choices – Salvaged Faith

Willing to Yield

Posted on September 23, 2012Leave a comment

I want to start out this morning with a testimony… and I think it is very important that you understand this is not me preaching about what you should go out tomorrow and do… I am simply sharing what my experience of God was this past year.

That is an important qualification, because I’m going to be talking about money. And talking about money makes a whole lot of us uncomfortable… but it is a part of our daily lives and it is an important part our words from James this morning.

And my testimony is this: For the first time in my life, this year I tithed to the church.

Now, I have always given to the church. But for a long time, I made excuses about how much I should give.

When I was a teenager and had only part time jobs, I might have stuck a dollar or two in the offering plate – whatever pocket change I might have had that day. It was the last of my money… not the best.

When I was in college, I did not attend a church regularly on Sundays, but worshipped on campus Wednesday nights – and no one asked for a financial contribution. No one asked me to give, much less give sacrificially.

As a seminary student and an intern at a church, I was spending more money on school and travel than I was making and piling up debt. I gave my time to the church and occasionally a few bucks as well.

And then I came here. I came to be a pastor and I knew that I could not ask you, in good faith, to give faithfully to the church and to God, if I was not also giving. Having a steady paycheck for the first time in my life, I should have immediately started tithing. But I didn’t. I held back. I looked at my student loans and a bit of debt from college… I looked at how much our cable bill was going to be… I thought about how we wanted to travel a bit… I knew that taxes would take a chunk of my wages… And so I started out small. I gave to the church – but only a small portion.

And then, I became comfortable with that level of financial giving. I knew I was doing God’s ministry in other ways and so I didn’t worry about it.

But one day a year or two ago, I was having a conversation with a friend, a fellow pastor, about the things that we cling to… the things we hold close and refuse to give to God.

I realized in the midst of that conversation that I had never willingly yielded my money to God. There had been times when I had given out of guilt. I have given because it was what I was supposed to do. I have given out of habit as the offering place went around and each person in the pew pulled out a buck and dropped it in. Sound familiar?

But never had I prayerfully thought about what God wanted me to give. Never had I searched my heart to ask what I was willing to yield, what I was willing to joyfully give up in my life for the sake of our Lord and our church.

I started out last year by giving a much larger percentage on a regular basis… and this year, my heart led me to give a full 10% of my income to the church.

I joyfully give that money to God… and I have to tell you – I haven’t missed one cent. I now give to the church first… the money comes out of my paycheck before it ever comes home with me. I give God my first and my best, instead of the change in my pocket – instead of the leftovers from my own spending and desires.

I have been blessed through my giving. No, I don’t have more money in the bank than when I started… but now I am reminded that the things that money buys – cable t.v. and new clothes and name-brand cereal don’t last. What lasts is the kingdom of God. What lasts is the word of God. What lasts is the joy that I have found through letting go… through being willing to yield.

Now… I’m going to put my preacher hat back on.

Because we all have different places in our life where we have been unwilling to yield. It might be money, like me, but it might be an addiction. For others the thing they grasp is their pride. Some of us are unwilling to let go of our schedules or our desires.

Throughout the book of James, we get some harsh truths about what it means to live in Christian community. On Labor Day weekend, we heard about the source of our conflict – pride and a lack of humility. The next week we were reminded that rich and poor are all the same and we need to stop judging and stop loving. Last week, we were dished up some truth about wisdom and speech… and our tendency to ignorance and cynicism.

In each message – we have been asked to let something go. Our pride and the need to “be important”, our status and the desire to “be better”, our knowledge and the need to “be right”, and today we are asked to let go of the material things we cling to and the stuff we seek out. We need to let go of our desire to “be the joneses.”

As we read James… even though I have experienced the joy of willingly yielding and letting God have control of my money – I have to admit that each one of these admonitions still hits close to home for me also. Each of these realities is something that I continue to struggle with, even as I know I am being faithful in some ways.

1) Keeping up with the Joneses kills our souls

James is quite clear in chapter four that our desire to keep up with the ways of the world means that our heart has gone astray from God. Familiar verse from the gospels reminds us– you cannot serve both God and money. And so every time that we choose the things we want over the things of God, we have cheated on our Lord and Savior – we have been unfaithful.

It is hard to accept sometimes, but God cares about what you do and what you have. If our gracious Lord and Savior makes sure that the birds of the air and the flowers of the field are taken care of… then he’s also working to make sure that you have enough – that you have abundant life. But so often, we turn our backs on the life God has given us and want to be someone else and have other things. Verse 5 reads: Doesn’t God long for our faithfulness in the life he has given us?

This life might not be perfect. We might not have everything. But Mother Theresa once said, “grow where you are planted.” Don’t look over the fence at your neighbors and want what they have… gratefully give thanks every day for the gift of life and the wonderful things that are a part of yours. When we humble ourselves before the Lord and give thanks for who we were created to be, God is right there, ready to lift us up.

2) Keeping up with the Joneses is killing other people

James chapter 4 starts with the hard truth that war and conflict comes from our desire to have what we don’t have and our desire to keep what is already ours. As he says in verse two: “You long for something you don’t have, so you commit murder. You are jealous for something you can’t get, so you struggle and fight.”

That reality is lived out on our newspapers and television programs every single day. Bank robberies and drug related shootings. Civil wars in far off countries about the precious resources of those places. Jealous acts of violence enacted towards someone for cheating or stealing a person you loved from your life.

But there is a quiet hidden reality to these verses that we are not always ready to admit to – a truth that needs to be confessed about ourselves. The things that we have in this world – everyday, ordinary things that we buy and use and dispose of… our desire to have those things is killing people, too.

Take my cell phone, for example. This summer, I dropped my phone and cracked the screen. So I upgraded to something new. My husband upgraded at the same time, even though his old phone was just fine. But within these simple devices are resources and minerals that you can’t find everywhere. In fact, the tin inside of these devices that are used to solder the metal parts together is mined mostly in Indonesia and China. I read recently about one province in Indonesia, two little islands where nearly half of the tin for cell phones comes from.

The tin mining industry has devastated these two little islands. The mining is done in shallow pits and these pits cover the island – thousands and thousands of pits dotting the ground. Most of this mining is done by hand, rather than machine and it is not a regulated industry. Small groups of men, often boys, work in these pits and scrape the walls by hand.

The reporter who visited the sites had this to say: “these dangerous pits – the walls literally just collapse and bury people alive. In one week, while I was on BangkaIsland, there were six men and actually a boy, a 15-year-old, who were buried alive in these pit collapses…”

My heart broke when I heard that story… how our demand for smart-phones and tablets has caused an industry to explode without regulation or safety and that people are dying so that I can have 3G. Our relationship with God and our command to love our neighbor means that we need to think carefully about the purchases we make in this world. We need to pray before we buy something. And we need to be informed about the far reaching impact of the things we want.

3) Keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t get us anything but fat and dead

We are often so focused on the things that we want today, that we do not stop to think about the far reaching implications of the stuff we accumulate.

As Brandon and I start to pack up our house, we have tons of things that we do not need and will never use. We are busting at the seams with cheap trinkets and clothes that no longer fit and craft supplies we don’t have time to use. It has been a reminder that we have abundantly blessed… and so we are taking this opportunity to share and donate and repurpose some of what we have been given.

The reality is that the stuff we have will not last forever. And we won’t be alive to enjoy it forever.

As James continues in chapter five, the wealthy get one final harsh warning. In this translation from The Message, I want to invite you to hear these words… remembering that we are each wealthier than 75% of this world:

Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment.

^4-6All the workers you’ve exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse

All you’ll to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse.

The old adage says, you can’t take it with you… and its true. Our time here on earth is short and piling on pleasures and wants and desires doesn’t get us anything but a house full of stuff that someone else is going to have to sort through.

James’s advice for us: remember that you are nothing but a mist that vanishes with the sunlight. Remember that you are nothing but grass that withers and a flower that fades. What good is all of the wealth in the world when tomorrow you are gone?

Let’s take a deep breath. Because we can hear these harsh words and they cut straight to our core. We might want to give everything away when we go home because we feel so guilty.

But I need you to hear this.

God does not want your money, if he doesn’t have your heart.

God doesn’t have any use for your stuff, if he can’t have your soul.

God doesn’t care about the things that you own… even if they could be used to help other people… unless you are willing to give him your life.

Let us prayerfully ask about what God wants us to yield. Let us joyfully and freely give – not because we have to, but because we want to. And let us join with Christ in the world along paths “the Joneses” don’t often travel

Spirit of Household Salvation

Posted on August 22, 2012Leave a comment

Religion is social. Religion is corporate. Religion is political.

As Christianity spread in the time of the apostles and beyond, it was often not the work of one-on-one conversations and personal confessions of faith, but of corporate conversions… of whole nations turning from one religion to another.

I did some reading this week about the reformation in Norway in the 16th century. Up to this point, Norway had been a Catholic country… being converted in the 9th century through the faith of Olav II, their beloved king who was later sainted.

But with political allegiances changing, suddenly a union between Denmark and Norway was on the horizon. And Christian III, king of Denmark was lining up to take his place on the Norwegian throne.

The problem… Christian was a Lutheran. He had been taught by Lutherans. He had even traveled as a young man and heard Martin Luther speak in person. And so his goal was to establish his kingdom as a protestant haven.

The first step, of course, is to get rid of the Catholic leadership. In 1536, the Catholic bishops were kicked out and replaced with Lutheran bishops appointed by the new king. Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson tried to resist these reforms and keep Norway from being united with Denmark. There was even talk about establishing Christian’s younger brother John as king… since he remained favorable to the Catholic faith. The Archbishop tried to do everything he could to resist the change, even helping to plan the assassination of an earl who was traveling to Norway to discuss the union. Engelbrektsson ended his days in exile.

While all of this was going on in the realms of bishops and earls and kings… What do you think the everyday person was thinking. Overnight they were transformed from Catholics to Lutherans. They didn’t have a say in the matter, they may not have even noticed a real difference. They were converted, wholesale, as a group.

In our world today, this makes no sense to us. Faith is so private and individualized. We make our confessions and trust in a personal Lord and savior.

But historically, this is the exception and not the norm. For much of history, faith has been a corporate… A communal experience. Your religion was based upon the faith of your father or master or lord or king. Your flavor of Christianity was not based upon the nuances that you chose, but the political affiliations and personal whims of someone higher up the food chain.

We could argue for days about whether it is better for faith to be personalized as it is today in our nation, or a corporate experience as it still is in some places today.

We certainly have known the advantages of being able to have our own say about our faith. You can know our God personally… you can turn to the scriptures and can find out for yourself what they contain. You get to decide whether or not you join the church or go to church

But I believe this isn’t an either/or question. There are some things about having a communal expression of faith that we have lost. As we dive into this chapter of Acts, we might be able to figure out how not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

David Matson argues that we could see the entire book of Acts as a story about houses…. We start out the narrative with the disciples gathered together in a house and the story ends with Paul under house arrest on an island, telling the stories of faith to those who will come and visit.

Then, throughout the journey of the disciples, they travel from house to house, sharing the faith they have received. We have heard of Peter and Cornelius, Paul and Ananias… and here in this chapter Paul and Silas meet up with two different families in the city of Philippi.

One of these households is led by a woman named Lydia. The bible tells us she is a dealer of purple cloth – a wealthy woman trading a rare luxury commodity. We know nothing of her husband, but she does well enough for herself that either he isn’t around or isn’t relevant to the story. She is the head of the household. And when she hears the story of salvation in her place of prayer by the river, she invites Paul and Silas back to her home and her whole household is baptized.

The second household conversion happens after a Roman jailer experiences a miracle. He had locked Paul and Silas up in jail under strict orders to keep them secure. When an earthquake shakes their bars loose in the middle of the night – he is convinced his life is over. With the prisoners escape, he will be punished and killed. Just as he is about to end his life – Paul calls out from the cell… they had not left, even though they could have.

The jailer is so overwhelmed that he wants to know about the faith that has sustained them in difficult times, the faith that has allowed them to be so calm in the midst of distress. He takes the two back to his home and he and his entire household are saved.

What can we learn from these two tales?

First: Lydia and the soldier both experienced conversion outside of their homes…. but took their faith back home with them. And not only that… they took people back with them.

Now, it would be important here to mention what we mean by a household. In the Greco-Roman world, the household was the place of residence of a family, but also of all the slaves and grown children under the master of that household’s authority. The household could be rather large and encompassed all of a person’s business, social, and familial relationships. The pater familias had unilateral authority over his wife, his children and his servants.

This thing that they had witnessed – the story they had heard – it was too important to keep to themselves. As the heads of their households, they knew that this faith was not something that only belonged to them but it was meant to be shared. They opened up not only their hearts, but their whole lives to the power of God. They made sure that this new conversion in their lives extended to EVERY part of their life – their children, their wives, their servants.

When we experience faith and conversion, do we run home and tell our families? Do we share that faith with our employees? Do we allow God into every part of our life? Do we make room for him in our homes, in our work, in the places we go to socialize?

One way that we could reclaim this idea of household salvation is to simply open up our whole selves to his power…

Secondly, the scriptures tell us that their whole households were baptized. The act of baptism is personal. More than a blanket statement that a whole nation is now Lutheran instead of Catholic, to baptize a whole household means that each person would have come before Paul and Silas to recieve the water. Young and old. Rich and poor. Slave and free. The head of the household would have lined them all up and said – you are going to do this.

It sounds a lot like mom and dad getting the kids dressed up for church and dragging them kicking and screaming to the family pew.

But it was important in that time and place for the whole household to believe the same things. In the Greco-Roman world, your household worshipped one god among many. To bring in idols or religious artifacts related to another deity would have caused your primary god to be jealous. A master of a household would have had strict control over the faith of those under their authority.

That sounds harsh to us today, until we realize that every day we make choices about what our family stands for and what we consume.

We make choices about what food we eat, what television shows are allowed to be watched in our houses, what activities we will or will not participate in. For a family that is trying to eat healthy, McDonald’s french fries are strictly forbidden. For a family trying to instil good values in their children, much of MTV might be off the list. We set rules and boundaries every day and each of those decisions says something about who we are and what we believe.

We also practice in our tradition infant baptism. And when we baptize children, we are making promises on their behalf. We are holding their faith for them. We are making decisions about their relationship with God even though they are not even aware of God’s presence yet.

When we do so, we promise to raise them in the church, to hold that faith for them and to teach them until the day comes when they can accept or reject that faith for themselves.

Until that day comes, our job is to feed them properly (so to speak). If we believe it, we should live it, and live it in our whole lives.

If we think back to the tale of the Norwegian Reformation, the short version of the story goes: The King appointed a new Lutheran bishop. The old Catholic bishop appointed a new king… and as we all know from the Ollie and Lena jokes that we sometimes tell, the Lutherans won.

Someone, somewhere up the food chain made a decision about the faith of the people. And at the time, they had no say. At the time, they may not have imagined what it meant. But as time has gone one, Norwegians by and large identify themselves as Lutherans. They lived into the faith that was handed to them. They have claimed it as their own.

In the same way, our children and grandchildren might live into the faith that we hold if we continue to bring them to this place… if we nurture them in the traditions that have sustained us… if we lead them to the Christ we have come to know and love.

Your faith extends far beyond your life. It extends to all of your relationships. It extends to your family and friends and into every part of your life. Let Christ in. Let Christ change you. And let Christ have your relationships also.