temptation – Salvaged Faith

A City of Idols

Posted on August 8, 2021Leave a comment

Text: Acts 17:16-32

When I lived in Nashville for seminary, my house just around the corner from Centennial Park.

In 1897, to celebrate one hundred years of statehood, Nashville hosted a World’s Fair – type exposition. Many incredible buildings were constructed on the park grounds… including a full scale replica of the Parthenon from Athens.

It was kind of surreal to live just a few blocks from one of the most iconic temples ever constructed… only this one was fully intact unlike the actual temple in Athens which has seen the wear of time.

When I would run at the park, with this looming structure as the centerpiece, I felt like I was transported to another time and place.

I wondered what it would have been like for the ancient Greeks who walked those streets of Athens and worshipped there…. or at the temple of Nike, or Zeus, or Hephaestos, or any of the other ancient Greek gods whose shrines were found throughout the city?

What would it have been like for Paul as he strolled those streets?

One of the first words we find in our scripture reading for today was that Paul was deeply distressed by this city flooded with idols.

Everywhere he turned there was a new place to worship a new god.

A shrine for silversmiths and for harvest, for healing and for the moon and the hunt…

And an idol was a representation of those gods used for worship.

Something carved in stone or molded out of metal.

A physical representation that people would hold or go to or in order to make a connection with whatever god it was they wanted to connect with.

And I got to thinking about our lives today.

As we walk the streets of our cities and towns and neighborhoods… what do our buildings and our signs and the way we live tell us about what we worship.

I’d actually like your help with this.

Think for just a few seconds… what are some of the things that you see other people worshipping today?

What do we obsess about, and give all of our time to?

What kinds of things do we build statues around?

What names and figures do we hold in reverence?

If you are joining us online, feel free to type your answers in the comments…

If you are right here in the room, shout them out and I’ll write them up here.

What are the idols that people worship today?

[space for writing]

Paul was a Roman citizen.

He had lived his whole life with this subtle background of the Greek gods in his life.

Even though he had always been a faithful Jew who worshipped one God, he would have known and interacted with many who were polytheistic… who worshipped many gods.

It would have been fairly normal and routine.

And yet, walking through these streets of Athens, he was greatly distressed.

He saw all of the ways people were spending their time and energy and wealth on that which was not God… his God… the one true God.

And it made him feel sick.

As you look at this list that we have created… how do you feel about it?

How do you feel about the idols that are worshipped in our midst?

Shout out in one word… or type in the comments online… just one word that describes how you feel…

[pause for answers]

I must admit… that much of this feels normal to me.

I feel like we are swimming, much like the people of Athens, in a culture of tribalism and difference and each person has their own truth… their own god… their own way to engage the world.

It is normal… and yet disorienting.

But I also have to admit that when I look at this list… and the things we haven’t yet put on there… that this is so normal… so much a part of who we are and how we live… that the truth is, we all have some kind of idol we worship in our lives.

We all have something that we get obsessed about… we all have things that we worship besides God.

I want to invite you each to take a minute to reflect in your own heart about what some of the idols are in your own life.

[pause for a minute]

Now, here is the thing about what Paul does when he encounters these idols.

When he encounters the stoics and the epicurians and those who are gathered at Mars Hill…

He doesn’t ask them to give up their idols.

He doesn’t tell them they are wrong.

In fact… he compliments how very religious they were!

Even though he is distressed by this worship, he doesn’t shame them or put them down.

No… he transforms the way they understand them.

He introduces his God… the one true God… and shows how our God doesn’t have just one specialty, or look out for only one type of person.

Paul describes our God as the one who truly accomplishes that which they are seeking in those idols of stone. Goodness… truth… life…

Our God is the one who gives life and breath.

Our God is the one who created every nation.

Our God doesn’t live in temples and isn’t served by humans.

In God we live, move, and have our being.

In essence, he is saying… what you are trying to seek through those idols of stone and clay and silver… turn to God and you will find it.

Maybe sports is your thing. It is the thrill of teamwork and watching individual gifts and talents shine.

But we can find that in God as well as the individual members of the body of Christ each play their part and the whole succeeds.

Maybe nature is what you place above all else. The rhythm and flow, the cycles of life and death.

All of those birds and flowers point to the One who made them.

Maybe you idolize work and wealth… But for what end? Is your aim to provide, to find stability, to yourself be highly valued and respected by others?

What greater value and respect can we gain than to be called beloved by God.

Paul, you see, challenges us not to lay aside our idols, but to transform them.

To look beyond them… deeper… and to ask what we are really seeking.

We can’t find answers in stone and clay and metal… but we can find our life and our hopes in the one true God.

So you don’t have to give up sports or working or whatever else it is that you idolize in order to follow Jesus.

But you might have to transform it.

You might have to hold it more loosely and recognize that in and of itself, it will not give you what you ultimately seek.

But there does come a day and a time when something that we worship simply will never lead us to God.

When we are fixated on something that will never satisfy… or bring life… or healing…

There are some idols present in our world that will only harm and destroy and that can never point to God.

It’s what we also name as sin.

That which separates us from God.

And if you have something like that in your life… it’s okay to let it go.

It’s okay to name it and to release it and to say no to the power it has over your life.

Friends, we might be swimming in a land of idols.

We might be surrounded by things that point to anything but God.

But that doesn’t mean that they have to rule our lives.

For there is only one God in which we live… and move… and have our being.

There is only on God that truly brings life.

The Wilderness: Gotta Serve Somebody

Posted on April 7, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Exodus 32:1-4, Matthew 4:8-9

Before we get started today, I want to invite you take just a minute of silent reflection.

Somewhere, on your bulletin, I want you to write down the top five things that demand your time, attention, and responsibility. The top five things that you are called to focus on.
Take a minute… and if you can and have time, try to number them with 1-5 with 1 being the thing that is most important.

Hang on to those… we’ll come back to them

Today on our journey through the wilderness, we come to the third temptation Jesus encounters.
The devil takes Jesus up onto a high mountain and shows him all of the kingdoms of the world.

I have to admit. Every time I read this passage, I can’t help but think of Disney’s “The Lion King.” I imagine Mufasa strolling to the top of Pride Rock with little Simba at his side as they watch the sun come up over the savannah. “Everything the light touches is our kingdom,” Mufasa explains. “One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here, and will rise with you as the new king.”
The young cub gets a glimmer in his eyes… “and this’ll all be mine?”

“This will all be yours,” the devil says to Jesus.
“Just bow down and worship me.”

There is a hidden question lurking just behind this offer from the devil. How and why does the devil have any authority whatsoever to be able to give these kingdoms to Jesus?
Our Lord and Creator made this world, and it all belongs to God, right?

Well, maybe not.
You see… from the very beginning, God has always entrusted this land, this creation, all the creatures to us.
As we are told in Genesis 1 – God made those first humans in God’s image and made them responsible for the fish, the birds, the cattle, and one another. God blessed them and gave them everything in all of creation.
And it was very good.

But what did we do with that gift?
We used it and abused it.
We took advantage of the creatures and one another.
Piece by piece, we have handed over this responsibility to our baser impulses.
With our actions and our inactions, through our impatience and fear, we have allowed the world to be controlled by the devil.

Our scriptures are full of these kinds of stories and they are clearly found during our time of wandering in the wilderness.
Exodus tells us about how the Israelites made their way to Mount Sinai after three months of travel and Moses went up the mountain to receive from God instructions about how the people should live. The very first declaration was this:
“You saw what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you up on eagle’s wings and brought you to me. So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:1-6)
And the people shout out a resounding “YES!”

But there are more details to be fleshed out in this instruction and Moses goes up to the mountaintop to receive them.
Twelve chapters go by in the book of Exodus.
And the people start to get impatient.
So by the time we get to our scripture for today, from Exodus 32, the people have had enough.
They agreed to follow the one who rescued them from slavery… the one who made the heavens and the earth… the one who was going to create of them a holy and mighty nation…
But as soon as fear and impatience set in, they are ready to move on to something else.

The people ask Aaron to make other gods for them.
They want to turn their allegiance, their hearts, over to something besides this God who terrified them and Moses who seemed to have disappeared into the clouds above.
They have needs.
They have desires.
They want to get going.
And they don’t see it happening anytime soon, so they are moving on.

It happens again after the people arrive and are settled in the promised land.
They want to be like other nations and have kings and rulers like they do.
So they turn away from God’s personal leadership and demand that they get a ruler (1 Samuel 8).

Over and over again, we take this precious gift of life, creation, and relationship that God has blessed us with and we say, “no.”
We instead allow other people, powers, and values to guide our lives.
In fact, if you were to look back at that list you created at the start of this time, what you will likely see are good important things that pull us in a million different directions.
They compete for ownership of our lives.
They compete with one another for a place of priority.
And every time we say yes to one of those things, we say no to something else.

Let me cut straight to the point.
Where is God on your list?
Or have we already decided to hand over this world and our lives and everything we do to something else?

It’s no wonder the devil has this world firmly in its grasp.
We have been selling it off, piece by piece, action by action, priority by priority for a long time.

So when Jesus finds himself standing on that mountaintop, he, too, has a choice.
Jesus could play the age old game where he lets fear and impatience and competing values rule the day.
He could take back this world by giving in to those baser desires to have it now and to have it your way and to have it be easy.
And… to be honest, once he had control of all the kingdoms of the world, he would have accomplished what he was there to do and he could kick the devil out!

OR… he could wait.
He could let God continue to rule.
He could take the more difficult path through the cross and the tomb and all the way to the gates of hell to wrestle the keys to the world from the devil’s grasp.
“Get out of here, Satan” Jesus responds. “it is written that You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” (Matthew 4:10)

Even Jesus has to write down a list of priorities.
Save the world.
Usher in the Kingdom of God.
Eat with sinners
Love the people.
Serve God.

Jesus has a choice that will shape every other item on that list.
In the words of Bob Dylan, You’re gonna have to serve somebody.

The Wilderness: Trust and Manna

Posted on March 25, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Exodus 16:1-8, Matthew 4:2-4, Deuteronomy 8:1-8
This week, as we continue our journey in the wilderness, we come to the first of three temptation stories.
Three trials.
Three decision points.
Three opportunities to be shaped by God.

The first is about a basic necessity for life: food.

Jesus has been fasting for forty days and nights and Matthew’s gospel tells us that he was starving. And so the tempter comes and whispers in his ear, “You’re God’s son… tell these stones to become bread.”
It would be so easy wouldn’t it?
For God I mean, not for us.
But for the Son of God, the one who could turn water into wine and multiply loaves and fishes, the one who was literally the Bread of Life… wasn’t this an opportunity to demonstrate that miraculous life-giving power within him?

“No,” Jesus replies, and he looks back to the scriptures of our faith… “We live on more than bread, we live on the word of God.”
He is actually quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3.
Moses has reminded them about the ten commandments from God and now is expanding upon what it means to live them out.
He tells them that this long road through the wilderness has been working to humble them, to test them, to discover what is really in their heart and if they were capable of truly following.
God humbled them by making them hungry… and then by feeding them with manna… so they could learn that life was sustained by more than basic necessities – whether we live or die is in God’s hands.

This is not an easy lesson to learn.

It wasn’t easy for the Israelites and it certainly isn’t easy for us.

Imagine, that just a month and a half ago, the Israelites were still in the land of Egypt.
Already they were looking back upon their days in captivity with rose-colored glasses.
They were fondly recalling that at the end of the day, they could sit by the fire and their pots were full and bread was plentiful. They were stuck in a system of injustice, but at least they knew what to expect.
What they were conveniently forgetting is that during their time in captivity, their life was not their own. Whether they lived or died, how many bricks they had to make, what materials they had to do so with, whether they had food in their pots or not, was all based upon the whims of Pharaoh and their overseers.
Their life was not their own.

There are two pieces of this lesson that we need to wrestle with.

First… when your entire life was controlled by another person, how are you supposed to act when you are suddenly free?
Like livestock or equipment has to be fed and fueled and maintained, the Egyptians knew that if they didn’t provide for the people, they would lose their labor.
When the people cry out – where is our water? where is our food? part of the reality is that these basic necessities had been provided by their masters in the past.
Many didn’t know what it meant to provide for themselves and those who did found themselves in a barren wilderness with no access to streams or game.

But we shouldn’t rush too quickly into the flipside of that coin.
You see, we live on that other side.
As citizens of this great nation where we have freedom, we imagine that every single person has the opportunity and the responsibility to provide for themselves.
We believe in the American Dream, that if everyone just pulls themselves up by their bootstraps that they will have a house with a white picket fence and 2.5 children who will grow up and go to college.
We do have a sense that life is sustained by more than just basic necessities like bread and water… but sometimes we overreach and in our striving for unessential things, we limit the access of others to basic needs.

What we forget, whether we are suffering under the oppression of others or we believe we are free to provide for ourselves is that either way, in both situations, our life has never been our own.

When Jesus is tempted to turn bread into stones he says no.
And that’s because Jesus knows, as Melissa Bane Sevier writes, “where bread comes from. It’s a gift from God through the acts of nature, farmers, and bakers. Any other process – especially one that only pretends to be miraculous – shortcuts the involved process that is part of what makes it a gift…”

“Bread takes time. Place seed in the ground. Wait for sun and rain. Weed and harvest. Thresh and preserve. Grind. Add ingredients. Knead. Bake. Serve. Enjoy.” (https://melissabanesevier.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/of-stones-and-bread/)
Every drop of rain and ray of sunshine. Every person tasked with tending the earth and forming the loaves. Every piece, every part… it’s all a gift and it is all from God.

It is easy to follow when, like the Israelites, we see God’s power manifest in might acts like parting the sea or leading them with cloud and fire.
But that daily sustaining trust and reliance upon God’s grace?
That’s much harder.

This decision point, this temptation, it is all about daily bread and the Kingdom of God.
It is about a daily commitment to turn to God first.
It is about our daily trust in the one who sustains life.
This is a story about life and death.
This is a story about salvation.

Our culture tells us that if we work hard enough and we are good boys and girls and if we are generous with our time and our money that we will be rewarded. If we keep our noses clean, there is a place waiting for us somewhere in heaven. A place we earned by our actions.
We think it’s all about us, and so why wouldn’t Jesus use his power and turn some stones into bread.
But God’s ways are NOT our ways.
And God says, NO.
My Kingdom has nothing to do with what you have done and everything to do with what I have done.
Life depends on God.
Salvation depends God.
Freedom depends on God.
Daily bread depends on God.
Every breath that you take depends upon the God who created you.

When the Israelites found themselves in the middle of nowhere, utterly dependent upon God, it terrified them.
But that is precisely when God steps in and reminds them… I am enough. I will provide.
And just like the rain gently fell this morning, bread rained down from heaven.

Like those Israelites, we, too, struggle to remember this simple truth.

But when we are pulled away from that temptation to focus on our jobs and the competition and the battle to get what is ours, we, too, discover everything depends on God.
It is all grace.
From the rising of the sun to the rain that falls… it is all grace.
From the bread on the table to the money in our pockets… it is all grace.
We didn’t create it and it wasn’t ours to begin with.
We are nothing but cells stuck together and formed into amazing bodies – and even that is a gracious and generous act of God.

No… it is all grace. It is all a gift.

And God reaches out to us and says, come my children.
Come and walk with me.
Come and work with me.
Come and be a part of what I am doing.
Turn to me every single day, and I will provide everything you need for life.

The Wilderness: Learning to Lean on the Lord

Posted on March 17, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Exodus 15:22-27, Luke 3:21-22, 4:1-2a, 4:14-15

This year, we are taking a journey through the wilderness during the season of Lent.

Most years, we spend one Sunday, if that, focused on the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.
However, the wilderness is not something to be glossed over.

So over these six weeks of Lent, we will take our time with these stories.
We will slow ourselves down and really chew on them.

Today, we focus on what the wilderness itself represents for Jesus and the Israelites.
It is the In-Between place, a liminal space, a transition between what was and what would be.

While it looks like we have a collection of random verses in our gospel text today, what we have are bookends of a transition into ministry.

Jesus was born and grew up in the home of Mary and Joseph. He was obedient to them and matured in wisdom and years, Luke tells us. But we don’t really know much else about his life as a child or a young person. Not until he suddenly shows up on the banks of the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

There, the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit descends and Jesus is named the Son of God.

But what next?
How do you go from a nobody to a viral sensation who teaches and preaches across the region as our third set of verses tell us?
How do you transition from a quiet life in Galilee to a world-transforming movement of love and grace and justice that challenges the religious and secular leadership of the world?

You pause for a minute.
You take a breath.
You figure out who you are and whose you are.

That same Spirit that descended upon him, led Jesus into the wilderness. Led him into a time of temptation and wrestling. A time to clarify his values, his power, his mission, his message.
Over the next several weeks, we will look individually at each and every one of those temptations and what they tell us about who Jesus is and how we are supposed to live.

For today, we simply want to remember that he took this time, this beat, this moment between those two realities to get ready for the future.

And when he was ready, the Spirit sent him back into the world.

When he was ready.

Scripture tells us that Jesus was in that wilderness for forty days, but the reality is, Jesus was in the wilderness for as long as it took him to get ready.

That number, forty, shows up 159 times in scripture and it is not a coincidence.

Instead, the number itself is a representation, a symbol, a clue as to the significance of the moment. It speaks to the reality that this is a time of testing that is meant to form the person or the people into a more faithful future.

The earth was flooded in the days of Noah for forty days, Jonah warned Nineveh for 40 days of its impending destruction, and Ezekiel laid on his side for 40 days to symbolize Judah’s sins – all represent a transition from our sinful past to the possibility of a new future.

Moses and Elijah, like Jesus, fasted for forty days in the wilderness – and these times were important transitions as they waited upon the Lord to give them instructions for leadership.

And then there were the Israelites.
They had been slaves in the land of Egypt.
All they knew was oppression and toil.
They didn’t know what it meant to live without Pharaoh’s rule, much less what it meant to live as the people of God in a new land.

The wilderness was not just the path they had to travel to the land of milk and honey.
It was also a time of transformation and testing where they would be strengthened and learn how to lean upon the Lord.

Exodus tells us that as soon as the Israelites were truly liberated on the other side of the Reed Sea, they celebrated their victory and began to move forward into this new land.

Together, they traveled for three days. Three days is all it took for the Israelites to journey through the wilderness without water before they started to grumble and complain and fall apart.

And God does a miracle in that place. The Lord has Moses throw a stick into the bitter, undrinkable water they had discovered, and suddenly it is sweet and refreshing.

They are learning to lean on the Lord.
They are learning to trust in God’s power.
But they are really just beginning to learn.

I look at this map and you know what really strikes me…. Where Marah, this place of bitter water is situated.

It only took them THREE days to travel this whole distance.

And it took them forty years to make the rest of their journey.

Because days were not enough time.

Years were not enough time.

It was going to take a generation of testing and transition and wilderness wandering before the people of Israel could leave behind what was and truly be ready for what was coming next.

Forty days…. Forty years… it took however long it needed to take for the people to be ready.

Right now, the wilderness is calling out to us.

Matthew, Luke and Mark all tell us that Jesus is led by the Spirit out into this liminal space, but Mark uses even stronger language. The Spirit forced him to go. He was pushed out there.

Just because you are led doesn’t mean you have to go. You chose to obey.

But to be forced… it means I don’t want to do something, and I don’t have a choice.

Did Jesus want to be in the wilderness?

Did he want to spend forty days wrestling with Satan?

I get the sense that any rational person wouldn’t choose this situation.
Jesus didn’t want to be there, but he had to do it.
He had to spend this time apart.
He had to get ready for what was to come.
Jesus had to make sure his head and heart and body were aligned before his ministry started.
It was going to be a rough journey and he was going to be working with some knuckleheads of disciples… not to mention the cross that would loom before him.

This time apart was necessary, because after the wilderness, there was a job to do.

Friends, we also have a job to do.
We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are called to be God’s church, the Body of Christ, and to live according to his example.
We are called to make other disciples and to transform the world.

Are we ready? Have we prepared ourselves?
Or are we like those Israelites who are only a few days into a journey and already we are making excuses and want to go back to the way things were and we need to be forced to stop and take it slowly and re-orient ourselves to God.

I think some of us have to be forced into the wilderness of Lent… and that includes myself.
I’m too busy to spend any extra time in prayer and fasting and study… I’ve got a job to do, right? That’s what we tell ourselves.
But when we force ourselves to stop…
When we hand a piece of our lives over to God for a while…
Well, then suddenly we find that all those priorities re-align.
We remember it’s not about me or my desires or my needs… but about God.
And about getting ourselves ready for what God needs us to do in the world.

To be God’s people.
To repent and live differently.
To lead in a new way.
To offer ourselves for others.

This time of testing and preparation and wilderness is not about suffering for the sake of suffering. It is not in itself pleasing to God for us to be tempted and tried.

Remember, after all, that Jesus was already beloved, dearly loved, just the way he was before being sent into the wilderness.

No… the wilderness, these forty days, are only pleasing to God because they get us ready to come back OUT of the wilderness.

I am reminded of that old gospel song, “Come Out the Wilderness.”

It reminds me that we are going to come out of this time of wilderness.

Sometimes this time will make us want to weep… or pray… or shout.

But most importantly, when we come out the wilderness, when we finish this journey, when we get to the other side of this “in-between” we will do so leaning on the Lord.

So during this season…
During these forty days…
During this time in the wilderness….
What do you need to do to get yourself ready…
What do you need to do to lean on the Lord?

Breaking the Rules

Posted on February 25, 2018Leave a comment

As children, our understanding of right and wrong, good and bad, and the direction of our moral compass is shaped by our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, older siblings, friends, and neighbors.
Sometimes, they do this through gentle encouragement. Other times, it is by laying down strict boundaries. In other cases, it is the failure of such people to guide the lives of young people that leaves them lost, swimming without instructions in a sea of temptations.

That doesn’t mean, as young people, that we immediately understand the influence that the people we love have on us.
A few weeks ago, I invited you all to share with me stories of the heroes in your own lives.
One of you wrote to me that you didn’t recognize your hero at first. He was hidden behind a lot of rules and regulations: how to be a gentleman… how to keep your shoes polished… the proper way to do something.

Our friend here in the church wrote that it took nearly twenty years to start seeing past all of those rules to come to understand who their father really was. In the process, he began to understand the life lessons that came along with all of those rules and procedures: lessons of respect, the giving of time together, the ability of something to be transformed. Once understanding really seeped in, the role that hero played in his life stuck with him… and will continue to do so, even though his father is now deceased.

This week, as we explore what makes a hero, Matt Rawle focuses on the story of Spiderman. In many ways, Peter Parker, the teenage boy in the suit, is a lot like our friend here in the congregation. While he had lost his parents, his Aunt Mae and Uncle Ben took him in and raised him and tried to shape his life. It took time for him to understand the lessons that these important adults were teaching.
There is a scene in the 2002 movie, starring Toby Maguire, where Uncle Ben is determined to have a chat with Peter.

However, Peter is too wrapped up in the temptations of his new powers, too focused on winning fights for some money, and too self-centered to listen to the advice of his Uncle in the moment. Only later, after his uncle’s death, do the lessons begin to sink in and shape the moral code of Spiderman.

Biblically speaking, we are shaped and guided by the influence of the saints that have gone before us – the heroes within the scriptures like Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, David, Matthew, Mark, and Paul. Sometimes we learn from the mistakes that they have made. Other times, we are encouraged to follow the rules from God that they have passed down. Still other times, we are encouraged to let their example shape who we are.

At the beginning of this year, I began with a group of friends to read through the bible, chronologically. Our reading plan will take us through every verse in 365 days.

So far, we’ve spent a lot of time in the rules and regulations of the Torah, the law of God passed down through Moses. There are rules about everything – what to eat, how to treat slaves, when to pray, who you can and can’t have sex with. Some of these rules make absolutely no sense to us today… and some would have been quite strange for their day as well.

And that was because God was trying to form and shape a people who would be holy.
Set apart.
Other.
Just like Uncle Ben told Peter that he was becoming the man he would be for the rest of his life, God wanted these people to become the kind of people, holy and set apart, that they would be for the rest of their lives.

God wanted people to take one good look at the Israelites and be able to tell that they belonged to God and lived according to God’s values.

At first, that holiness was shaped by relationship. God was in relationship with the patriarchs of our faith like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – speaking to them personally and leading them along the way they should go.
But in order to shape a community, a society, rules were a more effective way to teach these lessons of holiness. Behind each commandment or law, God was forming a people who would honor God, honor creation, and honor one another. It was not the rule that was important… but how the rule would shape our lives.
There comes a time, however, when those same old rules handed down generation after generation start to lose their power.
When we forget the lessons behind the rules and the relationship with the God who gave them to us and we begin to idolize the rules themselves.

I heard a story once about a church that stood up and turned around to face the back doors every time they said the Lord’s Prayer.
A new pastor arrived as was puzzled by this strange practice so she asked why they did so.
No one knew. No one could remember. It was just the rule for how they did it.
A few years later, they were updating the sanctuary. The wallpaper was being removed so they could freshen the space up with some paint. And as they peeled back the wallpaper on that back wall, they discovered the words of the Lord’s Prayer. In year’s past they had been painted there on the back wall. The church must have stood and turned to read them together.
But reason behind the practice had long since faded away. Only the practice remained.

This was the reality that fell upon the people of God as Jesus walked among them. The Pharisees believed that by following the rules of God and the traditions handed down from previous generations that they were being faithful to God.

Whenever they encountered others who broke such laws, they were quick to point out their flaws.
And so in today’s passage from Mark, they criticize Jesus and the disciples for picking heads of wheat, even though it was a Sabbath day on which no work should be performed.

Jesus replies that the law, and the Sabbath, were made for humanity… not the other way around. We were not meant to fit our lives into the boxes of rules written ages ago, but those rules were meant to bring us life and rest and honor and wholeness.
If in this new time and place, if in this particular situation of need, the rule actually limits the ability of God’s people to be set apart or to honor God, one another, or creation… then sometimes those rules need to themselves be set aside.
We can point to heroes in our world like Rosa Parks, Ghandi, and others, who willfully chose to disobey laws in order to help shape our societies into places that were more just, equal, and loving places.

But Jesus also teaches us that sometimes, simply following the rule is not enough.
When Jesus faces temptation in the wilderness, the devil tries to steer him away from his path of ministry by quoting scripture. But Jesus points to other scriptures that better fulfil God’s intent.
As he taught the people in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also took some of the familiar rules we knew and made them even stronger. In Matthew 5, there are a number of ways in which even the Ten Commandments are reframed –
“you have heard it said to those who lived long ago, ‘Don’t commit murder,’… but I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment.” (5:21-22)
In these stories of our faith, Jesus is helping us to see that the rules themselves do not determine what is right or what is wrong.
They are not the ends themselves, but a tool which helps to shape who God wants us to become.
Sometimes, to do what is right, means to break the rules and do what others might believe is wrong.
And sometimes, it is to take the rules we know and love and live them out even more deeply.

How are we supposed to know what is right and what is wrong?
How are we supposed to respond when not just biblical laws, but societal laws that form and shape us, no longer support the values that God is trying to shape in us as a people?
The good news is that we do not simply have rules that are handed down, written in stone, that will never change.
No, we have an example to follow.

I tended to be a rule follower as a child, but I can remember a few times when a rule was being enforced but I didn’t understand the purpose or intent behind it.
It especially made me mad when the people who were sharing the rule were not following it themselves.
“Do what I say, and not what I do” was a phrase that frustrated me to no end.
I think that was because I knew even then that the rules themselves are not what make our actions right or wrong, but it is the example and the life we lead as a result of them.
When the people we are supposed to look up to or emulate aren’t following the rules, they lose their meaning.

But we do have an example to follow.
We have a Savior who walked among us and dealt with our temptations.
We follow someone who not only had a relationship with God, but was God, and who lived out God’s values in every step taken upon this earth.
And so while the rules in our lives might guide us, our job is to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus.
When we are in relationship with Jesus, and allow God’s ways to fill our heart, then every step we take will be holy.

Spirit of Self-Control

Posted on August 27, 2017Leave a comment

Many of you know that I spent some time this spring focusing on my health. I joined a gym, worked out five times a week, and kept to a limited food plan focused on building lean muscle and burning fat. For the six weeks of the challenge, I practiced incredible self-control.

And the week after, I gave myself a break. I stopped worrying about what I ate.

If I’m honest, I haven’t ever found my focus again.

About two months ago, I started back up at the gym. I missed the workouts and the community. My goal is not to fit into some unrealistic ideal of how society thinks I should look, but to be strong and healthy and have the energy I need to do this work.

One thing I didn’t change however, is that I haven’t turned my attention to how I was eating again.

So this past week, while thinking about this sermon on self-control, I thought that perhaps I should at least look at how I was doing in that department.

And I planned really healthy breakfasts, with veggies fresh from my garden.

I packed lunches each day, instead of running out to buy something.

But by dinner time, I lost all semblance of self-control.

Wednesday night, we got Chinese takeout. I ate all my food, PLUS two crab rangoons and potstickers.

Thursday night, we ordered pizza. I had four pieces of taco pizza, a couple of breadsticks, AND a cookie!

And in each case, we were having a lazy night, eating in front of the television, and I didn’t even realize how much I had consumed until I started counting it all up the next morning.

If you aren’t focusing on the task at hand, you will lose sight of your goal. Self-control is all about not allowing yourself to be distracted away from your purpose.

This morning we heard the familiar story of Samson and Delilah – of a man who was tempted into giving up his secret strength.

But to understand this story we need a little bit of background.

There was a man named Manoah whose wife was barren. Try as they might, they could not have a child.

But one day, an angel appeared to the woman and promised her that a child would be born to them – a child that would be holy – a child that would save Israel from their enemies. But in order for this to come to pass, the child must be set apart as holy and must live a certain way.

This vow – this promise was called the Nazarite vow.

And so even before this child was born, the mother lived according to the Nazarite vow and then when the child Samson came into the world, he was declared a nazarite.

Now, being an infant – he couldn’t choose this himself – but according to the tradition – a father can declare his son a nazirite. Samson had the right to refuse this status and to end his promises, but nowhere in the scriptures does it say that he does this.

To be a nazarite meant that he had to follow three rules.

First, he had to abstain from any fruit of the vine. He couldn’t eat grapes or drink wine or even use wine vinegar with his food.

Second, he had to refrain from cutting his hair. As time went on, the long hair on his head would have been a sign of his vow.

Third, he couldn’t touch dead bodies.

So Samson took on these vows for himself and God blessed him with strength as a result of his faithfulness.

However, Samson had a weakness.
He had a distraction in his life.
And that distraction was women.

It’s not so much that his love for women was a bad thing. But time and time again, his weakness for the members of the opposite sex put him in terrible situations.

And eventually, as we heard this morning, Samson was tempted away from his Nazarite pledge because he lost sight of what was most important.

He put this woman, Delilah, before the pledge that he and his parents had made to God.

As soon as he let Delilah cut his hair, his strength vanished, he lost his control over the situation, and was captured.

So, Samson because our poster child for what NOT to do in practicing self-control.

Where do we turn to understand what it means to allow God’s spirit to fill us with self-control? What is this fruit of the spirit that Paul commends us to embrace?

When we look to the gospels of Jesus Christ, one of the places I think we can see this fruit is in the command to stop worrying.

As the gospel of Luke tells us – “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing.”

I could personally take that as a license to never diet again! To just take a deep breath and not focus on how much food I eat at all.

But when we look at the full context of this passage, Jesus is really trying to tell us not to be distracted.

This command to stop worrying is not about trying to save us from anxieties and troubles by promising everything will be okay.

No, Jesus is trying to tell us to stay focused on what is most important.

This advice not to worry about food and clothing and tomorrow end with the powerful statement:

Seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness…. And everything else will take care of itself.

In other words, focus on God and what God asks of you.

That really is all that Samson had to do. Focus on God and what God asks of you.

The key to self-control is to let God to have the central place in your life.

The key to self-control is to allow the purpose God has given you guide your actions.

In my scripture study around the sermon today, I learned that the word for demons in the New Testament – daemonia – means “to be controlled by another.”

And in a real sense, every time we let food or worry, power or desire, or anything else to become the focus of our lives instead of God, those things begin to control us.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “the devil made me do it.”

In his sermon on “Self-Control and Freedom,” Charles Rush reminds us that people used to assume that there were spirits that caused us to indulge in pleasure, so anytime someone succumbed to a temptation – they saw it as a demonic possession.

“We no longer believe that,” he says, “but their insight was right about the [spiritual fact that] cravings… become compulsions. At some point… they begin to control us. At some point, our character becomes misshaped and misaligned in order [to] adjust itself to increasing demands our compulsions put on us. We are no longer free, but are driven by our compulsions.” (http://archive.christchurchsummit.org/Sermons-2006/060716-SelfControlAndFreedom.html)

It’s not that things like eating and drinking and sex are evil… but they can spiral out of control if we allow them to be the central objects of our lives.

Self-control is a barrier that prevents other things from distracting us from God’s purpose in our lives: to seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness.

And discipline or a rule of life allow us to set boundaries that will help us to keep focused on what actually matters the most.

For the Nazarite, discipline and self-control was found in three simple rules – avoiding grapes and wine, not cutting their hair, and avoiding the dead. The purpose of the rules was to constantly remind them that they had been set apart by God for a purpose.

Many disciples of Jesus Christ today also have a discipline that helps them to focus first on God.

Some of you set aside time every morning to pray.
Some of you use the Upper Room daily devotional.
Some of you have made intentional choices about what you will eat or wear or drink because it is a witness to your faith in Jesus Christ.

Whatever it is, it is part of how you are creating space for God’s purpose to be prioritized in your life.

One of the things that I hope for this morning is that this might be a moment to reflect on whether or not self-control is a part of your spiritual life.

What are the temptations that try to sneak their way before God in your life?

Do you have… or do you need… a discipline or a practice that helps you to focus first on God?

As J. Hampton Keathley writes that Samson was a raised up by God to be a judge, a ruler, and was meant to lead Israel. “Samson strangled a lion; yet he could not strangle his own love. He burst the fetters of his foes; but not the cords of his own lusts. He burned the crops of others, and lost the fruit of his own virtue when burning with the flame kindled by a single woman.” (https://bible.org/series/1-2-3-john-comfort-and-counsel-church-crisis/bible.org/ttpstudents.com/sessions/node/5399?page=42)

We should be honest about the things that threaten to distract us from our faith and keep us from being in control of our actions. And then we should pray about how we can turn them back over to God.

I want to invite you to a simple prayer practice right now that helps us to do so.

Close your eyes and clench your hands up tight.
Picture the distractions and worries you have in your life that you have brought with you… even into this very place of worship.
Then in your own time turn your hands, still gripping, over so that they are facing down.
Imagine God’s hands underneath yours and slowly open your hands so that the things you are carrying fall into God’s hands.
If you do this at home or in your own time, you can repeat this several times.
Then turn your hands face up, but this time with the palms open and ask God’s Spirit to fill you afresh.
Let go of your desires.
Turn your heart over to God.
And seek first the Kingdom.
Amen.

Returning from Thin Places

Posted on February 14, 2016Leave a comment

There are places in this world that are “thin.”
It is a label given to places, in the Celtic understanding, where the barrier between the human and the divine, heaven and earth, is nearly imperceptible.
A place where we experience the divine more readily.

In biblical history, we see a number of these “thin places” or holy locations: like Mount Sinai or the temple in Jerusalem, or that mountain where Jesus was transfigured. Sometimes, it is the location itself that is key… sometimes it is the hearts of the people gathered who seem to transform it.

Perhaps you have known a “thin place.”
Experiences that have filled you with a sense of awe and purpose.
Sometimes people call these “mountain top moments”… even if they didn’t actually take place on a mountain because they are the peaks of our spiritual journey.
“Thin places” are where you have felt God’s presence more than any other.

As I think back in my own spiritual journey, I’ve had these kinds of experiences in large gatherings of faithful folks at retreats, and I’ve had them in silent moments at the top of mountains. I’ve also had them right here, in this sanctuary, in this building, as we have gathered to worship and praise God.

And what I have noticed is that it is always hard to leave those places.
You want to linger.
You can’t imagine normal life in the same way again.
The pull to stay is almost irresistible.
But eventually you have to return.
Return to your life.
Return to solid ground.
Return to the mundane and the thick and the muck and mess.

In our gospel this morning, we find Jesus returning from one of those “thin places.”
The Jordan River was a place of healing and transformation.
John the Baptist called people out to the river to repent and be baptized.
And when Jesus visited, that barrier between the heavens and earth grew so thin that the skies burst open and the Holy Spirit descended upon him.

But like us, Jesus can’t stay there.
He can’t set up shop there on the banks and wait for the world to come to him, any more than we can’t live here in the church for our whole lives… waiting for flocks of people to come into our doors.
No, he has to return to the rest of the world.
There is work to be done.

So, full of the Holy Spirit, like we often are after these holy moments, Jesus returns from the Jordan.

And there is something that happens in this returning, in this transition.
In between verse 1 where he returns from the Jordan and verse 14, where he returns to Galilee, there is a gap.

The wilderness.
A liminal space.
40 days of discomfort, of waiting, of transformation.
40 days of fasting and wrestling.
40 days of trial and temptation.
40 days.

Biblically, this 40 days reminds us of the great flood in Genesis, or the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the wilderness. Moses fasted for 40 days… so did Elijah.
This number 40 doesn’t have to mean a literal forty days… but it signifies the right amount of time it takes to get you ready for whatever comes next.

As Jesus returns from the Jordan, he needs to prepare himself for his ministry in the world. And the devil shows up to tempt him. As Jesus is shown all of the possibilities for what that ministry might look like, he has to figure out what kind of savior he will be. He wrestles with his calling. He takes time to focus fully on the presence and power of God that will sustain him in his work.
And in that time, Jesus is preparing himself to go and BE a thin space in the world.
To be the very presence of God, Immanuel, with the people.
And if Jesus, the very Son of God, needs this liminal time to get him ready to return to the world… don’t you think we do, too?

Every week, we gather in this church to worship and experience the divine. It has become for us a sort of thin place… [And soon, some of us will be worshipping in a new thin place].
And what we experience here… the friendships we make, the prayers, the support and accountability, the life-giving spirit… is good and awesome and holy.
But we can’t stay here forever.
Every Sunday, when the worship has finished and we take leave of the building, we have to return to the world.
We have to go out into Galilee, into Des Moines, into our mission field.
There is work to be done for the sake of the gospel.

But I’m afraid that too often, we come to a holy and thin place like this, we get filled up with the Holy Spirit, and then as soon as we step outside of the doors, the devil is waiting for us.
And the devil prays on all of our insecurities and temptations.
I fear, that most days, instead of holding on to the spirit of God… we instantly fill ourselves back up with worries and concerns, with politics and ideology, with work and school and family troubles.
We walk out the door and forget about what we have just experienced.
Back to the normal, mundane, ordinary world, as ordinary, normal, mundane people.

What if, before we left the building, we took a moment to get ourselves ready?

Sometimes I give you big challenges, but this morning, I want us to think small.
I want to challenge all of us to carve out not 40 days, not 40 minutes, but 40 seconds of space…
40 seconds of wilderness time… to help us return back to the world.
I want to challenge you, before you walk out the doors today, to spend just 40 seconds putting your trust in God.
40 seconds to remember who we are and whose we are.
40 seconds to lift up the temptations we know we will face and place them in God’s hands.

Our churches have work to do. We have a kingdom to help build. There are lives that are lost that need the love and grace and mercy of God.
And we cannot do it by ourselves.
We can’t do it without being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Here’s the thing… YOU are the temple of God. God’s Spirit lives within YOU.
And God wants you to be the hands and feet of Jesus out there in the world.
God needs your ministry and your work out in the world.

So let us get filled up with the Spirit.
And let us go out, to live as “thin places,” to be people who bring the love of God to every person we meet.
Amen.

Going All In

Posted on February 26, 2012Leave a comment

This morning, as we enter the season of Lent, we do so with the book of Romans at our side. As a church, we believe we have been called to reflect the light of God and much of that vision that we have affirmed comes right from these verses in chapter 12.

So this season, this time in the wilderness, will be a time of exploration for us. We will dive deep into this chapter and discover together just where and what God is calling us to.

Today, we start with verse one – which Zoe read for us a bit earlier. I want to share it with you again from the Message translation:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. (MSG)

Take your everyday ordinary life…. Every moment, every second, every action… 100% and give it to God.

I want to share with you a prayer… and you tell me if you think this describes the kind of faith Paul invites us into:

Prayer of a Half-hearted Christian
I love thy church, O God;
Her walls before me stand;
But please excuse my absence, Lord;
This bed is simply grand
A charge to keep I have;
A God to glorify;
But Lord, don’t ask for cash from me;
The glory comes too high.
Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
Yes Though I seldom pray or pay,
I still insist I am.
Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No Others, Lord, should do their part,
But please don’t count on me.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below
Oh, loud my hymns of praise I bring,
Because it doesn’t cost to sing

We just finished singing, “I surrender all,” but so many of us… including myself… don’t really surrender all. We surrender some. We surrender on somedays. We surrender ourselves half-way… but not all.

In fact, many of us are like this dimmer switch up here. We waver in how much light we let out into the world. Our lights are not off completely – but neither are they shining at 100%, 100% of the time.

I did some research on how these dimmer switches work. Specifically the old style knob dimmer switches – where you turn the dial and the lights get brighter and dimmer.

It turns out what makes these switches work was something called a variable resistor. The resistor doesn’t conduct electricity well and in this design, the resistance is increased or decreased by moving the contact arm.

Right here, the arm is all the way on the right, and so it has to travel through all of that resistance to complete the circuit. As the charge works its way through, it loses energy, the voltage drops, and then the light is dimmer.

In this next image, the contact arm is at the top, and so there is about half of the resistor to go through and the lights are only halfway on.

In this image, there is very little actual resistor that the charge has to go through and all most all of the energy travels through the circuit and the light is fully bright.

(you can play with a flash version of these images here. Thank you to “How Stuff Works” for helping me with my sermon!!!)

Now… I find that these old styles of dimmer switches really help us to talk about our faith. You see, we put up all kinds of resistance in our lives. Just like the person in the prayer I read for you, we make excuses, we want to stay where we are, we think living out our faith costs too much. And on different days and different seasons, the amount of resistance we put up varies.

Some days we want to shine brightly and we are very open to God. We remove obstacles and barriers and let God’s love shine through us.

But some days, we throw every barrier in the world before God. I’m too tired. I’m too old. I’m too poor. I’m not going to listen, God.

What is amazing about these older styles of dimmer switches – is that no matter how much resistance we put up, and how dimly the light shines – it still takes a considerable amount of energy.

The input on the right side is at 100% power. That energy is being used to heat the resistor and then it is lost, dissipated, gone.

In the same way in our lives. God gives us everything. He is right there beside us, shining into our lives, calling us into his service. And every barrier we put up, every bit of resistance that we give, takes all of that God energy and it is used up, dissipated, gone.

When Paul calls us in Romans 12:1 to become a living sacrifice, he isn’t talking about dimmer switch faith… he is inviting us to throw out the resistor – and to let all of that amazing love and power and grace of God to shine through – 100%, 100% of the time.

In our weekly Lenten study this morning (and again on Tuesday night for those who want to join us) we are taking apart that verse piece by piece. But for this morning, I want to explore just what this means for our lives.

I think one of the best ways to understand this idea of going all in is to look at our gospel reading for this morning. As we walk with Jesus, we can see how he lived out this idea of a living sacrifice.

First of all, our passage starts with his baptism. As Jesus rises up out of the waters, the voice of God speaks – This is my son, the Beloved.

Before we can even begin to think about being a living sacrifice, we have to remember God’s mercy. We have to remember what God has already done for us.

God has created us, claimed us, named us, called us and saved us.

Through Jesus Christ, we become the sons and daughters of God and we too hear the voice calling out – You are my beloved. You are mine.

God’s love and grace and mercy are flowing into our lives at full power. It’s there without us having to say or do anything.

But we don’t stop with the baptism. We don’t stop with our declaration of faith.

No, as soon as Jesus hears that voice, the Spirit of God whisks him away into the wilderness. There, for forty days and forty nights, he is tempted, the wild beasts surround him and angels take care of him.

Jesus didn’t try to plan ahead. He didn’t back an emergency kit. He didn’t give excuses for why he couldn’t go. He went and completely and utterly put his life in God’s hands.

We, too, are called to dependence. We are called to place our lives, our time, our energy, our resources in the hands of God.

This time in the desert – this time of living and holy sacrifice – is us taking away all of the barriers, all of the resistance. We relinquish control… because we trust that God will take care of us.

You see, this time in the wilderness, this act of living sacrifice ONLY works if we believe the first part…. That God loves us and forgives us and gives us life.

And then, after he had experienced absolute dependence upon God and let all of his temptations and resistance go, Jesus came out of the wilderness and went straight to work.

Placing our lives in God’s hands mean that all of that power is flowing directly through us… and we can’t help but shine.

Our worship and our service and our ministry are one and the same thing. In every moment of every day, we are responsive to where God wants us to go. We serve him. We let him shine through our hearts.

As Lent begins, we are invited to walk with Jesus. We are invited to enter the wilderness, knowing and trusting that the power of God is 100% behind us. And we are called to let shine.

Give up any resistance you might have in your life. Because of the amazing things that God has done for you already – trust him. Know that he will take care of you. Let go of your worries and your resistance and let him have your life. Then your light will shine brightly for all the world to see, 100%, 100% of the time