God – Page 8 – Salvaged Faith

Hope or Despair? Birth Pangs of the Kingdom

Posted on November 29, 2009Leave a comment

As I started exploring and reading our texts for this week, I was instantly transported back to my best friend’s kitchen – 1997. I was a sophomore in high school and my family had recently started going to church. I knew the basics of the Christian faith, but was becoming aware of how muc more there was to the bible.

The late 1990’s was a time of religious fervor – at least as far as I remember them. Mega churches were just starting to be noticed, the Left Behind Series of books were on everyone’s reading lists, and in my high school bible studies and prayer meetings were popping up all over the place. Oh – and the year 2000 was on the horizon and no one quite knew what to expect.

For the most part, I was a typical high schooler and oblivious to what was going on in the rest of the world. Living in rural Iowa, that scope of vision was even smaller. So as a new Christian, sitting in my best friend’s kitchen, my entire world was rocked when my friends and One of their moms started talking about end times prophecy.

I can’t remember why we started talking about it, but before I knew it they had pulled out these time lines and charts and bibles and were explaining to me what order things were going to happen for Christ to come back again. They talked with such certainty, such confidence, and I remember feeling nothing but lost.

In fact, my stomach turned as visions of the world being destroyed passed before my eyes. I remember feeling clammy when I thought about billions of people dying in the tribulation. I was terrified by descriptions of the seven seals being opened.

Perhaps most of all, as I sat on that kitchen stool, I remember how unprepared I felt. My friends knew all of this information – but more importantly, they believed and were confident in the face of impending doom! I, on the other hand, was uncomfortable, had questions I was afraid to ask, and if they were right, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be among the faithful. That assurance they felt that told them they would escape the troubles… yeah, I didn’t have that.

I mostly avoided talking about it with my friends, but I nearly gave up on Christianity after a series of those conversations. I started reading the Left Behind books and I was so upset by them I stopped a few books in. The picture of God that was presented by them and by all of this prophecy just didn’t match up with the God I had met in my United Methodist youth group. There we talked about love and grace and forgiveness and becoming a new creation… and all I could see in what my friends were so sure of was judgment and destruction.

In some ways – we get that same kind of feeling from our gospel text this morning. We are told to be alert at all times so that we have the strength to escape from all of these things that are about to take place. We are told that people will faint from fear of what is to come because the heavens will be shaken. I hear a lot of doom and gloom in these few passages that come to us from the gospel of Luke.

But I hear these words very differently today than I did ten years ago. After we got past the Y2K scare and I started reading the Bible more, I realized that the sure and certain scenarios presented on those time lines in my friend’s kitchen weren’t the only possibility presented to us in the Bible.

As we have talked about in Sunday School recently – I started to see that Revelation isn’t a schedule for the apocalypse but a book of hope in secret code for a community being persecuted. I have now read just as many verses in Paul’s letters that talk about not knowing what is going to happen in the future, as I have the ones that seem to have the inside scoop. And – perhaps more importantly – I have started seeing the scriptures as a whole, and not in isolated verses.

When we look at the entire scope of the scriptures – we see the story of a God who created us out of love and has been continually yearning for relationship with us. We see the story of a God whose response to our endless denial was to come and be born in our midst. We see the story of a God who lived among us to show us the path of the righteous, and who died so that we could follow him. We see the story of a God who is not interested in scrapping this world and starting over, but who re-creates and redeems and transforms even the heavens and the earth.

Read in light of that story – these verses in Luke sound very different. People will faint and tremble not because terrible things are looming – but because they THINK terrible things are looming… they don’t understand what is happening… they don’t understand the signs.

About a year ago – my husband and I had some of our own signs to decipher. We go over to his sister’s house every Friday night to have dinner with their family. It is a wonderful time to eat good food and play games and hang out with our niece and nephew. A couple of weeks went by and I started to notice that my sister-in-law had stopped having her usual glass of wine with dinner. Then I noticed that she was eating less and less at our meals and was tired and seemed to be losing weight. And I started to get slightly worried, because I didn’t understand what was happening. Was she sick? Was there something that we should be concerned about?

And then the announcement came – Bevin was pregnant! She had stopped eating and was losing weight because she had such terrible morning sickness. She was tired because there was new life growing inside of her!

I had completely misread the signs.

If we go back a little bit further in Luke, chapter 21 this morning, Jesus is trying to tell his disciples not to be afraid by what might come next – by what appears to be happening around them.

They ask him for a simple answer – when are these things going to happen? How will we know? And in response he tells them not to listen to those people who say that the time is near. He tells them not to be afraid by the signs of the times. Or as the Message translation puts these verses: “When you hear of wars and uprisings, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history and no sign of the end … nation will fight against nation… over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.”

But those are just the outside symptoms. They are similar to the things I was seeing in my sister-in-law: weight loss and not eating and I thought something was wrong because I misinterpreted the signs.

Jesus goes on to talk about a particular time when it will seem as if all is lost, or as the Message bible puts it – “everything will come to a head.” And at that moment – when things appear to be their worst, when all appears hopeless – that is when the Son of Man – that is when Jesus will be seen.

I think all of this would be a whole lot easier to understand if Luke didn’t leave out and important detail. I think he left it out because Mark and Luke have almost identical passages. If you look at Luke chapter 21 and Mark chapter 13 – there are many similarities except for one… after Jesus reminds them that there will continue to be wars and natural disasters he says: This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

I was with a group of pastors a few weeks ago in Indianapolis and we were reading this exact same passage in Mark. One woman spoke up and said – I’ve had five children… I know exactly what Jesus is talking about!!! It always seems to be the worst, it always seems like you just won’t survive, right before your child is born. That’s when the pain is the worst and that’s because you are growing and stretching and waiting for this new life to emerge. That’s a really different way to understand this passage.

Paul talks about the groaning of creation, he talks about the birth pangs and waiting for redemption and if we think about God’s Kingdom being born in our midst, its going to take a little bit of change and transformation. Things will be shaken up a bit just like when birth happens in our lives.

We could look around us at the melting of the icecaps and tsunamis and tornadoes and the strange weather we have had this past year and we could be worried about the end. We could look at the violence in our own community – much less in the world – in this past year and think that we are on a downhill slide into immorality and destruction. We could look at the wars we are engaged in – especially in the middle east – as signs that all is lost… as the impending day of judgment and doom.

Or we can listen to the scriptures. In our passage today, it says Stand up and raise our heads because what is coming is not destruction – but redemption. What is being born in our midst is the new creation.

Today is the first Sunday of the Christian year.

Today is the start of a season of hope in the midst of despair, the season of light when everything appears to be dark.

If last week we prayed for Christ the King to come on earth – then today is the day that we start looking for the Kingdom.

Today is the day we look around and see the signs of the kingdom everywhere. We see it in the hunger that young people have to understand and learn more about who God is. We see it in the hunger we experience as we gather to worship and pray. We see it in that spark of hope that is in our hearts – even though we could look at the world and think radically different things.

I think in many ways this church understands that because two years ago you were faced with a tough decision. You looked around and church attendance was declining and you had to decide if you were going to go to part time or stay with a full time pastor. Some churches in that situation would have said, well – we are pretty much hopeless.

But you said that something new is being born in our midst – and we are going to wait and see what happens. That’s why we light this candle today. We light this candle remembering that hope is just around the corner that the promises of God are almost in our reach. That all of the groaning and birth pangs around us are merely getting us ready for what is to come. There is no fear to be had. There is no trembling on this day. Because God is coming near to us. God is coming and so let us stand up and raise up our heads and await the glory of our King. Amen and Amen.

Hebrews Part 3: Milk First, Meat Later

Posted on October 18, 2009Leave a comment

Milk First, Meat Later

[SLIDE] As we continue in the book of Hebrews today, we come crashing into the heart of the letter’s Christology.

Christology? That’s a pretty big word, you might be thinking. If we break it apart, we find first Christ, and then ology – Christology is what we understand about Jesus Christ.

[SLIDE] Already the book of Hebrews has told us some things about who Jesus is. He was with God before the foundations of the earth. He is the Son of God. And for a time, he was made a little lower than the angels – took human form and lived among us. He took on our life and because of what he has done for us, we are now children of God.

Last week, we recalled how easily we forget what God has done for us. Like the Hebrew people in the desert, we wander and grumble and always want something else than the rest, the grace, that has been prepared for us. But Christ cuts through all of our excuses and denials and speaks to our heart, shows us the right path, if only we are willing to listen.

So what are we listening for? What is it that Jesus wants us to accept? What has Christ done for us?

The answer begins with chapter 4 verse 14. Jesus is the great, high priest and we are invited to approach the throne of grace with boldness to find mercy and grace in time of need.

We need to turn our lives around, approach God in Christ and accept the grace we find there.

Seems simple enough doesn’t it?

[SLIDE] Hebrews doesn’t think so. Because immediately after these phrases, we have a whole series of explanations about what it means for Jesus to BE the person waiting there for us – what it means for him to be the high priest… what exactly Jesus is doing there on the throne of grace?

For just a moment, lets skip through a few more verses and go to verse 11, this time in the Message translation – “I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening. By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago!”

We’re going to stick with the milk today – and next week we’ll tackle the more difficult stuff about what it means for Jesus to be the priest.

So beginning with the basics. We need to repent from our past lives and turn with faith towards God… Or as we put it all through the month of August – God keeps telling us, I love you, I forgive you, and I have a job for you.

[SLIDE] For most Protestants – Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists – our focus is on the “I forgive you” part. We know who God is, we know who Christ is, through what Christ has done/accomplished for us.

That is Christology. By looking at what Christ did, we have a better understanding of how we are forgiven, how we are justified, how we are saved.

Think about this in another way. If a new person comes to town, we get to know them by asking questions about what they have done in the past. We ask where they lived. We ask where they studied. We ask what their job was. And we continue to get to know if they are a good person or not, if they are trustworthy, not by what they say, but what they do – how they treat us once they become a part of our community.

The same goes with Jesus. Once we understand what Jesus has done for us, we understand how we can put our lives in his hands.

There is a bit of a problem however. There isn’t just one answer to that question.

[SLIDE] In fact, in the Western world there are actually three different understandings of how Jesus saves us.

This word at the top, atonement, is basically a fancy way of saying just that. How we become at-one again with God – how we make amends, how we are reconciled to our creator.

Looking at why Jesus went to the cross, three major theories have been laid out.

1. Christus Victor – in the battle for good and evil, we are held prisoner to sin, held captive by Satan. In Jesus’ victory over death, evil is defeated and we are set free
2. Satisfaction – problem is that we have broken the covenant and a penalty must be paid. Jesus knows we are guilty, but his action on the cross bears the punishment for us.
3. Moral Example – the cross is the natural outcome of the life of Jesus – who spoke truth to power and dared to love those who society turned away. In his life and death, he shows us how we should also live.

How many of you knew there was more than one way to understand why Jesus went to the cross?

We’re going to look at each one a little bit more in depth.

• Christus Victor – We are captured, not free; imprisoned to Satan and sin; evil has control over us
 Addiction is a sort of prison – we can be imprisoned and homeless and not even know it
 How can we be set free? Christ the resurrected one rescues us, defeats sin and death.

• Forensic – we are in the defendent’s seat – we have broken the covenant and must face the consequences
 Satisfaction (Anselm) God’s honor has been destroyed by our sin & we have infinite debt to God. Only the God/Man can make our satisfaction
 Penalty Satisfaction (Aquinas)Our offense against God disrupts order, God as a just God must keep the righteous order and justice must be recieved. Christ pays the penalty to restore the balance.
 Substitutionary Justification (Luther/Calvin) God’s work in Christ is enacted in us – we are acquitted, pardoned and our record is cleared.

• Moral Example (Abelard) – we have lost the understanding of and ability to love and Christ’s life, death, and resurrection shows us what true faithfulness looks like

All three of these are at play in Wesley and should be in ours as well
• if we respond to this pardoning love and allow God deeper access to our lives, we will be liberated from our captivity to sin and the transformation into the fullness of our lives… penalty/satisfaction emphasis with a moral element and a ransom effect.

We too heavily emphasize just the judicial understanding of sin – that claims we must be tried, found guilty, and punished for what we have done wrong.

In my understanding of God, it is through judgment that we are free to recognize we need the grace of God, repent of our sins and live lives worthy of the calling of God. Punishment is not required. Because Christ already restored us. The moment Christ became human, we were reconciled to God. The moment Christ rose again, the powers of this world that plague us were defeated. But then Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit so that we could also participate in that resurrection, so that we could be made new.

Hebrews Part 2: Cut to the Heart

Posted on October 11, 2009Leave a comment

This morning, I want share with you a little video clip that will become for us a parable about what it means to trust in God’s word.

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/hosting_files/theworkofthepeople.com/content/store/images/preview_video.swf?preview_file=/hosting_files/theworkofthepeople.com/content/store/files/previews/V00444.flv&thumb_file=/hosting_files/theworkofthepeople.com/content/store/files/thumbs/system_thumbs/V00444.jpg

If we each took some time, we might each find ourselves relating to one of these characters just a little bit more than others. We could ask who we each as individuals are, or we could ask who we as this congregation is most like.

The character that I relate to the most in this clip is probably the father.

You see, we have good intentions but are so wrapped up in the things around us that we are just going through the motions. We’re doing something just because we think it’s the right thing to do. And then, in our attempts to be faithful we stumble and we fall back into old patterns.

The father in our holiday dinner is trying his hardest to bring his family to the table and to offer thanks for what they have received. And after his wife makes a meager attempt to give thanks – I think Nordstroms and Neiman Marcus were on her list – our dad himself flounders around with his thankfulness. He hasn’t really thought it through all the way. We are disappointed by his focus on things and in the end we have a feeling that he has set a bad example for his kids to follow.

More often than not – no matter how good we are or how hard we try, we are like that dad. We are like the rich young man in our gospel reading from Mark. We can cross all the t’s and dot all the I’s, but then Jesus shows up and cuts straight to our hearts. Deep inside, are we really ready to leave it all behind and trust in the God of the universe?

We are going to journey a little bit farther into the book of Hebrews this morning. Last week we skimmed over the beginning of this letter. So I want to touch on it again. In chapter 1 we are reminded that God has been reaching out to us throughout all of history… first through the prophets… and then through his Son.

The Son of God – Jesus Christ – has finally brought God’s message of love and salvation to us. He is greater than even the angels – who helped us to hear this message in the past.

In chapter 2, we find the same question raised that we did when we studied Isaiah – presented with God’s glory and majesty and power… we start to compare ourselves to that glory and find ourselves utterly unworthy and feel as tiny as ants. If you remember in Isaiah – this leads to confession and it is why we confess our sins together in worship after we praise God in our call to worship and opening hymn.

But in Hebrews – there comes a slightly different answer to this question. The author of Hebrews goes back to Psalm 8 and while we might question why God cares so much – we are reminded that God made us just a little less than the angels – that all we see is a gift and it has been placed in our hands. While we don’t always see the power in this statement – we do have control over this world. We have control over how we treat one another. We have control over our children and the animals that surround us. We have harnessed natural resources for power. And In this day and age as we see the impact that humanity has made on the climate of our world – we even recognize our power over the wind and the rain and the sun.

We have lots of power… however sometimes that power spins out of control and we do hurt one another, and we are hurt by one another and by the planet. What gets us through those times is knowing that Jesus humbled himself and took human form and became himself a little less than the angels for a time. Christ entered fully into our human experience so that the one who saves and us who are being saved might all become one. Christ took our lives upon himself – so that he might redeem us, restore us, heal us, from all of the mistakes we have made with our gift of control, power and free-will.

God in Christ came to save us and calls us to follow… but first, there is a warning.

You see, God has tried to save us before. In chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews, we are reminded of the failure of the Hebrew people to respond.

Our writer in Hebrews is very familiar with our Old Testament and he quotes from Psalm 95… Hear these words again from the Message Translation:

“Today, please listen; don’t turn a deaf ear as in the “bitter uprising,” that time of wilderness testing! Even though they watched me at work for forty years, your ancestors refused to let me do it my way; over and over they tried my patience. I said, ‘They’ll never keep their minds on God; they refuse to walk down my road.’ Exasperated, I vowed, ‘They’ll never get where they’re going, never be able to sit down and rest.’”

Because of their stubbornness, because of their unwillingness to trust in the God who was leading them, because of their foolish attachment to the “golden years” of slavery in Egypt – the Hebrew people refused to accept the gift that was right in front of them! All they had to do was trust in the power of God enough to cross over a border into the land of the Canaanites. And they would have found themselves in the land of milk and honey.

But they couldn’t let go of the security of the past. They couldn’t let go of the things that they knew. They wouldn’t open themselves up to the possibility of what was lying ahead.

The same could be said of our father in the clip we showed at the beginning. He wanted to show some kind of faithfulness so he was trying to express his thankfulness. But he was so tied to the things of this world like cars and HDTV that he found himself grasping for straws…. Did any of you think that he really meant what he was saying?

As the older son chimes in – his thankfulness extends to things like piracy and music groups and the internet. He is focused on himself and what he can get and how quickly he can get it.

The younger son follows up with being thankful for the food that is right in front of them. He rattles off the items on the table because he knows that if he says something he will finally get to eat them. He might actually be thankful for the food – but he has no spirit of thankfulness for those who have prepared it or made it possible for him to sit down and eat.

In our gospel reading – our rich young man falls in the same boat. He has said all the right words and done all the right things and he has gone through the motions of faithfulness – but is his heart really in it? Does he really believe?

You see, belief is the difference. In the message translation, it might be called “ a deaf ear” and in the text as printed in your bulletins it might be called “ a hardened heart” – but in either case, it is an unwillingness to accept the truth.

There are a couple of ways that the truth escapes us.

First, we might not look beyond ourselves. Like the older son, we see and feel only our own truth and our own reality. If you noticed in the clip, he actually interrupted someone else who was speaking to quickly rattle off his list of items. This perhaps was also the greatest sin of the Hebrew people in the desert, because they were so focused on what was in it for themselves that they forgot the blessings they had received from God and looked only at what they lacked – what they were missing.

Second, we might be unwilling to go past the surface level of things. Like the boy at the table, we see only what is right in front of us and don’t look any farther. We put our blinders on to the reality that is just beyond our fingertips. All he sees are mashed potatoes and red stuff – and he misses the time and energy his parents put into making the meal, the people at the store who worked so they could buy the ingredients, the farmers who raised the crop, the sun and the rain and the earth that nurtured his food, and the God who is behind it all.

Third, we might be fooling ourselves by going through the motions. Here, the father at our dinner and the rich young man have a lot in common. They are doing all the right things – they might even be saying all the right things, but are their hearts really in it? Do the dad really understand what thankfulness is about? Does the young man really understand what the law is about?

In Hebrews we are warned about the deceitfulness of sin – it blinds us, it tricks us into thinking that we can do it on our own.

But what we really need – all we really need – is faith. We just have to believe and trust in God’s promises. We just have to believe and trust and God’s goodness. Today – Please listen – the psalmist implores us – don’t turn a deaf ear!

God means what God says. The promises are sure. The invitation is real. And when Jesus calls out to the rich young man asking him to leave all of his wealth behind – he means it. Because he is cutting to the heart of what is holding him back. The Word of God, both as we see it on the page and as Christ speaks it, knows who we are and it cuts through all of our defenses. As put by the Message translation – the word lays us open to listen and obey – nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word – to the truth. We can’t get away from it – no matter what.

Jesus has compassion on that rich young man… even more than that he loves him. And so he has to tell him the truth. And Jesus’ words cut straight to the heart of the matter. You are just going through the motions, my friend. You have built for yourself a wall of deception through your wealth and you trust in your things more than you do in me. So trust me. Leave it all behind. I will take care of you.

The rich young man hears the truth. He sees the promises. But just like the Hebrews in the wilderness who could almost taste the honey that awaited them across the border, he turned a deaf ear. He walked away. He thought it was impossible – because he wasn’t ready to believe that with God all things are possible.

Which brings us back to the person at the dinner table we haven’t talked about yet. The daughter among the group – who was hesitant to even speak opens her mouth and out pours truth. Her words cut to the heart of the matter, and you can see that each person around that table has to stop for a second. The truth gets through – even if just for a second – the truth gets through that God loves us… even if we don’t deserve it… even if we turn a deaf ear and harden our hearts and ignore him. The truth gets through.

Today – Please listen – don’t turn a deaf ear. Take the mercy, accept the help, trust in God.

Can you be Christian outside the church?

Posted on September 28, 2009Leave a comment

Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Depending on how you hear that question, two different things might be arising to your mind.

On one hand, Can someone who doesn’t come to church be a Christian? Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Or on the other hand, Can you and me continue to be Christians during the hours and the days of the week that we aren’t in the church? Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Both of these are very important questions. And we think that the answers are fairly simple.

Let’s take the first one. As people who show up every Sunday morning, it frustrates us that there are people who claim to be Christian but never darken the door of the sanctuary. I think a big part of us really wants to answer NO to that first question. The church is such an important part of our faith journeys. It is where we worship God. It is where we learn about our faith. And yet we could all probably name people in our lives who do not go to church and yet are good people – people who even claim to believe in God.

As I thought about people I know who fit that description, I thought about my mom whose work schedule varies with the wind and who is either working or sleeping on Sunday mornings. And about the young couple I married this summer who can’t find a church home because the bride is a nurse who works the weekend option. Yes, they could have different jobs – but they don’t. They are where they are, whether by choice or by chance.

In many ways that’s actually the same story that we find in the book of Esther. Esther was a young, beautiful Jewish woman who found herself in difficult times. Her people had been conquered by the Persians and because of her beauty and virginity she was brought into the King’s court.

Her uncle wanted to protect her and ensure that she had a good future and so he ordered his niece to deny her family and her racial background. And after twelve months of purification this young, insignificant woman from Israel suddenly found herself as a queen of Persia. There in the King’s court, she was no longer allowed to practice her religion. She had given up her traditions and her upbringing. In fact – as an interesting note – the name of God is not mentioned at all in the entire book of Esther!

She was in a position of power, of success, and yet was completely outside of her religious heritage and upbringing. She left it all behind.

While this might not seem like the best role model for our children, we keep the story of Esther in our scriptures because of her faithfulness even outside of what is “ acceptable religious behavior.” Throughout the story there is an idea that she is where she is, doing what she is doing, for a reason…. “for such a time as this” as her uncle Mordecai puts it.

Because when the fate of her people is in danger, she puts her own life on the line to approach the king and to rat out his most trusted advisor. She speaks the truth in a time when it would have been expected of her to keep silent and still today, the Jewish tradition celebrates the feast of Purim in remembrance of her act of courage and faithfulness.

As a pastor, I absolutely want everyone to find a home here in this congregation or in another congregation. I want to make sure that as the church, we make every opportunity to encourage our brothers and sisters to be a part of a congregational life. Let me be clear… I’m NOT encouraging you to go home and tell your family, “Pastor Katie said it was okay for me to skip out on church.”

What we should do, however, is not jump to conclusions about why someone might be outside of the congregational life. In this story from Esther you don’t see the local rabbi knocking on the palace door wondering why Esther isn’t at synagogue. What you do see is her uncle Mordecai, quietly watching her, encouraging her, praying for her. He encourages her to use her time and her position to do good. He shows her that she can make a difference because of where she is.

And we too can do this. We can encourage our family and friends in their work and their play. We can point out and celebrate the ways that they experience God’s kingdom in their daily lives. That nurse who works on the weekends is bringing God’s love and healing to people who are in their darkest moments… that is a noble task and as her friend, I can remind her of that. And I can pray for circumstances to change so that she is able to join us. Those parents who are carting their kids off to soccer games and football games on Sundays need to know that we love them and care about them and that we hold them in our prayers as they work to raise their children in the world today.

There are absolutely things that we miss out on if we try to live our faith as a Christian outside of the congregation. We don’t get to share in the public worship of God – which centers our hearts and minds as much as it praises the one who made us. We don’t find opportunities for learning about the faith very readily outside of the congregation or have as many people to talk about the scriptures with. But just like Esther was still able to follow God in the midst of her circumstances…. our brothers and sisters in Christ are not cut off from God just because they are not here in church with us this morning. In fact, if we understand the church to be the people of God, rather than this building – perhaps they aren’t outside of the church at all. We can carry the church to them – through our actions of love and encouragement.

In it’s weekly feature: Pastor, Talk to Me, a website I frequent (Lectionary Homiletics) has a feature where church people are invited to ask questions about the weekly sermon texts. In many ways – it’s what we try to do with the Round Table Pulpit.

One particular story from a parishioner struck me. She talked about how she needed to support and serve the others in the world who God uses and shares that last Sunday a beloved member of the church was injured and could not attend worship. She describes her congregation as a small church with limited technical abilities, but then goes on to tell how she held up a cordless phone throughout the worship service, so that the member who was home could participate and interact with the rest of the congregation through hymn singing, prayer concerns, and passing the peace. Just because she wasn’t in the church building, didn’t mean the church was very far from her.

Which leads me to that second side of the question.

Can WE be Christians outside of the church?

I know that there are days we are so concerned about who is in and who is out, so prideful that we are here, that WE forget to take our faith with us outside of the congregation.

In fact, I think something that many of us practice is “two hats theology.” We wear one hat when we pray, when we come to church, when we are around our Christian friends, but when we go to work, or go home, or turn on the football game, we put on our other hat.

I was talking with a friend last night during the Iowa game… during the part of the game when things weren’t going so well for our beloved Hawkeyes. And this friend of mine who is a new father said that he had already gotten in trouble for cursing in front of the new baby. It was hard for him to censor himself because he had his football hat on!

This two hats theology makes its way into our lives whenever our business practices lead us to take advantage of another person, or our political choices lead to less equality and less justice.

Two hats theology makes its way into our lives whenever we push back on the urgings of the Holy Spirit because we are too busy to respond.

In fact – we are so busy with the other things in our lives that we push church back into the “discretionary time” of our lives.

What is discretionary time?

This doesn’t work so well in a congregation in which we have a lot of retired persons, but lets say that the average person is working 40 hours per week – and let’s say that you probably need another 50-60 hours each week to maintain your home, family, health, school, etc. You eat, you watch your kids and grandkids play sports, you shower and clean. Add in another 50-56 for sleeping. That takes up 156 of the 168 hours available to any human person during the week.

So, typically the church tries to take those 12-15 hours of “discretionary time” – “free time” if you will – that you have available in the week and we say: let us have that.

We ask you to give up 2-4 hours on a Sunday morning. We try to get you to join small groups and to serve through the church. But at the same time, other volunteer groups are also vying for your time. When all is said and done, you might only put your “church hat” on for 5 hours a week.

But what if we tried to think about what it meant to be a Christian in all of those other hours of our day? What if the main thing about being Christian isn’t how much time we give to the church, but how we seek God in the other 160 hours of our week?

Here is where we find help from the words of Jesus. Because the disciples are struggling with this exact thing. In our gospel reading from today, John notices another person casting out demons in Christ’s name and the disciples tried to stop him because he wasn’t one of them, because he wasn’t healing people on sanctioned “Jesus time”

They are so concerned with the fact that they are the “in-group” that they stopped believing anything good or holy could happen outside of their little band of followers. But Jesus urges them not to stop these good actions. “For no one who does a deed of power in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.”

And then comes the line that turns our modern sensibilities upside down. Whoever is not against us is for us.

We tend to think about that in the opposite way. If you aren’t for us – if you aren’t actively supporting what we are doing, then you must be against us. You must be the enemy. It’s how we respond to foreign policy decisions, it’s how we respond to competing business interests. It’s how we think of our time.

If we aren’t in the church, if we aren’t doing something for the church – then we must be doing something against the church. We must have to put our other hat on – the worldly hat – until the time comes when we can get back into that sacred building again.

But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus says if you aren’t against us, you are for us.

Jesus doesn’t care about what time church is or how many hours you spend in this building any more than Jesus cares about who is included in his little band of disciples. His goal isn’t to build the congregation – it’s to transform the entire world!

And so he’s a lot more interested in the things we are doing with those other 160 hours of our time during the week.

How are you demonstrating your faith during the core time of your life? How can you wear your church hat in those areas? How can we demonstrate our faith in the other spheres of our lives – in our families? In our work? In our schools?

The disciples are troubled because they see people acting outside “the church” – outside of what they believe to be the prescribed boundaries of their community. And Jesus’ response? Go and do likewise… I don’t care if you are in or if you are out… if you follow me, you’ll follow me wherever you are.

Go out into the world and serve me. Serve me as you cook supper for your family. Serve me as you prepare expense reports for your business. Serve me as you take mail to the post office. Serve me as you knit a blanket for a friend. Serve me…. And then come back to this place each week – to this congregation – and find rest and comfort and strength, so that you can go back out there and serve me again.

Can you be a Christian outside of the church? I pray that we all might take up the challenge.

the redemption of creation

Posted on September 14, 20091 Comment

Over the next few weeks (months probably) I want to go back through my notes and blog a bit about some of the amazing things I have brought back from the Moltmann conference.

The first one that has been really chewing in my soul is the idea that creation needs redemption.

I guess this has always been in the background of my theology. I think about Paul writing that the creation is groaning. I think about how all of the earth suffers under the sin of humanity and our greed and destruction. But for the first time, I started thinking about how this planet itself has also fallen and committed acts against God’s will and needs to be redeemed.

Now – I don’t think that the oceans have a will. I don’t think that the skies and the clouds do things intentionally – but in many ways neither do we. But this world is not as God created it. And when a tsunami strikes land in southeast Asia and 225,000 people die – I don’t think that is God’s will. Moltmann said time and time again that God is with those who suffer, not the cause of the act. He said time and time again that an act against creation is an act against God.

So, in putting various pieces together, we could talk about an ecological soteriology. That as Christ redeems us, Christ redeems the world. That all of creation is taken through the cross to the promise of the resurrection.

We spend so much time worrying about theodicy, looking for God as the cause of these events, instead of thinking about God as the one who will ultimately redeem even the world from the suffering it has caused. God in Christ through the power of the Spirit bears all of these things through to the new creation. And that is an amazing thought to behold

Moltmann Conversation – Notes from 101 w/ Danielle Shroyer

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

Moltmann 101

I. impressionistic theologian (nice analogy)

II. Life
A. Hamburg, Germany, secular parents, commune?, spent time gardening on Sunday mornings
B. Loved Einstein, mathematics, science – apathetically joined the Hitler Youth – but was a terrible soldier, German POW – learned about God in the POW educational camp
C. Struck by the power of the story when reading the bible
D. Started theological training, pastor, professor
E. Because of lack of training – not a systematic theologian – not start with doctrines

III. Method
A. Started not by a narrow focus, but through the broadest lens possible and started with eschatology – changed the method of how people understood eschatology
B. We can see doctrine in how it relates to everything else
C. Trilogy! (not intentional)
D. People wanted him to do systematics – no way!
E. Influenced by many other theologians along the way

IV. Theology of Hope
A. Came out at a time when it was a faux paux to talk about eschatology – we are rational men who shouldn’t talk about that tacky subject…. So Moltmann writes all about eschatology
B. The idea that we are too “modern” for eschatology is stupid – unhistorical historicity – you have created a way of speaking of the world that is not grounded in anything real whatsoever
C. The one thing that makes this life real is that we have a hope in something that is coming in the FUTURE
D. Promise of God always taking us towards a future horizon
E. It’s not something we tack on to the end of dogmatics, but it is the medium of Christian faith as such – the glow that suffucies everything here in the dawn of an expectant new day
F. The minute we turned to despair we instantly stop believing in Jesus – if we believe in Easter, we can’t be people of despair!
G. Why do we hope? What gives us the right to have this hope? Because the way God reveals Godself is by saying “I promise…” and God does. “I promise I will make all things new!” so we are constantly facing that future of hope
H. In America – hope has become the opiate of the masses, a joke that people who can’t get their lives together talk about: Moltmann – hope is not in any sense an opiate for the masses – it is the very thing that makes us feel like we understand the mission of God in the world!!! Hope is what makes us point at an injustice and say – that’s not right! Hope makes us people of protest, because we have not bought into the fact that this is all there is
I. Hope makes us antsy – we can’t feel settled in this world because we have to point out the things that aren’t right and say that there is a day when things will be right.

V. The Crucified God
A. Good Friday and Easter are inseperable realities – so when you talk about hope, you have to talk about what gives us that hope. IMMEDIATE response to the first book.
B. Smackdown moment: soteriology – most theologians only have the sense of thinking about what it does for “sin management” – how does it help me NOT die; cur dues homo – why did God die? However we have to work it, we just want to make sure we are good to go.
1. Moltmann comes and says – hmm, I wonder what the cross meant for God! What did God feel on Good Friday? What was it like for God the Father watch his son die?
2. completely alters the trajectory of soteriology
3. a lot of dialogue with nihilism… at the cross your faith dies, or it should, because look at what really happened
4. but this is where it actually begins Moltmann says… you have to look at Jesus on the cross, as a God who died and suffered among us. You think you understand what it means to look into the abyss? The existential abyss is nothing compared to the abyss of what it means for God to LET God die!!
5. the place where godlessness and godforsakenness comes together
6. godlessness – the killing of innocent life
7. godforsaken – a death you did not deserve
C. Theodicy – God as despot, divine child abuse, God becomes this mean judge; so, we think that is terrible and we try to step in and do something, but then we become despots ourselves and we decide who suffers where and when.
1. God SUFFERS on the cross – there is no impassable God.
2. And God is right in the middle of suffering – God isn’t on the outside listening to his son call for him and not answering, but is also there on the cross calling out not hearing a response
D. Metaphor of intersection – God being in every place “no one can love the cross, it’s awful” But in this place of the intersection, all sorts of separate things fight for one another, atheism vs. theism, death vs. life, hope vs. despair, godforsakenness vs. god-loving, divine vs. human…. All dialectical understandings of our faith collide in this moment
E. Radical break between the reality of the cross where all of these things are fighting and the resurrection. “money move – checkmate!” Because all of those things that were colliding, are answered in the cross – there is a victory! If you go all the way down into the abyss – Easter Sunday encompasses all of creation all victory, all beauty.
F. He took suffering seriously without telling us to go out and seek suffering or without condoning suffering. – this suffering happened only in context of who God is.
G. If we’re going to call ourselves theologians, everytime we come up with something we believe about God, we need to stick it at the foot of the cross – the litmus test for what we understand about Jesus, God, the world, etc.

VI. The Church of the Power of the Spirit
A. Really pastoral and practical, because he didn’t just want to talk about ideas all the time – the mission and act of the people of the faith in the world is VERY important to him = the mission of the church is what this is all about.
B. Hope is not other worldly, I talk about the future, because it’s the only time that makes the present make any sense
C. Giving bearings to the church…. I feel like we are grasping for what our bearings our, lost our sense of the way, lost our direction. I want to help provide some bearings for that course.
D. We have become a people who are too concerned with religious institutions (God, spirituality, Jesus, religion) and have stopped actually living life.
E. Wrote in the hopes that people would live the Christian life again!!! A messianic fellowship. We are the people who get together and actively wait for the coming of Jesus, for the future of God, for the coming of the new creation
F. Sunday: talk about and figure out ways to live out our future reality. And then do it!
G. Church = gathered people who anticipate and work toward coming kingdom 1) before God, 2) before others, 3) before the future…. What will the future say about the Christianity we follow? What will others say about the work we are doing? What will God think about how we are living our faith? (MISSION!!!)
H. God’s glory – the goal of the church = to glorify God. But the deal is, we glorify God by working towards God’s end goal: the redemption and liberation of all creation…. God doesn’t WANT to be glorified unless it’s by the redemption and liberation of all creation…. God doesn’t want to just be glorified for Glory’s sake.
1. Heaven and earth declare God’s glory.. when the shalom of the city is working, then the glory is there!
2. We’ve made God’s glory so far out of our cosmic realm that we don’t even know what we are talking about… but it is something that we practice and work at NOW
I. We tend to ask as theologians really dumb questions in ecclesiology – the more interesting question is WHERE is church? Our job as people of God is not to say what the church is, but to point to where the coming kingdom is. Then we aren’t about the business of protecting “the church” – so if something is happening that is a glimpse of the KOG – and it’s not in church – woo hoo!!!! Celebrate the presence of the church wherever we find it – liberates us to live in the world fully, instead of ghetto-ized Christians.
J. We don’t need to make absolute claims, or totalize belief, we just have to point to hope.

VII. Contributions to Theology Books:
A. Trinity of the Kingdom
1. theology of the social trinity… doesn’t care about the homo usia conversation or the subject conversation…
2. The New Testament talks aobut God by proclaiming in narrative the relationships of F/S/HS – relationships of fellowship open to the world. We know what the trinity is based on the narrative of the story. The story says this – so lets just read the story.
3. These relationship that we see are ones of fellowship – NOT hierarchy – that has been opened to the world.
4. Trinity in the Kingdom – because in this fellowship we are invited into the life of God in the world.
5. UNITY _ we are still monotheists! Ecumenical, pluralistic conversations
6. F/S are one – not one and the same.
7. not numerical unity, but same divine life/goal/love
8. not worried about tasks of the Trinity… in a relational sense, they don’t need work duties/job descriptions… but changing patterns. NOT STATIC
a. The spirit sends and is sent, the spirit is the one who sends Jesus into the world as the Kingdom Come.
b. Not a triangle – but a circle!!!
9. “relationship of F/S/HS is so wide that the whole creation can find space, time and freedom in it”
10. the way that we understand how God makes time space and freedom for all of us to exists and live and move and have our being.
11. perichoresis! =) round dance, mutual indwelling
a. each one always yields to the other in this dance, mutual submission.
12. Isaac Loreas? Zimsum = expanding and contracting, heartbeat of the world where the love of God are constantly expanding and contracting in this perichoretic dance and in this space we are invited and we experience life.
13. eternity breathes itself in between these relationship so as to breathe out the spirit of life.
14. ALWAYS connected to the kingdom. God isn’t just God apart from us – if that is so, in any case, we don’t know it.
15. Moltmann NEVER separates God from the world.

B. God in Creation
1. tension between immanence and transcendence
2. in creation there is a secret hiding of this tension, because God is present and indwelling – as those who have been created by this relational God, God is already present
3. in heaven – relative transcendence, on earth – relative immanence – there is a space between where we wait…. (future of hope!)
4. God is present now, and yet God is not fully present now. 1 Cor. – the promise to end all promises is that God will be all in all.
5. so now, there is this secret (God is dwelling in the world!) but not FULLY – insomuch as we see creation, we can say God is here, but in the future, God will be there even more so.
6. Panentheism – middle ground between Pantheism (God is everything) but also not so radically separate from creation that we cant’ access God here. God indwells in creation by the fact that God made it – we bear the image of the one who created us… all of the cosmos has this indelible image of God
7. World of nature bears the prints of the triune God, so we can access the idea of the day God will be God all in all.
8. $move – we got wrong the way we tell the creation story – God made these things… to get to the part where WE show up… the problem with that way of talking is that it assumes that WE are the crown of God’s creation, but we aren’t… Sabbath!!! IS =) God finished the creation, receded back into who God was and rested, rested as being God over and in creation. “the God who rests in the face of his creation does not dominate the world on this day, He feels the world, he allows himself to be affected, to be touched by each of his creatures”
9. The act of creation did in some sense change God. God could always create – but after having created, he’s different. (isn’t this the reality for parents?)
10. This is not an act of dominance – Sabbath is the eschatological place of HOPE – that reminds us why all of this creating happened. Something inherently eschatological about Sabbath… the day that we rest from our work of trying to make the kingdom come and we trust in the fact that the kingdom WILL come. 6 days we labor and we are the people of promise and on the 7th day we stop, lest we get too big for our britches and we worship God and say, we trust you are the God who will make this happen – that we trust you will make this happen.
11. the way that we recognize our relationship with the presence of God in creation. Not only do we rest in God, but on that day, God is also on the Sabbath resting in us.
12. Ecological issues in 1985 – not just about interpersonal power, but our relationship with the creation itself. Not here to gather information for dominance sake, but so that we can participate in the kingdom through the creation.
13. Jubilee – the Sabbath – when we divest ourselves of things in order to further the kingdom we show that we trust in it enough to be a part of it. The feast of redemption
14. first six days – yet not complete. Sabbath is the crowing moment (good, not complete) God is still creating after the first Sabbath
15. The Fall – he doesn’t think that any fall would take away the imprint of the Triune God that is on creation… no sense of our brokenness takes away the fact that God made us. the broken places are still held up in the life of God, and will not be left untended
16. possibility for Godforsakenness – pulls back so that there is a space for us
17. Time = the future of Christ is truly an unfinished future that is really a question mark – everything is up for debate. When we put our trust in Christ, we are trusting in the hope of the one who has always been faithful to God’s promises. Not because we know exactly what will happen, but because we trust in God.

C. The Way of Jesus Christ
1. really good Christology
2. but does Christology in a really open way… because Jesus is still on the way somewhere! All of our Christilogy has to be a theology on the move towards the coming future
3. life lived out in Christ, with Christ, out of expectation of Christ

D. The Spirit of Life (1991)
1. wholistic pnumatology – we normally put her in a tiny box. And add little tiny things we don’t understand there.
2. we feel embarrassed to talk about the Spirit.
3. The Spirit is not some thing off in some other corner, but every experience of life that is joyful is the presence of the spirit!
4. If you go out to dinner and had a good time – the spirit was there, it was life-giving =) all of life that is lived and experienced and enjoyed is done so because of God.
5. no need to separate “more” and “less” religious experiences. The spirit really did come and stay at Pentecost – no reason not to talk about the Spirit!!!
6. God is bound to creation in love = God created in love, so we are beloved. The problems start to happen when we turn away from being God’s beloved – we become miserable and aggressive and mean and angry and selfish and greedy. Because we forgot that we are beloved. “the whole misery of men and women comes from a love of God that has miscarried”
7. Spirit of Love births life to us – and all those places where that experience isn’t fully birthed is where the love of God has miscarried.
8. Full person of the Trinity – beckoning the future to come forth, showing us what it means to bring the future into the present, who makes the KOG to come in Jesus, Breath and Space…. Ruach and Ruah, (in German too!)
a. Breath calls creation into being, breathed out onto the world (valley of dry bones, creation, etc) but also Space (Ps 31) – a broad place, room to move, liberates us to live our lives with freedom – the creative passion for the possible. Downpayment for what is to come. Anytime we feel moved to do something really beautiful in the world – that’s because it’s what is coming – holds us over – keeps us in that hope – helps us protest in all the right ways.

E. Coming of God
1. homeless Shekinah – God is homeless here, so we celebrate God on the Sabbath, but this is not fully God’s home. At the coming of God, the Shekinah will become fully permanent here. When the temple was destroyed, the spirit is holding us together from Sunday to Sunday, but at the coming of God, the Shekinah will be homeless no longer
2. Four Horizons – for God’s glory, new creation, history of humans with the earth, resurrection and eternal life… we tend to do it backwards

F. Experiences in Theology
1. capped off the last books, discussed method of theology – theology is just experimenting in creativity. He just played in something that captivated his imagination.
2. through his theology, he has come into conversation with so many people that he wants to offer his thoughts – Mirror Theology (black theology for whites, feminist theology for men, etc…)

Send Me!

Posted on August 30, 2009Leave a comment

God said, “Whom shall I send?” And immediately, without hesitating, without knowing what on earth he was getting into, Isaiah responded, “Here I am, Send ME!”

Now, I have thought and thought and thought about this sermon. In some ways, it is the inspiration for this whole series on worship – because fundamentally, I believe that what we do in worship gets us ready to say yes. What we do in worship helps us to place God at the center of our lives as we praise. What we do in worship helps us to let go of the pasts that weigh us down. What we do in worship re-presents us with the Word of God. And ALL of those things prepare us, shape us, form us, so that when God cries out, “Whom shall I send?” we will all cry together – SEND ME!!!!

If you look at the structure of our worship services – about a third or more of our time is spent responding. We respond to God by lifting one another up in prayer. We respond to God by giving generously to the work of Christ’s church in the world. We respond to God by coming forward to the table of the Lord and sharing in the heavenly banquet. We respond to God by heading out into the world with a blessing. And the most important part? We respond by living every minute of our lives between 10:00 on Sunday morning to 9:00 the next Sunday in a way that says yes to God.

That, my friends, is the tricky part. We read in James that we are supposed to be doers of the word and not hearers only. That we shouldn’t just talk about loving God and others, but we are actually supposed to go out there and love God by loving others.

As we have talked about all this month, the core of our gospel message is: God loves you, God forgives you, and God has a job for you.

Every single day, in a thousand different ways, God is inviting us to participate in the reign of God’s kingdom. Just on Thursday as I sat down to write down some of my thoughts, I was struck by four invitations in particular.

1) Mary Lanning passed away on Thursday morning and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to comfort those who are grieving?”

2) The rain kept falling all day Thursday and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to fill sandbags in Palo and Central City and Marion and bring hope to those who are flooded?”

3) I looked at some of our curriculum for Sunday School, and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to teach the high school class and provide support and encouragement for our young people?”

4) Our lay leadership team met on Thursday evening, and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to serve the people of this church in Marengo, Iowa?

Now – in school, I was always the kid who wanted to answer all of the questions. And so I’d be sitting there in my seat, eagerly raising my hand, halfway standing out of my chair so the teacher would notice me.

That’s kind of how I picture Isaiah. He just had something AMAZING happen to him – He is standing before God and in spite of all the things he has done in his life, he has lived through the experience. Even more than that – he was forgiven, given a whole new lease on life. And now this same God that is full of grace and mercy needs someone to help him out. And Isaiah raises his hand and says “Hey God!!! I’m over here!!! Send ME!!!!!!”

If I took each of those questions from Thursday individually and just stood up here and asked them, I would be willing to bet that you wouldn’t be eagerly responding. I myself have gotten out of that habit of eagerly saying yes to things that come along. Our lives are so busy. We have legitimate reasons to be gone. We are already committed to many good and wonderful other projects. We are serving the community through our jobs or through the school already.

We have lots and lots of good excuses.

Or are we just letting ourselves off the hook?

There is a twenty year old young woman is a missionary in Uganda who has adopted 13 children who have been orphaned. She also shares God with the people in the village through bible studies and worship. One day recently, she was handed a baby that she thought was dead… until the baby breathed. The mother had HIV and had stopped breastfeeding the 9 month old, for fear of passing it to her child, but there was no other food for the baby or the mother to eat. None, at all. The missionary pleaded to take the baby to a hospital, scooped the infant up in her arms and also purchased formula.

She brought the child into her home to nourish the little girl back to health. She wrote “For the first 24 hours, I could hardly stand to look at sweet baby Patricia … The hurt and the hunger in her lifeless little eyes was simply unbearable…”

“I am sad and I am angry…but this is my blog and I am going to say what I feel like. I am MAD. I have been sad and broken for these children for so long and it has finally turned into a hardened anger… I am angry that in the “Pearl of Africa” and the most fertile region of it at that, a mother has literally NO food to feed her baby, not to mention herself or 6 other kids. I am angry that the result of this is that these sweet ones suffer in their innocence.

“I have said it before and it still holds true: I DO NOT BELIEVE that the God of the universe created too many children in His image and not enough love or food or care to go around. In fact I believe that He created the Body of Christ for just that, to help these little ones, the least of these. And I believe that except for a handful, the Body of Christ is failing…

“According to several different resources, there are 168.8 million needy children like … Patricia. Seems like a big number, huh? It shouldn’t, because there are 2.1 BILLION people on this earth who profess to be Christians. Jesus followers. Servants. Gospel live-ers. And if only 8 percent of those Christians would care for just ONE of these needy children, they would all be taken care of.” (http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/)

Katie the missionary is right – there are 2.1 Billion people on this earth who profess to be Christians… but Gospel live-ers? That might be a different story.

In our epistle from James, his main concern is that people aren’t living out their faith. They aren’t letting God’s truth become planted in their lives. And in verses 22-25 he gets to the root of this problem. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listening when you let the Word go in one ear and out the other. You have to ACT on what you hear! If we just hear the word and do nothing about it , then you are like someone who looks at themselves in a mirror, walks away and two minutes later has no idea who they are or what they look like.

It’s the same wisdom that school teachers know well. Edgar Dale once said that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see… 70% of what we discuss with others, 80% of what we personally experience and 95% of what we teach others.

We can spend all the time we want reading the bible or listening to sermons – but if we aren’t actively engaging with the Word of God – if we aren’t discussing it with one another, and living it out – then we quickly forget what God has said.

Real religion, James says, is reaching out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping oneself unstained by the world.

Real religion is for merely 8% of us Christians to live out the gospel by caring for the orphaned, hungry, homeless children of the world.

Real religion is speaking up on behalf of the “least of these” in our country – the homeless, the unemployed, and the underinsured.

Real religion is listening for who God wants us to care for here in Marengo, Iowa and getting on board behind it 110%.

And… real religion is clothing ourselves not with excuses for why we can’t do something, but with the whole armor of God.

The thing I realized, just this week as I felt God calling me to speak up and say something concrete about health care reform, is that it was incredibly scary. I felt very ill equipped and I was incredibly worried about what other people might think. About what you might think.

Perhaps you have noticed this, but I tend not to take sides in big issues. I would be willing to bet that most of you don’t know who I voted for in the past three elections and that most of you would be surprised at the answers. And that is intentional. Because I take seriously the call in James to be quick to listen and slow to speak. I have been working very hard at biting my tongue so that I can be the pastor to all of you: republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives, libertarians and well, whatever the opposite of a libertarian is.

But when I read from Ephesians the passage about being strong in the Lord and the strength of his power, I felt like God really wanted me to respond. In particular, verse 12 spoke to me because it reminds me that our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh – this is a life-or-death battle with cosmic powers. In this debate about health care, we are not enemies because there is a more important battle to engage in.

“But in the framework of hope for God’s kingdom they [stories of Jesus healing] cannot be forgotten, for in that framework they become reminders of hope.
“All severe illnesses are heralds or foretokens of death, and we have to see Jesus’ healings as heralds or foretokens in just the same way: they are heralds of the resurrection… In every serious illness we fight for our lives. In every healing we experience something of the resurrection. We feel new-born, and as if life had been given back to us.”

– Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World.

(remainder of sermon to be posted later)

Worship, Encouragement, and Not Taking It Personally

Posted on August 17, 2009Leave a comment

Yesterday, we had maybe 30-35 in worship. It was a very quiet Sunday – and we shared an intensely powerful worshipping experience. So in the aftermath, I had two wonderful saints of the church come up and tell me not to be discouraged.

I realized as they both were offering their words of uplift that I wasn’t discouraged. I hadn’t really taken the low attendance (months of low attendance actually) personally. I decided it wasn’t about me, and so I wasn’t going to let it get to me.

What is on my mind however, is a question of what has changed. While I think some people recognize this as the summer slump, the truth is that here and there for six months now, things have been about the same. We’ll have a sunday with 60-65, but then we hover in the 40-50 range. On a special day like Easter or Confirmation we’ll hit around 100 – but that’s few and far between.

Of the 40-50 group, about half of those come every single sunday faithfully. The rest are more sporadic. Every other Sunday, once or twice a month, there for a few weeks, then gone for a few. Here in the summer, gone in the winter or vice versa. When we all show up – we have a crowd! When we don’t – our sanctuary feels sparse and empty.

Someone noted that worship is a habit – and that many in our church just are not in the regular habit of coming every week. Some lament the fact that other activities have encroached on Sunday morning’s sacred time slot – and there are more sporting events and activities to draw away our young families than ever.

The question I’m wrestling with is: WHY is Sunday morning from 9-12 so sacred?

There is the whole “Lord’s Day” thing. In my Sacred Time class, I remember vividly the discussion about how the Sabbath, the seventh day is really Saturday – that we worship on the “first” and the “eighth” day of the week. We worship in a time out of time – a little Easter every Sunday – both the beginning and the end and everything in between coming to bear on this one moment of sacred worship. But is this experience of “holy time travel” really about the day? Or is it about the mystery of God coming to meet us? And if that’s the case, can’t our “little Easter” experience be on Sunday afternoon? or Wednesday night? or Tuesday morning?

Going off of that, because of the sacredness of the Lord’s Day, many people only think/talk about God on Sunday. The rest of the week, they do their own thing and worship/prayer/study is the farthest thing from their mind.

There is the battle against secular culture thing. Many I talk to hold onto this time slot dearly because it is the last remaining vestage of cultural Christianity. What once were blue laws forbidding stores to be open and the prohibition of alcohol sales on Sunday (in Nashville you couldn’t buy hard liquor/wine on a Sunday – but you could buy beer… i mean, tailgating is sacred too!), now mostly is just a distaste for activity on Sunday morning. We at once try to hold fast to the idea of sabbath and perpetuate its breaking. Our youth work during this time, our Sunday School teachers stop at the grocery store to pick up donuts for class, we all want to go out to brunch after church, etc. But suggest we worship some other time? Never!!

I know a couple where the wife works the weekend option at the hospital. She works 12 hour day/nights on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Morning worship, even Saturday or Sunday evening worship just don’t work for them. They are left out.

I know a couple where the husband works the night shift Saturday at the plant. By the time he gets settled in for the night, he has barely gotten enough sleep to wake up for church in the morning. When he can’t help get the kids going, the wife finds it easier to stay home with the whole crew. They are left out.

I know a family matriarch whose family wants to spend time together on Sundays. She often feels torn between preparing a meal for her children/grandchildren and making it to church. Both are good things to do. When she chooses her family, she is left out.

I know a youth who terrific basketball player. Some weeks tournaments take them out of town for the weekend and her whole family gets in the van and travels together to the site. She is making three pointers, but their family is left out.

I know a mom who has five kids. Getting them all up and ready at the same time to come to church, and then spending the hour of worship telling them to sit and be quiet and keeping them entertained isn’t worshipful for her. And she feels like they are distracting others. So most of the time they stay home. They are left out.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t know if any of those folks would even show up to a Wednesday evening service, or a Sunday evening service. I’m not sure if I can fit preparing another sermon a week into my schedule. I have my own family obligations (and Sabbath needs) that make my heart hesitate when I think about Saturday/Sunday evening worship. But I do know that there are also people who are left out. And I pray that God will help us to find creative ways to share worship with them.