He didn’t say that they couldn’t be in a basket in the NileJ.

And the plot thickens.  Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby and pays the biological mother of Moses to nurse and raise Moses for a few years.  I’m going to guess that Moses’ mother is one of the few people in history to be paid to raise her own child.  Who says motherhood isn’t a paying job?  So Moses is able to grow up in the comfortable atmosphere of royalty while learning about his Hebrew ancestry from his mother.  The privileges that Moses enjoys come from God’s interventions and the strong-willed, quick-witted nature of his mother.

I am convinced that Moses wouldn’t have grown to be the person that he was had his mother not been the person that she was.  If the midwives and Moses’ mother had simply submitted to the authorities of their day, we wouldn’t be talking about Moses today.  Submission to authorities is biblical, but only when the authorities are adhering to biblical principles.

Submission is a word a lot of women hear and shudder in horror.  Why?  Because I believe submission is a biblical teaching that has been abused by men for almost 2,000 years.  Paul writes in Ephesians 5:21-22, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”  First of all, Paul tells us all, regardless of gender, to submit to one another.  I don’t believe that Paul is saying always do what another person wants you to do, regardless of what it is.  And the same is true when he encourages wives to submit to their husbands. 

This scripture has been abused for almost 2,000 years to say that a wife needs to be subordinate to husbands.  Submission is different from subordination.  Submission is giving yourself to a person, subordination is putting yourself below other people.  Paul is encouraging us to be mutually submitted, mutually give yourself to your spouse so that you become one in Christ.  As Paul says elsewhere, there is no longer male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free.  Instead we are one in Christ. 

So as we see with the Hebrew midwives and with Moses’ mother and with Peter and the apostles, we are only supposed to submit to our spouses or to the authorities when they are following the will of God.

Ministry of Motherhood

I want to tell you right now and go on the record as having said I respect mothers… I respect mothers a lot.  I enjoy children, but when you have children of your own, they are your responsibility 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.  I look at a child like Madelyn and I think it is quite clear that she can’t do very much for herself at this stage of life.  She cannot feed herself, change herself, or bathe herself.  She is almost totally dependent on her parents, and I think that her parents are doing an excellent job of raising her and sharing in the parenting responsibilities.

My mother was a stay-at-home mother, and we didn’t make it an easy job for her.  She had three boys in a period of six years and between the cut fingers, skinned knees, broken arms, and regularly scheduled visits to the doctors, she found time to take us to church on Sundays.  In the summer when we were outside experimenting with gasoline and fire, hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil, and eventually gunpowder, she found time to take us to Bible School.  She cooked a home-cooked meal every night, kept us clothed and as clean as possible.  She was and is a strong person.  And I hope that today any stay at home mother is proud to tell others about her job description.

I like the story told by Tony Campolo about his wife, Peggy.  Tony is a professor of Sociology at Eastern University and Peggy stayed at home to raise their two children.  Whenever they would go to some social event, filled with female doctors and lawyers, Peggy never missed a beat when people asked what she did for a living.  Tony says, “My wife, who is one of the most brilliantly articulate individuals I know, had a great response: “I am socializing two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teleologically prescribed utopia inherent in the eschaton.” When she followed that with, “And what is it that you do?” the other person’s “A lawyer” just wasn’t that overpowering.”

Motherhood requires strong women: strong physically, strong mentally, and strong spiritually.  A stay at home mother should have more influence on her children’s spirituality than anyone else in the child’s early years.

I heard a story about four scholars who were arguing about their favorite Bible translations. One said he preferred the King James Version because of its beauty and eloquent old English. Another said he liked the New American Standard Version for its literalism and how it moves the reader from passage to passage with confident feelings of accuracy from the original text. The third scholar was sold on the New Living Translation for its use of contemporary phrases and idioms that capture the meaning of difficult ideas. After being quiet for a moment, the fourth scholar admitted: “I have personally preferred my mother’s translation.” When the other scholars started laughing, he said, “Yes, she translated the Scriptures. My mom translated each page of the Bible into life. It is the most convincing translation I have ever read.”

Mothers, what you do and what you say in front of your children will have more of an impact on your children than where you take them to church or Bible School or even pre-school.  The way you translate the scriptures into real life will speak to them for a lifetime.  So I encourage you to not only read the Bible with your children and to pray with your children, but live out your beliefs so that they can see your good works and give glory to the Lord.

God: the model parent

The Lord is our ultimate guide to parenthood.  God is often referred to in the Bible as father.  Jesus addresses God as Pater and Abba, Father or Daddy, and he instructs his disciples to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  But God is not only the perfect father, God is a perfect mother.

Now God is never called “mother” in the Bible, but mothering terms are used to describe God.  Isaiah describes God as the one who birthed Israel, who will protect her children, has fed her children.  Isaiah 66:13 says, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”

God is described as a seamstress making clothes for Israel (Neh. 9:21), a midwife attending to the birth of Israel (Psalm 22), a woman working leaven into bread (Luke 13), and a woman looking for a lost coin (Luke 15).  There are a number of references to God as a mothering animal, such as a bear or a hen.  To be honest, I was quite surprised when I started looking at all of the references to God that lifted out the feminine side of God.

Does that mean God is a woman?  No, it doesn’t.  As I said earlier, God is never referred to in the Bible as mother.  But I also don’t want you to hear me saying that God is a man.  God is not man or woman, God is God.  God created man and woman in his own image, and that my friends, is something that we will never be able to understand.  It is a divine mystery that may never be answered sufficiently for us as long as we are bound by our earthly bodies and minds.

But I will continue to call God Father.  Not because God is a man and not because I am trying to be sexist or patriarchal.  I refer to God as Father because that is how Jesus referred to God, among other metaphors as well.  I recognize that not everyone has had a loving, caring earthly father like I have and I understand that this makes it difficult for other people to view God as Father in a loving and caring way.  To those people, I encourage you to pray to God using other biblical adjectives for God like loving God, creator God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Emanuel.  God is not male or female, man or woman.  God is God.  And our good and perfect God is our good and perfect father, a father who has birthed us, who looks for us like a woman looking for a lost coin, who spreads his message like a woman kneading leaven into dough.  We serve a big, big God.

So women, as we seek to learn from the strong-willed women of the Bible, let us learn from Shiphrah and Puah, as well from Peter and the apostles to follow God, even if it means that we are not submissive to the authorities.  But that means we must know who this God is that we serve.  As some choose to enter into the ministry of motherhood, remember that your actions speak louder than your words.  And as we seek to model our parenting or mentoring skills, let us remember that we have the ultimate example in God, the one that Jesus called Father, Abba, Papa, Daddy.

Mission is Messy

Mission is Messy

 

1 John 3:16-24

 

16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

 

23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

 

            A true story.  There is a local church that had scheduled a fund raiser that would be announced this week during their worship service.  I believe the money was to go to the church’s building fund.  But in light of all of the things going on in the world today, they decided that they better come up with a different fund raising event.  The original plan was to have a number of people from the congregation participate by having jars with their names on them where people would put their money in the jar and the person with the most money in their jar would be obligated to do something that we normally don’t do as human beings.  Any guesses what they were originally planning to do for a fund raiser?  They were planning to have a “kiss the pig” contest.

            With the recent attention that the swine flu is receiving, I think that this particular congregation would have been up against a large obstacle, nobody would sign up to be in the contest (fyi I believe that the possibility to receive N1H1 virus from swine is very low, if not impossible).  But as Christians making up the large body known as the church, we know what it is like to be up against a few obstacles.  We face obstacles all of the time.  And today I would like to look at our scripture to see that we as the church have obstacles to fulfilling our mission, our calling from God to share God’s love with God’s people.  So let’s jump into the scripture and see what we can learn from John about our mission as the church.

            Our scripture for today starts out by saying, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”  We as Christians are really good at remembering the first part of this verse.  Jesus’ love for us is the reason that he came to the earth, lived a perfect life, and yet was punished and forced to pay the ultimate price.  He had to give his life so that we might have life.  This is the kind of thing we learn in Sunday School as children.  So why do we often miss the second part of this verse?  Why do we miss the part that tells us that since Jesus laid down his life for us that we need to do the same for others?

            Usually when I read this verse I immediately think of Jesus dieing on the cross and that we are called to die, either literally or metaphorically, with Jesus.  But I don’t think that our interpretation of this scripture needs to be limited to this understanding.  John does not use the words “Jesus died for our sins” in this section.  But he chooses to say that Jesus laid down his life for us.  And I have heard, though I cannot confirm this, that the only person to use the phrase “laid down his life” in the New Testament is John.  Therefore I believe that when we read verse 16 in context, it can really broaden our understanding of this scripture. 

            Look at verse 17.  Immediately after John tells us that Jesus laid down his life for us and that as his followers we too should lay down our lives for one another, he goes on to say, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”  I think that when John talks about Jesus laying down his life for us, he isn’t just talking about Jesus dieing on the cross.  He is talking about Jesus sacrificing all that he had in heaven, living as a part of the triune God, in a perfect place where there is no pain or suffering, no anger or hatred.  Jesus laid down the life that he had in heaven to come to this earth to be hated, tortured, spat on, and crucified!  He laid down his life in heaven and picked up a cross.  Not because he enjoys that sort of thing, but he did it out of love for us.  And now John is saying that as his followers, we should lay down our relatively comfortable lives for the sake of others.  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help?  The answer should be clear to us.  If we hoard all of the world’s goods to ourselves while those around us suffer, then we simply do not have the love of God within us.

            As I was preparing this message I started thinking about the word “mission”.  We use the term mission all of the time in the church.  We talk about the Valley Mission, we talk about being a missional church.  We have a Moment in Mission where we often talk about missionaries.  We even have a mission statement.  But what does “mission” really mean?  I looked it up and the simple definition of mission is: the business with which a group is charged.  The mission of a vacuum salesman is to sell vacuums.  The mission of a general contractor is to build houses.  So what should the mission of the church be? 

            I believe that the mission of Christians and the mission of the church should be just what John tells us in our scripture for today.  The mission of the church is to show people the love of God.  And as John tells us in verse 18, we are not just to show people the love of God in words and speech, but in truth and actions.

            I don’t believe that John is saying that we are not to use our words to tell people that we love them and that God loves them, that they are some how supposed to observe our lifestyle and see that we love them.  But John is saying that words alone fall short of our mission.  To love in truth and actions means that we back up our words by giving of ourselves, giving of our time, giving of our money, even giving of our personal satisfaction at times.  I think that is what John is encouraging people to do when he says that they are to lay down their lives for others in the same way that Christ laid down his life for us.  Jesus sacrificed his comfort to help us bear our pains. 

Now when I think of the mission of the church as to be the loving, inviting community of believers, sharing the love of God with all people, I recognize that different people will carry out this mission in different ways.  Some are called to be pastors, some are called to work with the poor.  Some are called to be evangelists, some to work for peace and justice.  Some are called to lead Bible Studies, and some are called to do help repair a neighbor’s house after a bad storm.  All of us are called to share the love of God with others, but not all of us are called to do it in the same way.

The apostle Paul loves to use the metaphor of the church being a body, the body of Christ, to be precise.  And the body is made up of many parts, the head, eyes, arms, and legs.  Each part is important; each part has its own function. 

So if we are all gifted in different ways to share and spread the love of God, then why does so much of the world not reflect the love of God?  Well I think that it is safe to say that there are obstacles to fulfilling the mission of the church.  I would like to share a few of those obstacles with you today and hopefully we can avoid these obstacles as we seek to fulfill the mission we have been charged with.

Personal Time

            The first obstacle to fulfilling our mission as the church that I would like to address is our personal time.  This past Wednesday I was driving through town on my way to a meeting 20 miles away.  And if you recall, it rained all day Wednesday.  So I’m driving through town and I see a person walking down the road, trying to protect himself from the rain with a little umbrella, which isn’t much help when the rain is coming down horizontally.  As I approached the person, I recognized him as someone I speak to frequently; he works downtown.  He has told me before that he doesn’t have a car, and I assume he was walking to work in the rain.

            I almost stopped to offer him a ride…almost.  I slowed down.  But I never stopped.  Of course I could justify not helping this guy.  I was afraid I would be late for my meeting.  I didn’t want my car to get wet inside.  I wasn’t even sure if it was the guy I was thinking of.  But if it was him, and I’m pretty sure it was, I know that he still had a least one mile to walk in the rain.  And the thing that bothers me so much today is that I got to my meeting plenty early to have picked him up.

            Time…how dare we allow our busy schedules keep us from sharing the love of God with other people?  The ironic thing about my missing an opportunity to share God’s love with this gentleman is that the meeting that I was trying to get to on time was a church meeting.  I was trying to do something for God, and in doing so I might have missed an opportunity to fulfill our mission as the church to show the love of God to God’s people.

            I believe that our busy schedules become an obstacle to sharing the love of God with other people.  How many of us have ever said, “I would help serve a meal at the soup kitchen this week, if I only had the time.”  Or “I would stop and pay a visit to my neighbor girl who is a single mother trying to pay the bills on a measly welfare check, maybe even offer to watch the kids for her, if I only had more time.”  Time is a precious commodity, and it is often an obstacle to our mission as the church.

Personal property/space

            The next obstacle to fulfilling our mission as the church that I would like to address is the issue of personal property and space.  I know that I am usually looked at as being idealistic when I draw your attention to the early church and lift them up as a model for how we are called to be the church.  But I am pretty sure that a lot of people called Jesus and his early followers idealistic as well.  So I guess I’m in good companyJ.

            The book of Acts tells us that the early church did not have private ownership of their ‘stuff’.  There would have been personal property.  That is obvious when we read the scriptures that the early church members still had possession.  But they shared them in a radical way.

            Today there is an excellent program in the Harrisonburg area that goes by the acronym HARTS, which stands for Harrisonburg and Rockingham Thermal Shelters.  HARTS is a faith-based organization that provides shelter and a meal for homeless people in Harrisonburg during the winter months to keep people off the street in the freezing weather.  The way I understand HARTS is that churches open up their facilities to provide a warm place out of the weather, restrooms, and a meal for one week from Monday night through Sunday morning.  After the week was up, the HARTS employees pack up the cots and move them to a different church.

            HARTS provides a staff member that would stay up all night long to monitor things and people as they would come and go throughout the night.  The staff members were trained to deal with violent people, people under the influence of various substances, and people with mental illness.

            I know of a number of Mennonite Churches in Harrisonburg that participated in HARTS this past winter, and I heard mostly good things.  I have heard stories of how churches have brought in food and blankets, sharing their goods with these people in need.  Then the homeless people that stayed in the church would often go to the Sunday morning church services in the building that they had called home for that last week.  As I have said, I think that this is a great program.

But this year (I believe the second year of HARTS), a group in Harrisonburg asked a few local churches to host one additional week to extend the HARTS program through the month of April.  This other group would provide volunteers to stay with the homeless folks in the churches.  But it turns out that these volunteers are not trained to deal with some of the things that transpired over the week.

            I heard that one church had issues with an intoxicated man vomiting on the carpet and people were making themselves a little too at home, rummaging through the cabinets and cupboards in the fellowship hall kitchen.  Two churches had people smoking in their men’s room.  One church even had fecal matter smeared on the wall.  I call your attention to the title of my message this morning, “Mission is Messy.”  It sure can be.  But I come back to verse 17, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”  Again the assumed answer is that it can’t.

            I spoke with one of the pastors of the church that hosted HARTS one additional week without the paid staff member present and he said that he had heard a lot of negative things about opening their facilities up again.  And it is that one word that causes me to tense up a bit; when they call it their facilities.  I thought that the church was God’s house?  The pastor of the church and I both agreed that some things could be done better to monitor things, but we also agreed that using God’s house to show God’s love to God’s people is always a good idea.  But personal property and personal space can clearly be an obstacle to mission.

Lack of Gratitude

            The pastor from the same congregation that had problems with people misusing “their facilities” told me that a big problem that they faced was that people in their congregation were complaining that the homeless folks seemed to have a sense of entitlement and were less than appreciative of the things that were being provided free of charge.  The guests were complaining about thing not being just right.  One guy said that his cot was too lumpy and he would rather sleep on the floor than to sleep another night on that thing.  One person made a big stink about the church only providing white sugar for his coffee and he wanted the pure Sugar in the Raw.  So what are we to do with people like this that show no gratitude when we go out of our way?  We love them anyway.  We show them the love of God, even when they don’t seem to appreciate it.  Our mission of showing people the love of God is never contingent upon the recipients’ gratitude.

            Anyone that has tried to show the love of God to another person probably knows what it means to be rejected, shot down, or denied.  Anyone that has tried to share their faith has probably found people that didn’t want to hear it.

            Greenmonte Fellowship does a great job of providing financial assistance to those in need in the area of their church, and I have tried to model our local relief program after what I have seen at Greenmonte.  When someone comes to Greenmonte looking for a little help, they give it to them with no strings attached.  But if that person comes back to ask for help again, before they receive another dime from the congregation, that person has to sit down with a financial advisor from the church to discuss how they can budget appropriately so that this is not an ongoing problem.  And you wouldn’t believe how many people walk away at that point.  They aren’t willing to receive the free help from the church.  All they want is the money. 

            So what are we to do?  We love them anyway.  We continue to show people the love of God because showing the love of God to God’s people is never contingent on the recipients’ gratitude.  But my goodness, does it hurt to offer a simple “thank-you” from time to time?  No, but we can never allow a lack of gratitude to be an obstacle to the church’s mission.

            I’ve only scratched the surface, I know.  There are many, many more obstacles to the mission of the church, because mission is messy, it’s hard, and it can be unrewarding.  But showing others the love of God is what we are called to do.  It is our mission.

            But don’t leave here today discouraged and depressed.  Because not only is mission messy, mission is magnificent as well.  We are a part of a long line of successful missionaries.  We all have been witnessed to in truth and in action, we have all felt the love of God.  The mission of the church traces back 2,000 years.  2,000 year!  That should say something to us all.  Because believe me, mission was just as messy 2,000 years ago as it is today.  The fact that the mission of the church continues today shows us that it is worth it.  The church has been called to be a community of believers that shares the love of God with all people.  We are all called to do it in different ways, just as the body has many parts.  But we are called to fulfill this mission.  Let us step up to the challenge, because not only is mission messy, it is magnificent.

            I will close with a quote from Henry Ford.  “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”

Henry Ford

Am I a Child of God?

1 John 3:1-10

3:1See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

4Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. 7Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. 10The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.

 

Whenever your kids are out of control, you can take comfort from the thought that even Almighty God, all-knowing God, all-powerful God has had his share of problems “controlling” his children. After creating Heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve. And one of the the first things He said to them was: “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Adam replied.

“Don’t eat the forbidden fruit,” God said.

“Forbidden fruit? We got forbidden fruit? Hey, Eve…we got Forbidden Fruit!”

“No way!”

“Yes WAY!”

“Don’t eat that fruit!” said God.

“Why?”

“Because I’m your Creator and I said so!” said God.  A few minutes later God saw the kids having an apple break and was angry. “Didn’t I tell you not to eat that fruit?” God asked.

“Uh huh,” Adam replied.

“Then why did you?”

“I dunno,” Eve answered.

“She started it!” Adam said.

“Did Not!”

“DID so!”

“DID NOT!!”

Having had it with the two of them, God’s punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own.  And I know that some of us have had parents say to them “I hope that one day you have children just like you to show you what you have put me through.”

            Children are a blessing, but I think it is safe to say that sometimes they can cause us a few headaches and gray hairs.  Maybe that is why God is usually depicted as an old gray-haired man.  Where do you think that those gray hairs came from?  God’s children causing stress!

            Our scripture for this morning is a tough one to understand, and I don’t pretend to have it all figured out myself.  There is a good chance that none of us, myself included, will be content with the way I have tried to understand this scripture.  But, as I hope to show in this message, I think that God is more interested in us trying to understand him and trying to do the things that he has called us to do than He is of us getting God right (if that is even a possibility).

            So today I hope to unpack this phrase “Child of God” and better understand what John was getting at when he wrote this letter to other Christians.  I hope to address the questions “Who is a child of God”, “Who is not a child of God”, and “How are children of God to live?”

Who is a child of God?

            The scripture begins by saying, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”  I hope that we all understand that God loves us.  God loves you, God loves me, God loves each and everyone one of us.

            God loves us with a love that we cannot understand.  God loves us, not because of what we have done or will do for him.  God loves us because we are his and have been his since before the beginning of time.  God loves us because we were created by God in God’s own image.  And because God loves us, the author of 1^st John says that we are called children of God.  That is the reason given to us in verse 1 for why we are called children of God, simply because of the love of God. 

            Now obviously we are not all literally God’s children.  I have a biological father and mother who not only gave me life, but also raised me for the first 18-20 years of my life.  And as I near my 30^th year, they continue to give me love and support.  And I expect that they will continue to do so as long as they have the mental capacity to do so. 

When John calls us children of God he is using a linguistic tool known as a metaphor.  We use a metaphor when we take something that is unfamiliar to us and compare it to something that is familiar to us to better understand the original unfamiliar thing.  Jesus used metaphors all the time.  He called himself a shepherd, the way, and the bread of life, among other things.  So he is taking something that people really don’t understand (himself) and comparing it to something that they do understand (ie bread).  So since we really don’t understand the relationship between God and us, John compares our relationship to God to that of a Father to his children.

            I think that those of us that don’t have children can’t understand this metaphor fully.  But those who are parents can better relate to the love that God has for his metaphorical children.  Why do you love your children?  Is it because they always obey you?  Is it because they are always good?  If that was the case, I can’t imagine that my parents would love me.  But yet they do.  Not because of what I have done, but because I am their creation, I bear their image.

            That is why God loves us, everyone one of us.  Regardless of the color of our skin, regardless of our behavior, regardless even of our religion, God loves us all equally because we bear his image.  God made us and pronounced us “exceedingly good”. 

Who is not a child of God?

            But our scripture for this morning doesn’t say that everyone is a child of God, only those who are without sin.  Beginning in verse 4, “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.”  Verse 6, “No one who abides in him sins…”  Verses 7-8, “Little children, let no one deceive you.  Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.  Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil…”  And it is all summed up in verse 10, “The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.”

            So if we are all children of God as people created in God’s image, what is the deal with John telling us that some people are children of God and some are children of the devil?  I think this goes to show us that sometimes metaphors break down.

            As I said earlier, Jesus calls himself the bread of life.  And during the last supper, he tells his disciples to eat of his body and drink of his blood.  This is language that we continue to use today in the church when we take communion.

            But Jesus wasn’t really made of bread.  This is what we call a metaphor breaking down.  A metaphor is an illustration, not a factual statement.  And since a metaphor is not a factual statement, it does not always make sense when we try to apply the metaphor to something else.

            The way I like to look at our relation to God is by using the story that Jesus tells that is found in Luke chapter 15, which again is packed full of metaphors.  Jesus tells the story of two sons.  The younger of the two sons tells his father that he wants his share of the inheritance early, and for some reason the father does as the younger son demands.  The younger son then liquidates his assets and travels, spends his money loosely, and finds himself broken and busted.  When reality and hunger pangs hit, the younger son tries to make a living as a servant to the locals while his father and his older son stay back and tend to what is left of their farm.  Finally the younger son makes the decision to return to his father, apologize for all that he has done, and try to get a decent job working for his father.  The younger son even plans what he will say when he sees his father.  He will say, “Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”

            When the younger son returns to his father’s farm he is greeted by a jubilant father.  And even though the son tries to give his prepared speech, the father says forget about that.  Let’s celebrate!  “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

            Now let me ask you, at what point did the younger son stop being the son of the father?  The younger son did say that he was no longer worthy to be called the son of the father, but when did he actually stop being the son of the father?  Never!  He never stopped being the son of the father.  Granted, there was a time when the father felt like his youngest son was dead, but never does he ever say that the younger son stopped being his son.

            I think that the same is true for us as God’s children.  Never do we stop being God’s children.  But sometimes we more closely resemble the son that stayed with the father and other times we more closely resemble the prodigal son.  And just as we learn in the story of the prodigal son, neither of the father’s sons are perfect. 

How are children of God to live?

            So we come back to the scripture from 1^st John where we are told that everyone that commits sin is a child of the devil (vs. 8).  And vs. 9, “Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God.”  If we take this verse literally, who then is a child of God and who is a child of the devil.  I have to admit, I’m a child of the devil by this definition.  It tells us in verse 9 that if we have been born of God that we cannot sin.  Guess what…I can sin, and I do sin.  And if you claim that you don’t sin, you’re a liar.  And to lie is to sin.  So we are all children of the devil.  Each and everyone of us because each and everyone of us is a sinner. 

Some people have tried to make this section of scripture easier to understand by saying that it is referring to living a life of sin, not simply committing a sinful act.  And the NIV makes it a little easier by saying that the one that does what is sinful is a child of the devil.  But my NRSV and the King James seem to say that if you commit a sin you are a child of the devil.

I believe that what we are seeing here is another linguistic device employed by John as he is writing this letter.  First we saw the metaphor, now we find something that we call hyperbole.  Hyperbole is overstating something to make a point.  This would be like me saying, “I’m starving.  I haven’t eaten anything all day.”  When in reality I just am hungry and it has been a few hours since breakfast.

We see Jesus using hyperbole in Matthew 5:48 when he tells his listeners to “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Does Jesus really expect human beings to be perfect?  I sure hope not.  If he did, we would all be in trouble, just as we would all be in a lot of trouble if anyone that commits a sin is truly a child of the devil.

Now don’t hear me saying that just because Jesus and John are using hyperbole that we aren’t really supposed to try to be perfect and to live without sin.  Just because I use hyperbole when I say that I am starving and haven’t had anything to eat all day doesn’t mean that I really don’t want a sandwich right about now.  This isn’t meant to be Jesus or John saying, “It really isn’t possible so don’t even try to be perfect or to not sin.”  Just the opposite is true.

God knows that we will fail to live up to his perfect example set for us in Jesus.  But he has called us to try.  Author Philip Yancey tells a number of stories in his book Church: Why Bother that help to illustrate this point. 

Yancey says that every parent knows the risk of asking something of their child that they cannot do.  That task is simply to walk.  The anxious parent sits back and watches their child attempt to stand by hanging onto pieces of furniture and then finally letting go, only to fall to the ground.  The parent must continue to sit back and watch the child struggle to its feet and attempt the task all over again.  Because no one has discovered a better way to learn how to walk (pg 98-99).

Trying, even though we are destined to fail, to stumble and fall, is the only way that we can learn.  Even when the ultimate goal, perfection, is unattainable, God still wants us to try.  And many people have learned to walk with the Lord in an entirely new way because they have set out to do the impossible.

Yancey goes on to tell the story of the great composer Igor Stravinsky.  He says that Stravinsky once wrote a piece of music that included a difficult violin passage.  After several weeks of rehearsal, a professional violinist came to Stravinsky and told him that he had tried and in spite of his best effort he found the passage too difficult to play.  Stravinsky replied, “I understand that.  What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.”  Yancey concludes by saying, “Perhaps something similar is what God had in mind with the church” (pg 99).

Does God truly expect us to be perfect, to be without sin?  No, I can’t imagine that he does.  Does God expect us to give our all in trying to be perfect, to try to be without sin?  Absolutely, to do anything else would be a disgrace to our status as children of God.

I have one more metaphor for you today, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  This is something that we say to compare a person to their parents and it means that a child often reflects some of the qualities of their parents.  I have my father’s nose and my mother’s eyes.  I have my father’s mechanical interests and my mother’s gift of loquacity (aka the gift of gab).

I believe that this is the point of 1 John 3:1-10: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  A child of God should reflect the qualities of God.  And I would add to this by saying that we are all children of God.  God loves us all, regardless of who we are or what we have done.  We are all God’s children; some of us are still prodigals.  May we all repent for our sins and strive to be perfect, to live without sin.  May we reflect the image of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  May we truly be children of God.

The Quiet in the Land

John 20:19-31 (New International Version)

Jesus Appears to His Disciples

 19On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

 21Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Jesus Appears to Thomas

 24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
      But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

 26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

 28Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

 29Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

 30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

 

            A guy joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence.  He is only allowed to speak two words every five years that he is there.  After his first five years the head of the monastery comes to him and says, “Brother John, you’ve been here for five years, so you may speak two words now if you so wish.”

            “Food cold,” said John.  The head of the monastery said they would be happy to fix the problem.

            Five more years went by and the head of the monastery came to Brother John and said again, “Brother John, you’ve been here for ten years, so you may speak two words now if you wish to do so.”

            John thought for a minute and he said, “Bed hard.”  The head of the monastery said he would get John a softer bed.

            Five more years go by and the head of the monastery approaches Brother John and tells him “John, you’ve been here for 15 years and you may now speak two more words.”

            John didn’t hesitate, and replied, “I quit.”

            “It doesn’t surprise me,” said the head of the monastery.  “You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.”

            They say that silence is golden, and I do believe that silence is important.  Silence gives us a chance to think, to reflect on life, and to pray.  But just as there are times when silence is appropriate, there are times when silence simply will not do.

            Today we are going to look at the scripture above to see how too much silence is a bad thing.  I hope to look at some of the reasons for our silence and hopefully challenge us all to be a little more vocal.

            Our scripture for this morning begins on the evening of the first Easter.  Earlier that day Mary Magdalene had found the empty tomb, led Peter and John there to see it, and then Jesus revealed himself to Mary.  Now we find the disciples, minus Thomas and Judas, gathered in a room with the doors locked.  Some believe that they were still gathering in the rented Upper Room where they had met for the Last Supper.  But why did they have the doors locked?  John tells us, “Out of fear of the Jews.”

            The disciples had witnessed the torture and crucifixion of Jesus.  I’ve never seen that sort of thing, but I know that I don’t want that to happen to me, or to anyone, really.  So I don’t blame them for meeting together and locking the door because there surely would have been a fear among them that if the Jewish authorities had this done to Jesus, maybe they would do the same to them out of fear that Jesus’ message might be continued through his followers.

            I understand the fear that the disciples had because I think that is what our spiritual ancestors, the Anabaptists, had to endure.  The Mennonites trace their lineage bake to the 16^th century movement of the Reformation where a group decided that they wanted to be baptized as adults, voluntarily, by choice.  The word Anabaptist literally means to baptize again. 

The Anabaptists were tortured and killed because of their radical beliefs.  This will sound a little gruesome, but it is true.  The early Anabaptists had their eyes gouged out and fingers pulled off, they were hung from the rafters by their arms and legs until they either died or would say that they would no longer adhere to the teachings of the Anabaptists (recant).  Preachers and evangelists would have their tongues removed or screwed to the roof of their mouths to teach them to stop preaching the message that they had been preaching.  In the almost fifty year period of persecution from 1525 to 1574 between 1,500 and 2,500 Anabaptists were martyred, killed for their beliefs.

            Thankfully the persecutions of the Anabaptists slowed down.  But a strange thing happened as the persecutions lessened.  When it became safer to be an Anabaptist, the Anabaptists got comfortable.  They developed small communities where they could buy their goods from Anabaptist stores and sell their livestock at Anabaptist stockyards.  They gathered together in rural areas and lived out their lives among their own people with little influence from the outside world.  The idea was If we don’t have to interact with the rest of the world, they can’t hurt us or pervert our religious beliefs.  And thus the Anabaptists became Die stille im Lande, the quiet in the land.

            So I don’t blame Jesus’ disciples for hiding in a locked room and I don’t blame the 16^th century Anabaptists for hiding and worshipping in the caves and forests where they would be safe.  But there comes a time when you need to step out of your safe zone.

            As we pick back up in our scripture we find in verse 21, “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

            The disciples knew that they were in danger of persecution, torture, and even death.  That is why they have locked themselves in the room.  But now here is Jesus saying, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 

            Jesus doesn’t say, “Stay here where it is safe.  Those people will tear you to shreds.”  He tells the disciples to get out in the world and live!  Keep doing the things we have been doing, living as a part of this new kingdom of God.  Even it if costs you your lives.

            When I read Jesus saying “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” I get chills up my spine.  The scriptures tell us over and over that God knew that Jesus would be tortured and killed, that this wasn’t all going to be rosy for him.  But God sent Jesus into the world because that was what needed to happen for the world to be transformed.  God needed to send Jesus into this world to bring good news.  And now Jesus is saying just as my father sent me into this world, now I’m sending you.  I’m sending you into the world so that the world might be transformed through the good news.  I know it might hurt, I know you might get killed, but you need to be out there spreading the good news of the kingdom and living as a citizen of this kingdom.

            And the disciples did it.  They went out and preached the Good News.  They healed the sick, gave to those in need, and preached a kingdom of love where Jesus is Lord.  And many were killed and tortured.  Peter is said to have been crucified upside-down.  Matthew is said to have been killed by a sword or a spear.  Others were killed by beheading.  The very thing that they had feared so much on that first Easter Sunday that they had locked themselves up in a room to keep the others away had indeed happened to them.  Tradition tells us that each of the disciples, with the exception of Judas, was martyred. 

So what happened that made them go ahead and take that first step out the door into a world that they knew would hate and despise them?  They realized that they had a message that was worth dieing for.  And so did the early Anabaptists.  We are not called to be the quiet in the land.  We are called to be Christ’s ambassadors to the world.

            Now up to this point I have been speaking about the Anabaptists and more specifically the Mennonites being the quiet in the land.  But I only use this faith tradition because that is what I am the most familiar with.  I am sure that the same thing can be said about many of the other Christian denominations today.  And I believe that is because we are afraid of what is outside of the church and who is outside of the church.  And I believe that the fear that we have today isn’t that we will become martyred or persecuted for our religion, but often that those outside of the church are simply “bad people”.

            This past Monday I was walking through downtown Staunton heading to my car after grabbing an early morning cup of joe.  And I saw a friend of mine who owns and operates a shop downtown walking on a street, coming toward me, about 30 yards away from me.  He was heading away from the shop, so I yelled out to him, “Hey, you missed your store.”

            He yelled back to me, “I know, I’m going to the bank to make the weekend’s deposit.”

            Remember, we are walking downtown.  There are other people around us, and we are yelling back and forth about 30 yards apart from one another.  So I yell back to him, “I don’t think everybody heard you.  Can you say that a little louder?”  Just a tip, if you are carrying your weekend earnings from a store to a bank in a bag through downtown anywhere, don’t yell it out so that everyone can hear you.

            He yelled back to me, “I guess I’m not too smart.”

            I replied to him, “No, I think you just see the good in people.”

            In the 16^th Century, there was a great theologian named John Calvin.  Calvin wrote a lot and he is the one that many denominations today trace their beginnings back to.  I respect Calvin a lot and I think he did a lot of good for Christianity.  But there is at least one doctrine that I don’t fully agree with and that is what Calvin called the “Total Depravity of Man” (I would align theologically with some of the nuances, though not fully).  Calvin wrote, “For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle. Those who term it concupiscence (lust) use a word not very inappropriate, provided it were added, (this, however, many will by no means concede,) that everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, is defiled and pervaded with this concupiscence; or, to express it more briefly, that the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence.”  (Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section

            I agree that there is a lot wrong with humanity today.  There isn’t a single one of us without sin and there isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t need a savior.  But to say that there isn’t an ounce of goodness in us, that we are “utterly devoid of goodness” seems a bit strong to me.  As I have said before, we were made in the image of God.  We are icons of God, though we are cracked, marred by sin.  And we still bear some of that image.

            My friend walking down the street, yelling out that he was going to make a deposit doesn’t seem to think that all of humanity is totally deprived of any good.  And I don’t doubt that he would agree that sin has broken us.

            I believe that how we see the rest of the world influences how we interact with those outside of the Christian faith.  Do we look at people as utterly devoid of goodness, or as people created beautifully in the image of God, yet marred by sin in need of healing?  I believe that some of this Calvinism crept into the Mennonite mentality of being the quiet in the land.  Shut the rest of the world out of our small communities and maintain a pure bloodline within the church.  There has been this fear that those outside of the church will corrupt the church, tempt our children, and pollute the people.  And there is some truth to that.  But by shutting out all of what we have deemed “bad” have we closed the door on seeing the good in other people?  And have we closed the door on inviting other people to become followers of Jesus Christ?

            We have something special to offer the world.  I greatly appreciate my three years of study at Eastern Mennonite University.  I gained knowledge, experiences, and developed friendships that I will cherish for a lifetime.  EMU seems to have a goal of providing an educational experience from an Anabaptist perspective that will help keep Mennonite students engaged in the Mennonite Church.  I recently heard a very encouraging number from EMU.  It was something like 90% of Mennonite students graduating from EMU remain a part of the Mennonite Church after graduation.

            I appreciate that.  But compare that to the approach of Bluffton University, a Mennonite college in Ohio.  Rather than trying to keep their Mennonite students in the Mennonite church, Bluffton is more focused on spreading the Christian faith, especially Anabaptist distinctives, to non-churched people.  I like EMU’s approach, but I really like Bluffton’s.

            I like that because I think that we have something to offer the world.  We have a message of peace in times of war.  We have a message of simplicity in an age of consumerism.  We have a message of forgiveness in an era of retribution.  We have a message of love in an era of hate.  So why be the quiet in the land when we have a message that should be shout from a rooftop?

            The quiet in the land mentality came about because the Anabaptists were being persecuted and killed for their beliefs.  There was a transition from a mentality that said “I’m going to follow, serve, and share Jesus, even if it costs me my life” to “I’m going to follow and serve Jesus in a quiet and peaceful way so that other people won’t mess with me.”

            Yes, we are called to be in the world, but not of it.  Mennonites and many other denominations have done a really good job of not being “of the world.”  But have we done so at the expense of not being “in the world”? 

            In conclusion this morning, I would like to read from Acts 4:18-20, “¹⁸So they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. ¹⁹But Peter and John answered them, ‘Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; ²⁰for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.’”  My prayer for us all today is that we will no longer be the quiet in the land, but may we continue speaking about what we have seen and heard while living as the alternative community known as the church.