Monday, January 31, 2011

"Face Off"

"Face Off"
1 Corinthians 1:18-25


Media Mogul, Ted Turner, creator of CNN and several other Turner networks, is credited with saying, “Christianity is a religion for losers.  I don’t need anyone dying for me.  I can die for myself.  I’ve done some drinking.  I’ve had some women.  If that sends me to hell, then so be it.”

I remembered that quote this week, as I was pondering these words from Paul to the rambunctious church at Corinth about how seemingly intelligent people just don’t understand the cross.  Paul had people like Ted Turner in mind when he told the Corinthian Christians that there are going to be some people who look at the cross of Christ and see only foolishness.  Those same people would look at Christians who believe in the Christ of the Cross and see only foolish people.

At Corinth, there were at least two groups who didn’t get it:  people with Jewish beliefs, and people who were steeped in Greek philosophy and culture.  Both of those two groups of people had either religious or logically rational outlooks that kept them from seeing what God was doing in the Cross of Christ.

It was so frustrating for Paul, because the cross of Christ is so central to our faith and beliefs.  In a contrary way, the cross of Christ isn’t even close to being important to people like the Ted Turner’s of our day and time.

So I wondered how Paul would have answered Ted Turner’s comment.  How would the conversation have gone if they were both in the same room with each other?  This is how I would envision that conversation going if they were both on a television program like “Meet the Press.”  I’d call the program, “Face Off.”


“Good evening, folks.  My name is Ann Tagonist.  Welcome to the program, “Face Off,” where we sit two people, with very different points of view across from each other, and let them go at it.  Tonight, in the chair to my right, is the Apostle Paul.  He is one of the greatest evangelists of the early Christian Church.  Paul is credited with literally putting Christian beliefs on the map after the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

“And, in the chair on my left is Ted Turner, media mogul, who started the Turner Broadcast System, which now includes the stations CNN, TBS, and Turner Classic Movies.  I’ll start with you, Mr. Turner.  You once made some fairly brash comments about Christians and their beliefs.  Would you care to start our “Face Off” with any elaboration on your ‘Christianity is for losers...’ comment?”

“Sure, Ann.  As I said, anyone who believes in this Christianity garbage ought to have their head examined.  All’s I see is a bunch of weakling people who can’t stand up to life on their own.  So they need this lame idea of a crucified Jesus to hold them up.  Instead of relying on the strength of their own human spirit, they end up being a bunch of whinny children who sneeze all over themselves and then plead with their God to wipe their noses for them.”

“What about it, Paul?” Ann asked, turning to the Apostle.  “Is that all the Cross means to most people:  a crutch to hold them up?”

“I just wonder,” Paul began, “if Mr. Turner has ever broken his leg.”

“No, but I blew out my ACL playing baseball once.  What about it?” Turner asked.

“Did you use crutches to get around, or did you simply use the strength of your human spirit?  I also wonder,” Paul continued before Turner could say anything, “if there was ever a time in your childhood that you did something absolutely wrong, costly wrong, that you couldn’t repay?”

“I threw a rock through a picture window once.  It was my own house, though.”

“And who paid for it?” Paul asked.

“I did.  My father made me pay for every cent of it to teach me individual responsibility.  He took money out of my allowance for a whole year until it was paid for.”

“Hmmm,” Paul said, rubbing his chin.  “And where did you get your allowance money?”

“From my father and mother.”

“So you really weren’t paying for it.  They were,” Paul commented.

“No, they gave me my allowance, yes, but then I had to give them back some money.  Once they laid it in my hands, it was mine to do with what I wanted.  I could have refused to pay for the window, but I didn’t, because I was learning personal integrity and responsibility.”

“Good for you,” Paul replied.  “But who paid for the window in the first place?  The glass company certainly didn’t wait for you to pay your dollar a week did they?”

“No; my father had to pay the bill all at once and then I paid him back,” Turner said, squirming a little.

“So someone had to come up with the full payment upfront for your little misdeed, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Because you couldn’t; because you had no means to, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Couldn’t you think of the Cross of Christ in the same way?  You needed someone to bail you out because the consequences for the trouble you were in was way beyond your ability to fix.  That’s basically what God did through Jesus on the Cross.”

“Hey,” Turner interrupted.  “I don’t know what you mean exactly by ‘the trouble I was in.’  But if you’re referring to anything like sin, or original sin, I don’t buy it.  Nobody before me put me in any condition of sin.  We all make our own choices.  It’s all up to us.  The buck stops here.  If I mess up, then it’s me who messes up.  Nobody’s make me mess up.  That whole original sin thing is an idea you Christians cooked up.  You couldn’t take responsibility for your own bad choices.  You had to blame it on some people way back at the start.  What a crock of hooey.  Adam and Eve didn’t make my problems, if I have any.  I make my own problems, and I get myself out of my own problems.  I don’t blame anybody but me.  Blaming is what children and losers do.  It’s up to me to take care of my own business.”

“That’s all well and good, Mr. Turner,” Paul replied.  “That is, if you are only talking about this life.  If this life is all there is, then what you say could be true.  And it’s easy for you to say it, because you have the means and the wealth to get yourself out of ‘messes’ as you call them.  What about all the people who don’t have your wealth and power to influence their situations?”

“Yeah,” Turner interrupted, “and I’ve built that wealth and position all by myself.  I did it my way.  I didn’t need any God blessing me with something I can do for myself.”

“Again, that is all fine,” Paul replied,” if your vision allows you to see only the reality of this world around you.  But what if you’re missing a different reality.  A spiritual reality.  An eternal reality in which you have a soul that lives on.  Your decisions are not just for this life.  They also affect the status of your eternal soul.  That’s the difference the Cross makes in a person’s life.  All your accomplishments and wealth, your little television empire, will mean nothing when you stand before Almighty God at the moment of your death.  The only thing that will matter at that point is your answer to God’s question:  ‘Have you come to the Cross?  And have you believed in what God was doing there?’  That’s the only wealth--the wealth of the Cross--that will get you into the heavenly kingdom.”

“Oooo boy,” Turner said, exhaling and rolling his eyes.  “I wondered when the heaven and hell thing was going to be brought up.  Again, heaven and hell is just a concept you Christians created to keep people in their place.”  Turner’s tone turned mocking.  “If you don’t have much in this life, you’re just supposed to be happy with that ‘cause you’ll still have heaven; is that it?  That’s a nice economic system of servitude.  I don’t buy it.  This life is the only life I have.  It’s the only life I know.  You only do this merry-go-round ride once, as they say.  And I’m not letting some quacky concept of heaven and hell hold me back or hold me down.  Like I said, I’ve had some women.  And I’ve done some drinking.  I’ve enjoyed what life has to offer.  If that  condemns me to hell, then so be it.  But at least I lived!”

“Well then,” said Paul, “if that’s what you choose, then so be it.”

“You’re darn right,” Turner retorted.  “Now you’re getting it.  That’s exactly what I’ve been saying all along.  I’m glad you’re seeing my side.”

“Oh, I see your side all right,” replied Paul.  “I see it better than you know.  I just don’t agree with it at all.  You’re the one who’s not getting it.  But you will.  Someday, you will get it.”  After a slight pause, Paul continued.  “Let me ask you a question, Mr. Turner.”

“Shoot,” Turner said.

“How do you measure love?” Paul asked.  “How do you measure how much you love someone, or someone loves you?”

“Hmmm.  That’s an interesting question.  I’m not sure what it has to do with what we’re talking about.  But I guess in answer I’d say I’d measure love by how far I’d be willing to go with someone if they were doing something I didn’t like.  Then I’d find out how much I loved that person.”

“Very good,” Paul said.  “I agree.  We never know how much someone loves us until we know how much that person is willing to endure or suffer with and for us.  It’s the suffering element that measures love.”

“Yeah; I suppose,” Turner replied.

“What I want to tell you, then, Mr. Turner, is that the Cross was a way that God was showing you to what lengths God’s love will go for you.  What we believe is that God’s love made him willing to become a human being.  The Creator became the created.  God did that not only to live life like we do, but also to experience the most horrible death that a human being could suffer.  That’s how God demonstrated the lengths of his love.  God gave up the ultimate power of being God out of love for this world and its people.  Think of your vast wealth, power, and prestige Mr. Turner.  Is there anyone you have loved so much that you’d sacrifice everything you are and have in order to show them how much you love them?”

“I think that’s going too far,” Turner retorted.  “Sometimes you have to put a limit on your love.  You have to demonstrate tough love and let people go their own way.  You have to let them make their own mistakes without sacrificing too much of yourself.  You can’t give up yourself for someone else.  That would be like ending your own life.  Then both of you would go down the sewer.  Who gains anything by that?”

“But that’s the wonder of the Cross, Mr. Turner.  God gave up everything out of love for you and me and even Ann Tagonist here.  The Cross is the demonstration of the  depth God would go so that we would understand how much we are loved.  That was God’s plan.  To get our attention.  To hook us back into the spiritual realities that are alive in our world.  To see, to really see, the workings of God and God’s love for this world and the world’s people.”

“Well, if you ask me,” Turner blustered, “it was a stupid plan.  If God really is God and has this infinite intelligence, it wasn’t a very intelligent plan to become a human being and die on a cross.  I mean, even I could come up with a better plan than that.  Why didn’t God just shout down over all the earth, in everybody’s language at once, ‘Hey, everybody!  This is God!  I love you all!  That’s it.  Bye, bye for now.’  Why would God come up with such an idiotic idea of becoming a Jewish man and dying on a cross?  It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I can see, to you, it doesn’t make sense, Mr. Turner.  But you know what?  God isn’t asking us if it makes sense.  God doesn’t allow us to be God, or second-guess God.  We don’t get to out God, God.  All God wants us to do is accept what He did.  Or reject it.  Do you accept what God has done in Christ on the Cross, or not?  That’s the question.  But don’t tell God that God didn’t do it right.  Or that how God chose to act wasn’t somehow acceptable to your sensibilities.  That’s not an option.  The only option we have is to accept the length and depth of God’s love demonstrated in the Cross; or rejecting that.”

“Yeah, yeah; whatever,” Turner snorted.  “Whatever floats your boat.  It just doesn’t work for me.  The great thing about our country is that you get to have your beliefs and I can have mine.  So if that’s what you want to believe, it’s OK with me.  That’s certainly within your rights.  That’s the American way.”

“Well, with that patriotic statement,” Ann Tagonist said, “we’ve run out of time for today’s “Face Off.”  I hope you enjoyed today’s edition between the Apostle Paul and Ted Turner.  Join us next week when Hugh Hefner will sit across from John the Baptist in another segment of “Face Off.”

Monday, January 24, 2011

"Building Bridges Instead of Walls"

Building Bridges Instead of Walls
1 Corinthians 1:10-17


During an ecumenical worship service, where a number of churches participated, someone rushed into the sanctuary and shouted, “The building’s on fire!”
The Methodists gathered in the corner and prayed.
The Baptists cried, “Get the water out of the baptistry!”
The Quakers began to shake and praise God for the blessings fire brings.
The Lutherans put a notice on the front door declaring 95 reasons the church was going down in flames.
The Roman Catholics took up a collection for the rebuilding of the church.
The Episcopalians formed a procession, grabbing the Christian flag, marching down the middle isle, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
The Jews threw up their hands and wailed, “Why us, O God?”
The Congregationalists shouted, “Everyone for themselves!”
The Fundamentalists proclaimed the fire was the vengeance of God upon their sin.
The Christian Scientists agreed among themselves that the fire really didn’t exist.
And the Presbyterians appointed a moderator who was to form a committee that would study the fire and bring a report back to the next Session meeting.

It has always bothered me, and maybe it’s also bothered you, that there are so many denominations.  I think it’s all so confusing, for believers, who must go in search of a church.  Things have really changed over the past 10 to 20 years, where people look for other things in a church, rather than a denominational tag.  In fact, being a part of a denomination can be detrimental to a church.  The next time you drive into Wichita, notice how many of the so-called mega churches don’t have anything in their name that identifies if they have an affiliation with a specific denomination.  The Church of the Way.  The Open Door Church.  The Church of the Open Arms.  The Church of the Savior.  When I was in Tucson, visiting my older brother once, I went to The Cool Church.  That was it’s name, The Cool Church.  And it was.

I think about all these divisions and try to make sense of it with Jesus’ prayer recorded in the Gospel of John:
I’m praying not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me; because of them and their witness about me.  The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind--just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so they might be one heart and mind with us.
And then Jesus makes this most glaring statement in this prayer, that should hit Christians and the church like a slap in the face:
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.

Do you see what that means?  It means that the world is really not going to be drawn to Jesus or the Gospel if the church can’t even get it right.  The world can almost be justified, when the church is telling the world to come together in Christ, by retorting back:  “Hey, it it’s not working for you, don’t try to push it on us.”

When I went to Israel with a tour group back in 1992, on the third day, we got to Jerusalem.  One afternoon we made our way along the Via Della Rosa, the way of the Cross, the way that Jesus was forced to take as he carried his cross through the main avenue of shops.  The way ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  It’s a huge multi-sectioned cathedral build over the place where it is believed Christ was crucified.  There’s a huge altar, and under the altar you can put your hand down in a hole in the rock where it is believed the cross of Christ was posted.  The Cathedral also has within it one of the traditional tombs where they think Christ was buried.

By the time we got there it was getting late and the sun was beginning to go down.  We ambled into the darkened church.  Each of us was given a candle so we could see our way better in the darkened church.  I looked around through the collection of artifacts by my candlelight.  But I noticed there were plenty of light fixtures, yet none of them were turned on.

I asked our Palestinian guide, Joseph, why we had to use candles when they could have the lights on.  He explained to me that the three different Christian groups who have rights over the church fight amongst themselves about who should pay the light bills.  The power had to be shut off because they couldn’t agree on who should pay the bill.

At five o’clock we were all asked to leave the church.  We had hardly had a chance to see it all and some in our group protested that we needed more time.  Why was it that they had to close it up?  The tour guide again explained that there was squabbling amongst the three Christian groups as to who should have the responsibility for the key, and for locking the doors at night.  So the local Jerusalem city government had to step in and install their own locks on the door and close it up at sundown every day.

What kind of witness was that?  Especially in the Holy Land.  Of all the places in the world, where is the witness of unity and common purpose most needed, and urgent, than in Israel and the Middle East?  Instead, at that great cathedral, the church continues to crucify Christ and each other, putting forth a witness of disunity and discord.

How did all this get started?  How could believers in the church get so far away from what Christ prayed in his great prayer?  Maybe it all got started at the church in Corinth.  I’ve heard it said many times, “Why can’t we get back to the love and unity the early Christian church had?”  Anyone who says that hasn’t read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  If they had, they they would know the Corinthian Christians were split into so many groups, that it was amazing the church was able to keep going.

A large part of the problem was that the believers in the church in Corinth were rallying around personalities rather than around Christ or their mission in Christ.  They totally forgot what that mission was in all their squabbling.

Something similar happened in the ancient church in Stirling, Scotland.  The church at Stirling had a rich history.  King James VI of Scotland was crowned in it.  Many other famous events had taken place within its beautiful sanctuary.

But in 1656, almost 100 years after King James’ coronation, the two ministers at the church started quarreling.  The conflict pulled in other members and lines were drawn in the sand.  Finally, the bitterness was so deep between the two sides that the church council split.  Their last act of unity was to decide to build a partition down the middle of the sanctuary, so each group could worship by themselves and not have to look at the others.  A brick wall was built, splitting the once beautiful sanctuary in half, creating the East Church and the West Church.  Each side jealously guarded their separate identity and their view of the truth.

At the church in Corinth, the same kinds of splits were taking place and groups were being formed around personalities.  Once group formed around Apollos, who was a great preacher.  He was smart.  His sermons were spellbinding.  And his voice could melt the mortar between the bricks.

Another group rallied around Peter the Apostle.  They felt that since Peter was one of the original 12 disciples, his was the teaching that should be followed.

Others formed a group loyal to Paul, since he was the one who started the church in Corinth in the first place.

And the other group put their noses in their air and said, basically, that they were the purists who were above all the other factions.

Instead of one wall dividing the Corinthian congregation in half, there were walls dividing it into fourths.  They weren’t real walls, of course, but they might as well have been.  How sad.  Peter, and Apollos may not have even known that factions were formed in their names.  It appears from Paul’s statement, the three men certainly didn’t condone the split in their names.  Even sadder still is the fact that from then on, factions in the church have ended up despoiling the power and the beauty of Christian witness and work.

There was a guy who had been marooned on a desert island for 10 years.  At last he was rescued.  A rescue party came ashore and found the man had three huts built on the beach.  The rescuers asked him about them.  The man said, “Well the first hut is my home.  That’s where I’ve been living all these years.  The second hut is the church I built where I could worship.”  Then what was the third hut a little further down the beach, he was asked.  “Oh, that’s the church I used to go to,” he replied.

Sometimes it’s not just churches that don’t get along.  We can’t even get along with ourselves when left alone.

There’s a wonderful book by Dr. Paul Brand titled Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.  Dr. Brand is a surgeon and a Christian.  He looks at things he has seen in his practice and relates them to the work of the church.  At one point in the book he wrote:
A tumor is called benign if its effect is fairly localized and it stays within membrane boundaries.  But the most traumatizing condition in the body occurs when disloyal cells defy their natural boundaries.  They multiply without checks on growth, spreading rapidly throughout the body, choking out healthy cells.  For still mysterious reasons, these cells--and they can be tissues--grow wild and out of control.  Each is a healthy, functioning cell, but disloyal, no longer acting in regard for the health of the rest of the body. (pg. 59-60)

It’s a tragic picture of what happens in the church as well--the breakdown of the spiritual body of Christ.  Instead of being bound together, united in one purpose by the gospel, the church has been infected with single cells that multiply themselves and create factions.  Individuals or groups of believers or denominations break off and go their own way, multiplying their divisiveness, ultimately crippling the church they say they are building.

The one who is most hurt in that infection and division is Christ.  As Paul said at verse 13, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own?”  It isn’t the church that is really divided.  It is our Savior who ultimately gets sectioned and drawn and quartered.  Or the cancer of disunity infects the body of Christ to the point of making it useless.

The Roman soldiers on guard at the Crucifixion of Jesus were allowed to take the clothes of the condemned.  When they got to Jesus’ cloak they discovered it was seamless.  To tear it into four parts so that each soldier could have a piece would ruin it.  That’s why they threw dice to see who would get to keep it as a whole.

Henry Ward Beecher was one of the first to have prayed that the church might be one again, like the seamless robe of her Lord.  Since then, most have agreed that the metaphor of the seamless robe of Christ is one of great beauty and power.  The divisiveness and cancer of all the factions in the Church of Christ have been destructive efforts to tear in pieces the sacred garment of the gospel, and of Christ himself.  I talked a couple of weeks ago about the smiling Christ.  But stuff like what happens to divide us, must make him sad.


So what happened in the church at Stirling, Scotland--the church that built the wall down the center of their sanctuary, splitting it in half, creating two congregations?  300 years later, in 1935, better wisdom and deeper faith finally prevailed.  The two congregations were again united and the offensive wall of schism was torn down.  Once again the beautiful sanctuary, and the joyful people of God were whole again, standing together in worship and ministry.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Jesus Christ Is Coming To Town

Jesus Christ Is Coming To Town
1 Corinthians 1:1-9


As Paul begins to pen the opening statements in his letter to the Corinthian Christians, he seems to be addressing a certain kind of fear.  The best guess is that Paul wrote this first letter to the Corinthians around 53 A.D.  It was just 20 short years after the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ.  One of the most fervently held beliefs of those early Christians (and of Paul himself) was that Jesus Christ was going to come again, return to earth, and soon.  At this Second Coming of Jesus, all those who are deemed faithful will be taken into heaven.  And all those deemed unfaithful will be judged and destroyed.

The fact that “Jesus Christ is coming to town,” caused most of the the Christians quite a bit of restlessness and fear.  “Am I going to be one of the heavenly bound ones and found worthy; or will I be found unacceptable and destroyed?” was the big question that was on most Christian’s lips.

The follow-up question must have been, “And how can I be sure?”  How do I know that will happen to me when Christ returns?  How can I be assured that I won’t be judged and that I will get to enter heaven?

Fear is an amazing motivator.  It spurs us on, or it does us in.  The legendary Knute Rockne, long ago football coach of Notre Dame, knew the power of fear and how to use it.  During one season, Notre Dame was going into a critical football game against a vastly superior Southern California team.  Rockne walked around campus the week before the game and found every brawny and huge student he could find, and suited up about a hundred of these hulks in football uniforms.

On the day of the game, the Southern California team ran out on the field first and waited for the entrance of the Fighting Irish.  Then, out of the dressing room came an army of green giants who kept coming, wave after wave.  The USC team was visibly panicked.  The Notre Dame team went through their warm-up and ran back into the locker room, presumably for the last minute pep talk.  Instead, the hulks gave the uniforms to the real players.  Back out onto the field they ran, fired up and ready to play.

Even though the switch had been made, all the USC players could see were the huge opposition.  The USC coach tried to rally his players, but the damage had been done before the game had even started.  USC lost.  But they didn’t lose to the original 100 players, who weren’t players at all.  They were beaten by their own fear.

That’s what the apostle Paul didn’t want to happen to this collection of believers at Corinth.  They were recent converts.  New Christians.  Young in their faith.  They didn’t know if they were going to be able to stand up against the gigantic persecution that was being waged against the church by the Roman government.  On the other hand, they didn’t want to just cave against the opposition, and then not be found good enough when Christ returned.  They were fearful they were lacking something important in their faith.  They were afraid they weren’t all they should be as believers in Christ.

If we ask the same kinds of questions about our believing, that is, if we are allowing our fears and false perspective to get in the way of our faith, then we need to pay close attention to Paul’s encouraging words.  If we are wondering if we are going to be able to sustain our own commitment in the face of a world that doesn’t care about your beliefs, then we need to read and re-read these verses.  If we are not sure we are all that we should be as Christians, or as a church, and don’t exactly know how to get there from here, then Paul’s message to the Corinthians is what we need.  If we’re not sure what it is, exactly, that God has done for us, through Jesus Christ, then these words can be a quick refresher of Good News.

Between verses 4 and 9, Paul tells the Corinthian believers they have at least seven attributes they have going for them.  I want you to notice that Paul is stating that these seven characteristics are not because of what the Corinthians have attained.  These seven are like an endowment from God--you don’t earn them; you just get them.

The faithful at Corinth didn’t achieve these qualities by watching the Apostle Paul’s work-out video over a period of time.  Instead, they were outright grants, given by God to all believers who would simply open their hands and hearts and receive them.

Here’s the list of seven:
1.  given the grace of God through Christ
2.  enriched in Christ with all speech and all knowledge
3.  the testimony to Christ was confirmed in you
4.  not lacking in any spiritual gift  (EHP: “you’ve got it all!”)
5.  sustained to the end  (EHP:  “God himself is right alongside.”)
6.  guiltless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ
7.  called by God into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord

Take a minute and ponder this list.  Think about which of these, on this list, you may need in your life right now.  They are ALL yours.  But, probably at any given time in our lives, we might need one, or two, or three of these more emphatically than the others.  (pause)

What I want to do this morning, because I don’t have time to speak to all seven, is take a quick look at just two of the seven qualities that Paul says we believers have.  In answer to the fearful question, and our lack of perspective about whether we are lacking something, or inadequate believers, Paul says:
“...in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge...so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift...”

Because of our belief in Jesus Christ, we have been “enriched.”  All speech.  All knowledge.  To put it another way, we have been made into people as we were really meant to be.  We are, through Christ, well-rounded in what we know about God and how we communicate that knowledge.  Because of that well-roundedness, that enrichment, the possibilities of what we can do in God’s name are unlimited.  So why do we worry?  We worry because we don’t really think what God did to us really happened.  We try to tell ourselves a different story, that we haven’t been enriched by God through Christ, we aren’t worthwhile, we aren’t whole.  The stories we tell ourselves are the stories we live by.  But Paul is saying, if you are telling yourself a different story, then that’s not from God.  That’s not what God is telling you, in Christ.  So which story do you want to be most empowered by?

There was a waitress who was taking orders from a couple and their young son.  She was the kind of waitress who had that certain demeanor that told you she feared no mortal, not even parents.  She took down the parents order silently and firmly, accepting what was supposed to be substituted for what and which dressing changed to what sauce.

The boy’s turn came.  He started with a tone of fear in his voice.  “I want a hot dog...” he started to say.
Both parents barked at once, “No hot dog!!”  The mother continued to order for her son: “Bring him the au gratin potatoes and beef, both vegetables, and a hard roll, and...”

But the waitress wasn’t even listening.  She said, looking only at the boy, “What do you want on your hot dog?”
He flashed an amazed smile, and said, “Ketchup, lots of ketchup, and, and, bring me a glass of milk.”
“Coming up,” she said, turning from the table and leaving the stunned parents in utter dismay.
The boy watched her go and said, still looking at her, “You know what?  She thinks I’m real!  She thinks I’m real!”

That’s what Paul is telling us that God has done for us in Christ, in the opening lines of his letter.  We walk away from an encounter with Christ, as all the people did that we read about in the gospels, and we say, like the boy, “He thinks I’m real!.”  Don’t you imagine that’s also what Paul discovered when God got ahold of him on that road to Damascus, as well.  The Lord thinks you’re real.  And affirms that story to you, in any way he can; not the story we tell ourselves about who we think we are.

That’s our work as well, is it not?  We’ve been enriched with all knowledge and speech, says Paul.  It’s not knowledge, like book knowledge.  It’s not speech, like a politician speaks.  It’s knowledge of what’s in people’s hearts.  It’s an understanding of what they need to hear.  It’s the ability, once we get that insight, to say the right thing at the right time, so they go away from us, like the little boy, amazed.

I think another part of what the boy discovered, as we have also discovered through Christ, is that when you understand that God thinks you’re real, and you see yourself as real, others will see you as real too.  Christians, like the waitress, have the power, through knowledge and speech, to help others see what they already have and what can happen when they see it too.

The other characteristic that I want to highlight from our list of seven has to do with answering the question, “Am I being an effective Christian?  How can I know?”  I think from what Paul has written to the Corinthians, you may not be able to know the answer to those questions on your own.  You have to have someone else tell you if you are or not.  That’s one of the purposes of the Christian community.

At verse six, Paul writes, “...the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you...”  The Message Bible has:  “The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.”  Part of what Paul is saying here is that when he went around the city of Corinth, and preached the Good News of Christ, his job was made so much easier because all he had to do was point to those who had already become believers.  “Look at this group of folks, here,” he tells his listeners.  “See the changes in their lives.  See how the decision they have made has affected the way they now choose to live and what a difference it’s made.”  If those changes had not really happened, or were not visible at all, Paul would not be able to use the Corinthian Christians as an example of what Christ has “confirmed” and “verified” in them.

Let me put it another way, using the example of how snowflakes are made.  We’ve all had an experience with snow this week.  Here’s a little fact about how snow is made.  Scientists used to think that snowflakes were made when a microscopic piece of dust trapped a molecule of water vapor.  Super cooled air would then generate an ice crystal to grow around the dust particle, and voila! a snowflake.

But, what they found out was that there was never any speck of microscopic dust in any of the snowflakes.  Dr. John Hallet, a physicist at the University of Nevada, has discovered that when a cloud begins to produce snow, there’s a very little amount.  As those snowflakes are being formed, the extremely cold air causes the snowflake to break up into smaller parts.  The small fragments then act as “seed” flakes, growing larger as they fall, breaking up, and starting all over.  In other words, it takes snow to make snow!

That’s what Paul is telling the Corinthian Christians.  “Once Christ was confirmed in you, you acted as the seed Christians, off of which I can attract and grow other Christians.  They, in turn, will help create other believers, and the church will grow!”  Paul needed Christians to make other Christians.  Paul was telling the believers they could know they were effective in their faith, because of what he was able to accomplish because of them.  As a result, Paul can say, “I give thanks to God always for you...”


This is who we are as Christians, and as a church.  This is what we have been given by God to use in the various ways we bear witness to our belief in Christ.  We, therefore, have nothing to fear, as we await the return of our Lord.  Come, Lord Jesus.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Perspective

In the short story, "The Common Day," by John Cheever, a couple is looking to buy the Emerson place, a farmstead on a hill.  The couple, Ellen and Jim, are both gazing at the farmhouse.  This is how Cheever writes it:
"Ellen looked from the modest, weathered farmhouse to Jim's face, to see what his reaction would be.  Neither of them spoke.  Where she saw charm and security, he saw advanced dilapidation and imprisonment."  Both Ellen and Jim are seeing things very differently.  Their perspectives don't match up.  After describing this difference, and realizing that Jim's perspective of the house will win out, Cheever closes out the scene describing Ellen with these words:  "He followed her and closed the door.  She looked behind her as if he had closed the door on her salvation, and then she took his arm and walked beside him to the car."
Having a different perspective about our lives is partly what this Sunday's message is about.  We may look at our lives as Jim does the farmhouse: dilapidation.  But from God's perspective of our lives, things may look very different:  charm, and salvation.  How do we move from one perspective to the other?  That's what we'll think about this Sunday in worship.  Hope to see you there!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making God Smile

Jesus was baptized.  Believe it or not, that is one of the thorniest theological statements you can make.  People who like to crank out Bible commentaries and those who write theological text books and articles love ticklish statements like that.  Thinking about why Jesus was baptized allows them to stir up the waters.  They get to ask all kinds of questions that create more confusion than they solve.

Even questions like infant baptism, like the two infant baptisms we got to witness last week, create difficult questions.  Aren’t we taught that baptism is a symbolic washing away of our sin?  We want to know that those who are baptized have accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord.  How does a baby do that?  So we ask the parents that question--the responsibility for personal faith is laid on their shoulders.  We want to know that the parents will bring up the infant in a Christian home, so their children can get to know Christ, and make their own affirmation of belief.

We also wonder how an infant, just a few weeks old, could have sins that it needs washed away.  Unless pooping, crying, and eating are sins, what have they done?

This gets even more unsettling in terms of Jesus’ baptism.  Aren’t we taught that Jesus was tempted like we all are, BUT WITHOUT SIN?  So why was he baptized?  Did he have sin before his baptism, but not after?  We know virtually nothing of his growing up years.  Just what was Jesus doing as a teenager, eh?  If Jesus was fully human, as we believe he was, it makes you wonder about those teenage years, doesn’t it?  I mean, you all know what you were like as a teenager, and the stuff you pulled when you were that age.  So, what about Jesus?

But, we also believe Jesus was the Son of God, fully divine.  How could God-in-the-flesh-Jesus have sin that would need to be symbolically washed away by baptism?  Or, did Jesus become the Son of God after his baptism?  Kind of like his baptism was an adoption process, and God was taking him on as his Son from that time on, but not before.

See, these are the kind of questions that book writing theologians love to get a hold of and run with.  You never end up knowing any more than when you started reading the first page.  So, being amongst those who has had a theological education, and wrestled with these earth-shattering issues, I finally asked myself another theological question:  Who cares?  I mean, it’s not that I don’t like theological questions.  It’s just that, to a lot of questions like these, there is no good answer, and the Bible doesn’t help us out much, to tell you the truth.  So, when I asked myself the “who cares?” question, a lot of the weight fell of my shoulders to try and solve the riddle, and I could get on with the more important tasks of being a pastor.

The point of the story is that Jesus was baptized.  Why?  We don’t know.  Jesus didn’t even tell John what was going on.  Only that they had to “put all things right.”  And even though it doesn’t say so, John probably just shrugged his shoulders and did what Jesus said he should do.

There are more important questions that do intrigue me from this baptism story, though.  For example, What was the tone of the Voice from heaven that said, “This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life”?  We aren’t even told whose voice it is, but we all know don’t we?  It had to be God’s.

And here’s an even more important question:  What was the expression on God’s face when God made that statement?  That’s something I’d like to know.  These are the kinds of questions I sit and wonder about, so that kind of lets you know how my mind works.  The only problem is, no one else seems to be worried about these kinds of questions and no publisher has wanted to review a book that deals with what God’s face may or may not look like at any given moment.

Aren’t we always warned not to make God out to be too human-like?  We’re told that God is not some grandfatherly character, with a long white beard, sitting on a throne, floating on a cloud.  God is a Spirit, the gospel of John reminds us, who flows like the wind, invisible, yet making a presence mysteriously known.

But here God says he’s got a Son, whom God loves dearly, and who is the “delight” of God’s life.  So I just got to thinking, when God said that, what God’s Voice sounded like; and what the expression on God’s face was.  And I wonder what Jesus did to evoke such a voice and such a look.  You know, I hope, some day, God will look at me with that same expression, and speak in the same tone.

I think we have this idea, that if God does indeed have a face, we assume God only has two looks.  One is anger.  Even in its mild form, it is a look of disappointment.  We may know that look all too well.



That’s what we think the face of God is most like.  Angry.  Red.  Shouting.  At least, as I said, if not angry, constantly disappointed.  If you’ve done any reading in the prophets, or the first five books of the Bible, doesn’t it seem like God is always angry or disappointed?

If God has any other expression, don’t we imagine it as a kind of somber, serious, stoic kind of look.  It’s not a look of anger or pleasure; it just is.  So, when I get you thinking about what God must look like when God is smiling, when God is delighted, maybe you’re having a hard time catching a vision of what that might look like.

But imagine it as best you can.  C.S. Lewis was the writer who really got me thinking about this.  In one of his books he wrote the following:
To please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God--not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work, or a father in a son--(that love and delight) bestows on us a glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain.  (The Weight of Glory, pg. 13)

Imagine making God happy.  Imagine making God smile--even laugh.  My favorite picture of Jesus is the one Adam put on our bulletin cover--the image of Jesus laughing out loud.  But how could we do that?  How could we make God smile or laugh?  How did Jesus do it?

When Jesus and John the baptizer were discussing who was going to baptize who, Jesus finally wins out when he makes the statement:  “For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do.”  That last phrase is so important.  It says so much.  It says we will receive the look from God’s delighted face when we live within the will and intentions of God, by living within the God-rhythms of life, by humbly accepting the wisdom that God’s way, and what God wants for our lives is the best way.  “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” is what we pray each worship service.

Jesus moves from his baptism right to his temptation in the wilderness.  He goes right from God’s love and delight to God’s apparent absence.  He goes from feeling the Spirit coming upon him like a dove, to feeling the devil come upon him with a vengeance.  Jesus must face the worst temptations that can be thrown at a person  What’s going to help him resist?

Dr. Thomas Chalmers, one of Scotland’s greatest preachers of many years ago, was riding one day behind the driver of a pony cart.  All of a sudden, the driver drew his whip and gave the pony a sharp flick.  When Dr. Chalmers protested, the driver said, “Do you see that patch of weeds off the side of the road?  This pony has a way of shying at it, and they’ll make him sick unto death if he eats them.  So whenever we approach it, I always give him a touch of the whip to let him have something else to think about.”  Dr. Chalmers used that experience in one of his sermons, when he pointed out that God always gives us something better, higher, loftier to think about when the lower things of life would distract us and tempt us.

I would guess, and of course I can’t be sure at this point, that the look of God’s pleasure and love served the same purpose for Jesus.  Once Jesus was out in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, Jesus would only have to remember that amazing and powerful look of delight on God’s face, and it would keep Jesus’ mind focused on what God wanted him to do.

Let’s think of this in terms of our own relationship with our children.  All parents who take their role as parent seriously and joyfully, want to give their children the best foundation of faith and morality.  At some point, then, the parent must give children enough freedom to put into practice what they have been taught; to really make their parental guidance a part of their own lives.

When the parents see how their children, in their freedom, choose the wisdom of what the parents have taught, is there not a great smile that forms on our faces?  And is not that smile attached with heavy chords to our hearts?  Don’t we want to boom out to the world, “This is my son/daughter, marked by my love, delight of my life!”?

When our children face their various temptations through out life, and they get through them because of their faith and morality, aren’t we proud of them?  When we see the character they have developed, don’t we smile?  Is there any amount of money that can buy such a feeling, or any reward in life greater than that sense of being totally delighted by their choices of faithfulness?  I think not.

This is what is going on in our relationship with God.  We are children of God, taught at the knees of Jesus Christ, guided by the loving direction of the Holy Spirit.  We are freed by God to choose God’s way or not.  To accept God’s plan and do what God wants, or not.  We are freed by God to live in a world that makes us come face-to-face with amazing temptations and difficult choices.

Will we live, as we have been shown by God in Christ, listening to the voice of God’s indwelling Spirit?  Will we make God smile--even laugh at times?  Will we face life in such a way that would make God just slap one of the angels on the back and boom, “Look at that Brooke Erickson; I am so pleased with that gal, I could just dance and laugh out loud!”

There must be no greater feeling for God than to look with a well-pleased smile on we, God’s children.  And there must be no greater feeling than to be the recipient of that look from God that says, “You are the delight of my life!”

Monday, January 3, 2011

"Knock, Knock" (John 1:9-11)

It’s been said enough times, almost to the point that I’m getting tired of hearing it, that since September 11, 2001, we live in a different world.  The proper stance for surviving in our modern post-September 11 world seems to be caution and suspicion.

Back in 1985, a year after I had moved to Colby, three men and a woman came through the area.  They had been on a robbing and killing spree from Florida to Arkansas to Kansas.  They were finally surrounded at a farm house north of Colby by police, sheriff's  deputies, and the KBI.  One of the perpetrators was killed and the other three were captured after a gun battle.  But not before a beloved Thomas County deputy was shot in the stomach (he survived), and two men who worked at a grain elevator in Levant had been taken as hostages and executed on a gravel road north of there.  It was an awful time for Thomas County.

Caution and paranoia spread like a stubble fire across northwest Kansas.  People who had never locked their doors before, began locking them.  In fact, there were a  lot of people who couldn’t even find their house keys, they hadn’t used them for so long.  Locksmiths were suddenly doing more business than they could handle, replacing keys, replacing locks, and installing deadbolts on doors that never had them.

The same kind of fear that northwest Kansas experienced has now been experienced by our entire nation.  Each time new reports of possible terrorist activity are issued, you can sense the collective muscles of our country tighten.  When I was in the Denver airport, traveling to San Jose, California for my daughter’s wedding in October, a calm, female voice kept announcing that the national alert color had been elevated to orange, and that we were all to be wary of suspicious bags or activity.

For some reason it doesn’t sit right with me, because I don’t like living under fear, and I don’t like others to have that kind of control over my sense of well-being.  Just because bad things have happened, and just because the government can elevate our paranoia with the announcement of a color change, doesn’t mean that that’s the way I have to view the world, or live in it.

Someone showed me a pamphlet they had received in the mail after September 11th.  It was titled, “Surviving In Today’s World.”  One line in this paranoid pamphlet was in bold letters and read, “Develop the habit of suspicion; assume that other persons are either enemies or predators.”  The pamphlet listed items for sale, such as window bars and bulletproof doors for your home, as well as elaborate household intruder alarms.  There were also items for your personal protection, such as bulletproof kevlar vests, mace sprays, and assorted concealed weapons.

This, and other matters going on in our world currently, have heightened our awareness that we aren’t living in a safe world.  There are people out there, some people we thought we could trust, who molest our children, who are sending bombs in packages, angry teenagers who go to school and shoot their friends, and teenagers in other countries who are being groomed to strap explosives to their bodies, walk into a marketplace where people are buying their daily food and blow them up.  It’s no wonder we look at each other through the squinty eyes of suspicion, trying to decide if that stranger is really an enemy or predator.

Having just celebrated Christmas and having just moved into a new year, I would like to make a bold counter proposal to our nations current state of suspicion and mistrust.  I would like to propose that the church in general, and Christians in particular, take the lead in countering our fear with hospitality.  The word hospitality comes from the same word as hospital, which has to do basically with making sure strangers are taken care of, and treated with respect.

The world Jesus entered was not a hospitable world.  It was not a welcoming world.  It was not a world that embraced the stranger, or treated them with respect.  It was a world characterized by fear and distrust, suspicion and animosity.

Probably the saddest statement in the whole New Testament, if not the Bible, is the way John begins his gospel.  Right at the start, before we find out much of anything about Jesus, we are told it’s not going to go well for him:
He was in the world...and yet the world didn’t even notice.  He came to his own people, but they didn’t want him.

Imagine coming home one day and your family not only doesn’t recognize you, they won’t even let you in the door.  Imagine going to work one day, to the business that you’ve been at for years, and your employer or fellow employees say they don’t know who you are, and, holding a shot gun, refuse to let you into your office/classroom/or whichever.  Imagine being the Savior of the world, the one who created that world in the first place, and the world you have come to save treats you like it doesn’t even know who you are.  And then kills you.

From the beginning of the story of Jesus’ birth, of God’s entrance into the world, a lack of hospitality and welcome have been at the fore front of that story.  The inn keeper’s unwillingness to make room.  Herod’s jealousy pushing him to instigate the murder of male babies in Bethlehem, in an attempt to expunge the Christ child from the face of the earth.  And on the story goes once Jesus begins his ministry.

Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them.  When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers.  “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riffraff.” (Matthew 9:10-11)

One Sabbath, Jesus was strolling with his disciples through a field of ripe grain.  Hungry, the disciples were pulling off the heads of grain and munching on them.  Some Pharisees reported them to Jesus:  “Your disciples are breaking the Sabbath rules!”  (Matthew 12:1-2)

Then he was back in the Temple, teaching.  The high priests and leaders came up and demanded, “Show us your credentials.  Who authorized you to teach here?”  (Matthew 21:23)

The Pharisee’s eyes and mouths and hearts were dripping with skepticism and suspicion.  Instead of welcoming Jesus, they treated him as if he were a problem.  Instead of approving of Jesus, they treated him with an attitude of distrust and dubiousness.  Instead of treating Jesus with hospitably, they treated him horribly.

At one point during my ministry at Colby, I thought I was ready to move to a different church.  I began fishing around for a new position.  I found out the church I grew up in, in the Seattle area, was looking for an Associate Pastor.  I sent them my dossier.  It just so happened I knew the moderator of the Pastor Nominating Committee.  She and her husband were youth leaders when I was a member of the senior high youth group.

It just so happened I was going to be taking Ryan and Kristin to Seattle for vacation to see my mom and I got an interview with the committee.  I knew half the people on the committee, and it was good to see them and catch up with them.  The interview was going well, and then one of them asked, “How do you expect to minister here since you are divorced?”

I answered that if statistics held true, half the couples in that congregation have gone through divorce, and there probably wasn’t a member there who hadn’t been touched by divorce in one way or another.  Maybe I could minister even more effectively with those folks because I have gone through it like they had.  But the question kept coming, with a tone of uppity hostility. I suddenly realized the interview was over before it had ever begun.

As I sat in my car for a few moments before driving away, staring at the A-frame roof of the sanctuary, my heart sunk into my stomach.  I became a Christian there, was baptized and confirmed there, preached my first sermon there, heard the call to enter the ministry in worship there, was president of the senior high youth group, did my first work of ministry there with the junior high youth; I was married there, and eventually was ordained into the ministry there, after the church had supported me through my four years of seminary.

And it wasn’t the fact that I wasn’t going to be considered for the position that made me so sad.  It was the way I was treated by that committee, with such a lack of hospitality, simply because of my marital status.  And they didn’t even ask the circumstances; it didn’t matter at that point.  I had been classified and judged.  I thought I had come home, and that I would once again, at least enjoy the hospitality of people I knew.  But they made it very clear that because I was divorced, it wasn’t my home anymore.

“He came to his own people, but they didn’t want him,” John wrote.  From Christ’s entrance into the world, he continually met the world’s suspicion, judgement, cruelty and rejection with Godly hospitality.  What did that kind of hospitality look like?  It was a hospitality that was nonjudgemental and welcoming.  It was a hospitality that was offered to anyone no matter what their story was:  from stinky shepherds at his birth, to a woman who was a known adulterer, to a woman who had been married 5 times and was living with #6, to a lepers whose skin was falling off in chunks, to a self-righteous Pharisee visiting in the night, to the demon possessed and psychologically disturbed people, and to tax collectors.  Jesus’ kind of openness didn’t make distinctions like we are apt to do; he welcomed with open arms anyone and everyone.

One of the reasons I am so drawn to Jesus Christ is because he does not, in any way, make distinctions about whom he extends hospitality to or not; all are received by him with great warmth and acceptance, no matter what.  Hospitality, then, becomes an expression of grace.  It is an embrace of those whom we may not want to embrace.  As Jesus said in the sermon on the mount,
This is what God does.  He gives his best--the sun to warm and the rain to nourish--to everyone, regardless:  the good and bad, the nice and nasty.  If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus?  (Matthew 5:45-46)

That’s what hospitality as grace is supposed to look like:  giving our best to all.  It doesn’t make a difference who the recipient is.  It’s more about who the giver is, what is in the heart of the giver, and what it is, exactly, that is motivating them to give their all to all.

One of my friends up in Colby is Larry Booth.  When he was serving a church in Wichita, he preached about this theme of acceptance and hospitality.  At the end of the service, he asked that people get up, mill around, approach someone and say, “Your name is _____________, and I accept you.”  A simple statement to say.  Then that person would say your name and tell you they accepted you.

Everyone was doing that, and during the course of all the hand-shaking and hugging, Larry ended up facing his wife.  He said, “Your name is Beth, and I accept you.”  But she couldn’t bring herself to say back to him, “Your name is Larry, and I accept you.”  I could still hear the quiver in his voice as he talked about how it felt to be refused hospitality, on the level of basic acceptance, from his wife.  And there were others in the congregation who couldn’t go up to each other and say that statement of acceptance.

“He came to his own people, but they didn’t want him,” (John 1:11).  Through Larry’s and my eyes, and experiences of others I’ve pastored, I gain little glimpses of how that must have felt for Christ.  We can only imagine the expectations of God, by sending his Son into the world.  God must have been thinking, “I’m sending my Son; surely they will respond with a loving embrace, and obedience to my Son.”  But from the start, John’s gospel makes it clear, God’s expectations for how He wished it would go, was not going to happen.  And I have wished to God that our rejection experiences didn’t have to happen in a church, amongst God’s own people.  But many do.  That is sad.

I think if we are ever to turn this world of hostility and suspicion around, if we are going to move away from rejection and judgment, we in the church had better get this hospitality thing right, first among ourselves.  It must start with us.  It must start with the Christmas story.  It must start with the New Year, of new beginnings, and determining to come at life and others differently.

First, we must be totally welcoming to the Savior, whom God sent into the world.  Without that, any other form of hospitality will be overpowered by paranoia and hostility.  Secondly, once we have opened our arms to Christ, as God has opened his arms to us through Christ, we can begin to treat others with the same welcoming, grace-full hospitality Christ did.  Then I think we will see the world, at least our own little part of the world, arise out of this current morass of hostility.