In the Tension [UPDATED]

I have a confession make: I've struggled with homosexuality my whole life.

I don't mean I've struggled with same-sex attraction. I think we can all agree that Mark Wahlberg and Brad Pitt are fine specimens of the male gender, but for me, that appreciation turns quickly into envy; I wish I looked like them, though preferably without the effort it takes them.

It's a problem.

No, my struggle is more basic than that; I don't know what to make of homosexuality at all. I struggle to reconcile the people I know with the scriptures I believe, the friendships and relationships and emotions with the principles. When I read the scriptures, I see principles that teach us to love our God and our neighbors, to respect each other, and a way of life that is full of grace and mercy and justice. But I also see a lot of things that show us where the boundaries of sin are, and I find it hard to read scripture in a way that says acting on homosexual urges, regardless of their origin (the nature vs. nurture debate is still far from over), is inside that boundary.

What makes it harder are the names I can put to people I know and care for who have followed those urges. My emotions want me to simply accept their actions, since who am I (a sinner as well) to judge? They seem to love each other, and who am I to say they shouldn't be able to marry who they love? I did, why shouldn't they?

That would be fair.

And frankly, I don't want to lose the friendships and respect of those who so strongly support gay relationships; it seems that these days, if you were to speak out against, or you were to even DOUBT the “ok-ness” of homosexuality, you lose the right to speak at all, about anything.

Apparently, that’s called being "tolerant."

In fact, it’s the very reason I nearly didn’t post this about a thousand times, why I edited it a thousand times, rewrote whole chunks; if somebody misunderstands, misinterprets, or simply is offended, then I lose the right to speak to them.

But then I go back to scripture. Some things in scripture are contextual and others are cross-contextual. Women as leaders, for example, is a contextual issue. The ECC is unashamedly egalitarian because there are actual examples of female leaders in the scriptures, and the two passages we see speaking against this practice are both rooted in the context of their respective situations. However, homosexuality seems, to me, to be cross-contextual, since it's addresses in multiple contexts and multiple authors and multiple cultures, and every time they seem to say the same thing: acting on the impulse is a sin.

I see so many of my peers, particularly in my generation, advocating for homosexual egalitarianism within the church. And I respect their opinions, since they're very smart and well-read and travel to Bolivia to care for orphans. Their character in other areas is so much like Jesus. They make me think hard about the way I read the scriptures, the way I see my neighbors.

And what if they're right?

What if I’ve been reading the scriptures wrong? What if I misunderstood the context? What if this whole thing is wrong in MY head and it’s not actually my peers in the church-world that are crazy? On the other hand, what if they’re reading too much of a 21st-Century perspective on love into the scriptures in a way that was never intended? What if they’ve unintentionally compromised their beliefs in order to sound politically correct or to feel like they fit in or to give themselves a voice where they wouldn’t have one otherwise?

And the argument just goes back and forth,

back and forth,

back

and

forth

back and forth in my head, a pendulum whose near-perpetual motion is starting to make me a bit dizzy.

The fact is that "hate the sin, love the sinner" doesn't help me, since the people who usually say that to me don't seem - to me - to love others that are different from them very well. But I also don't want to compromise the truth contained in the scriptures by trying to make them say something they don't simply to resolve a cognitive dissonance between my culture and my religion.

What seems to keep coming back is the tension within love that you see in the scriptures. The kind of love God has is patient, kind, generous, and trusting. But it also speaks truth into the lives of others, honestly, openly, albeit carefully. Some things are not beneficial, the scriptures say, and you shouldn’t do them no matter how strong the urge, no matter how harmless it seems. And so when someone is wrong, love says so, because the relationship it is based on can handle that tension. Love looks out for others. Love doesn’t seem concerned that you always FEEL love in order TO love.

There's a difference between love and permissiveness. 

It seems to me that the "accept me for who I am" argument doesn't work for several reasons. First, I doubt anyone saying that to me would respond too kindly to being told the same in return; nobody accepts a racist "for who they are" anymore, and the same goes for anyone labeled a "homophobe." Even if we say otherwise, we all BEHAVE as if we believe that our actions - and even our beliefs themselves - are actually choices. We behave as though we are not genetically programmed, but that we can choose to do something, choose to believe something. Which means that we really do believe people can change their actions and beliefs, even if we only believe that only OTHERS should change.

I suppose it raises the question though, who ought to change? That could be the crux of the culture war.

Second, while God always accepts us as we are, for Him that is not an end, that is only a beginning. God is ever-challenging us to grow in faith and holiness, to become closer to His image and character, and that means leaving sin behind, a piece at a time. His love is big enough to be dissatisfied with where we started. God believes we can and should change.

It's part of love.

And so my struggle is, how do I imitate God here, in the tension?  How do I live authentically, true to both the scriptures and my friends, so they can see that God loves them fiercely, but that doesn't always mean He'll just sign off on everything we want or feel?  How do I come out the other side having represented God well to my neighbors? How do I best love God and people in a culture that believes love means encouraging you to do whatever you feel is ok, regardless of the consequences and regardless of how it affects others? In a culture that is passive-aggressive, how do I confront in a healthy way, a way they understand?

How do I live in the tension?

How do I love?

[UPDATE]

Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, responded SO well to the LGBTQ community at the Global Leadership Summit this month, and I thought I'd post the video here.

Inefficient

I think a lot of the objection to short-term missions that has been raised as of late has a lot to do with the American notion of efficiency. It seems a lot of arguments are built on the idea that “we could do MORE with that money if we’d stop spending it on plane tickets / fundraising items / souvenirs / tourism and just give it to the people, THEN they could rebuild their society.”

I disagree.

Short-term missions do have issues and need to be handled carefully, to be sure. The dangers of “poverty-tourism” where one weeps over the people for a month after returning home and then resuming the life one left are legitimate and fairly well-documented; one can return on an artificial high and feel one has done one’s “duty” for “those people over there” without ever truly grasping the truth that we are just as poor, we are just as broken as they. We create for ourselves a false dichotomy where we put ourselves above those in poverty and are the “benefactors” who go over there to impart on them our wisdom and our ways, to give our money away and feel good about having done something. We forget that to be a true partnership, to truly honor them as human beings created in the image of God, the interaction goes both ways; we need to be willing to learn from them, to recognize that they too have a great deal to contribute to the Kingdom of Heaven if only we were willing to accept their sacrifice and their talents and their experiences. Poverty tourism insults a local culture by making a hierarchy where none exists, putting the tourist as better than the local. And yes, this is a danger that needs to be avoided.

But it can be avoided. Short-term missions work best when they are partnered with long-term missions, with missionaries who have lived in the area a long time and have spent the time building relationships with the locals and can continue those relationships once the team has left. It takes training for the short-term teams to understand a bit of local culture before they arrive (let’s avoid those cultural taboos if we can; don’t bring beef to India!). It takes an attitude of humility on the part of the team to understand that they aren’t the bigger picture here, that God’s been at work a long time before they arrive and will continue to work a long time after they leave. It takes the posture of disciples who are willing to sit at the feet of the long-term missionaries and the locals and learn from them, even as they participate in the mission work they came to do.

And yet many lament the inefficiency of the short-term team. So much capital and time are invested in going over to another place to do this work, so many resources that could be used to build more wells, more community centers, feed more children, clothe more orphans, buy medicine for more wounded and elderly. It’s a touching thought, and while I applaud the sentiment, there are other things in this world than efficiency.

I heard a story once about a missionary in sub-Saharan Africa describing the way we do church here in the West to one of the locals. At some point, he mentioned a heated debate that had begun over the organ in one church, whether to replace/restore it with $100k or be efficient and buy the cheaper electronic version. The local - who himself lived in poverty - looked at the missionary and said something to the effect of “if it takes $100k for an organ so people can meet Jesus, then spend the money! You can’t put a price on meeting Jesus.”

Humbling, for sure.

But it makes an important point: money is just money. We can’t make more of it than it is, because if we do that, we turn it into an idol and give it false power. If we truly believe that God is Lord over all, if everything is His and He can do with it as He pleases, then it’s a false modesty that says we should give all the money spent in short-term missions to the locals because we think that means it’ll be better spent; it’s easy to say because it’s never going to happen, which makes the one saying it feel superior without having to really change anything. And that perpetuates the false dichotomy we mentioned earlier, it still puts us above them, only we leave smelling more righteous, even if it’s only self-righteous.

And that annoys me.

More to the point, however, arguments about efficiency completely ignore the other benefits to short-term missions: relationships and inspiration.

In Haiti a year ago, the locals we worked with were so happy to have us there. [Side note: That was one of my takeaways, how they could live with joy in the midst of such pain, and it has given me better perspective as I’ve moved jobs and gone through a lot of transition in the last year.] The purpose of our trip was to work with a team of Haitians to help them rebuild their church, which was to double as a community center. The relationships forged with Joselin and others there were valuable for us and for them; we learned about each others’ cultures, laughed together, prayed together, played together, and worshipped together. Before we left, the Haitians thanked us because they were so glad to know that the church beyond their borders cared for Haiti, and they wanted us to know that they too were praying for the church in America. That relationship, between Haitian and American churches, requires that investment of people, which requires money. It’s valuable! Think of how easy it is to quit when you feel that nobody supports your efforts, when you are simply ignored.

There is motivation in relationship; Joselin in particular wanted to rebuild his country and this time do it right (Haiti crumbled, in large part, because there is an existing culture of short-changing building materials), and he drew strength from the relationship, knowing that even if his local brothers and sisters wanted to take shortcuts, others like us supported his desire to rebuild properly and were willing to work side-by-side with him to get it finished. And we in return were inspired as a team, drawing strength from his strength. I’d return in a heartbeat, given the opportunity.

To (ironically) pull a page from economics, it always takes investment to generate return. If it takes $2500 a person to send a team to Haiti and help the Haitians know that the rest of the world still cares about them, then DO IT! We can send all the money in the world to somebody but that doesn’t necessarily show them that we love them; it takes the investment of time, the labor of sacrifice to show someone that you love them. If it’s a week building alongside Haitians, do it. If it’s four days in an orphanage in India, do it. If it’s a VBS in South Africa, do it. Be aware of the dangers, check your motivations, but don’t be afraid of inefficiency; it’s worth the sacrifice of efficiency to build the relationship.

A Prayer of Seeking

God.

Lord.

Father.

Teacher.

Sometimes we feel so close to You. We hear your voice plainly. We feel comforted. We feel joy. You meet our needs in more abundant ways than we could possibly have guessed or imagined possible. We feel loved.

And sometimes it feels like you don't even answer, like you didn't even hear us to even tell us no. Things don't go as we'd hoped. We feel the weight of silence.

And sometimes you move beyond where we feel comfortable, outside of our boxes, our traditions, our expectations and our interpretations. We feel so small. We feel absurd.

But you've told us we can trust You, and You've proven it over and over again, even if it's in ways we didn't quite expect. May we learn to trust Your mercy, Your justice, Your grace as we walk forward in this uncertain world.

We ask this as humbly as we can, just like Your Son: may it be so.

Substance

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." [The Apostle Paul, in Philippians 2:1-4]

The church these days has been looking pretty fragmented. We find ourselves all over the spectrum on every conceivable issue. Every day it seems there's another scandal of some Christian getting angry at some other Christian over some theological or doctrinal or political or practical issue that they don't quite agree on; like oil and water, parts of what are supposed to be the body of Christ just can't seem to mix. And it begs the question, whatever happened to Jesus' call for unity?

In John 17, Jesus prays that his followers would be, above all, united together as Jesus is united with the Father. The early church had a word for this likeness: homoousios, meaning of the same substance.

I dare you to try and fit that one into conversation today.

God the Father and Jesus are of the same stuff; if you see one, you see the other. But as you read through the Bible, sometimes it seems that on the surface, God the Father (especially in the Old Testament) and God the Son (Jesus, in the New Testament) aren't really that related; one burns Sodom and Gamorah, the other heals beggars and lepers. But if you look more closely, you start to see that God the Father really is generous, loving, and actually likes his creation, and that Jesus sometimes gets upset and turns over tables. The more you read, the more you see that they are united in the same stuff - the stuff of character - and it is most profound to note that God the Father and God the Son are servants. God begins the restoration of His world by rescuing Israel from slavery, something none of the other religions of the day could claim. Jesus, over and over again, heals people physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually in nearly every place He went. It makes me think that unity in our body, as diverse as we are, as seemingly different as we are in our theology, in our expression, in our worship, means that we need to all be of the same character, of the same stuff.

Homoousios.

We need to be united because we take on the character of God, and the best way to do that is to love each other. And the best way to love each other is not at first a head thing, and not even at first a heart thing, but is at first an action thing: to serve. Serving is at the very core of God's character, and is, I think, at the very heart of what it means to be a united body, in the name - in the character - of Jesus.

I've never seen people who serve together angry at one another for very long. When we SERVE others WITH others, we can put our differences aside because it's no longer about us, it's about the mission and the One who gave us that mission, it's about the purpose we've adopted that's outside of ourselves. When we need to, we can still work with others we don't agree with or don't even like much because we're all in on the mission together. And when our self-attention goes out the window and we instead gravitate that attention to the mission, so too does our focus on the differences we see between ourselves and others seem to dissipate. Unity is about our focus; when we are not united it is because we are too focused on loving ourselves instead of on loving others. Disunity, at its heart, is about selfishness.

The heart of unity is selflessness and humility, just like serving.

One substance.

One character.

One mission.

One Church.

"The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" [Jesus, in Matthew 28:16-20]

Postures of Confession

Did you know that your posture changes the way you think?

It's true that your body shows the rest of us what's really going through your head at any given moment, but the reverse is true as well: the way that you carry your body will change the way you think, the way you feel. A quick example: on a day you're not feeling so great, take a pencil and hold it in your mouth, forcing the corners upwards in an approximation of a smile. See how long it takes before you start feeling better.

The simple fact is that we behave because of what we believe, but we also believe because of how we behave. The two are a cycle, influencing one another in our lives, egging the other onward. This is the reason why actors often become uncomfortably close to a character they work on particularly closely; Heath Ledger became chronically depressed after he spent so much time on his character the Joker, and the world is now lesser because his exceptional talent is gone, lost to a drug reaction.

We think and feel how we behave. We behave how we think and feel.

Think about this the next time you're in church. I was leading one of our services this past weekend and, as I sang "Jesus Paid it All," I couldn't help but notice several people standing with scowls on their faces and their arms crossed. I didn't know any of these people and so I can't speak to their hearts, but I really wanted them to grab a pencil. Such a posture speaks very loudly, to me as a worship leader, to those around them, and to their inner dialogue - their posture tells THEM something too. What I saw were people not engaged, people unhappy with something, people closed off to the movement of the Spirit in their lives. But In the same service, I saw people smiling, their hands open and heads bowed; engaged, singing, worshipping, people who were also speaking to themselves, and people around them, and to me on stage.

In our contemporary service.

In our traditional service.

In every church I've ever been in, both kinds of people are there.

Side by side.

What all of this tells me is that we can, if we want, intentionally change things. If we are closed off to God, perhaps changing our physical posture towards Him will help us change our mental and emotional postures. I have to wonder if the difference between those two groups of people was their posture, if making an intentional change could have helped them engage with God and those around them. They could have worshipped if they had purposefully changed the way they stood, held their hands, arms, and heads. It's a question of attitude; why am I here at church?

It's about choice.

I find that on those very rough days when I travel all the way to church tired, worn-out, discouraged, it simply takes picking up my guitar and playing to remind me who I am, why I'm here, and put me back into my place. Not in a bad way, in a good way. They say that to confess is to agree with God about who we are; as I play, yes, I agree with God that I am a sinner, but THEN, then I agree with God that I am His child. Forgiven. Given grace.

Deeply Loved.

The next time you're in church - traditional, contemporary, emerging, wherever - try changing your body language; open your hands instead of holding the pew or chair in front of you, or maybe raise them over your head. Sing. Move. Dance. Worship.

Confess.

Choice

A caviat: this is the first post I've published in a long time - I'm aware. About a year ago, while working at my last church, I was asked to stop writing because my thinking was, apparently, "too controversial" for some people of influence to handle. While I've since moved to another church (who do not hold that opinion), it's been very hard for me to start thinking like a writer again ... my thanks to Shawna for giving me a kick in the mental butt to just start writing again and see where it goes. Please be kind; it's been a while.

I think our culture is bored.


We Americans have so much, and it's not even that challenging to get more, relatively speaking. Middle and upper-class kids have the easiest lifestyles on the planet; everything is handed to them on a silver or gold or platinum platter (we have options), and so what else do they have to do but find ways to seek thrills in one form or another? Girls go online and take their clothes off not to make money but just to do something dangerous and "taboo," something against their parents' wishes, something that gives them a rush (though they'll take the money too). Guys and girls alike experiment with drugs, sex, alcohol, parties, and the like to find some sort of high, artificial as it may be, to stimulate their minds without all the hard work of learning something useful or meaningful. Their parents' body language and actions - if not outright verbiage - have told kids that they are entitled to this lifestyle of privilege.  As human beings, it's easy for us to believe because, let's face it,

we want to.

But it leaves nowhere to go except to consume, and we human beings are not meant to be consumers, we are meant to be people who make more of the world, who create and love and learn and build and grow.


Our culture's obsession with sex and the adrenaline-rush (in one form or another) seem, to me, to stem from a search for meaning. But that search has been limited because we've been looking only in the only places we've been taught to look: the places we're most comfortable. Instead of breaking out of our boxes, instead of moving beyond the world of consumption, we simply try to find new ways to consume, new thrills, ever more exotic and provocative, but fundamentally the same as the last. A girl taking off one more piece of clothing each time she gets on a webcam is thrilling for her, but it only can escalate once the thrill wears off - one more piece of clothing, one more provocative act. Likewise, a guy drinking only demands that he drink more and more to get the same thrill. More parties, more drugs, more violence, more more more ... we will consume ourselves into oblivion, all because we have become bored, lost in our search for meaning to the point that we've essentially given up, numb to the pain we're really causing ourselves and others but unable to break the cycle for fear of losing the pleasures that we think are all we have; we don't want to give up what makes us feel good, even if for a moment. Our happiness is fleeting, but it's all we know; we want more, but are not willing to sacrifice to get it.

But perhaps that's the very thing keeping us from finding meaning that will last. Perhaps joy is something found when we give up what makes us feel good in the short-term, when we stop seeking pleasure for ourselves and instead seek to do good to our neighbors and to better our world. Perhaps moving beyond our ease is exactly what we need to do; perhaps the meaning we seek only comes in conflict and blood and sweat and tears, the things that make us uncomfortable. Perhaps joy is found in the midst of pain and work and sacrifice.


Perhaps the problem has been choice all along: we didn't know we had one. Maybe what we've done is bought into the lies of consumption because, deep down, we don't WANT to sacrifice, we don't WANT to give up of ourselves because it's HARD. But instead of facing the facts, instead of owning up to our own decisions about what we do and why we do it, we make it the fault of others, of our culture, of our parents, of our genetics, of our family, of our history ... of our world ... of anything except the one place where blame must eventually fall:


ourselves.


Yes, things happen that are not our fault, but it is WE who choose how to handle those things, whether to let them make victims out of us, or innovators. Do we accept the subliminal messages of the matrix and so doing commit ourselves to a mental and cultural prison, or do we reject the lie and instead choose to move beyond, to a new way and an ancient way, a way borne of mercy and justice, love and sacrifice,


... death and resurrection ...

Altar: True Worship

I preached again, this time with Pastor Will Kallhoff, who did part 1 and I did part 2 on a sermon about worship. I thought it turned out really well, people responded well. When you listen, one thing to know: when people start laughing, it's because a sword was pulled out of its sheath. That is all.

Another Sermon

I preached another sermon and thought it was worth putting up here. The video of the sermon itself isn't that exciting, but the video before the sermon is somewhat important - so video first, then sermon audio. Enjoy!

Responding to Greatness

What does it mean to lead worship? How is it different than performing?

I was confronted with questions like this tonight at a meeting, and they're good questions. I also did a terrible job of answering them on the spot, which is sort of sad since I should be able to talk about this stuff easily - it's sort of my job. Now, obviously on some level it depends on how you define the various words in question, particularly "worship" and "perform" but lots of people think they're very clear about what those words mean and think everyone else agrees with them. So it's worth exploring the questions if just to finally agree on what the words mean.

We started thinking about this in youth group recently: what is worship? What does it mean to worship someone or something? The definition we came to was this: to worship is to acknowledge something's greatness and to respond to it. It's a great definition because it's both simple and concise. It's also modestly disturbing because it means we could potentially be worshipping a lot of things that maybe don't deserve it.

Worship is in the attitude and behaviors of a person. As someone whose job it is to lead others in worship, I have to start right at the beginning and say that my job is, by definition, impossible if I think that leading means it is my sole responsibility if someone does or does not worship God. When it comes down to it, a person cannot be forced or even coerced into worship; they have to respond freely for themselves. If they were coerced, it's not worship. If they were forced, it's still not worship. Now, I can be very distracting in many ways (I can make it all about me, which distracts, I can be really bad at what I do, I can make too many changes, I can keep everything too the same ... the list is long), but it will always come down to a decision, a choice of behavior made by the individual.

Performance, in Christian circles, is often thought of as the polar opposite, the Joker to worship's Batman. Performance is, in this vein of thinking, trying to get others to acknowlege MY greatness and respond. And by that definition, I have no problem saying that I'd prefer never to perform again. If all we're on about is ourselves, then we've missed the point of the gospel entirely. And yet it's a constant temptation; I want others to say "wow, Chris, you're so great because that service rocked my world" or "Chris, you make my life complete when you sing every sunday." Nobody's ever actually said those things, really, but I'd be lying if I said I'd never wished they would. I'm weak that way. But it's important that I catch that before it goes too far; it's one thing to desire excellence, it's quite another to be excellent for the purposese of being acknowledged. The compliments that help me the most?

Them: "Chris, I can't believe I met God like that today, He talked with me today and it was awesome!"
Me: "Sweet. What did you think of the band?"
Them: "What band?"

It's really not about us, it's about God's glory, it's about acknowledging how incredible God has been and continues to be in our lives and then responding accordingly. But I'm glad God asks us to be a part of it.

But let's take it a little farther because there is still the issue that performers are among us, and often enough, we're the ones guilty of trying to call attention to ourselves. The grace of it all? It is still possible to worship God in a place where those who say they're leading are actually performing. See, others can HELP you worship, but they cannot worship FOR you. It used to be, back in the day, that the priests were to be the representative of the people, to present the sacrifice of the people to God for them, but when Jesus came that changed. Now, we are to present ourselves as transformed by the gospel as a spiritual act of worship, we are to be imitators of God, we are to love others as we love ourselves ... we are to love God with all of our beings. Worship happens corporately, but only because lots of individuals agree together about He who is being worshipped. So when I'm in a place where others are trying to call attention to themselves, it might be harder, but I still need to acknowledge God and then respond; it's still on ME to be in a place of worship, even in spite of others.

As a worship pastor (or more properly, a creative arts pastor, one who strives to lead others in worship through artistic endeavors), it is both a humbling responsibility and a frustrating exercise. On the one hand, everything I do is to be an example for others to follow, and yet it does not guarentee that they will ever truly worship. Flip it around, and I can be doing my absolute worst and others may still worship God simply because they love Him so much that nothing I do can distract them. Sometimes I get frustrated because it makes me feel sort of redundant, but then I remember, God still wants me here, God still wants my help leading others.

Control

We Americans are obsessed with control. Some churches push the value of excellence; many want to plan ahead not becaue it is pleasing to God to do one's best, but because it gives them some assurance of their control over the outcome. A whole movement of church growth was built around this concept, called the "seeker-sensitive church." Other churches are petrified of change; for them, this means keeping everything the same, week to week, month to month, year after year. We can control what we know, and so we introduce no new ideas, no new music or art, and consequently no new congregants.

This is not to say that excellence is a bad value - God does ask for our everything, from hearts to minds to strengths (it actually does please God when we do our best) - but to say that it needs to balance with other values such as flexibility, compassion, and understanding. Nor is this to say we should change just for the sake of change - that would be a terrible use of resources and time, and would likely hurt many in its pursuit of novelty over tradition. It is a call to intentionality, for excellence with purpose and change with direction and design. Jesus called his disciples out of their cultures and comfort zones for a purpose, a mission, a grand design.

Subsequently - and I think, because of Jesus' example - Historic Christianity has challenged and continues to challenge every culture in some fashion. For the Greeks and Romans it challenged pantheism and emperor-worship; for the Jews it challenged notions of messiah and Torah; for the African it challenges notions of marriage and of the supernatural; for Polynesians it challenges notions of the "Big Man" and materialism; for Americans and most Westerners, it challenges notions of control, individualsm, and consumerism. No culture is left unchanged in the wake of true Christianity, a religion that confronts a culture's demons at their source. But so too is no culture left empty when confronted with Jesus, who makes the culture more whole, more complete, more alive than it had been. Jesus does not ask us to obliterate a culture, nor does he ask us to become one with it. Rather, we must always keep the two in tension with one another; we must not allow our own cultural prejudice and bias to contort the free expression of Jesus' spirit manifested in another culture. But this does not mean we have nothing to say to it; rather, the global, multiethnic, transnational church is to keep itself accountable, each culture challenging and subverting notions of superiority over others. Jesus liberates culture to be more full, more complete, more whole than it could have possibly been without Him. The Romans were freed to a life focused on the One True God, the Africans liberated to a life without fear of the darkness, and Americans emancipated to a life surrendered to the Will of God, serving others instead of themselves.

Cathedral

It's amazing how buildings can be symbols. In St. Gallen, Switzerland, there is a Catholic church building dating back somewhere between six and eight hundred years ago, and it stands as a symbol for Western Christianity today.

In its time, it was an awesome sight: painted ceilings soar above intricate baroque latticework in copper and bronze. It was meant to inspire awe, for the congregant to walk in and immediately fall to his knees in awe of God and of the Church, and in so doing, inspire the heathen to convert.

They didn't do "seeker-sensitive" back then.

The confessionals - of which there are many - each depict a different scene - Christ walking on water, the martyrdom of Stephen, and others. The altar stands separated from the congregation by several ornate wooden railings; a golden cross stands at the front, and above it, three symbols depicting the Trinity; in the back, a massive pipe organ. All is the finest that can be had, crafted by the best artisans and architects, spared no expense. It would have shone with unmatched brilliance when the light hit the windows, making the inside almost glow as a choir sang the Gloria or the Agnus Dei before the pious masses.

Today it's a tourist attraction.

It was restored a few years ago, but only to a point; what was once copper and bronze is now green and oxidized, the gold and the paintings faded, the pews worn and empty. Sometimes the acoustics are used for orchestral or choral concerts, at which point a few people show up to listen. The rest of the time, tourists come in groups and admire the fine artistry, gawk at the organ, sit in the wooden pews, take pictures, make light conversation about the paintings, and take pictures of the altar. And then they leave, unchanged, uninspired, untouched.

It speaks so well to where we find ourselves. An empty building, forgotten except by a few tourists and its own meager congregation, an icon of glory days passed, of lost power and of waning influence. Europeans look elsewhere for their spirituality now, to science and Buddhism and New Age and - for a growing number - to Islam.

It's because of Church buildings like this that such a change began. The altar, for example, is separate from the congregation, peasants, who were deemed unclean and ineligible for communion. The masses were expected to come to church because - so far as they knew - their only option for a life better than their own was in the hands of those in power, and those in power took their money and their goods to pour into large buildings and to make themselves comfortable.

It is at this point that I run into conflicted feelings. There were obviously many who abused their power, but there were a few - some of the artisans, a few priests and bishops, many monks, and perhaps even a pope or two who were not in it for themselves, who genuinely believed they were living as Christ commanded. They poured their time into their congregations and into creating the artistic masterpieces that now sit in our cities, victims of entropy. They did what they could in a corrupt system (though most didn't challenge that system). But eventually, the people had enough and stopped going when other voices gave them a better option.

What do we do with this picture of a building, a masterpiece of art that is at once a historic marvel and contains many tragic stories? Do we chalk it up to the heathens, to those who chose to leave because they stopped believing (did they ever start), and call upon them to repent and return to the cathedral? Do we call it a failed experiment and abandon it to history and to the concerts and the tourists? How do we learn from this? How do we at once celebrate those that were truly faithful (if somewhat misguided by their culture) and avoid the pitfalls of a bureaucratized institution that would take the resources of the poor (and the rich, yes) to build a mere building when many were without food? Can art be created without exploiting others? Do we really need the building? If not in this massive all-but-abandoned structure,

where

is

the

Church

now?

Music and Mission, part II: Incarnation

I was perusing my files today to filter out the old stuff and noticed an incomplete post for a series I started a while back. If you're interested in the topic, here are links to the first few posts from the series:

Introduction
Part 1a
Part 1b

And now, we continue the story. Thanks for reading ...

Once I started thinking like this, it occurred to me that perhaps I'd been thinking in all the wrong ways about worship arts. Maybe instead of treating worship as another duty on Sunday, I could use that service as a means to teach the congregation about being missionaries. Maybe, as Neil Cole writes, it was about lowering the bar on church and raising the bar on discipleship. The more I studied, the less I saw wrong with having paid worship staff, so long as they used their positions as pastoral positions. If a church's worship service was less about trying to convince people who are not there why they should be Christians and more about sending the Christians who ARE there to the people who don't want to be, maybe, just maybe, there could be hope for the world yet. To say it another way, I started to take issue with what some called the "attractional" model of church.

God didn't just do the same thing He'd been doing - pillars of fire, large clouds, plagues, prophets who parted the sea - he didn't stay apart from His people, but instead came down to live among them. And not just as a fully-grown adult either, God came down as the Son and spent time growing and living with the first-century Jews. Sometimes, I think, we want our missions and evangelism to look different, to be easier than that - we want to just go in assuming everybody already knows where we stand and call them to repent. That's the story we often tell with our actions, right? We sign big declarations about what we think are important issues, preach sermons about repenting, and have long conversations with each other about "the way of the world," and all the while the people who need to meet Jesus aren't involved in the conversation because it never even occurred to them that the Church might have answers to their questions. I think if we ignored three of the four gospels, we could continue to think like that, but since we don't just have Mark, but also Matthew, Luke, and John's accounts, we can't ignore this idea of incarnation because it affects SO much of church life. We can't just isolate or even insulate ourselves from the world and then expect it to change; like Jesus, we have to invest ourselves in it, even preparing to pay a heavy price to see change - good change, positive change, godly change - happen.

Israel did this time and time again; they'd isolate themselves from the world around them or they'd use military means to make change happen, and over and over again things didn't seem to work out for them. Worse, they couldn't seem to stick to their own rules! Time and time again, God sent prophets to inform Israel of her misdeeds, of her affront to the poor, the broken, and the downtrodden. God asked Israel to be a light to the world in the midst of darkness, to show the world the way in which they could live well, the way in which they could know God. But instead, Israel continued to forsake that charge. And thus Jesus came.

If our lives are to be imitaitons of Jesus, and if our collective body of churches are the body of Christ, then it stands to reason that our worship services can fit into this story. Churches ought to begin by learning the culture around us, applying it to the way we design services, and using those services to make better disciples of the Christians and non-Christians alike who come.

(to be continued ...)

Equilibrium

When I was a kid, my parents had this habit of taking me and my sister to a dentist every six months or so. I always wondered if he intentionally tried to fit most of his little tools into my mouth at the time just to see if he could, but by the end of the appointment he’d be satisfied that my teeth were in satisfactory health and give me a new toothbrush and a stern warning to floss better. And if it had been a really good appointment, I’d be told to walk out the door into the lobby and press a doorbell button that lit up a big sign that said “hey hey hey, no decay.” This was a really big deal to the dentists and hygienists that I would be able to press this button.

Why?

I mean, nobody expected me to get more teeth, only to keep them healthy. Our basic assumptions tend to be limited to maintenance, not expansion; we don’t expect growth, we expect things to stay just the way they are now. Obviously our experience tells us that a single person can’t actually have more teeth, but aside from that, we think it’s a silly question because we don’t like decay. We don’t like teeth that can rot and cause pain and make us eat only yogurt and applesauce. We don’t like that things break down, that they wear out, that it takes energy and effort to maintain them at their present state. In the science of thermodynamics we call this “dynamic equilibrium,” the way that it takes energy and effort and work to just keep things the way that they are instead of decaying – we call it “entropy.”

It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to keep things at dynamic equilibrium. Your body’s mitochondria, the little powerhouses of your cells, are feverishly working day and night to produce chemical energy, something called ATP, from your food. Furthermore, maintenance requires more than just energy, it also requires your cells to die on a regular basis as they wear out, and are replaced by new versions with new mitochondria and take up the call to keep being a body. When a person’s body decides to stop fighting the entropy, something called static equilibrium begins to take hold. Without all that effort, the body re-equilibrates with the environment around it and the elements begin doing their own thing. Another word for static equilibrium is “death.” When your body stops fighting the decay, it dies.

All this effort to keep one thing going.

But let’s say that my assumptions were different, that I still wanted the world to have more teeth. What would it take? Despite the limitations of my own mouth, there is a way – I could always get together with a girl (she’d have to be a cute girl if I wanted good teeth) and then make a few tiny people that could then grow their own teeth. Speaking from experience – I’ve done it twice now – I can say that it works. There are now more teeth in the world than before.

You can sleep easier tonight.

In order for growth to happen, it requires one to transcend dynamic equilibrium. Massive changes have to take effect in order to reproduce; new hormones are created, entirely new structures are built to house this new creature until it can sustain itself, great amounts of energy are spent in the making. And when at long last the day comes, there is pain and discomfort and separation. We literally cut the two apart sometimes when the growth hasn’t gone exactly according to plan. But in the end, there’s this beautiful new infant, fragile and vulnerable. And the process is still not finished; more energy is poured in, more effort is made to make muscles and bones and organs bigger, brain cells grow and fit into new patterns, and eventually, there is no longer an infant, but a fully capable, mobile adult that can make decisions, laugh, cry, and eat sushi.

God asks us to grow.

See, growth doesn’t happen when we simply try to maintain what we have. Sure, it takes a measured amount of energy to fight decay. But in reality, the amount of energy it takes to fight against decay is best spent growing bigger, in reproducing. In the end, it is in reproducing that we are able to live as a species. But when we reproduce, we cannot make the other into clones of ourselves, we must allow them to be unique, capable on their own, with their own set of gifts and talents. We don’t dictate who they are, God works with them so they can be the best they can be.

If nature is any sort of reflection of God’s intentions – and the scriptures and our tradition resonate that it is – then we are to move beyond simply maintaining ourselves. Life is not, in the end, about us, but about something bigger, more than ourselves. God’s assumptions are not our assumptions. And so our church programs have to give up on being static, because if we try to maintain them just-so in a changing world, we’re simply prolonging the inevitable move to equilibrium. When it’s about keeping it just like it always was, we’re really saying it’s all about us. But if we grow, if we reproduce and allow the children to grow up and think for themselves, we’ve begun to act out something bigger, something grander. We act in the very character of God.

A Few Over-generalizations

Some of you may remember that I’d basically given up on the whole evolution “debate” out of what amounts to sheer exasperation with pretty much every side involved. Recently, however, I seem to have been drawn in again, mostly through discussions with several youth members at church. It has led me to do some more reading in the area, on two sides (of many) in particular, and yet I still find myself at a place of …

… “So?”

The issue that keeps coming back for me is this: how is it that the two sides in question seem so full of paradoxes, and how then can we then make these central debates to any sort of worldview?

For example, young-earth creationists claim that the universe was created in six, 24-hour days (because time was measured that way already) by a benevolent God who told them to be fruitful and multiply and to take care of their garden and the people of the earth He loves so much. I get the opposition to abortion, it seems to fit pretty well with “God loves all creatures”. However, they then oppose social health care, as if it would be such a terrible thing for everyone to be healthier, for more people to live, and for more people to live well. Now, I know there are issues with health care reform and socialized health care from an economic perspective (i.e. we can’t really afford it), but how on earth can you claim that these are issues that scripture can oppose? Sure, they’re not particularly consistent with traditional American values, but scripture isn’t particularly for or against America. I’ve yet to hear from any of the conservatives/fundamentalists how the two go hand-in-hand. Now they may, there’s the possibility since everything is really a religious issue, but I’ve yet to hear their justification for it. What the world does is only my concern inasmuch as I need to understand it to then show them the love of Christ in a way they can understand.

My beef with the other side is that they’re just as paradoxical. Most naturalistic evolutionists would say that there was no particular cause for everything, just random chance (if we can label it that). They also would tend to say, by definition, that everything arose through natural selection of genetic variation, the fittest genes survive, the most cunning are able to pass on their genetic material for a new generation. However, what I don’t understand is that the same group of people – to over-generalize – also seem to be most often in favor of universal health care, socialism, etc. This isn’t to knock those ideas one way or the other, but to notice an inconsistency: if you’re so in favor of naturally selected survival, then why on earth would you try to guarantee everyone surviving? And THEN you say that it’s our freedom of choice that we should make abortion legal. It seems a contradiction and a paradox to me as to how these can all coincide in the same worldview.

Just some thoughts, hoping that maybe it’ll get my writing juices flowing again. I’ve been away from this for far too long and I miss it. And yet I also seem to have very little time for it. Ah well.

Cheers.

Sermonizing

I know I've been terrible about posting since I moved to South Dakota, but let's be fair, I've been so incredibly busy that life has afforded me very little time for scholarship and writing. In addition to moving into our new house and leading worship this past weekend, I preached my first sermon as a pastor. More to the point, I've only preached twice before - once in my teen years in a youth service, and once with five minutes warning in India. So this isn't coming from a lot of experience. But I've done my share of writing.

Below is the text of the sermon text and audio.

Many of you know this already, but for those of you that don’t, my wife Liz and I were missionaries in Australia for a year, planting a church in Melbourne. Moving into a new place can be a bit scary, but it’s exciting at first. You spend a lot of time “oohing” and “ahhing” over the cool things you see, hear, and taste. But somewhere around month two, you start to realize that not everything is as shiny as you thought. What comes to mind is that when we were in Melbourne, I could never figure out why people kept running in to me when I’d go places, especially in the Central Business District of the city. We’re talking pretty much anywhere I’d go; I’d be walking along crowded city streets, and people would just walk right into me. It took me forever to figure out that it was me, not them, who was the problem.

When you walk along a sidewalk here in the states, we tend to make the assumption that it works like we drive. We drive on the right side of the road, and so we also walk on the right side of the sidewalk; it’s just common sense, right? Well, Australians drive on the left side of the road, and so I assumed that they’d walk on the left side of the sidewalk. And yet every time I would stick to my brilliant plan, I’d inevitably walk right into people. And so one day I was in the city and decided that instead of getting hit over and over again, I’d stop and watch and see what I was missing. And sure enough, as I watched, I began to notice that people didn’t actually walk in straight lines, but instead wove in and around each other as they bustled from place to place. It wasn’t until I stopped to watch and then imitate their behavior that I could walk unobstructed through the city.

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, but I want to suggest today that it’s probably got to be more than that if we’re to be Christians of the highest caliber. Around the year 61 AD, in a letter to a group of churches near the city of Ephesus, the Apostle Paul wrote these words:

“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children, and walk in the way of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” [Ephesians 5:1-2]

I think you'll find that a lot of the really profound things in scripture are built on "therefore" statements. This usually forms the hinge of many of Paul's writings in the New Testament; because God is, because of what came before, because of how good God has been, therefore we act. So in order to understand what we're reading here, we'll have to start with what came before.

1. What Came Before:

Ok, so what did God do?

Well, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's how the greatest story ever told starts, right? First there's nothing but God, and then God sets aside something that's not Him and calls it good. In fact, He created an entire universe.

But we all know how the story goes after that, right? Another part of creation, something or someone else not-God, referred to as the "serpent," decides to try and get us, the creation, off track, to pull us out of that relationship we had with God, and we fell for it. We made a choice, and a rift was created between the divine and the mortal, a barrier built between God and humanity.

But God already had a plan in motion.

You hear about it all over the place. Whispers at first, really, and then growing anticipation. God is moving, God is working, God is seeking redemption with His creation. All the way back in Genesis it says that God called out a particular family to be the vehicle for this, to be as numerous as the stars if they'll strive to be faithful to the way of life He's set aside for them.

The LORD had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing." [Genesis 12:1-2]

And God kept His promise – Abraham’s family grew and grew and grew, just like God said. But growth can be scary, especially to your neighbors, and eventually, Abraham’s family, who became the Hebrews, were enslaved by another nation, Egypt.

And so the desire for redemption, for reconciliation turned into a longing, a plea for freedom. One day, in the midst of this oppression and slavery, God called a man named Moses to be a voice for Him, to speak out and demand that God's people be set free. When they were, they were sent out to cross the wilderness. They were given a way of living that would honor God, who would honor their freedom if only they'd keep to this way of life. In Exodus we read that, because God freed them from Egypt, they were to obey His law.

And God spoke all these words: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Therefore, you shall have no other gods before me. Therefore, don’t make graven images … therefore …" [Exodus 20:1-17, abridged]

We know the rest of the ten commandments, right? In remembering the things God has done for us, we are to be moved to Obedience.

But we don't always obey too well, and neither did our predecessors; no sooner had the Israelites been freed then they fell back into their old ways. And so God decreed that they move back into the wilderness, until, when the last of those freed from Egypt had passed on, they were once again called to move, only this time into the land God had promised.

And so they took the promised land for their own, but once again, they disobey. In fact, God spends centuries trying to teach them to obey the law He'd given them. Over and over again, but worse each time. Prophet after prophet was sent to remind the Israelites of their calling, and prophet after prophet was cast aside by King after King. Even removing the Israelites from their home as punishment only worked for a short time, and all the while the world groaned for redemption. But God had not forgotten, and through His prophet Isaiah spoke these words:

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. … He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives life to those who walk on it: I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness." [Isaiah 42:1-7]

And when all seemed darkest, God chose to act. On a seemingly ordinary night, some shepherds were going about their business as usual when the skies lit up with beings the likes of which they'd never seen, announcing the birth of the world’s redemption.

But notice the manner in which God chose to act: He chose to come in the most humble means possible: He was born to an unwed teenage girl in enemy-occupied territory. He only told two groups of people about it: a bunch of peasants, nobodies, and then several years later, a small group of astrologers (Bibles often translate the term "magi"), who found the child and presented gifts intended for burying a king. Nothing about this story makes sense to our understanding of things – and yet this is how God chose to enter history; in the most ordinary means available. Isaiah 53, a prophetic chapter talking about the messiah, says that Jesus would be ordinary, plain, simple.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. [Isaiah 53:2]

It’s like if you took a group picture of Jesus with the disciples, you couldn’t pick out which one was Jesus! And yet, THIS is the man who history hinges on. He then spent thirty years growing up, learning how to speak and write, memorizing the Torah and Talmud, learning Hebrew customs, and working with his adopted father as a carpenter before he began any kind of public ministry. And when he did begin, who did he call to work with him? The second-rates, the guys who flunked out of Rabbi School and had to instead work as fishermen and tax collectors.

Then he had the nerve to further challenge the religious establishment and tell them that in the two thousand years since Moses, they STILL hadn't managed to understand the intent of the Law they'd been given. He taught with authority and conviction, telling stories about fields and wheat and coins, stories drawn from the very lives of the people who followed him. And for simply teaching Truth to people who were not considered clean, Jesus – God himself – was betrayed, sold out to the very enemies that occupied the promised land, then tortured and killed in one of the most painful manners that history has ever devised.

THIS is why Paul writes that our gospel is a stumbling block, a folly to Jew and Gentile alike. It doesn't make sense to us that God would act like this!

Paul tells it like this:

Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a humble servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even a criminal's death on a cross! [Philippians 2:6-8]

This was the fragrant offering that Paul is speaking of in Ephesians 5. In the Ancient Hebrew Temple, incense was burned 24/7, its smoke a symbol of the prayers of the people drifting into the Holy of Holies, where God Himself lived. At the exact hour that Jesus died, the Scriptures say that the very curtain separating the rest of the Temple from God was torn, top to bottom, from God's side to ours.

Of course, we know that the story doesn't end there. In the hour that humanity reached its lowest, Jesus was resurrected. He beat death, and having become the very offense we were supposed to be – He wiped the slate clean. He began the story anew, and fulfilled the redemption for which the world had been longing since Adam and Eve first chose themselves over God.

2. Therefore:

God came in skin, into a zip code and sandals and mortality and all the trappings that went along with that. John’s gospel says that “the Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood,” that He was “generous inside and out,” that he was “true from start to finish.” Not just the stories about Jesus, they are true, but JESUS HIMSELF was TRUE! He told stories, he ate food with people, he healed those that were sick, he touched the untouchables, he taught with authority. And then when it became necessary, He gave Himself up as a sacrifice for us and died at the hands of those that opposed Him, and rose from the grave and defeated death.

And we are supposed to be different because of this story, because it is THE true story.

In each of Paul's letters, it is this story that he starts with. For Paul and the early church, the gospel story is one in which we remember what came before, because it's in remembering that we are inspired to action. Because God did this for us, THEREFORE you ought to imitate God. Matthew 28 - because all authority has been given to Jesus, because of what he's done, THEREFORE go and make disciples of all nations. Romans 12 - because of what God has done, THEREFORE offer your bodies as living sacrifices and don't conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds as your spiritual act of worship. Philippians 2 - THEREFORE if you've been encouraged by your life in Christ, have the same attitude as Christ, value others above yourself and be a servant!

It’s sort of like God was a missionary. Historically, one of the ways that theologians would describe God was with the term “Missio Dei.” In English, it means the Missionary God. And this story is why! If we are to imitate God, then we need to imitate Him as missionaries. Because God IS a missionary, we too are to be missionaries. We all tend to think of missionaries as those people who go off and move to exotic places with lots of sand and people with bones through their ears. But not everybody can do that; it’s just not possible, and I don’t think God asks that of everyone.

So the question comes, what does that look like? For those of us that don’t get to go to those exotic places, for those of us that feel a bit too ordinary, how are we missionaries to our own culture?

Well, again, what did Jesus do?

Jesus, I think, used the ordinary to point to the extraordinary. He told stories using ordinary things like plants and coins and wedding banquets and lamps and fields. What’s more, even when He did do extraordinary things, like healing, He STILL asked people to do the ordinary things like wash in a river and put mud in their eyes. It was through the ordinary that their extraordinary faith was shown.

Jesus was like a tour guide for the way that God was already at work within the world. And that’s what we’re supposed to do! We say, “God is working in the ordinary!” God didn’t just abandon the world to its own fate, He intervened, and the stories are all around us just waiting to be told. Paul said it this way:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. … To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. [1 Corinthians 9:19-22, abridged]

A great example of this in action can be found in Acts 17. Paul has just come to Athens, Greece. Now, a little background about Athens. You’ll remember from grade school that the Greeks were polytheistic, that means they had a lot of gods that they worshipped. And by a lot I’m not just saying like, five or six, I’m talking hundreds of them. There were so many that what they’d do was make a little statue, or sometimes a really big statue of those gods to remind them who they were worshipping. They were so nervous that they had forgotten someone that they’d gone and made up a statue called “the Unknown God” just in case!

Another thing that was really common in those times was the public debate. A guy would get up in the street and start giving a monologue, and inevitably someone else would come along and start debating with him. It’d be like a guy getting up in Walmart, and starts to tell everyone why the Packers are so great, and of course that doesn’t go over so well, so then someone else gets up and starts telling him no, the Vikings are far better, and here’s why. And they go through player stats and game stats and history and maybe trade a few insults, and all the while everyone’s standing around going “huh, that’s interesting, I never thought of it that way.”

Well the same thing happens to Paul. Now Paul walks into the scene and is worried by all the statues everywhere. The scriptures say that when he saw the idols he was “greatly distressed.” He starts doing this whole debate thing in the marketplace and some philosophers come along and start debating with him. But it gets to the point that they hold a formal meeting and invite Paul, and at the meeting Paul sees the statues all standing there, including the statue to the unknown God, and of course he knows what that means, because he’s spent time with them. So what does he do? He gets up and gives them a huge compliment – “I see that you are very religious!” The Greeks all smile. Then he says, “I see you have this statue to an unknown God. And maybe you didn’t know who this is, but I know this God, I know that He’s THE God, the one who made everything and you and me and that a relationship with Him is beyond anything you can possibly imagine …” Paul used His surroundings, the things that the Greeks took for granted, and turned them into a gospel message! He gave them a tour of their own religion, of their own culture and showed them how God had been working the whole time, even when they didn’t see it!

Now, not everyone believed. But some did. “All things to all people so that some might be saved.” Paul could take the ordinary and show them how it pointed to the extraordinary.

What ordinary things in the lives of those around us can we use to point to God’s work? What parables can we tell? What questions are there being asked that we can help to answer? Who is seeking that we can seek with? What in our lives is ordinary, and how will God use it to do extraordinary things? What about garden gnomes? Or pheasants? Cows? Corn? There’s a lot of that around here. Taxis? What stories are there waiting in the ordinary to be made extraordinary?

But Jesus didn’t just USE ordinary things, He didn’t just talk about them.

What did Jesus do? Jesus actually became ordinary!

Why would he do that? I mean, if I was omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and all that, I wouldn’t want to give it up. I’d like being that, I think. But Jesus, Jesus was better than that. Jesus really loved the people he came to serve. What we need to remember the most is that we too must actually care about those that we are here to serve. Not just out of obligation, not just because we have to or because it makes us feel better about ourselves, but because we genuinely care for them, about them. The same way that God cares about us.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” [John 3:16-17, 21]

A friend once told me a story that illustrates this well. Some Navy SEALs were performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in a dark part of the world. The team flew in by helicopter, made their way to the compound, and stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room was filthy and dark, and the hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified. When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them that they were Americans. The SEALs asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn’t; they sat there on the floor and hid their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn’t believe that their rescuers were really Americans.

The SEALs stood there, not knowing what to do. They couldn’t possibly carry everyone out. Then one of them got an idea. He put down his weapon, took off his helmet, and curled up tightly next to the other hostages, getting so close that his body was touching some of theirs. He softened up the look on his face and put his arms around them. He was trying to show them that he was one of them. None of the prison guards would have done this. He stayed there a little while until some of the hostages started to look at him, finally meeting his eyes. The SEAL whispered that they were Americans and were there to rescue them. “Will you follow us?” he asked. Then he stood to his feet and one of the hostages did the same, then another, until all of them were willing to go. The story ends with all the hostages safe on an American aircraft carrier.

A long time ago, God came into our cell, took off His powers and His immortality and everything that made Him God and curled up next to us. And then He rescued us. What he asks is that we be willing to do the same to those around us who haven’t heard about that rescue, who don’t know what true freedom is like.

During this song, I want you to think about how you’ve been telling the story. The purpose of this time is for reflection; the words will be up on the screen for you to think through, not to sing. To that end there’s a blank space in your bulletin if that would be helpful for you, or listen to the music if that would. But think about this: do you know the story? If you know the story, how are the ordinary parts of your life given over to God? How well do you dwell in your neighborhood? Do you take offense at their habits or their language, or do you extend grace? Do you try to learn about them, about who they are and what motivates them and whether or not they like baklava and how they feel about the Huskers?

[Sing "Worlds Apart" by Jars of Clay]

The Church of Starbucks

A friend from church sent this to me, and let me say, I think I've seen pretty much everything in this done in real life. Ah, Christian Culture, how you frustrate me!

The Parable of the Soils

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

So as you all know, I've not been at a steady job of late because, well, I can't seem to find one. I'm sure that some of the blame goes to the economy for the lack of new jobs, but I'm starting to wonder if in our season of need, God's been closing doors for a reason. But God is good, and He takes care fo us even when we can't; we've got a wonderful family, and to that end, my grandparents have "hired" us to garden for them. As they've gotten older, they've had a harder time taking care of my Grossmami's addiction to all things green and flowering - she's literally surrounded the house with one big garden, which, over time, has become somewhat an extension of the yard. So our job has been to turn it back into a viable garden again. And wouldn't you know it, as we've had time to talk, I've been learning a lot, things my seminary career never taught me. As Morgan Freeman says in Bruce Almighty, "people underestimate the value of manual labor." I am no exception.

What came to mind has been this parable in Matthew 13, where Jesus describes a gardener (ok, farmer) that goes out to plant his crops and what happens in the garden after the farmer walks away. And let me tell you, when my grandparents walked away (so to speak), their garden started to look an awful lot like three of the four types of soil in this parable.

The garden is so wide that in one area, my grandparents had to put down a small path to get to their tomato plants and currant bushes. The path is made of several stone pads and some packed dirt. Wouldn't you know it though, nothing grew there, even in the packed dirt which, when we tilled it, was otherwise healthy and fertile. The idea of a "hardened heart" makes a bit more sense to me now. As the metaphor goes, the person's attitudes (their "heart") become very monotone, very set; you can't convince them of anything new! God can't plant the seeds of wisdom or knowledge or anything in a hardened heart ... but give it a good till (assuming it's not hard as stone) and suddenly all sorts of things can grow. Also, you now have to weed carefully.

I can't say that we've encountered any thorny soil yet (it is, after all, a garden), but the whole of the place might be a good example of why weeding the thorns out is a good idea to do sooner rather than later. The more weeds that grew in the garden, the more obvious it was that there was competition for nutrients; the garden plants weren't producing as many flowers or as many new bulbs as when they had freedom to expand. Lots of the newer seedlings of the garden plants were weak, small, and flimsy; they were easy to take out, but I hope they'll grow strong now that they have room to expand. The longer you go, the bigger and deeper the thorny plants get, and eventually take over completely. Ironically, all it takes is some weed killer to take them out, but the weed killer takes out both the weeds and the few good plants that are left. But still, we have to remember that good soil is REQUIRED for the thorny soil; remove the thorns (whose roots often go deep), give it some time, and the soil will be ready to plant good seed. Think of those people who have begun to recover from addictions; often, their lives are somewhat empty for a while as they remove the thorns and struggle not to let new thorns take over. But they are often the most fertile soil of all, and once the thorns are removed and the good seeds planted, they become extremely fruitful fields.

Today we spent two and a half hours weeding a small patch of ground. In the center was a large bush full of flowers, but around it, very rocky soil. The parable mentions rocky ground being a place where weeds spring up and then wither and die because their roots never get very deep. This is true - we discovered that the weeds came up really easily, but the shrub we couldn't budge (good thing) because its roots were very deep and very wide. The rocky soil is a problem, not only because seeds grow without depth and die, but because turning it into good soil is nearly impossible. As I said, two and a half hours spent on maybe three square feet of ground, and we barely made a dent in the number of pebbles mixed in the surface dirt. In order for this patch to become good soil for healthy, useful crops, it would require literally pulling away everything on the surface, a total transplant of the upper layers. I've heard of this happening before - remember Paul? But it's not an easy thing, nor is it terribly economical (God had to blind Paul in order to 'exchange the soil,' so to speak), but it IS possible, and often it can be worth it.

It's a parable about discipleship, and I understand why it was that Jesus cautions his audience about what they're up against. Matthew, for one, loved to tell the parables of Jesus that had missionary implications; a person could spend a LOT of time tilling ground and weeding and removing rocks or thorns before good soil might bear crops with fruit. Sometimes I worry that we use the parable as an excuse to just avoid those people who don't look like "fertile" fields to us. Something that Jesus never quite mentions in the parable is that any field ALWAYS starts out like one of those three soils; there's no such thing as a perfect field that's born ready for planting. It starts out with weeds and rocks and sometimes stone paths; it takes work and dedication and love to produce a fertile field on which to sow the good seed.

The question is, do we give everyone that chance?