Do Not Conform

Weekends in the fall seem to be a portrait of contrast in my life.  I experience in those two short days each weekend my best moments and my worst ones.

You see in my family… Saturdays in the fall are good for only one thing: Hawkeye football games (okay… you Cyclone fans can insert yourselves in here to, just change the words in your mind).

Now, I’m not sure that this would be a big problem, if it weren’t for the fact that while enjoyable… and while a great source of community and family time… I also have some of my worst moments during football games

I get very wrapped up in my Hawkeye football.

A bad call?  I’m jumping up out of my seat and yelling at the zebras.

A dropped catch?  That poor Marvin McNutt heard plenty from me last year.

Yes, even Kirk Ferentz… especially Kirk Ferentz… gets an earful from me.

Now – never mind you that I’m sitting on a couch at my parent’s house or in my own basement and they are at least 30 miles away.

It doesn’t matter to me.  My whole self – mind, body, and soul – is focused on that game.  It gets very personal.  I’m sure my blood pressure is rising just thinking about it.  I want to see them win and succeed and when they don’t, it is disappointing.  And when they intentionally do dumb things and make mistakes… well, then sometimes a curse word or two slips in there.

I am NOT the same person during a football game that I am when I come to church on a Sunday morning.  And you might not be the same person at work on a Tuesday afternoon that you are here in worship either.  We have become so comfortable with putting on and taking off our holiness and exchanging it for the ways of the world. We do it seamlessly… without blinking… without even being aware of it ourselves.

In fact, we do it so well that we begin to blur the lines between the two. We look at all of the good things that sports and work and shopping and national pride and money and the like provide that we start to see them as goods that are on the same par, the same level as our divine calling.

So it is no big deal with we give up a Sunday morning for a round of golf or skip our morning devotions in order to be at work early.  They are equally good and important in our lives.

Eh… except, they’re not.

In our gospel lesson for this morning, we find Peter making a similar mistake.  He knows that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ and he is so proud of himself for correctly identifying his Savior.

But then his mind goes to other places….

I want to invite you to hear this scripture again, this time rewritten by Kyle Childress:

Jesus starts asking them questions about what people are saying about him. Who do they think he is? And more, what do you fellows think about me? Of course, Peter spoke first, “You are the Messiah!” Jesus responded, “Yeah, but you guys need to be quiet about this. Let me explain what being the Messiah is.”

Then he began to teach the hard stuff; he began to teach that he would suffer and die and be raised. Peter interrupted, “No, No! We’ve got a good thing going here. People are having their needs met and more and more of them are joining up. For Pete’s sake, we have a movement started. We’re going to be successful. Some of the boys are already drawing up the blueprints for a new Center for Ministry complex inCapernaum. James and John want to be co-directors and I’m putting together ‘Jesus Tour: A.D. 31’ with t-shirts and kid’s action figures and a possible book deal. Jesus, just think, you could become an author. People might even start quoting you.”

Jesus whirled around, “You don’t get it! The stuff you’re talking about is satanic! It’s the complete opposite of what God wants and who I’m called to be.” And Jesus got back to the hard teachings: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me …”

Ministry centers might be good.  T-shirts with your ministry on them, definitely good. Books about Jesus – awesome…

But the problem is, those things have nothing to do with what God wants right now.  They have nothing to do with God’s will at that moment.  They directly contradict God’s plan for Jesus and for all of human history.

There are so many competing goods out there in the world, and our lines get blurred and sometimes we can no longer tell the difference between divine things and human things, between what we want and what God wants.

So what do we do?  How do we weigh the options?  How do we choose?

Human things vs. Godly things: How do we tell the difference?

A)    YOU don’t: when we come up with these things, we excuse our human actions.

1. Daniel Deffenbaugh writes:

In our sin and unbelief, we like to think of ourselves as “free thinkers.” In reality, we are only thinking like Satan and like the fallen world system in which we live. Our culture constantly seeks to shape us. Like teenage children, we think we are expressing our individuality and independence when we differ with God. In reality, we are merely following the world, the flesh, and the devil in rebellion and unbelief. When we give our lives to God, we give ourselves over to His influence and control. When we turn to God in obedience, we turn away from the world’s shaping influence on us. Its influence should diminish, and God’s infinite wisdom, contained in Scripture and conveyed by His Spirit, should begin to transform our thinking and our actions. Giving our lives to God as a living sacrifice is the decision to be shaped and influenced by God and not by our fallen world.

B) Not talking about a list of right or wrong – something we can post on a wall and check-off… we are talking about something written on our hearts.

1. This might be different for everyone… a different choice, not a universal set of ways of being.
2. Take someone which a gift for public speaking who has a successful job at a corporation.  A) stay in job, use money for God’s will, B) quit job and become preacher, c) stay in job, volunteer on the side
3. Really reminds us of the importance of discernment… and not not imposing our ways of following God upon others.

C)    HOW does it get written there?

1. We have to spend time with God
2. You are who your friends are… be friends with God.
3. Letting God shape our lives/fixing our attention on God
4. Means of grace in the Methodist tradition: Prayer, bible study, small groups, communion, worship, service, visiting the sick, tithing
5. We really have to do these things intentionally… we have to do them so that we are paying more attention to God and what he wants for our lives than we are to our own wants and desires.  When you spend time focusing on God, there starts to become less room for your own base thoughts.

When we let God transform our hearts and our minds, then we will KNOW what God’s will is.  The best of God will be dwelling in our hearts.  It will spill out of us when we talk, when we listen, when we act in this world.

If I started my Saturdays in the fall with prayer… If I spent some time reading the scriptures with my breakfast on those days… If I spent some time with a person in need before the football game even started – my whole attitude and energy would be in a different place.  I would understand that its only a game… a good human enterprise… but that it doesn’t need to take such a huge spot in my life.  I would be able to enjoy it for what it was, knowing that I don’t live and die on the outcome, but on the grace and mercy of my God and Savior…