Monday, August 25, 2014

100 Years From Now

"100 Years From Now"
Romans 12:1-2

(Note to readers:  This was a round table discussion.  The three questions were given to groups of people at worship.  They discussed each one and wrote notes about the questions.  Then they reported back and answers were compiled during the discussion.  Following the discussion, I presented my thoughts that are written beneath the three questions.  If you have any thoughts about the questions that you'd like to share, please email me at wingspan19@gmail.com).



Imagine it's 100 years from now.  The people in Pratt Presbyterian Church are gathering to celebrate the history of the church.  As they look back, what would you hope they would say about this present time (2014 and beyond) in the church's history?

Pretend our church is an 100 year old person.  This person is being interviewed.  One of the questions is, "Of what are you most proud, as you look back over your 100 years?" What would you answer be if you were this person-church?  Another question you are asked is, "To what do you attribute your health and longevity?"  What is your answer?

Pretend you can time travel.  One of the places you decide to time travel to is Pratt Presbyterian Church 100 years from now.  Realistically, what do you think you will find? The reason I used the 100 year time frame is because we just celebrated the 100th anniversary of our church building.  I'm not sure if the people back then wondered what we'd be like in 100 years, and how things would change.





100 years from now is a long time.  Especially with as fast as things are changing now.  Change didn’t happen as fast over the last 100 years as it will the next hundred years.  100 years ago, what changes were coming could be anticipated.  Now, we have no idea how much change will be taking place—we assume A LOT!  Back 100 years ago, it was assumed not much will change, and if it does there would be plenty of time to adapt.

I think we're still infected with that way of thinking--that if things change, they will change slowly, and we will have plenty of time to adapt.  Things don't change very fast in churches anyway--right?  Our congregation in particular, has a 130 history.  We could call it a DNA, so-to-speak, that has determined a lot of who we are.  Changing that congregational DNA is hard--maybe as hard as changing our human DNA.  (Although that's not getting very hard either.)

There are two words I want you to pay attention to in these first couple of verses of Romans 12:  "...be transformed by the renewing of your mind..."  Transformed.  Renewing.  Other more modern versions have something like, "...change the way you think."

To be transformed literally comes from the word metamorphosis.  To go through a metamorphosis means to change from one thing into something else.  Maybe as a kid, or even as an adult, you watched a caterpillar create a chrysalis and emerge as a butterfly--two distinct biological entities.  That's the kind of transformation Paul is talking about here that needs to happen.

Metamorphosis is not a transformation that happens once and is over, but in Paul's way of thinking, it is a process that happens now and continues into the future.

And we do that by the "renewing of your mind."  This word, renewal, means to be new in nature, with the implication of becoming better.


My sense is that we are at a Y intersection.  Over the past 100 years we have come so far.  But what we have been doing over the past 30 or so years stopped working.  The two roads at this Y intersection are very different roads.  If we choose one of the roads at the Y, it will mean staying on the road we've been on.  Which will, in my estimation, get us closed down in the next 25 years.

The other road at this Y we are at would mean, metamorphosis and renewal.  It will mean becoming something very different than what we are now.  What we are doing now is not working.  What we need to do, if we are going to survive the next 25 years--and beyond--will be to take the road that will cause us to go through a process of complete and utter metamorphosis--to become something else, to start that now so that we can continue into the future.  Maybe for the next 100 years.  We are going to have to change the way we think about church, and what church is.  We are going to have to be willing to go through a painful process, but which pain will set this congregation up for long-term health.

When I was in Bakersfield at the church there, a 1200 member church, the senior pastor and the Session caught a vision for what needed to be done to turn that downtown church around.  The vision involved buying up a whole city block, and putting a gym and new administration building in.  It also meant buying an existing office building on the property and turn it into the home of a Hispanic and Chinese congregations.

The way they sold the plan to the congregation was to go to the  members and say, "We have a vision.  But some of you older members will never get to see the fruits of it.  It is a bold plan for the health and well being of the congregation into the next 50-75 years.  Are you willing to invest in something you will not see the ultimate fruits of?"

They ultimately said yes.  The whole project took $5 million dollars as well as supporting the churches annual $1.5 million dollar budget.  They paid everything off in 3 years.

Now I'm not saying we need to buy this whole block and build a gym.  We don't need another gym, thanks to the foresight of Porter and his bank.  But I think the choice of taking the other road in the Y intersection we are at will be just as costly in some ways, and painful, but amazing and exciting.  I think God is setting us up, through the Experiencing God study and some other ministries that are emerging, to begin to think BIGGER.  Think DIFFERENTLY.  Metamorphisically different.

But wouldn't it be just as painful, tragically so, rather than creatively so, to close this church down in 25 years because there's no one left?

We need to think differently, NOW, so that we can begin the process of metamorphosis change that will help this church not just survive, but grow, in the next 100 years.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Whatever

"Whatever"
Romans 11:30-32

Men’s Bible Study recently finished up a study of the life of Paul.  At one point, during Paul’s journeys, he had been arrested.  One of the qualities we quickly discovered about Paul was that he never missed an opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  No matter who he was talking to, Paul always worked the Gospel message into the conversation.

On this one particular instance, as I said, Paul had been arrested.  He was brought before King Agrippa.  Paul told Agrippa about Christ.  Agrippa’s response was tragically telling:

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.  (Acts 26:28)

Almost.  Not quite, but almost.  You almost got me, Paul.

Maybe Paul had that experience in mind when he wrote these lines to the church in Rome.  Paul uses the word, “disobedient.”  I’ll give you a quick little Greek lesson about this word.  In the Greek language that Paul wrote in, the word is “apeitheia.”  It’s where we get our word “apathy” from.  The root word in the Greek means, convince or persuade.  The “a” prefix on the word means “not” or “against.”  So a-peithea means not convinced, or not persuaded.  Which is what Agrippa was, when Paul shared the gospel.

Our English translations, then decided to use the word disobedient in these lines of Paul to the Roman Christians.  So, to be disobedient, in this instance, literally means to be unconvinced and unpersuaded.  To be unpersuaded means that you are not certain that something is true.  You’re not sure that what you are seeing or hearing can be relied on or trusted.

If you remain unconvinced, you never really give yourself over.  You never really get emotionally involved.  If someone told you they loved you, but you held on to a handful of skepticism about what they are telling you, you will end up withholding yourself, unpersuaded by their love.  That may have nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you, and the spirit within you.  If you keep to your stance of being unpersuaded, you never commit yourself fully.

Did you hear about the company that makes blank bumper stickers? They're for people who don't want to get involved.  To come at life and people and God with the posture of not allowing yourself to be won over, is like driving around with a blank bumper sticker.  You are for nothing, you are allied with nothing, you are passionate about nothing.

In the book of Acts there is the story of Annanias and Saphira.  In the early church, people were selling property and giving the proceeds to the apostles.  The apostles would then use that money for feeding and taking care of the poor who were coming to Christ by the thousands.  But Annanias and Saphira held back a good portion of the sale of their property, just in case.  They were not as thoroughly convinced that this Christianity thing was real.  They were almost persuaded.  But just in case what was happening through the gospel didn’t last, they would have an insurance policy of funds to fall back on.

That’s not being totally persuaded.  Gordon Stull used a great example of this in our Sunday School class one time.  We were talking about this whole-hearted kind of commitment.  Gordon said it’s like the poker player, who at some point pushes all her chips into the middle of the pot and says, “I’m all in.”  She lays everything she’s got on the line.  She’s all in.  Annanias and Saphira were not all in.  Their lack of being totally convinced about Christ ended up costing them dearly.

There’s a further step in this slippery slope of remaining adamantly unpersuaded.  After a while, you just don’t care.  Refusing to be convinced slowly becomes apathy.  Remaining unconvinced keeps you from being emotionally involved.  No emotional involvement becomes a “who cares” attitude.

Someone asked me the other day, “What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?”
 I said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

I was going to call the Apathy Hotline one day, but then I thought, “What’s the point?”

And the nice thing about apathy is you don't have to exert yourself to show you're sincere about it.

Remember the early part of the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible.  Revelation is a vision of the future, written by John the Divine.  There are letters to seven churches at the start of the book.  The seven letters are messages to those churches from the Risen Christ.  In the letter to the church at Laodicea, Christ says,
I know…that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16)

Here, the Risen Christ is equating being lukewarm to being apathetic.  Those believers were never passionately all in.  They would never allow themselves to be fully convinced.  They weren’t emotionally hooked by Christ.  Just, “Meh.”  “Whatever.”

In the book I mentioned in last weeks message, The Inferno, by Dante, he wrote, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”  I think Dante picked up this notion from Christ’s letter to Laodicea in the book of Revelation.  Because people who are attempting to remain neutral are people who are not allowing themselves to be convinced.  And people who are not persuaded about Christ won’t allow themselves to get passionately involved.

But there are times, as Dante has made the point, times of moral crisis, times of spiritual degradation, times when the flag of warning has been raised when we individually, or as a church, need to take a stand.  Need to make our voice heard.  Need to throw ourselves into some situation and make a difference.  But we won’t do that if we aren't convinced about Christ.

British historian, Arnold Toynbee once said, “Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, which takes the imagination by storm; and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.”

When you meet someone who is enthusiastic about something, isn’t it because they are thoroughly persuaded?  You can’t get excited about something you are still unconvinced about.  You aren’t going to throw yourself into your relationship with Christ, if you really aren’t sure about him.  You aren’t going to be part of some kind of ministry, or make plans for your own ministry, if you are not convinced about the one whom you are serving.

The longer you hold out, the more you hold back, the less enthusiastic you will become, the less chance you will allow yourself to be convinced otherwise.  To be like Agrippa in his conversation with Paul, and to be “almost persuaded,” really means you are really unpersuaded.  Almost persuaded doesn’t cut it with Christ.  That was the warning of Christ to the church at Laodicea, the lukewarm, those who just sit by and remain sort of convinced about Christ get spewed out of his mouth.  To be almost persuaded means you are lukewarm.  What Christ wants is that you be “all in” as Gordon Stull described, or “all out.”  At least Christ knows where you stand that way.  It’s the apathetic fence sitters who end up doing nothing, or being nothing that makes Christ gag.

In the cartoon "Mother Goose and Grim," the cat is sleeping. Someone asks, "What are you doing?”
The cat says "Nothing. I's a cat. Cats always do nothing."
"When are you going to get up?" the questioner asked.
"I don't know" says the cat. "The hardest part of doing nothing is knowing when you're finished.”

Christ knows.  Christ knows when you’re finished.  It’s when you show that half-hearted enthusiasm.  It’s when you are passionate, sort of, about your relationship with him.  It’s when you say you have a plan about some kind of ministry in the name of Christ, and then that plan just stays on paper.  It’s when you’re persuaded, almost, but not fully.  You may try and get by with that in the church.  But Christ knows.  Christ knows if you’re fully convinced.  Or not.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Are You Saved?

Are You Saved?
Romans 10:8-13

Are you saved?  It’s a simple question.  It’s definitely  a religious question.  We associate the question with evangelistic types who feel no discomfort in walking up to a total stranger and asking the question, “Are you saved?”  I haven't seen any street preachers in the past few years who are buttonholing people on city street corners trying to save their eternal souls.  Or people walking up and down the sidewalks with a sandwich board that says, “The end is near.”

I don’t know why.  It’s still a relevant question.  It’s a question all of us have to ask ourselves, or be asked by someone in the church.  There are lots of variations on the little question, Are you saved?  What is the state of your eternal soul?  If you died today do you know where your soul would be?  When someone joins the church, the first question they are asked is, “Who is your Lord and Savior?”  There is only one acceptable answer.

If you are a thinking person, hopefully you ponder the question, Are you saved?  On one level, when you hear that question, you may be thinking the question really is, Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior?  That’s part of it.  But there’s more to ponder here.

If you hear the question, Are you saved?, you may ask, and rightly so, “Saved from what?”  It’s like the bumper stickers back in the ’70’s that said, “Jesus is the answer.”  Then the backlash bumper stickers started coming out that said, “What’s the question?”  Or there were the bumper stickers that said, “I found it!”  And the backlash bumper stickers that read, “I didn’t know you lost it.”   If I answer “yes” to that question, “Are you saved?”, you also have to be ready for the backlash question: From what are you saved?  The word implies that you are saved from something.

The word “save” in the Greek language of the Bible means:
1)  saved from serious peril
2)  to be kept alive
3)  preserve your inner being

So, think of those meanings when you think about being saved.  From what serious peril were you actually saved?  How were you literally kept alive when you were saved?  How was your inner being being preserved when you were saved?

When Paul Tillich retired as professor at Harvard Divinity School, on the occasion of his last class, he preached a sermon to his students on Matthew 10:8, “Heal the sick, raise the dead…”  Tillich then said to the ministry students, “You will go out to carry the gospel of healing, but your biggest problem will be persuading people they need to be healed.”  His sermon made the point that the biggest challenge Christian ministry faces is that of getting people to realize how sick we are without healing faith in God.

I think he’s right.  Most people don’t think they are that bad of a person.  They become “saved”—that is, as I mentioned before, they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but won’t allow themselves to think any further about the depth of what they have just been saved from.

Being saved from what?  Hell?  Eternal damnation?  Eternal torment?  The fiery flames?  Pitch forks and torture?  Most of our understanding of what hell is all about comes more from Dante’s book, The Inferno, than it does from the Bible.

A man died and was taken to his place of eternal torment by the devil.  As he passed sulphurous pits and shrieking sinners, he saw a man he recognized as a corrupt television evangelist snuggling up to a beautiful woman.
"That's unfair!" he cried. "I have to roast for all eternity, and that TV evangelist gets to spend it with a beautiful woman."
"Shut up", barked the devil, jabbing the man with his pitchfork.  "Who are you to question that woman's punishment?”

I want to give you an alternate understanding of what hell is all about based on a couple of things Jesus said, rather than Dante’s seven circles of hell.

First, one of the most quoted and memorized verses in the Bible: John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”  The word, perish, in the language Jesus spoke, means total annihilation.  It doesn’t have anything to do with eternal damnation, fires, and torturous torment.  It means that your soul is fully destroyed.

What Jesus is contrasting here in this most favorite of verses, is between having your soul completely erased, or having everlasting life with God.

And secondly, add to that the statement Jesus made recorded in Matthew 10, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).  Again, this word destroy has to do with having all traces of your soul expunged from existence.  From these two statements Jesus makes, we are forced to rethink what hell is all about.

What if hell is not a place of eternal torment, but is a place where your soul is totally obliterated?  What if what you are saved from is not eternal punishment, but the irreversible eradicating of all that you are body and soul?  If you had the choice to live eternally with God and with the souls of all who love God, or having even your soul absolutely and forever eliminated,  which would you choose?

Francis Schaeffer, in his book, No Little People, described the judgement of God as a great prairie fire.  He wrote:
A Christian has only one foundation:  Jesus Christ the Savior.  And on that foundation he builds—with either combustible or non-combustible material.  One day there will be a great judgment and the fire will come.  It will be like the great prairie fire which sweeps along burning everything in its path.  Suddenly it comes to a great rock outcropping in the midst of the prairie.  Everything around the rock will be consumed.  Only that which is atop the rock will escape the fire.

That’s what you have been saved from.  Not eternal punishment.  But total and final incineration of your very soul.  Why does that happen?  How do people come to that end?

In the opening scene of the movie, La Doce Vita, there is a panoramic view of Rome’s skyline.  The focus is on the grand dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the center.  Then there is the sound of a helicopter, heard off in a distance, until we catch a glimpse of it, far off, dragging some obscure object through the air by wires.

As the helicopter flies closer, you can clearly make out the cargo.  It is a huge statue of Christ being dragged across the skyline of Rome.   In the middle of the helicopter's flight, the film cuts to a beach below.  Young beach goers, annoyed by the intrusion of the helicopter noise, laugh mockingly, pointing, as the statue flies overhead.  The helicopter comes to a stop, hovers in place, then releases the statue into a trash dump-site below, breaking into pieces as it hits.

The message is loud and clear:  Modern people have relegated Christ to the trash heap.  People act as if Christ really doesn’t matter.  In the early days of Christianity, the believers were hunted down and killed in all kinds of heinous ways.  The threat of the world was a clear and present danger.  But today, we as believers have no such external threat.  The world doesn’t see us as a danger anymore.  The world only sees Christians and our Christian beliefs as something that can be ignored, or laughed at as antiquated and irrelevant.   It is against this grim scenery that the drama of God’s salvation is played out.

That is how a person reaches the point of having their soul erased by God.  If you want to live as if Christ doesn’t matter, or as if Christ is some antiquated figure who has nothing to say to our modern sensibilities, or if you want to live as if Christ has nothing to say to you about how you will live your life, to all that God says, “Fine, have it your way.”

Remember when Jesus said,  “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26)  Notice Jesus doesn’t say if you want to gain the world and ignore Jesus in the process, your soul isn’t eternally tortured.  It is forfeited.  It is given up.  It is erased.

People say, “How can a loving God condemn someone’s soul to eternal punishment?”  Well, God doesn’t.  God just grants people their wishes.  If you want to live as if God doesn’t exist, and not believe in the Savior Jesus, then fine.  You won’t be subject to the evil whims of a devil.  You will simply reap what you have sown in this life—the total eradication of your soul.

That’s what you’ve been saved from.  Let me say again what the meaning of the word “save” is in the Greek:  saved from serious peril, to be kept alive, to have your inner being preserved.  It isn’t hard to make the connection about what you have been saved from.  Is it not serious peril to face having your very soul erased?  Doesn’t being kept alive mean more than just your body, but that your soul also has a life and it can be wiped away?  And what is your inner being but your soul, and to preserve your soul for eternity, rather than it being quashed at the end of life, is something you should desire?  And the only way to do that, as Paul has said here, “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”


There is one more piece to this statement by Paul that he goes on to explain in detail.  It’s a part of being saved, that is just as important as what we are saved from.  It is what we are saved for.  It’s not enough for God that we be saved from the peril of losing our soul.  God wants to benefit us, if we accept his salvation from annihilation, so that our life now may be full.

Here’s what we’re saved for:  to be put right with God (vs. 10); so that we won’t be disappointed (vs. 11)—interesting that the word literally means that we won’t be put to shame—that God saves us for a release from shame and a way to live into a sense of self-esteem and inner strength; that we will be richly blessed (vs. 12); and, that so we will be attended to by God whenever we call out to him (v. 13).

Whenever I talk to people who are going through some grief experience I try to help give them a sense of their resources to deal with that grief.  Is not this list of what we are saved for a great trove of resources that God has given us?  That no matter what, when we are saved, we are right with God; that we will not suffer ultimate shame and disappointment no matter how tough the situation; that we will be richly blessed no matter what we feel has been taken from us; and that God promises to always be there when we call out to him.

What we are saved from and what we are saved for is truly a cause for exultant worship and praise of God.

The British Parliament abolished slavery in the West Indies on August 1, 1836.  But the decree was not to be valid until the next year.  On July 1, 1837, twenty thousand slaves united in Jamaica.  At 11:00 at night, all of them dressed in white robes, they knelt down, faces turned upward at the clock tower, awaiting midnight.  As the clock struck twelve, the twenty thousand slaves rose together and shouted joyously, “We are free!  We are free!”  They knew exactly what they were freed from.  And they were just gaining a sense of what they were freed for.

Can we not also, at the moment we have confessed with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believed in our heart that God raised him from the dead, can we not also raise our hands in joy and shout, “We are saved!  We are saved!”