The Dance of Love

"The Dance of Love"
Proverbs 19:13; 21:9, 19; 27:15

OK; the drip, drip, drip of a nagging wife.  Ever hear a sermon about nagging wives?  That's not what I'm going to preach about.  Rest easy, all wives present.  There are also many traits of the opposite sex, we men, and if you are a husband, that are probably just as irritating.

I just got through reading a book that we used for our book group that I'm in with my daughter and her husband.  The title of the book was, Men:  Explain It To Me.  It's about a trait that we men evidently have, called "mansplaining."  It's how we men/husbands talk down to our wives/women as if they don't know anything, and need us overly intelligent men to explain everything to them, just because they're women.

So, if it's the drip, drip, drip nagging, or the arrogance of mansplaining, there's enough on both sides of the marriage relationship to erode marital bliss.

What is strange to me about the Proverbs that have been read is that they were written by King Solomon, one of King David's sons.  Solomon was supposed to be one of the wisest people who has ever lived.  But 1 Kings 11 lets us know that Solomon married 700 women.  Of course, some of those were marriages of convenience in order to keep the peace with some neighboring tribe or nation.  But still, what did he expect having that many wives?  One is certainly enough for most men.

But on top of that, Solomon also had 300 concubines.  A concubine was basically a kept woman, who had less status than a wife.  Solomon, as the story in 1 Kings 11 eludes, had poor impulse control.  Every pretty woman he saw, he grabbed for himself.  He just couldn't stop himself.

Then he complained about nagging wives in the Proverbs, and how awful that was for him.  Well, "hello!"  Don't have so many wives!  Women, can you imagine having 1000 men around you all the time explaining stuff to you that you don't need explained—how annoying that would be.  Whether husband or wife, why get yourself into that mess by having so many spouses!?  For all his wisdom, Solomon evidently was not very wise about relationship stuff.

Or was he?  As a counterpoint to these "drip, drip, drip" proverbs, Solomon was also the author of another book in the Old Testament, "Song of Songs" or "Song of Solomon."  In Proverbs, he writes about nagging wives.  In Song of Songs he writes one of the most beautiful love songs between a groom and a bride.

I wonder if Solomon wrote this love song, and then used it 700 times on 700 different women to woo them as wives.  Then they all get together in the back room of the harem, and have a conversation.  "Wait a minute; he said what!?  That's the same song he sang to me!"  Then all the other 699 women would chime in saying, "That's what he sang to me, too!"  And it's no wonder he wrote the Proverbs about drip, drip, drip nagging.  It's would have been his own darn fault!

Sooo, what I want to talk about this morning is neither nagging or mansplaining.  What I want to do is transition from the Proverbs to their opposite in the Song of Songs.  I want to talk about what love looks like between a man and a woman.


It all started at the beginning, in the Garden of Eden.  At first the man is alone.  God sees something is not quite right with Adam.  The man is alone.  We are all alone, essentially.  Individual entities with a unique mixture of body, mind and soul.  We are all alone, but it is how we handle that aloneness that matters—that makes us who we are.

God watched Adam for a long time.  There was something not quite right, God was thinking.  Adam is mopey.  He is withdrawn.  He is not quite as connected to his surroundings as God thought he should be.  Finally, God realized Adam was reacting to being alone by being lonely.

So God changed the situation, thinking he was making things better for Adam.  God made a woman.  But a whole new can of worms would be opened, that I wonder if God anticipated.  I always assume God knows what God is doing, and exactly what might come of each action God takes.

When Adam woke up from his rib removing surgery, opening his eyes to find a naked woman standing there, he is inspired to break out into poetry:
At last!
Bone of my bones
Flesh of my flesh!
A woman!

Or, loosely translated:  "Va va va voom!"  Or, "Hubba hubba hubba."  Whichever you choose.

Both the  man and woman fly at each other in a fit of mutual attraction and wonder.  But despite their innocent love, they would quickly find out that getting along in an ongoing relationship would be much more difficult than they imagined.  Certainly the man and woman loved being in each other's arms.  But fully understanding each other was going to be another matter all together.

I can't remember if I told the story about the man who was so pleasing to God that God came to him and said, "You are a great guy.  I am really proud of the way you have turned out.  I want to make one of your dreams come true.  Ask me anything, and I will do it for you!"

The guy stood there a minute, a bit overwhelmed, but finally said, "You know, I'd love a bridge between California and Hawaii.  I love going to Hawaii, but it is so expensive to fly there all the time.  If there was a long bridge, I could just drive there."

God looked at the guy and said, "You have got to be kidding!  That would be a bridge across the Pacific Ocean, stretching for hundreds of miles.  That would be nearly impossible.  Can you not think of another dream you would like fulfilled?"

The guy thought for another minute, then said, "Well, I would really like to understand women.  I would like to know exactly how they think and why.  I want to know what makes them tick, and how to read their emotions exactly.  I would really like to fully know how to figure out women, inside and out."

Then God paused for a long minute and finally said, "Would you like that bridge with two lanes or four?"

I wonder, if by creating a woman, God was creating someone even God would have a hard time figuring out.  God created us men as fairly simple creatures.  Not much mystery there.  In the movement from creating man to creating woman, God was going in the direction from the simple to the complex, the banal to the sublime, the animal to the aesthetic, the blank canvas to a piece of art.  And somehow those two would have to come together in a relationship.  All of a sudden the man and woman would be asking new questions, like, "What is love?"  And, "How do I love this other?"

That is what the Song of Songs is all about.  It is a love song.  There are three parts in this love song:  one sung by the husband, one sung by the wife, and the third sung by a choir who are are watching this love relationship unfold.

The Song of Songs is realistic about love.  It recognizes that love can take you to the top of the world, and it can sink you into the valley of sadness and a deeper loneliness than that which comes from being alone.  This love poem knows that sometimes a relationship is like a woman's drippy nagging or man's condescending blah blah blah.

I'm just going to hit some highlights in the Song of Songs, hopefully letting them sink in as you think about your love relationship.

In the first chapter, the bride sings, "…the very mention of your name is like spreading perfume."  Love and intimacy has to do with personal names.  There is nothing abstract or casual about love.  Instead, it is personal and familiar.  Love with a person who has a name is the corrective to how love, in our day, has become nothing but hook ups and pornographic and lusting, where there are no names.  True romantic, and loving intimacy does not treat a person like a thing, but a person with a name, and all that name signifies.

And then comes a string of compliments sung back and forth between the man and woman.  It isn't cutting remarks like dripping faucets and denigrating mansplaining.  In the Song of Songs, both the man and woman are intent on building each other up.  Like true artists and poets, they see the beauty that lies within each other, and they celebrate, out loud, what they see.  How much stronger relationships are when lovers look at each other with the artist or poet's eyes, and paint complements on each other rather than smudging each other up with the degrading and demeaning.

In the next movement of the Song of Songs the man sings about the seasons of love:

Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.  (2:10-13)


Winter is used by poets to describe the time of self-reflection and evaluation.  It is during the winter of the soul when a person (or a couple) searches for their identity and meaning in life.  Or for a new identity and meaning.

Spring is used by the poets to describe the challenge of finally seeing everything differently.  It is the challenge of following the Spirit.  It is the time of testing the truth of what you have come to see during your Winter searching.  Spring is the time to approve or reject the new that is around you.

Summer is described by the poets as the invitation to live in love and companionship.  To feel love's warmth on your face and soul.

And Autumn is described as the time to come face-to-face with big life decisions.  It is the time of maturity when you decide to choose love and commit yourself to live life in that love.

These are all the seasons of love that are described here in the Song of Songs.  The images of the seasons speak poetically about how love and intimacy are not easily achieved, and don't just automatically come to us.  That is one of the fallacies in our modern thinking about love, that we just fall into it, and it is so easy after that.

Instead, the Song of Songs realistically, through the imagery of the seasons, lets us know that love comes with a lot of reflection, searching, and testing.  There are times when intimate love, and the one you love seem distant, distracted, aloof, and detached emotionally.  Love becomes hard work in constantly defining and redefining what love is at each new season.

The final point I want to make about intimate love in the Song of Songs is in the first seven verses of the 4th chapter.  This part of the song is considered the wedding song.  Part of the wedding ritual in that culture was that the bride danced before those assembled at the wedding feast.  The groom, in turn, sang her beauty.  The various movements of the dance made the entire body of the bride an expression of adoration, joy, and enthusiasm before her groom.

It is interesting also, that dance to the ancient Hebrew people was a form of prayer.  It was getting caught up in the expression of worship, making the whole body a prayer message of adoration to the glory of God.

In the song sung by the man to his dancing bride, look beyond the descriptions of her body parts to the feelings they invoke:  awe, reverence, desire, gratitude.  These are the kinds of feelings that fuel a deep and meaningful human love between a man and a woman.

But they also describe well the feelings and sensations evoked in prayer.  Both prayer and intimate love have to do with feelings that are evoked by another.  Prayer is the language spoken by us when we are captivated by the beauty, passion, and power of God.

Love is dance, a dance not only of intimate romance, but of true relationship.  So, dance.  I encourage you to move beyond any snippy comments that denigrate each other, and dance, and sing your love for each other.

Ambulance, Firefighter Or Fence?

"Ambulance, Firefighter, Or Fence?"
Matthew 9:35-38

The story of the missionary, Irene Webster Smith, is told in her biography titled, Sensei, by Russell Hitt.  She was a Quaker missionary to Japan for 50 years.  She first went to Japan in 1915 from her native Ireland with an organization called the "Japan Evangelistic Band."  Her first assignment was to serve in the Tokyo Rescue Home.  The Home sought to save prostitutes from their entrapment in the government-licensed brothels.

In this early experience, Sensei (as Irene came to be known to the Japanese) learned how these young girls, unwanted by their parents (mainly because of the male child-oriented culture) were sold into a life of perversion and trained from their earliest years to know no other experience.

Those days in the Tokyo Rescue Home were discouraging to Sensei.  The girls, no matter how they seemed to repent of their past, would so often revert to the sex trade life on the streets as soon as they regained their health.  In the midst of that frustrating work, a thought came to Sensei.  Her thought, written in her journal, was this:  "It would be better to put a fence at the top of the precipice than have an ambulance at the bottom."

With that thought, a vision was born—a vision of a home for the unwanted girls when they were still at a young age.  It would be a home where little girls, once destined for brothels and disease could be brought up in happiness, and experience joyful, Christian living.  For many years, Sensei turned to the work of keeping young girls from falling over this particular cliff in life.

When we ponder our own acts of Christian compassion, we must ask ourselves what God would have us do.  Pick up the pieces in people's lives after calamity has struck?  Run a spiritual ambulance service?  Or should we be like spiritual firefighters, holding on to a life net and calling people to jump from the "burning buildings" their lives have become?  Or, like Sensei, should we be fence builders on the jagged cliffs of life, keeping people from falling in the first place?  In other words, provide a practice of preventative spiritual medicine?  All three are valid and all three are needed when people are hurting.


As Jesus went from village to village, teaching and proclaiming the Good News, healing people of every imaginable disease and illness, witnessing their distressed and downcast lives, his compassion was inflamed by a frustration that the fence building ministry was not being provided by anyone of his day.

The reason he saw so much hurt and misery was because nothing was being provided up front to keep the people from falling into such a state of hopelessness.  Jesus saw himself providing a spiritual ambulance service for the walking wounded—indeed, the nearly perishing—and wondered out loud where the people were who were supposed to be watching over the flock.  It was so frustrating for Jesus to see that the people's wounds, and their lostness and their disease wouldn't have progressed to such an alarming state.

"Alarming state" doesn't even begin to describe what Jesus witnessed in the people.  As he looked upon them, Jesus described the people as "distressed" and "downcast."

Let's get the full impact of what Jesus was saying here.  Elsewhere in the Bible, the word "distressed" is used to describe people in three different states.  First, the word is used to describe a person who had been literally flayed and mangled to death in some tragic way.  (pic). Jesus looked around him and saw spiritually tragic and emotionally damaged people.  Walking corpses.  Life had dealt them a blow, seemingly beyond recovery.

Or, maybe it was a slower process, as John Killinger wrote about in one of his books, titled, Christ In The Seasons Of Ministry."  (pic). In that book Killinger described being distressed as, "life in the piranha bowl."  It's where people, or situations, or life in general, always seems to be taking little pieces of you.  A little bite here and a little bite there.  Pretty soon we feel like nothing is left except a red stain in the water.

A second way this word, "distressed," is used in the Bible is when it describes someone who is plundered by predatorily evil people.  (pic). It describes the state of the man who was jumped and robbed and beaten in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus looked around at those to whom he preached and ministered and saw a people who had been attacked by the worst the world has to offer.  That they had been robbed of something precious in their lives—maybe even of life itself.

A third way this word is used is to describe someone who is wearied by a journey which seems to know no end.  In a previous church, I was counseling a young couple.  Life had been hard on this couple, not long married.  The wife mentioned she had seen a copy of the book, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do."  It had been almost a year since she finished reading that book, and she was still waiting for the "tough times" to end.

Jesus, looking at and listening to people, describes them as those who have been wearied by their circumstances in life.  Jesus is sensitively and intuitively hearing their wondering if it's ever going to end.

All of these three uses of the term "distressed" help us get a clearer picture of Jesus' description of what he saw etched on the faces and lives of people.

But that's not all.  Jesus used another word as he looked upon the people during his journeys.  He described them as "downcast."  (pic). Again, there is more to this word than meets the eye.  It is a word that is used to describe the person who has literally been thrown down to the ground, stepped on, and laid out flat, usually with mortal wounds.

Just last year, at least eight people were killed and 28 were injured in a stampede over food aid, held by a church group in Zambia's capital, Lusaka.  Imagine people so hungry that they caused injury and death running over each other for food.  Not even knowing—or did they—that they were trampling others bodies.

Even when taken figuratively, as Jesus intended, it is still a powerful word and image that portrays a person under the weight of an utterly destructive force, unable to even stand up or protect themselves.

By using these two words—distressed and downcast—Jesus' imagery paints the picture of a people being neglected by those who could help.  Those two words portray people as being tormented and almost totally exhausted by life—even to the point of death.  As Jesus looked out over the throngs of faces, he lifted his eyes toward heaven, praying to the Father God, "Where are the people who will give of themselves to these hurting others?  How can others not see, and let these distressed and downcast go for so long?"



In reaction to the great need, Christians and Christian organizations have reacted in one of three ways.  The first is the ambulance.  That style of ministry to the distressed and downcast has been to pick people out of the gutter when they've already been run over by life and/or their choices.

Mother Teresa, now a Saint in the Catholic Church, ran a whole ministry to the distressed not only in Calcutta, India, but around the world.  Much of her ministry—the Sisters of Charity ministry—was basically of the ambulance kind.  (pic).

In her book, No Greater Love, Mother Teresa wrote:

In twenty-five years, we have picked up more than thirty-six thousand people from the streets and more than eighteen thousand have died a most beautiful death.  When we pick them up from the street we give them a plate of rice.  In no time we revive them.  A few nights ago we picked up four people.  One was in a most terrible condition, covered with wounds, full of maggots.  I told the sisters that I would take care of her while they attended to the other three.  I really did all that my love could do for her.  I put her in bed and then she took hold of my hand.  She had such a beautiful smile on her face and she said only, "Thank you."  Then she died.  There was a greatness of love.  She was hungry for love, and she received love before she died.  She spoke only two words, but her understanding love was expressed in those two words.

That's the ambulance form of Christian compassion.  It's waiting at the bottom of the cliffs, because one way or another people will go over the edge, turning their hurt into the tragic.

(pic). The firefighter form of Christian compassion, is also a waiting at the bottom of the cliffs.  But with a safety net—something to catch those who go over the edge.  Not letting them hit the rocks below, so you can only read them their last rites.

Remember in my opening illustration, about Irene Webster Smith, how she tried the firefighter approach.  She caught so many young women who were throwing themselves out of the burning building of peddling themselves for sex.  The only problem, as she found out, was that once the girls and young women got cleaned up, and healed of any STD's, back they'd go into the burning building.  Only to repeat the cycle of having to hurl themselves out the window again, be caught again, cleaned up again, going back again.   It's frustrating for those who are called to the compassionate Christian role of firefighter.

The fence building form of Christian compassion is probably the hardest of all.  It is so because it's an ongoing commitment of preventing people from ever needing the ambulance or the firefighter.  If need be, you can take a break from being the ambulance or firefighter.  But like Irene Smith, once you start taking in baby girls, you are in it for the long haul.

All three forms of Christian compassion are vital and necessary.  They take special gifts, so you have to assess where you would fit in best.  As Jesus looked around at the crowds that day, he was asking, "Where are my ambulances?  Where are my firefighters?  Where are my fence builders?

We need to be ready with an answer as to which of those roles we can fulfill the best.

We are not going to see the kinds of distressed and downcast people like a Mother Teresa would see.  But you walk by people every day who are suffering with loneliness, depression, and grief.  You ask them how they're doing and they reply, "Fine."  You may be one of those people yourself.  Deep down, you, or they, might just be yearning that someone would notice them.

Jesus does.  Jesus notices all the hurting people.  But wouldn't it be great to be one of those who notice like Jesus does.  To be able to approach someone and say, "Jesus notices you're not doing well right now.  And I notice, too."  Then, do something.  Like Mother Teresa said, people are hungry for love.  Be ready to pick them up off the rocks below the cliffs, to catch them jumping out of the building of their burning lives, to build the protection around people that would keep them from needing an ambulance or safety net in the first place.

Before And After

"Before And After"
1 Corinthians 12:12

If our television shows are any indication, we are currently enamored with pictures of before and after.  There have been shows like 10 Years Younger, What Not To Wear, and The Biggest Loser that show us what our bodies and our selves can look like before and after a makeover.  There have been shows like Extreme Home Makeover, Trading Spaces, and Flip That House, that demonstrate what your home and landscape can look like before and after.

We evidently like to see those kinds of sensational transformations unfold before our eyes.  “It’s amazing what people can do,” we think to ourselves.  “It’s mind-boggling the kinds of changes people make to their bodies, their looks, their homes,” we continue in our thoughts.  And then comes the wall in a word:  “But, I don’t think I could do that.”  It’s that little word, “but,” that makes all the difference when we try to imagine those same kinds of changes being made in our lives.  We enjoy watching it happen to others, and we kind of live our lives, imaginatively, through what we are watching; but, we never make the personal jump and imagine it happening to us.  Could a before-and-after transformation really happen, in any shape or form, in our lives?  We have all kinds of reasons and excuses why it would never happen to us, don’t we?

I always have a question, though, when I watched shows like that.  The people on those shows, who have had a before and after transformation, all say, “This has changed my life.”  But that’s my question.  Has it really changed their lives?  Has putting on new and different clothes, has losing 100 pounds, has a new hair style, or a skin peel, or even getting a new home, totally and substantively changed the people from one kind of person to a new kind of person?  Has dealing with a person’s exterior done anything to the kind of person they are?  Has it changed their character?  Has it changed their personality?  Has it changed their sense of self?  I don’t know those kinds of answers.  Those shows never dealt with those kinds of questions.

That would be some kind of show to watch, wouldn’t it?  Extreme Personality Makeover.  Or maybe a show title like Major Life Overhaul.  That would be something to see.  Is that kind of internal change of self possible?  If it was, would you do it?

In his letter to the Corinthian Christians, Paul says that just such a life overhaul is possible.  This kind of life change isn’t done by some “glam squad” on a TV show.  It isn’t done by a contractor who builds new houses.  For Paul, and the whole New Testament for that matter, this kind of 180 degree change of the self can only be effected by the Holy Spirit.  In one verse here in chapter 12, Paul gives us one of those before-and-after pictures that is not only intriguing and amazing, it is doable for anyone.  Let me read that verse once again, and then I’ll break it down into this amazing before-and-after transformation:


By means of his one Spirit
we all said goodbye to our
partial
and
piecemeal lives.
We each used to
independently
call our own shots;
BUT
then we entered into a
large
and
integrated life
in which
the Holy Spirit has the final say
in everything.

Did you notice there’s a “but” right in the middle of that verse?  I’m going to deal with that but at the end of the message.  That but is the major change word in this verse.  So let’s hold on to the but, and deal with it at the end.

What I want you to notice is that there are three parts of a person’s character on each side of the but in this verse.  On one side of the but is the before picture.  On the other side of the but there is the after picture.

Paul says on the before side, our living looks partial, piecemeal, and we are calling our own shots.  On the after side, our living looks larger, integrated, and the Holy Spirit has the final say.  Notice how each of the three characteristics on each side correspond to each other:  partial living vs. living large; piecemeal living vs. living integrated; calling your own shots vs. the Holy Spirit having the final say in everything.  Let’s look at those two very different kinds of living in detail.

First, partial living vs. living large.  Partial living creates a feeling in us that we are incomplete.  Nothing feels whole.  Another way of putting it would be, living small, or living a small life.  When I was in seminary, my New Testament professor defined heresy as, “making a part the whole.”  So, living small, would be like living a heresy.  It would be coming at life, zeroing in on only a small part of it, and then falsely making the assumption that this small part of life is really the whole of what can be grasped.  It’s like taking only a small part of the life of God, and living out of that smallness, while at the same time missing out on so much more.  Living small, or living partial, means becoming too easily and too quickly satisfied with so little of what is available to make a great life.

I think there are times when God uses that feeling we have that something is missing, that we are incomplete, that we just aren’t whole, to give us a hunger to look for that which will change our partial into wholeness.  In that search, God hopes we will find Him.

As I was thinking about how people live small, partial lives, I came up with the image of a supermarket.  Let’s imagine there’s a supermarket called, “The Holy Spirit’s Life Store.”  Rows and rows, shelf upon shelf of life.  But instead of getting a shopping cart when we enter, or one of those huge pallet carts like at COSTCO, we get a little hand basket.  We wander up and down the aisles for hours and put 2 or 3 little things in our hand basket, go to the register to check out, get our items bagged, get out our wallet to pay, and are told by the Holy Spirit (who is the cashier), “No charge!  It’s all free!”  And we think to ourselves as we walk out with our little bag, “Wow! I could have gotten a lot more.”

Or it would be like running into that same life store, looking at all the things on the shelves and saying to ourselves, “I can’t possibly afford anything like this,” and walking out with nothing, not realizing it was all free.

And it’s not just stuff in the Holy Spirit’s Life Store.  There are aisles filled with values.  There are shelves of characteristics.  There are displays of outlooks.  There are cases of new dreams.  Tables loaded with attitudes.  There are baskets full of fresh insights.  There are packages of emotions.  Cartons of ideas.  There are fresh-baked and tantalizing prospects.  Racks of new angles.  Piles of opportunities.

At different stages of our lives we need different things.  We would shop differently at the Life Store as we age.  Pieces we were missing that made us feel small and partial when we were younger, or at mid-life are different.  Old age creates even different needs, and we shop a different part of the Life Store then.  Pieces we didn’t even think or worry about at one stage become vital at another.

Don’t we get so tired of a life lived only partially?  We have talked and walked ourselves into that kind of living, though.   Paul says the Holy Spirit wants to talk us out of it.  The after picture of the Holy Spirit is a shopping spree in God’s Life Store, opening our eyes not only to the ways we have chosen to live small, but the after picture of a large life offered freely to us, with so many more choices than we could have imagined.

Living large, as the Holy Spirit wants us to, means understanding and seeing the extent of all that God is, all that God has to offer in terms of relationship and life.  It’s going into The Holy Spirit’s Life Store and using God’s “But” card.  It’s saying to ourselves, “I used to spend myself buying into this kind of life, BUT, I can make a change and get this instead.  I can live much larger; I can live a life that is whole and full.  And I can afford it.

The second before and after picture has to do with living piecemeal vs. living integrated.  Living piecemeal means that you are living your life in pieces.  Each part is segmented, and is kept apart from all the others.  It’s not allowing any overlap or interchange between all the segments of your life.

You have a part of you that contains your marriage, another part that contains your job, another part that contains your church life, another part that has to do with your relationship with God (because that can be entirely different than your church life), a part that holds your social life, a segment for yourself as a parent or grandparent, a segment for education, and on and on.  Each compartment is totally separate.  When you are in a certain compartment, you may have a totally separate mode of being.  It’s like we have created a different personage and way of being for each segment, so that we only know how to act a certain way when we’re in that compartment of our lives.

I did a personality profile with young couples at a retreat.  I had the couples take the profile twice: once for how they saw themselves, and again for how they saw their spouse.  Then we compared how they saw themselves with how their spouse saw them.  One couple was baffled because he saw himself one way, but she saw him the exact opposite.  The more we talked we finally realized he took the test as he saw himself at work; she described him as she saw him at home and with the family.  He had compartmentalized his life and had developed two very different ways of being in those two separate compartments.

The after picture, with the Holy Spirit’s help, is to live an integrated life.  Living in the Holy Spirit’s after picture means recognizing that organizing ourselves into compartments is just a control game.  It not only keeps us in individual compartments, but it is also our attempt at controlling and keeping everyone else in their place.  It is our unintegrated way of keeping others in our control, only allowing them in certain segments of our life.  We assume that we are in control of those compartments, especially as that means who gets to move in and out of them.

The major problem with living piecemeal and unintegrated lives, trying to have that kind of control is that we quickly assume we can do the same with God.  We can keep God in our “church” compartment, or in our “spiritual life” compartment, and not allow God into other areas of our lives, like work, family, marriage, etc.

What the Holy Spirit does for us, in creating an integrated life, which is the after picture, is to kick the walls down of our compartments and fragmented lives.  The Holy Spirit wishes us to integrate all the compartments of our lives, so that they all inform each other, all intersect with each other in some way, all interact with each other.  Most importantly, by living an integrated life, we are taking control away from ourselves and allowing God to roam freely and speak openly to all parts of our lives.  Isn’t it interesting that the word integrated and the word integrity come from the same word.  To live an integrated, non-segmented life is to live a life of integrity where nothing is hidden, and nothing goes uninformed by God, and everything is one whole.

The final piece of the before-and-after picture really ties the first two together:  living  independently, calling your own shots vs. living with God’s Spirit having the final say in all things.  When we look at the way the church at Corinth was, we see how this part of the before and after picture is played out.

The people of Corinth generally had a reputation in the ancient world as an unruly, hard-drinking, sexually promiscuous bunch of people.  They brought these characteristics right into the church.  The Corinthian converts simply took their “calling their own shots” kind of lives into the church and spiritualized it, rather than allowing their faith to help them rise above their lifestyles.

For example, in the church at Corinth there was a man who was sleeping with his mother.  Sounds like a segment for a Jerry Springer show.  Pot luck suppers became food orgies at which the poor were left out.  Spiritual gifts were only used as ways to decide who was cool and who wasn’t, who was in and who was out.  The rich snubbed the poor, the charismatics snubbed the traditionalists; each faction said it was the best:  one faction followed Paul, another faction followed Apollos (because he really knew how to preach), and yet another faction of purists said they were the best because they only followed Jesus.

It was a mess, and it was all brought about because people wanted to call their own shots.  Paul was in Corinth a year and a half, trying to hold that church together, and I think one of the happiest days of his life was when he finally walked out of town.  The problem with living a life in which you think you get to call your own shots is that it ends up making all of life factional and schismatic.  It destroys all your relationships, it destroys the church, and everyone ends up getting hurt in the end.

The “after” part of this picture is living in which God’s Spirit has the control.  It is living a life that allows the Spirit of God to have the final say in our lives.  Whenever schisms happen between two people or two groups of people, neither party wants to feel like they’ve given up or lost control and power.  Control and power is all about living to and for the self.  It sets up a win-lose situation.

So, in order for something new to happen, it’s not a matter of one side giving in to the other.  It’s more a matter of both sides giving up, and giving in to that which is bigger than both of them; which is, God’s Spirit.  It’s not a matter of one side having their self-inflated say over the other side.  It’s more about both giving up their say, and giving that say over to God.  The after picture is a picture of losing in order to ultimately win.  It’s a matter of giving into God, so that we can then give in to each other, and create an entirely different kind of relationship.

Conclusion
The question we need to ask ourselves, as we look at this before-and-after picture that Paul has drawn for us, is the same question I ask myself when I watch those before and after shows:  Can the Spirit of God fundamentally change who a person is?  Can you really become a different person?  Is a 180 degree life switch possible?

And, is this possible not just for individuals, but for a congregation as well?  Can a church move from living out of a small, partial vision of itself, to living large?  Can a congregation move from living a piecemeal, fragmented existence, to a whole and integrated kind of ministry?  Can a church move from calling it’s own shots, to letting God’s Spirit have the lead and take control?  Can a congregation move from a before picture to an after picture, and thus becoming founded upon and working out of a Godly sense of integrity?

I firmly believe that the answer to all these questions is a big, YES!  That’s what the but is all about in the middle of this verse.  The word but signals to us that something new can, will, and is about to happen.  That we lived one way, but an exception is being made so that we can live an entirely different way.  The word but is a word of grace that erases what is past, so that we can live into a new vision of self and church.  Paul says we can all say “goodbye” to that before picture, and looking into the mirror of the Holy Spirit, catch a glimpse of the after picture and say, “Wow!  What a difference!”

Living Like Jesus Prayed

"Living Like Jesus Prayed"
John 17:1-11

In John's gospel, this prayer in the 17th chapter, is the last prayer Jesus makes.  In the other gospels, Jesus prays his last prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  No one knows what Jesus said entirely in that garden prayer—the disciples kept falling asleep.

But in the gospel of John, there is no account of the Garden of Gethsemane prayer.  Just this long one in chapter 17.  The last thing Jesus said to his disciples was actually a prayer to God.  But it was a prayer heard by all the disciples, and it was a significant enough prayer to them that they wrote it down.

In this prayer, Jesus talked to God about five basic ways he hoped the disciples would carry on in the task they would have when Jesus left them.  These five themes make up a great short list for we believers in living out our witness.

I

The first theme Jesus prays for is that the Son (that is, himself) be glorified.  When Jesus asked that he be glorified, he was asking to be more than honored.  Honoring someone is a lot less than being glorified.

Being glorified meant that the invisible identity of God's divine splendor, power and radiance would be made visible in Jesus.  Before the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the glory of God was not plainly visible in Jesus.  If it was, he wouldn't have been rejected and crucified.  Jesus knew that his time had come.  With his death and Resurrection, everyone would see unmistakably who Jesus was.

Whitworth College, where I attended, had a library.  At least I think it did.  Let's just say if you were given frequent flyer miles for the amount of time spent there, I wouldn't have earned any free trips or even an upgrade.

The only thing I really remember about Whitworth's library was a picture.  It took up the better part of a wall once you got inside the front door.  It didn't look like a normal painting.  It was black and white, and what it looked like was a huge conglomeration of Guernsey dairy cattle markings and shapes.  I ignored it most of the time, because I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to it.  I had no idea why the mural was there.  I asked the librarian about it one time and she would only say, "Keep looking at it; you'll see."

Then one day I saw it.  I wasn't even in the library.  I was outside on the sidewalk talking with some friends.  I happened to glance through the glass doors, see the shapes, and it all suddenly was clear.  It was the face of Christ.  I didn't know why I didn't see it before.  There he was, all the time, and I couldn't even see it—see him.

That, in a way, is what Christ prayed for, asking to be glorified.  He wanted people to see him, once and for all, for who he really was—the divine Son of God.  People had spent at least three years looking and looking at him and not seeing.  Now it was time that they saw his true glory.

In a Time magazine article from several years back, the cover article was the question, "Who Was Jesus?"  What caught my eye about that title was the past tense, as if Jesus was someone but isn't anymore.

In the article, four possible answers were given to that headline question.  Jesus was either an "itinerant sage," a "hellenistic cynic," an "apocalyptic prophet," or, an "inspired rabbi."  Notice what was left out of that list.  None of the answers included the "glorified Son of God," the one with the visible identity and radiance of God himself.

If we are going to live like Jesus prayed, then first and foremost, we must recognize Jesus for who he really is—present tense.  If we don't get this point of his prayer right, all the other themes of his prayer go mute.  What Jesus wants in the first place is that we would all see the unmistakable divine connection between himself and God.

II

The second theme Jesus prays for is that each of his followers would receive eternal life.  Jesus knew that there was a question that every person asks in their heart of hearts.  It is a question that has probably been put there by God himself—a question that draws us all towards him.

It is the question that the great Presbyterian preacher of the early 1900's, Clarence Macartney, illustrated as he was on a walking tour of Norway.  It was a bright July day.  He sat at the top of a low hill overlooking a village which was but a cluster of cottages.  Most of the people of the village were gathered outside the door of one of those cottages.

Then a group of men came out of the house carrying a crude coffin.  It was laid on the flatbed of a low wagon, and the procession started for the road.  Down the steep hill rumbled the wagon, followed by the company of mourners.  At the foot of the hill, they took a road which led them through fields of sweet new-mown hay.  After a pause at the gate of the churchyard, they came to the doorway of the gleaming white-steepled church.

The coffin was carried into the church, and in the space of a half hour they came out again into the clear sunlight and gathered around the freshly, hand-dug grave.  For a little time there was a holy quieting that brooded over the fields of hay and the silver fjord beyond.  Then the company broke up and went their several ways.

As the people came slowly up the hill again, Macartney said the question on his own mind, and must have been in the minds of those faithful folk, formed itself into a poem that he wrote in his journal as he sat there:

One question, more than all others,

From thoughtful minds implores reply,

It is, as breathed from star and pall,

What fate awaits us when we die?

Jesus, in his final prayer wanted to answer that question for all disciples and all time.  Eternal life awaits those who have known and believed in Jesus as the Son of God.

III

Thirdly, Jesus prayed that he had finished the work God had given him to do.  What a great feeling it must have been to look back over his short life and saw his life's purpose accomplished.  Henry Ford once said, "You can't build your reputation on what you're going to do."  Jesus' reputation had been built solidly on knowing what God's purpose for him was, and then setting out with a single-mindedness to accomplish that purpose.

Gian-Carlo Menotti, the composer of the musical, "Amahl and the Night Visitors," once said,

Hell begins on that day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts we wasted, of all that we might have done but did not do.

What Jesus prayed, and therefore what our task becomes in order to live fully, is to know clearly what it is that God has for us, and what his purpose for our lives is, and then accomplish that.  It is in bringing our purpose to completion that gives us that great feeling of accomplishment when our life on earth is over.

In baseball, victory is determined not by hits but by runs.  The player who gets to third base and no further doesn't get credit for three-quarters of a run.  And so, with Jesus, one of the last things he said on the Cross was, "It is finished (or accomplished)."  Jesus didn't say, "I almost got it done."

IV

The fourth theme Jesus prays is that he had made God's name known to those God had given him.  Notice what Jesus said there.  He didn't say he had made God's name known to the whole world.  He had only made God's name known to the people whom God had led his way.

Count Zinzendorf was part of a Lutheran splinter group called the Moravians, back in the early 1700's.  The Moravians were known for their zeal for missions, and spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Count Zinzendorf once told a group of mission volunteers who were being commissioned,

You are not to aim at the conversion of whole nations.  You must simply look for seekers after truth who, like the Ethiopian eunuch (in Acts chapter 8), seem ready to welcome the gospel.

Thus, the Moravian missionaries didn't go out with exaggerated or unrealistic expectations.  They simply and forcefully shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with those individuals and small groups God gave them.

That's what Jesus prayed and is how we are to live.  We aren't expected to transform the whole world for Christ.  But we are responsible for those God has given us.

V

And lastly, Jesus prayed, as he was leaving this world, for those who would remain in the world.  Jesus was going to be with the heavenly Father God.  But his disciples and followers would be left behind in a world that crucified him.  Jesus knew it was going to be tough living in such a world.  The reality is, the world is a hostile place for those of us who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

The Bible's message seems to be this message.  From the Garden of Eden when the deceitful serpent appeared, to Moses negotiating with Pharaoh, to Abraham and Lot dealing with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the prophets preaching against the secularization and the compromising of religion, to the Crucifixion of Jesus, all the way to the final overthrow of evil in the book of Revelation, the one theme is this world has become so corrupt that it is an extremely difficult place for those faithful to God.

Jesus knew his followers would need special protection from God if they were to go on without him.  So that is what he prayed for.  If Jesus prayed for it, you know he got what he prayed for.  Thus, we are to live as Jesus prayed—which means we are to live in this hostile world knowing we are under the protection of God Almighty. Knowing that, we can be bold and courageous in our discipleship.  As it says in the book of Hebrews, "So we can take courage and say, 'The Lord is my helper, I will not fear; what can man do to me?'" (Hebrews 13:6).

So these are the five themes Jesus prayed for in his final prayer before his death:  glorify the Son, Jesus Christ; live life now with the joy of knowing you have eternal life; finish the work God has given you to do; make God's name known to those whom God has brought into your life; and, live as a fearless disciple, under God's ever watchful protection.

Playing To A Tough Crowd

"Playing To A Tough Crowd"
Acts 17:16-34

During my first year of college, there were a lot of experiences that blew me away.  I suppose it happens to most first year college students.  I went to a community college in the Seattle area and played basketball my first year.  Most of the players were using some kind of drug recreationally, which made practices unbelievable.  Some of the players were playing other games with the cheerleaders on road trips, and that was sickening, since a couple of the girls ended up pregnant.  Two of the players robbed a taxi cab driver right in front of their apartment, which was undeniably stupid.  And on and on.

But one of the things I didn't expect, that first year of college, was to have my Christian faith attacked in the classroom.  One of the classes was Introduction to Philosophy.  The class was taught by a guy who was a Hindu, and he hated Christianity in general, and Christians in particular.  He wasn't Middle Eastern.  He didn't wear a turban.  He was just this short, dark-haired, scruffily bearded guy, who was intense almost to the point of hyper-activity.

His Christianity bashing started early in the quarter.  I remember sitting there thinking, "How can this guy get away with all this crap, attacking my faith—the faith that I one day hoped to be a minister of?"  So I'd go home, and instead of studying like I should, I'd study the Bible, getting ready to do battle.  I would come to class the next time ready to make my counter-points.

What I found out was, he didn't care much about the Bible either.  "Don't come at me with all that Bible stuff," he'd say mockingly.  "It's full of inconsistencies and contradictions.  You have this vengeful God in the Old Testament who wants everybody dead.  But in the New Testament there's a guy who says he's God who is all about peace and love.  Are there two Gods?  Which is it?"  Then I'd go back home, read my Bible and commentaries, and figure out what I had to say to that guy.

Every point I tried to make, he would challenge.  When we began talking about evil in the class, and I brought up the devil, he said something like, "If you Christians believe in a devil, then you don't believe in one God.  You've set up two Gods—one evil and one good.  So is Christianity monotheistic (that is, having only one God) or dualistic (having two Gods)?"  Back home I'd go, studying more in my Bible, trying to come up with an answer that would make some inroad with that instructor.

I never did read very much of my philosophy text book, which is what I should have been reading to get a better grade than I got out of the class.  I understood all the content of what we were learning, but man that guy irritated me.  I was totally outmatched.  He seemed to have an answer for everything, and I would be sent home packing.

I went on to a Presbyterian Christian college after that—much like where David is going up at Hastings.  I wanted to learn how to think and how to reason like that guy did.  I didn't like being on the defensive all the time.  I learned a lot about philosophy at the Christian college, because I was a philosophy major.  But you know what?  I grew more in my faith, sitting in that one philosophy class at a community college, taught by a Hindu instructor.

It was probably the closest I have come to Paul's experience in Athens.  Although I'm sure Paul didn't feel outmatched like I did.  Paul knew what to say, and wasn't timid about saying it.  They didn't try to rebut Paul; they just laughed at him.

Philosophers are a tough crowd to play to.  Paul's crowd was made up of Epicureans and Stoics.  In the Epicurean's way of thinking, everything happens by chance.  No one is in control, especially any gods.  There are gods, according to this philosophy, but they are off in the heavens and don't care what happens in our world.  So the best thing a person can do is get the most pleasure you can out of life, since when you die, that's it.  Eat, drink, and fool around, for tomorrow you may be dead.

The Stoics, on the other hand, believed that everything was God and that God was in everything.  Humans were the playthings of fate; and fate was the same as the will of God.  Everything was the will of God, both good and evil.  Therefore, the main task of being human was to accept fate without emotions or feelings.  Then you will be at peace.  Don't let what happens to you control your emotions.  Don't feel.  Don't react.  Just accept.  Go with the flow.

There's a lot from these two ancient philosophies that is still alive in our American culture.  Old philosophies don't die; they just keep getting reincarnated in a new time with slightly different twists.

Some people may not have or hold to a religion.  They may not have any spiritual beliefs.  But I think everyone has some kind of philosophy about life.  They have an approach to life.  They have a way of dealing with the questions that every thinking person asks themselves:  Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is life?  What's the best way to live my life?  A lot of us find the answers to these questions within the context of our religious and spiritual beliefs.  Without religion, a person is left to find answers in philosophy.

When Paul walked in to Athens he saw monuments that had been built to every God or philosophy by which people thought they had found answers to their life questions.  From Apollo to Zeus, they were all there.  There was even an empty monument, just in case they had ignorantly left one out.  If someone came into Athens and said, "Hey, you forgot a monument," the Athenians would say, "No we didn't; it's over there in the 'etc.' area."

Once Paul had been in Athens for a while, gawking at everything like the tourist he was, the more upset he became.  You might say that Paul felt a lot of bad juju in Athens.  There were two main reasons Paul was upset.

The first reason was because of all the monuments and altars that had been built to every known god and philosophy.  By outward appearances, the people of Athens were very religious.  What else would explain all the monuments?  But there is a point where you have so much religion, you actually have no religion at all.  It all blends into nothingness.

The other problem, which is one of our problems in modern culture is political correctness.  What Paul ran into in Athens was an early version of political correctness.  We don't want to offend anybody about what they choose to believe or not believe, so we make room for everyone's beliefs, right or wrong.  Whatever you want to believe is fine.  Just let us know and we'll make sure to build a shrine to it—even if it's a religion you just made up.  It's hard to talk to a crowd where the religion is not the main thing, but political correctness about religion is actually the main religion.

But in Paul's mind, as he began discussing with the people, believing in everything, or making allowances for every kind of belief actually means believing in nothing.  When Paul started his speech to the philosophers, he said, "I see that in every way you Athenians are very religious."  The old King James Version of the Bible uses, instead of the word religious, the word, superstitious.  That catches the tone of Paul's opening statement, because he's not complimenting the Athenians—he's being sarcastic.  A lot of the time, being religious and being superstitious are the same thing.

Being superstitious means attempting to cover all the bases just in case.  But the more you try to adopt, the more diluted any of those beliefs become.  What Paul tried to get across to the philosophers of Athens was that true religion, true belief, concentrates itself on that which it believes in.  For Christians, we focus on our faith in Christ as Lord and Savior to the exclusion of all else.  It is that focus and concentration that empowers us with the knowledge of who we truly are, and what our purpose is.

You can try to have a cafeteria religiosity, like the Athenians were trying to do. (Or what American culture is trying to do.) You can go down the line with your tray in hand, take a scoop of pleasure from the Epicureans, have a slab of intellectual stimulation with a side of truth, and then get a wedge of chocolate covered fate for dessert.  But all you end up with is a stomach ache.  You reach for the pepto to deal with the consequences of your cafeteria approach to religion.

Or, as Paul preached, you can go to the Jesus Christ Cafe and get a balanced, very particular meal, excluding all the stuff you don't need, and walk out satisfied.

The other thing that made Paul mad, as he walked around Athens, was that no one seemed to be challenging the believe-in-everything spirituality.  There was a small synagogue of Jewish believers there, and there were some Gentile converts there.  After Paul had seen enough, he went right to the synagogue and "held discussions."

I'm sure part of the discussion had to do with Jesus Christ and believing in him as God's Lord and Messiah.  But I get the idea that Paul was discussing with them about why they weren't out there trying to set the Athenian people right.  Why weren't they out there trying to confront the hokey philosophies of the day, and the cafeteria approach to religion?  If they believed in the one, true God, why weren't they out there proclaiming the message?

Paul's first tough crowd was not the Athenians.  It was the believers.  I can imagine their answers—can't you?  "That's just the way things are—you have to accept it."  Or, "How can we be expected to change a society's whole way of being?  That's too big of a thing to ask."  Or, "We're just a few.  How can you expect this handful of people to have any impact."  Or, "We're doing the best we can just trying to protect ourselves from all that stuff out there.  We just don't have any energy left to confront and take the offensive."  Sounds like what Christians say today.  That was a tough crowd of believers Paul had to talk to.

The great preacher and evangelist, Charles Spurgeon, was once asked, "Do you believe that those who have never heard the gospel are really saved?"  In response, Spurgeon said, "Do you believe those who have heard the gospel and never shared it are really saved?"  What Spurgeon did was to focus the responsibility where it really lies: not on the person who hasn't heard, but on the believer who refuses to share what he or she has come to believe about Jesus Christ.

So Paul went out of the synagogue and modeled for the believers what they should have been doing all along—without excuses or fear, he took the Message to the marketplace.  In the end he mostly got laughed at.  It was his second toughest crowd of the day, after having talked to the believers.

Some have said, because Paul was only able to gain a couple of converts, that this was his least "successful" preaching stop.  But that all depends on how you define success.  Paul mostly defined success by whether he was faithful to his calling, faithful in sharing what he believed—not in the numbers he may have brought to Christ.

That is the only way to measure success when you are playing to tough crowds:  was I faithful to what Jesus has asked me to do?

Chosen

"Chosen"
1 Peter 2:9-10

Most of us have sad stories about not being chosen.  Remember those days in elementary school?  During recess a group of us would line up against the wall so that teams could be chosen for dodge ball.  The same two boys always ended up being the captains.  They were the ones who did the choosing.  I don’t know how it was that they were always the captains.  I don’t remember anyone choosing them to be captains.  I think they chose themselves.  The rest of us evidently allowed them to do that, because no one ever complained or put themselves forward as a captain.

I was always chosen near the end or at the end.  You know, with the rest of the kids that were hurriedly divided up as the extras that were either not cool enough, or good enough to even be chosen.  We were just separated like cattle.  Bodies to be cast to one side or the other.

There certainly are times when we are chosen, and we know in our heart of hearts that there was nothing we did that affected that choosing.  Some call it destiny, or fate, or chance.  I prefer to think of it as something that God is up to behind the scenes.  For God’s own reasons, God chooses, and lives are forever changed.  God selects someone out of a group of others, like David chosen out of all the rest of his older brothers, and that choosing creates ripple effects usually not just in their life, but in a lot of lives surrounding the chosen one.

In the Old Testament, the Jews defined themselves as God’s chosen people.  Chosen for a special destiny.  Chosen for a special mission.  Chosen to be a witness to the nations.  In the musical, “Fiddler On The Roof,” the old town Rabbi says, “We know, O God, we are your chosen people; but isn’t it time you chose someone else.”

God eventually did choose some others, or at least expanded His circle of who was chosen.  Through Jesus Christ, from New Testament times on, God includes the church as part of those who are the chosen.  Let’s find out what that means, according to Peter.

You’ll notice Peter addresses his letter to Christians who are “...exiles, scattered to the four winds.”  They weren’t scattered because they decided to move to a new town.  They were scattered because people who followed Jesus, who were chosen to be the church, were being searched out and killed in gruesome ways by Jewish religious officials and partly by the Roman government.

The Christians reading Peter’s letter might be thinking along the lines of the "Fiddler on the Roof" Rabbi’s prayer to God, “... it’s maybe time you chose some other people.”  If life is getting really awful and scary, you might be reassessing what it means to be chosen, to be and remain faithful.  You might be wondering what kind of “night-and-day” difference God has really affected in your life.

Have you been chosen to go from nothing to something, only to be torched in Nero’s gardens?  Have you been chosen to go from rejected to accepted, only to become lion fodder in the arena?  Have you been chosen to be priestly, only to become a human sacrifice, not on an altar, but on the torture table of some Roman sadist with a saw?

So, being chosen by God doesn’t spare you from the chaos and craziness in the world.  Fortunately we don’t live with those same kinds of circumstances that Peter’s letter-readers had to live with.  We get to come here to worship, and not worry that the police are going to bust down the door and haul us all away to do unspeakably awful things to our bodies.  Even if we did, it wouldn’t change the fact that we’ve been given an identity by God as people He has chosen.  What’s important is that we’ve been given an identity and we must be a people who are constantly living into that identity, as God’s chosen people.

As we examine that identity, let’s ask some simple questions that Peter answers in this single sentence of his letter.  The first question is, Who’s chosen?  “You” are, Peter writes.  But not you, individually.  This isn’t about you, personally.  It’s about you, plural.  All of you.

I met a guy in seminary from Georgia, who became one of my close friends while we were there.  He came up to me one day and said, “What y’all doin’?”  I was by myself so I looked around me to see who “all” he was talking to.  I thought a bunch of people must have snuck up behind me.  Or, maybe he thought I had developed multiple personalities.  But it was just me, so I discovered, in the south, “y’all” is singular.  If you wanted to address a group of people it was, “All, y’all.”  That’s what Peter was saying in his letter (if he lived in the south):  “You, all y’all, are the ones chosen by God.”

We all got chosen by God in one fell swoop.  We’re all in this together.  This isn’t about individuals.  It’s about us.  It’s about making a stronger, more profound impact on God’s team as “all y’all” rather than just a bunch of individual “y’alls.”

Which leads us to another question Peter tries to answer, “What have we been chosen by God for?”  It’s clear that for Peter being chosen doesn’t have anything to do with getting status or notoriety.   When I was a kid, and we were all up against the wall at recess, like I explained earlier, there was usually one of the captains who was cooler than the other.  Like Ken Montgomery.  Just being chosen by him was the best.  It elevated everyone’s status just because we were on his team, and he chose us.

But that’s not what’s going on when we get chosen by God.  It doesn’t mean we are cooler or better than anyone else.  It doesn’t mean that our status is suddenly elevated, that our stock as a human being just went through the roof.  To be chosen by God, as Peter describes it means being chosen for responsibility.  Being chosen doesn’t mean we get to sit back and do nothing; thinking that being chosen was all it was about.  And just because the world may be chaotic and scary, and we may be in survival mode, doesn’t mean we get to run and hide.  We have to, as the chosen ones, live out of our new identities as the chosen, right in the middle of life.

For Peter, that new identity is best described as the “high calling of priestly work.”  All y’all have been chosen to be priests.  Isn’t that a kick?  Now does that mean that you have to wear those black shirts with the uncomfortable tight white collars, and say words in Latin that no one understands?  Does that mean that you have to all of a sudden become celibate and give up your marriages?  Thankfully, a big NO to all of that.

But Peter describes what it means to be chosen for priestly work in the rest of the sentence.  First it means to be chosen to be a holy people.  The word “holy” literally means something or someone who has been set apart for a special purpose.  So to be chosen for priestly work means that each of you is to help everyone else to see how each of you is special.  As a congregation you are to do the work of understanding how God has set all of you apart, in a together kind of way, for a special purpose.  God has chosen this congregation, and set them in this community, for a special purpose.  Do we have an understanding of what that is?  Do we know what that purpose might be?  That’s why we worship and study and pray and fellowship together, not just for our own fun, but to discern how God has set all y’all aside for a special purpose in this place.  And I think, because we have done so much worship, study and prayer together, is the reason we have been able to create such a clear "vivid vision" for the next three years.

Next Peter says that the high calling of priestly work is to tell others about the night-and-day difference God has made in your life.  Individually, and as a congregation, the expectation is that you don’t get to ever stay the same.  We are, all of us, moving from something to something else.  You aren’t the same person you were 5 years ago.  Nor, hopefully, are we the same congregation we were 5 years ago.  We have made some changes ourselves, or changes have been thrust upon us.

The great thing with God is that these changes are of an upward nature; they are positive rather than negative, in God’s way of doing things.  The movement of change as Peter describes it is from “nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.”  These kinds of changes are going on continually in our lives, which means that God is continually active in those changes in our lives.  So, it is our priestly work to tell each other, to tell others the nature of those movements in our lives.  They encourage all of us as we are willing to share what’s different in our life, and how God has helped shape those differences.

In my mind, this kind of story-telling has to be done with a lot of grace-full listening.  The changes and identity shaping circumstances may have been a result of stupid things we did, or bad choices, or hurtful actions by others.  Like I said, just because we are chosen doesn’t mean that we stop being human beings and start acting like angels.  Or that life magically gets easier.  
Life together means giving each other a lot of grace, helping each other find the forgiveness, acceptance and embrace that we need to go on.  And then tell each other those stories of how that happened, for our mutual encouragement.  If God really makes a difference in our individual lives and in our life together, that’s where the story has to begin and be told.

Peter calls being chosen by God a “high calling.”  I’ve talked to so many people who feel like their lives aren’t counting for much of anything; that they aren’t participating in anything that they would describe as a high calling.  They feel they don’t have purpose.  They don’t feel like they are doing anything that has the conviction of God behind it.  They don’t feel like they are in the grip of doing anything that resembles some profound motivation.  I hear the same from congregations as well, as I moderate different Sessions around our presbytery, lately.

How much of what all y’all does flows out of this kind of motivation?  Isn’t that something that we all desire, either as individual believers or as a congregation?  We want to do something that gives us the sense of being God-connected.  We want to know that we are doing something worthwhile in a meaningful sense.  That what we are doing is somehow making a difference and having a worthy impact.

This kind of identity can only come through doing the priestly work Peter has described that God has chosen all y’all for.  Only in our identity as chosen by God will we find that sense of calling and satisfaction that we may have lost along the way.  It means being a part of a community that knows it is chosen to courageously share the subtle and profound movements in their life together, and help God and help each other make it come out right, make it a positive shift rather than negative.  That’s meaningful and priestly work.

It also means keeping a sense of holiness about what all y’all are doing.  That we, together, have been set aside by God, chosen by God, for a special purpose.  We can only find that out together.  We can only celebrate that together.  We can only keep at that kind of holiness together.  That’s who we are.  That’s who God chose us to be and to do.

Voice Lessons

"Voice Lessons"
John 10:1-6

I think it's fascinating how different each of our voices are.  I don't have much self awareness about how my own voice sounds.  I don't like listening to my self.  From time-to-time I listen to one of my sermons, but I start shuddering listening to my self talk, and eventually turn it off before I'm done.  A lot of people feel the same way about listening to their own voice.

But if one of you called me on the phone, even though my iPhone tells me who's calling, if I didn't have that feature on my phone, I almost always know who it is after you'd say hello.  Just by hearing your voice.  That's what I find fascinating.  That the human voice is not robotic, making us all sound the same.  There must be millions and millions of variations in each human voice box that makes us all sound distinct.

As we have been finding out in Men's Bible Study, as we have been working our way through the book of Proverbs, it's not just our voice that matters.  It's how we use our voice, and what we say with it.  We've been paying attention to that continual theme in Proverbs that the thing that gets us most into trouble is what we do with our mouths—what we say.


Jesus develops this theme about our voices and how we use them in the parable of the sheep and the shepherd.


Our story is bracketed by two bookends—two sentences:  verse 1 and verse 6.  Verse 1 is a statement that Jesus makes:  “Let me set this before you as plainly as I can."  And then verse 6 is the result of Jesus' plain speaking:  "Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking about."  Even in those times that Jesus tried to make things as simple as he could, still no one got it.  That is, for Jesus it wasn't just a matter of people understanding his parable.  It was the next step of believing in him that he was most concerned about.

Part of what may be at issue here is the people's expectations and assumptions about what Jesus talks about and how he should say it.  Those expectations were probably along the lines that Jesus should talk about religious stuff, and he should use religious sounding language.

Let's look quickly at the parable of the sheep hearing and recognizing the shepherd's voice.  Does Jesus mention God?  (Nope.)  Does Jesus use words like saved, salvation, repentance, justification, heaven, holy, etc. etc.?  (Nope.)  Did Jesus use religious-speak, verbiage that only seminary professors would understand?  In-language?  (Nope?)  Our problem is that we use that kind of in-speak, religious verbiage, with people outside the faith or on the borderlands of Christian beliefs, and we expect them to know and understand exactly what we're saying.  People expected Jesus to talk like that, because a Rabbi, a religious teacher, is supposed to talk like that.  But Jesus didn't.  So, if you don't hear the kinds of words you expect (religious verbiage), then you have to listen differently.

In Men's Bible Study, some times the version of the Bible that's read from uses a lot of words that you'd expect to find in the Bible.  But we don't talk like that, so some proverbs are hard to understand.  Joel uses the Bible Version called Today's English Version, put out by the American Bible Society.  When we hit a hard proverb and are having trouble understanding it, we turn to Joel and ask, "What does yours say, Joel?"  He reads it and we all go, "Of course; that makes more sense."

My guess is, that Jesus assumed if he talked to people in parables, they'd understand it better—easier.  Not using a lot of big words, Jesus was making the people listen differently.  Jesus was giving people a lot more responsibility, in that listening, to put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4.  He was giving the people the chance to make their own connections in what he was saying.

I'm going to do the same thing this morning.  Jesus, in his simple story, is talking about sheep and shepherds.  I don't know much about that.  But mainly what Jesus is talking about with the sheep and shepherds is voice.  So, I'm going to say a few things about voice.  I'm not going to use any religious language.  I'm going to be true to what Jesus was saying, and how he said it.  And I'm going to give you the responsibility to make the connections.  I will stop, after each time, and ask you one question:  "What connections are you making as you are listening?"

Ready?  Here we go.

Voice Lesson #1
Babies as young as 4 1/2 months old are already learning to recognize their name, especially from a familiar voice.  It's a recognition of a particular pattern and tone of sound.  When you think about it, babies in the womb can't see others, but they are certainly picking up on voices—especially on those who are becoming more and more familiar.

Also, it's been discovered that singing lullabies to infants and children helps strengthen emotional ties with the parents who sing those lullabies.  Parents use different tone of voice when singing to their children versus just singing.

An experiment was done, where parents sang a lullaby to their child.  Then, they sang the same lullaby to a random group of people.  What was discovered was that when singing to their children, there's an expressiveness of tone that can't be faked.  Parents use a different voice when singing to their children.  Babies, it's been found, associate tone of voice and familiarity of voice with their own level of security and caring.

Now, I've just been talking to you about some very religious stuff.  Did you get it?  So here's my question:  What "religious" connections did you make as you listened to what I said?


Voice Lesson #2
After graduating from law school, a friend was having trouble finding a job.  Potential employers she interviewed with commented that her voice lacked "credibility."  She had excellent qualifications and professional experience.  She had passed all the bar exams.  But she was told her voice would irritate others, instead of inspire confidence in what she was saying.

According to research, about 40% of what we communicate comes across from your voice.  Your tone of voice.  The pitch of your voice.  The volume you use when you speak.  The way you inflect or modulate your voice when you talk.

A recent Gallup poll of what annoys people about others voices included:
mumbling
talking too softly
yelling (like the old Oxyclean commercials with Billy Mays)
monotone
"mmm"; "like"; "ya' know", etc.
talking too fast
high pitch
accent or regional dialect (like calling customer service and getting some guy in Sri Lanka)

All of these things don't have anything to do with the content of what you are saying, but how you say it—your voice.  When you are talking on the phone with someone you've never met, within 30 seconds into the conversation, you have formed a mental image of that person:
—what you think they look like
—how smart, or stupid, they are
—what their personality is like
—if they are attractive or not

Memorability of a person often has more to do with "voice image" rather than "physical image."  How you use your voice is a major key in your effectiveness and identity.

Now, again, I've just been talking about some very religious stuff.  Did you get it?  Thus, our question:  What connections are you making with what Jesus said and what I just said?


Voice Lesson #3
The areas of your brain that govern listening, and how we interpret what we hear is closely tied to our brain's emotional systems.  Of the five senses, only smell has more attachments to those emotive parts of our brain that govern emotion.  When you are using your voice, you are speaking out of, what's called, your "emotional core."  Also, whenever you listen to someone else's voice, their voice is generating emotions and feelings and gut level reactions in your emotional core.  Why do you think so much marriage and family counseling has to do with communication?

Your voice is one of the prime determiners, not only about what kind of relationship you have, but if you have any relationship at all with another person.

So voice and the voice-brain-emotions connection determines our relationships with each other.  If we're trying to determine if we have real connection with someone, we are probably paying attention to voice most of all.

Now, you guessed it.  This third and final voice lesson is actually very religious.  Did you understand it?  What connections are you making with what Jesus said and this final voice lesson?

For Jesus, the voice is all about making connections with others.  Not everyone.  There were sheep in the pen, when the shepherd spoke, that didn't recognize the voice and stayed in the pen.  But your voice, and how you use it, is primary in starting, keeping, and maintaining a flock of relationships.  It's the voice that gives the sheep their identity, and holds them together in those relationships.