Monday, September 29, 2014

If You're A Christian And You Know It...

"If You're A Christian And You Know It..."
Philippians 2:1-4

(Note to readers:  I didn't have time to give this message this past Sunday--September 28--so I'm posting it anyway for those who would like to read it.)


One of the issues that Paul faced with the church in Philippi was that enthusiasm for Christ had waned.  When a number of the people had first become Christians, they were excited about the faith.  They were energized by their relationship with Christ.  Being a member of the emerging church was fun and fulfilling.  They felt like they were going some where, and giving their lives to something significant.

But then, time or circumstance, dulled the edge of joy.  "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."  (Leon Bloy)  But the believers didn't hold on to that sign.  Others weren't seeing the presence of God through the joy of the believers.

The Risen Christ said the same thing to the church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation:  "  But you walked away from your first love--why?...Turn back!  Recover your dear early love.  No time to waste..." (Revelation 2:4-5).  It happens in all our relationships over time.  Things become passé.  Joy and enthusiasm slowly morph into taking things for granted.

Napoleon once said, "Men of imagination rule the world."  But the same thing could be said of people with enthusiasm.  Without enthusiasm no relationship is sustained, no ministry is built, no trips to Belize are made, no empires founded, no faith shared.  The people of victory are those who keep the fires burning on the altar of enthusiasm when other flames have sunk into cold, gray ashes of despair or indifference.

Anyone know what the word enthusiasm really means?  It comes from a combination of three Greek words.  The first is en, which means in.  The second is theos, which means God.  And the third is ousia, which means you.  En Theos Ousia.  Enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm literally means, "God in you."  If you are enthusiastic, you have God in you.  Enthusiasm isn't something you create within yourself.  It isn't something you do by getting a bunch of cheerleaders together to try and build your enthusiasm.  If enthusiasm were up to you, it would rise and fall like a tide.  But enthusiasm has to do with God in you, and how much you allow God in your life.

Some years ago an American ocean liner was wrecked off the shores of the Scilly Islands, at the southwestern tip of Great Britain.  The sea was calm.  The weather clear.  But the ship was caught in an unseen but powerful current that slowly pushed it off course.

The same thing happens if we're trying to create enthusiasm ourselves.  We are at the mercy of different powerful currents like indifference, boredom, fear, faithlessness, lack of moral and spiritual resistance.  Without God-in-you, those currents will push you way off course, and true enthusiasm will escape you.

Gandhi once said, "There is more to life than increasing its speed.  Without the right sense of direction, how quickly we arrive does not matter."  Our enthusiasm, the fact of God-in-you is that which provides the right direction and the right speed with which to get there.

That's what Paul is trying to get across in this letter to the Philippians.  They have forgotten what they have gained from Christ and their life in Christ: that sure and certain enthusiasm that can direct and redirect your life.

I think that's what true evangelism is.  It is taking the responsibility as Christians for each other to remind each other of what Christ means to us.  The great Presbyterian preacher, Clarence Macartney told of a trip he took to Russia in 1912.  While he was there, visiting many households, he saw that in each place he went there was in the corner of every room, on the wall facing east, there hung an icon (a little painting or mosaic) of Christ.  Everywhere Macartney went, to visit the Russian people in their homes, or in places of business, they were reminded of Christ.

That's evangelism, not just toward unbelievers, but also believers who need the importance of keeping Christ and the Christian life clearly and always before our eyes.  That we need to remain, always, enthusiastic.  That we are connected to that which is much deeper than ourselves.

Chuck Swindoll, in his book, Strong Family, tells the story about a man who was looking at a large estate one day with a friend.  "Oh, if I was able to have this estate, I would be really happy."
"And then?" asked the friend.
"Well, then I'd knock down the old house and build a mansion, have lots of friends around me, get married, have several fine cars, and stable some of the finest horses."
"And then?" the friend asked again.
"Then I would hunt and travel and keep house and enjoy life gloriously."
"And then?" came the question again.
"Why, then, I suppose like other people, I would grow old and enjoy other matters in my old age."
"And then?"
"And then I'd probably die."
"And then?"
"Why do you keep asking me that incessant, 'And then'?  I'm sick of it and have no time for any more of it."
Years later the friend heard from the man who was once looking at the estate.  "God bless you.  I owe my happiness to you," the man said.
"How?" asked the friend.
"By two words asked at the right time:  "And then?"

Enthusiasm that is attempted to be self created doesn't end up being enthusiasm, because it isn't motivated by our deep connection with God.  The work of the evangelist is to ask the "And then?" questions that help us remember our God connectedness.

Mother Teresa wrote, in her book, No Greater Love,
What we need is to love without growing tired.  How does a lamp burn?  Through the continuous input of small drops of oil.  What are these drops of oil in our lamps?  They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting.  Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves.  He is not out there; He is in you.  Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize Him.  (page 22)

Then, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, "What we love we shall grow to resemble."  To be enthusiastic is to connect with God who is in you.  But to not only connect; also to love, to love God who is in you, to not let that love fade, so that we then become more and more to resemble God in us.  To be, in a word, enthusiastic.



Monday, September 22, 2014

What Is Life?

"What Is Life?"
Philippians 1:20-26


What is life?  It's one of those age-old philosophical questions, along with, "What is truth?", or "What is beauty?"   The philosophers wanted to know not only the answer to this question to figure out who they were, but also, "How can I prove I exist?"  Our perceptions can fool us, the philosophers taught.  What if we are only a person someone is dreaming about, and as long as that person keeps dreaming, we will continue to exist?  But once they wake up, we will disappear.   Those are the kinds of things the ancient philosophers thought about.

How do we define what it means to be alive?  There are all kinds of answers to that question.  For example, part of what it means to be alive is the time you are alive.  From the time you were conceived to the time you die, that's what life is.  Life is partly your biological time--that space of time between conception and death.

But is that it?  Just time.  Philip James Bailey has written a poem that says no to that question.
We live in deeds, not years;
in thoughts and breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
He most lives
Who thinks most,
feels the noblest,
acts the best.

Maybe life is what you accumulate.  Even though this is certainly part of the answer to, "What is life?", it must not be too important of an answer to the question.  Of all the funerals I've given, I've never had a family ask me to list, at the funeral, all the stuff the person owned.  And I've never seen a hearse pulling a u-haul trailer.

Or, maybe life isn't all the stuff one accumulates, but the pursuit of accumulation of stuff.  Life is what we do to get all the stuff we have when we die, that is now useless to us.  After we die, our kids will have a sale, getting rid of our accumulated stuff, so that somebody else can own it and put it with all their stuff.  Or, our kids will back in a dumpster and throw it all away, wondering why we accumulated all that stuff.

Maybe life is our occupation, our job, our hobbies, our work.   Life is what we do from 8 to 5.  Life is the thing we do to earn our keep, to get money.  The sad part about this is that if life is our work, and, as statistics tell us, a majority of people don't like their jobs, then what a waste of life.

Some say that life is the development of all our relationships.  At funerals, if I read an obituary of some kind, I will list those who preceded the person in death, and those who have survived the person's death.  They are the family relationships that the person has created.  It doesn't mean those were good relationships--but they were relationships nonetheless.  Is the definition of life our relationships, the people we know, the people we have taken the time to interact with, the people we were sociable with?

And some will tell you that life is what you make of yourself.  Life is the person you become through all the choices you make about who you are.  Life is about people-making.  If you go to the library or bookstore, or browse the Amazon Kindle books and look in the self-help sections, there are so many such books.  The reason there are so many self-help books is because people are constantly trying to figure out who the are, or figure out how they can be somebody else.

Rabbi Zoisa was talking with a group of his followers--young Rabbi wannabes.  One of them asked Zoisa what he was most afraid of about dying.  Zoisa said to the little huddle of young men, "When I stand before the Almighty, the one question I'm afraid of most is not, 'Why weren't you Moses?' or 'Why weren't you Elijah?'  No, the more fearful question the Almighty would ask me is, 'Why weren't you Zoisa!?'"  That's the question some say life is all about--why weren't you, you?  Who are you, exactly?  Life is about finding the answers to those questions.  Hopefully you'll find out before you die.

These are just a few answers that people may give to the question, "What is life?"  There are so many more answers to that question.  Most are inadequate.  The question is a huge one, and most of us are content with small answers.

One day, the great artist Michelangelo came into the studio of the equally great artist Raphael.  He looked at one of Raphael's drawings.  Then Michelangelo took a piece of chalk and wrote across the drawing, "amplius," which means, "greater" or "larger."  He felt Raphael's drawing was too cramped and narrow--too small.

In a similar way, God may be looking upon your life, and knowing what is possible in you, what you are capable of, God writes over your lives, "amplius."  Greater!  Larger!  More!

For Paul, this greater, this larger, this more has only to do with Christ.  "For what is life?" he writes.  His answer to his own question:  "To me, it is Christ."  But what does that mean--that life is Christ?  Paul explains himself fairly thoroughly with some well placed phrases.

First he says that life is Christ, so "...that I shall never fail my duty..."  The old Russian army had a tradition that when a sentinel had been posted, he could be relieved or withdrawn from duty only by the officer who posted him, or by the Czar himself.

During WWI there was a story about a Russian soldier who was posted as a sentinel in a dangerous war zone.  The officer who posted this soldier was killed in battle.  The sentry refused to leave his post until an order came from the Czar himself.

That's the kind of dedication Paul is talking about in never failing his duty when Christ is his life.  Paul knew he had been placed in duty by Christ himself.  He came under fire a lot, as we discovered in our Men's Bible Study about the life of Paul.  Sadly, he came under fire not only by those who were opposed to Christ, but also by other leaders in the church who were never too sure about Paul.  But Christ was so much of Paul's life, that there was no way he was going to give up his position.  Not until Christ himself relieved Paul.

Secondly, Paul says that Christ is life, and because of that, "I shall be full of courage,” he wrote.  In the book, Alice In Wonderland, Alice meets up with a lobster.  Of the lobster, she says:
When the sands are all dry, he is happy as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the shark;
But when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.

In our study of Paul, we almost lost count of how many times he had been beaten, or stoned, or caused a riot for preaching Christ.  How many times he was whipped, or thrown in jail, or shipwrecked, all for proclaiming that Christ was his life.  It made us wonder what we faced that takes that kind of courage, simply because for us, Christ is life.

Thirdly, Paul wrote that Christ was his life in order "...to add to your progress."  Because Christ is his life, Paul is able to help and mentor other Christians at Philippi so they could make progress in their lives.

The word, "progress" in the Greek language Paul wrote from, literally means to blaze a trail where there is no trail.  So it means a lot more than just making progress.  It means cutting a path through life.  It means to always be going forward and never backward.  Life lessons may be learned by looking backward, but life itself is always lived forward.

Of all the forms of travel, all of them can go in reverse except one.  Railroads, cars, busses, bicycles can all go backwards.  The only one that can't is an airplane.  It can only travel by going onward and upward.  We've talked a lot lately, in terms of our church’s mission and ministry, that people like to be on a bus that's going someplace.  Maybe we should use an airplane instead of a bus.  Paul is making sure the people he is mentoring are on a plane going somewhere--going forward.  Because the problem is, if you try to fly backwards in a plane, or refuse to go forward once you're up in the air, you're going down.  To make Christ your life means making progress, blazing a trail, always going forward and never coming to a stop.

And the next thing Paul says in describing what it means to have Christ as his life means being a leader that other believers are proud of.  I heard about a minister who was officiating at the funeral of a war veteran.  The dead man's military friends wanted to have a part in the service at the funeral chapel.  The Pastor led them down to the flag draped casket.  They stood at attention for a solemn moment of remembrance, then marched out through a side door.  Except the side door opened into a storage closet.  In full view of the rest of the mourners, the small military procession had to beat a confused and disorderly retreat.

It's important, as leaders--especially in the church--to know where you are going in your faith, and where the church should be going.  The church has been infamous for being led by misguided leaders straight into a dead end closet.

I remember a Farside cartoon that showed a bloodhound leading a posse through the woods.  The men had guns and all of their faces were anxiously pointing at the bloodhound who was out in the lead.  But the dog was thinking to himself, "I can't smell a darned thing."  If the leader doesn't know where he or she is going, everyone else is going in the same misguided direction.  The only way to avoid that, says Paul, is to make sure your life is Christ.

And the last, and maybe surprising description to Paul's statement, "Life is Christ," is dying in Christ.  "I want very much to leave this life and be with Christ," he wrote.  What that statement tells me is that if his life were to end the day he wrote the letter to the Philippian Christians, he would have died fulfilled.  His life was well spent.

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote,
As for me, the hour has come for me to be sacrificed; the time is here for me to leave this life.  I have done my best in the race, I have run the full distance, I have kept the faith.  And now the prize of victory is waiting for me, the crown of righteousness which The Lord, the righteous Judge will give me on that Day...  (2 Timothy 4:6-8a)
In trying to figure out an answer to the question, "What is life?" I like how Paul answered.  Instead of just saying there has to be a spiritual dimension to your answer to this question, as if your spirituality is just a small piece of the pie, Paul said, "No, it's ALL Christ."  Christ isn't just a part of what life is.  Christ is the whole of what life is.  Unless you get that right, none of it will make sense, and nothing will be fulfilling in life, nor will life really have a great sense of purpose to it.

Life is Christ.

Monday, September 15, 2014

The Three Relationships (part 3)

“The Three Relationships”  (part 3)
Romans 12:9-21


This is the final of this three part series about the different kinds of relationships we have as we make our way in this life.  Paul describes three different relationships in this part of his letter to the Romans.  He interweaves them together, so we have to do a bit of untangling as we look at each of the relationships individually.

The first relationship I looked at is with your self.  Whether you like it or not, you have to have a relationship with yourself.  For many people, especially if you tend towards schizophrenia, relationship with your self can be problematic.  One guy said, “I couldn't live with myself if I had schizophrenia.”  Or maybe you’ve heard the little ditty:
Roses are red
Violets are blue;
I’m schizophrenic
And so am I.

It is from this, sometimes messed up relationship with the self, that you launch out into all other relationships.  If your relationship with your self is on shaky ground, probably all your other relationships will be as well.  So it’s best to make sure your relationship with your self is on solid footing in order to make the other two relationships Paul mentions work best.

The second relationship Paul describes is the one you have with people you like.  We all have people we get along with better than others.  There are people we just like being around.  They make us laugh.  They are positive and upbeat.  They don’t look at you funny.  They are encouraging and they have your back.  They’re reliable.  These kinds of relationships make life worth while.

Probably a couple of friends you may have heard about are Sven and Ole.  Sven and Ole are up fixing the roof. Sven picks up a nail, looks at it, and throws it away. He picks up the next one, looks at it, and hammers it into the roof. The next one, he hammers it into the roof; the next one, he throws away.
Ole says, "Sven, why do you throw away half the nails?”
Sven says, "Ole, don't you see, they have the point on the wrong end!"
Ole says, “Sven, don't be such a dummy! Those are for the OTHER side of the roof!”
What would we do without friends like that?

The third kind of relationship that Paul mentions, is the one we will look at this morning:  your relationship with people you don’t like.  This, besides the relationship with your self, may be the most problematic of the three relationships.  If we could just relieve ourselves of the jerks in our lives, everything would be so much better.  Like the little girl riding in the back of the car who asked, “Mommy, why do all the jerks only come out when Daddy is driving?”

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”  That’s the trouble with our lists of people we don’t like.  They might live next door to us, or they might be relatives, which makes it doubly hard to just ignore them or expunge them from our lives.

Another Sven and Ole story.  It just so happens that Ole is sick unto death.  His life is touch and go.  Ole is deep in thought as he lies in the hospital bed.  He looks hard at his wife Lena, and says, “Lena, promise me. Swear to me that if I die, you’ll marry Sven Svenson.”
“SVEN SVENSON???” Lena shrieks. “You want me to marry Sven!!??  You’ve hated him all your life!”
Ole answers, “Yep, I still do.”

Another problem with Paul’s instructions about dealing with people we don’t like is that he gives more advice about that relationship than the other two combined.  Look at all the stuff we’re supposed to do in our relationships with people we don’t like:
bless them and don’t curse them
be friendly
don’t mistreat them, even if they have mistreated you
earn their respect
live at peace with them
don’t get even or take revenge
feed them, or get them something to drink

Looking at the length of this list, it’s clear that Paul isn’t going to just let us write these people off.  Instead, it appears that this is the relationship that Paul is expecting us to do the most work on.

Jesus gave some equally penetrating words about getting along with those we don’t like:
You have heard people say, “Love your neighbors and hate your enemies.” But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.  If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that? Even tax collectors love their friends.  If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that? Don’t even unbelievers do that?  But you must always act like your Father in heaven.  (Matthew 5:43-48, CEV)

I’m not going to lie to you—these are very tough words.  They are especially tough words if your family members are Steven Sotloff or James Foley, the two journalists who were beheaded by fanatic members of the Islamic State in northern Iraq.  How do you love those ISIS people?  How do you bless ISIS members instead of curse them?  Why would you want to live at peace with them, or not have thoughts of revenge?  How could you ever establish a friendship with someone who beheaded your loved one?

Then there’s Phil Robertson from the show, Duck Dynasty, who this week said about members of the Islamic State, “Convert them or kill them.”  This, in a sick way tries to combine the two worlds of the Old and New Testament:  Come at your enemies with Christ, and if that doesn’t work, revert back to the Old Testament adage, “An eye for an eye,” and kill them.  Either way, it appears you are being biblical.  But you are still missing the true power of Jesus’ and Paul’s words.  Not only that, if you follow Phil Robertson’s advice, you are stupidly saying and doing what the soldiers of ISIS are saying and doing:  Convert or die.

Jakob Whitson (to whom we are going to talk to in person, Sunday, October 6, in worship via Skype) posted an article on Facebook this week about this very topic.  In that article, “How are we to love the soldiers of ISIS?” by Greg Boyd, there is this statement:
With this background in place, we are in a position to notice something important about the question: How are we to love the soldiers of ISIS? The only reason this question is different from the question of how we are to love anybody else is that these people strike us as more evil than others and/or because we may be concerned about what would happen if everybody loved these soldiers. But as we’ve just seen, our call to love has nothing to do with how “good” or “evil” a person is.  We’re to love “the righteous” and the “wicked,” just like our God makes the rain fall and the sun shine no matter who you are (Mt 5:44-45).

These are the extreme cases.  Those scenes of beheadings are horrifying, and we are thanking God that it wasn’t our family member. But the ISIS beheadings are no less troubling to me than the story I also read this week about the young mother who smothered her two children to death with a pillow.  Only one and three years old!  It makes me absolutely sick to think about those two baby girls, born into the world only so they could be smothered to death by their mother!?  I don’t even know the woman, but it’s still so hard—maybe nearly impossible—for me to be asked by Paul to “bless and not curse” that woman.

Even though both those incidents are tragic and awful and sick all at the same time, and we want some kind of justice (meaning “an eye for an eye”) for these despicable people, we have to ask ourselves an equally difficult question.  It’s a question we don’t want to have asked of us, because we don’t want to face the answer.  The question is, “Are you or I capable of doing the same thing?”  Notice, I didn’t ask, “Would you do the same thing?” but, “Are you capable of doing the same thing?”  Deep down, do you have it within you to commit some kind of atrocious act?  Is there something that is part of our basic humanity that holds within it the possibility of being deadly awful?

I’m going to let you sit with those questions, and as you think about them, think also about Jesus’ words that God “…makes the sun rise on both good and bad people.  And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.”  Because, if we are honest with ourselves, we are both.

I like the line from the article that Jakob Whitson shared that read, “… our call to love has nothing to do with how ‘good’ or ‘evil’ a person is.”  Our call to love has to do, not with the person we don’t like, but the person we are before God.  The flip side to the awful question I just asked you is, “Are we capable of blessing people we don’t like and not cursing them;  are we capable of being friendly to them;  are we capable of not mistreating them, even if they have mistreated you; are we capable of earning their respect; are we capable of living at peace with them; are we capable of not getting even or taking revenge; and, are we capable of feeding them, or getting them something to drink?”  Deep down, do you have it within you to commit some kind of graciously undeserved, and loving act towards someone you don’t like?  Is there something that is part of our basic humanity before God that holds within it the possibility of you being life altering amazing to those you don’t like?

Because the writer of the article that Jakob shared is right.  As Christians, it doesn't matter if the person we don't like is an ISIS terrorist and assassin, uncle Snert, Sven and Ole, or your next door neighbor.  It doesn't matter if they cut somebody's head off or are playing their music too loud.  Ultimately, it isn't about the person you don't like and their behavior.  It's about you and how far you are willing to go in your relationship with Christ.  How far you are willing to take Jesus and Paul's words to heart and doing them, no matter how hard they are.

"It’s important to remember that the teaching of Jesus, Paul and the rest of the New Testament about never retaliating and about instead choosing to love, bless, pray for, and do good to our enemies is emphatic, unambiguous, and never once qualified. Indeed, Jesus goes so far as to make our willingness to unconditionally love enemies the pre-condition for being considered a “child of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-5; Lk 6:35-6). If Jesus is in fact Lord, faithfulness to his teaching and example must trump all other considerations--including your possibly deserved sense of justice and retaliation. Otherwise we must face Jesus’ pointed question: “Why do you keep on saying that I am your Lord, when you refuse to do what I say” (Lk 6:46)?"

Jesus is not one of those, "Do as I say, not as I do," kind of Messiah.  Think about the whole arrest, trial, brutal whipping, and crucifixion scenes.  Remember that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity--that he is God in the flesh.  At any time during the whole ordeal when he was arrested, beaten and crucified, he could have retaliated by flattening all those who tormented him, spit on him, beat him, and eventually pounded spikes through his wrist.  Never did he fight back.  Instead he prayed that God would forgive them, "...for they don't know what they're doing."  He had the power of the Creator of the universe, and chose not to exert that power in revenge against his enemies.


There doesn’t seem to be a way around this one.  We can’t be like W.C. Fields, who when caught reading the Bible and asked what he was doing, replied, “Looking for loopholes.”  There doesn’t seem to be any loopholes in either Jesus or Paul’s words about how what kind of relationship we are to have with those we don’t like.  So, if there are no loopholes, I guess the only other alternative is to get at it, and do what they say.

This might help.  It’s a reading or a prayer that I found a number of years ago when I was trying for forgive someone who hurt me deeply.  It took me a long time, praying this prayer, to finally get to what its words are saying.  This is from Hugh Prather in his book, A Quiet Answer:

I release you from my hurt feelings.  I free you from my reading of your motives.  I withdraw my “justified” outrage and leave you clean and happy in my mind.  In place of censure, I offer you all of God’s deep contentment and peace.  I will perceive you singing, with a soft smile of freedom and a glow of rich satisfaction.  I bless you my brother (sister).  You are a shining member of the Family of God, and I will wait patiently for this truthful vision to come honestly to my mind.

Monday, September 8, 2014

The Three Relationships (part 2)

"The Three Relationships"  (part 2)
Romans 12:9-21


Last week I started a three part sermon series on these words in Paul's letter to the church in Rome.  This part of the letter is about the three kinds of relationships that make up our daily living.  There's the relationship we have with ourselves.  There's the relationships we have with people we like.  And there are the relationships we have with people we don't like or don't get along with.

Of course these relationships can get messy and overlap.  We have to have a relationship with ourselves.  But even though you have to have a relationship with yourself, you may not like yourself some of the time.  So you end up being on two lists at the same time.  Or there are other people with whom you have a relationship that you like some of the time and don't like the rest of the time.  They may go back and forth between two lists.

Up until this point in Paul's letter to the Roman Christians, he has been wading through some thick theological stuff.  He's trying to make the gospel of Jesus Christ clear to two different audiences at the same time:  Jews who have converted to Christianity; and, non-Jews who have become Christians, but are trying to figure out what it is that they just got themselves into.

So, for 11 chapters in this lengthy letter, Paul has given his readers a crash course on Christian theology.  Then with chapter 12, Paul makes a shift and wades into more practical stuff.  Relationships.  That's got to be easier to understand, right?  Rather than continue on about justification by faith, sin and sanctification, Paul rows out into the smoother waters of basic human relationships.

In essence, what Paul is doing is saying, "Look, there's a lot of basic theology you have to understand about God and what God was doing in Jesus Christ.  Then you have to understand how all that theology provides the foundation for your relationships with yourselves and each other.  This is theology, and this is how that theology works out in everyday life."

Last week I talked about our relationship with our self.  Paul's advice here was four-fold:  run from evil; don't be a quitter, be a prayer; keep yourself from burnout by being fueled by the Holy Spirit; and don't puff yourself up.

This week there are three characteristics, says Paul, that should be part of our relationship with others we like--especially if those others are fellow Christians.  If we're going to get along with others in the church, and by those relationships bear witness to Christ, then there needs to be three distinctive qualities.

First, says Paul, "Let love be genuine."  The word love here, in the Greek language that Paul wrote, is the word "agape."  Many of you probably know that agape was a little used Greek word that the early church took as their own and redefined it as the love that God has for us through Christ.  It is that kind of love that keeps loving no matter what you get in return for that love.  It is a kind of love that is willing to sacrifice the self in major ways for the other.

A college boy brought a framed picture of his girlfriend to a photography shop because he wanted to get another copy of the picture.  The shop owner removed the picture from the frame, and the boy noticed there was writing on the back.  It said:  "My dearest Jimmy, I love you with all my heart--I love you more and more each day--I will love you forever."  It was signed, "Marsha."  Underneath was a P.S., "If we should ever break up I want this picture back."

Agape love is not that kind of love.  It's not something you can just turn on and turn off.  This kind of love isn't a product you manufacture--like saying, "I'm going to be more loving today," and then trying to manufacture that.  It's more a fruit--something that grows out of something else.  For Paul, that something else is faith.  Faith in God that comes to action in love.  Therefore, this kind of love is built on something more solid than just what we can pull out of our own hats.

Love does not come from doing something; it comes from being with somebody, and that somebody is the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, through our faith, inspires us with that same kind of love that God has for us, so that we can turn around and love our brothers and sisters in the faith the same way.

A police officer pulled a driver aside and asked for his license and registration. "What's wrong, officer," the driver asked. "I didn't go through any red lights, and I certainly wasn't speeding."
"No, you weren't," said the officer, "but I saw you waving your fist as you swerved around the lady driving in the left lane.  I further observed your flushed and angry face as you shouted at the driver of the Hummer who cut you off.  Then I witnessed how you pounded your steering wheel and cussed when the traffic came to a stop near the bridge."
"Is that a crime, officer?" the man asked.
"No," the policeman said, "but when I saw the ‘Jesus loves you and so do I’ bumper sticker on the car, I figured this car had to be stolen."

And that's what Paul said was the true mark of this kind of agape love--that it's genuine.  The Greek word Paul used for genuine is anhypokritos.  It's actually the base word hypokritos with a prefix.  Hypokritos is the word we get our word hypocrite or hypocritical from.  A hypokritos in that Greek world was an actor on a stage, someone who was only playing a role, hiding behind the personage of the character they were portraying on the stage.  Being one person, but pretending to be someone else.

A hypokritos was also someone who is living in contradiction to himself/herself.  Their outer persona is a contradiction to who they truly are inside.

The prefix "an" means against.  So Paul is saying that the love we have for those we like and are our brothers and sisters in the faith has to be anhypokritos--that is, against hypocrisy.  Love that is two-faced isn't love at all.  In fact, that kind of duplicity in love undermines the whole spirit of the church and the relationships within the church.

There was a despicable scoundrel, whose face was twisted from the kind of life he had led.  He chanced to meet a young woman who was the image of outer and inner beauty, from her relationship with Christ.  The wretch of a man fell in love with the woman.  But he knew she would never love him from the way he looked and his awful past.  So he put on the mask of a handsome and better man and began to win the young woman over to his love.

And it worked!  They were in love.  They were to be married.  But some of the criminals of his past caught up to the masked man.  In front of his beloved, they challenged him to come clean and take off the mask--show her who he really was.

Dejected, the man sadly looked at the ground and slipped off the mask.   As he looked up, the past co-horts of the man gasped.  His face had changed to look exactly like the mask.  He had been changed by the genuine love that only a relationship to the Holy Spirit can create.  "Let your love be genuine."

Secondly, Paul writes that in our relationships with those we like, and are part of our Christian community, we should "practice hospitality."

There is a connection between genuine love and hospitality.  Hospitality is the kind of loving friendship that is extended to people outside your circle of friendship.  There is a code of hospitality that extends back into the ancient Hebrew culture.  If you take a sojourner, a foreigner, into your tent, you are to extend that person hospitality.  That is you are to give them a place to stay, food to eat, care for their wounds, even protect them with your life.

We show this kind of hospitality to our fellow Christian sojourners, because we were taken into God's tent, so-to-speak, through Christ, when we were in need.  Through Christ, God took care of us, healed us, protected us from the world.  That's what we do for each other.  That's hospitality.

Princeton Theological Seminary once conducted what they called "The Good Samaritan Study."  They got 40 seminary students to agree to give a practice sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan.  They were held in one building, and when it was their turn, they were told to go to another nearby building to present their practice sermon.

On the way over, the students passed a man groaning, slumped over in a doorway.  He was a plant who was just acting.  Six of every ten seminarians who passed the groaning man went right by, ignoring him.  The fact that they were preaching a sermon on the Good Samaritan had no effect in their decision as to whether they would stop and help or not.

Hospitality is that extension of genuine love that comes from our faith.  It is that part of our faith that is supposed to turn love into action.  That's what makes our love authentic and genuine.  And don't think that no one is watching, gauging the genuineness of our love shown in hospitality.

President McKinley had to choose one of two equally competent men for a high diplomatic post.  He was having a hard time making a decision.  But then an incident occurred that helped him to make up his mind.

One stormy night, McKinley boarded a streetcar and took the only available seat left.  Not long after he boarded, a washerwoman with a large basket of clothes climbed aboard.  No one moved to make her comfortable.  One of the two candidates McKinley was considering for the very important job was sitting nearby, immersed in his newspaper.  He noticed the woman, but kept his nose in the newspaper to pretend he didn't see her.

McKinley went down the aisle, took the washerwoman's basket from her arms and led her to the back of the car where his seat was.  The candidate never looked up, was never aware of the kind act McKinley committed.  And when it came time for McKinley to decide between the two candidates, the one on the streetcar was never aware that his total lack of hospitality deprived him of the job.

Our Lord Jesus acts as the picture of hospitality.  At communion, Jesus welcomes all in hospitality to join him at the table.  He washes his disciples feet as a symbol of how they are to serve the world in humble hospitality.  And most importantly, The Lord Jesus offers his life in protection against the enemy, by dying on the Cross for our sins.  Our Lord showed hospitality is at the heart of God's grace and the gospel.

And the final quality of a relationship with those we like, who are our brothers and sisters in Christ, is to "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."

One of the main qualities of rejoicing is that it takes shape in fellowship.  True rejoicing isn't done by yourself.  It's done in the company of those who believe like you do, and who amplify your joy with their voices and lives.

Rejoicing is also related to hope, because who rejoices if they aren't hopeful?  If your hope in God is not based in the thought that your future can be bigger than your past, then you will not feel like rejoicing.

One day a young friend of Bertrand Russell, the famed philosopher, noticed that Russell was in a state of deep contemplation.  The young man asked, "Why so meditative?"
Russell replied, "Because I've made an odd discovery.  Every time I talk to a fellow scholar I feel quite sure that joy is no longer a possibility.  Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite."   (Maybe that should be descriptive story for the master gardeners group.)  We find out best about joy and rejoicing when we surround ourselves with others who know what it's all about.

Likewise, weeping, when done with others, doesn't accentuate or increase the weeping but lightens that burden.  Grief is caused by loss.  It is an expression of our sorrow for the dead.  It is an expression of tears caused when two people part.  Or loss of a job. Or loss of youth or health.  Loss of innocence.

Or they are tears of remorse due to guilt.  It's interesting that Paul would include these words about weeping, because in the Greek culture, people didn't feel guilty.  They didn't feel guilt because they believed everything happened according to fate.  How can you feel guilty when what happened to you is simply fate?  It isn't your fault because of your bad decisions and choices or actions.  It's all fate.  If a person in that culture cried, it was because fate had dealt them a hard blow.

But for Paul, our knowledge of our sin should cause remorse, and remorse causes guilt, and guilt and remorse should lead us to tears of repentance.  It is with those who weep out of remorse whom we are to weep with, because we have all been there.

So those are the qualities of our relationships with others:  rejoice or weep with those who are doing likewise; be inventive in hospitality; and love others with a genuine love.

Next week we will look at our relationships with people we don't like.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The Three Relationships (part 1)

"The Three Relationships"  (part 1)
Romans 12:9-21


I think there are three main types of relationships that we have and try to maintain.  There's the relationship with ourselves.  There's the relationships we have with people we like.  And there are the relationships we have with people we don't like.

Of course these relationships can get messy and overlap.  We have to have a relationship with ourselves.  Because, as the old adage says, "Wherever you go, there you are."  But even though you have to have a relationship with yourself, you may not like yourself some of the time.  So you end up being on two lists at the same time.  Or there are other people with whom you have a relationship that you like some of the time and don't like the rest of the time.  They may go back and forth between two lists.

Up until this point in Paul's letter to the Roman Christians, he has been wading through some thick theological stuff.  He's trying to make the gospel of Jesus Christ clear to two different audiences at the same time:  Jews who have converted to Christianity; and, non-Jews who have become Christians, but are trying to figure out if they have just become a sect of the Jews, or something else entirely.

So, for 11 chapters in this lengthy letter, Paul has given his readers a crash course on Christian theology.  Then with chapter 12, Paul makes a shift and wades into more practical stuff.  Relationships.  That's got to be easier to understand, right?  Rather than continue on about justification by faith, sin and sanctification, Paul rows out into the smoother waters of, "Let's just all get along, here."  Easy peasy, (as a little girl kept telling me while we pulled nails out of boards at the Bread of Life work day, a week ago).

Some times it's not just the emotional side of relationships that's difficult.  It may be just figuring out what the relationships are.  For example, consider the relationship mayhem created when 76-year-old Bill Baker recently married Edna Harvey.  Edna happened to be Bill's granddaughter's husband's mother.  That's where the confusion began for granddaughter, Lynn.

Lynn said, "My mother-in-law is now my step-grandmother.  My grandfather is now my stepfather-in-law.  My mom is my sister-in-law and my brother is my nephew.  But even crazier is that I'm now married to my uncle and my own children are my cousins."

Uh, yeah.  Easy peasy.  Do you hear the banjo music from the movie, "Deliverance" playing in the background?

No matter how they fall out, relationships are difficult.  And Paul doesn't shy away from those difficulties, just as he doesn't shy away from the thick theology he has written in the first 11 chapters of this letter.  From what Paul has begun to write about relationships here in chapter 12, as I started out, he seems to fold all relationships into those three categories:  self, others we like, and others we don't like.

Some would like to make this whole thing simpler by eliminating one of those categories:  the relationship with people we don't like.  If we can just cut that group out, we only have to worry about getting along with ourselves and the people we like.  That would make our lives a whole lot smoother.

But neither Paul nor Jesus will allow us to do that.  Somehow we have to make all three work, or we aren't worthy of the name, Christian.  Sorry.  I know it's a bummer we have to get along with people we don't like.

So let's dive in here, and see what Paul has written about these three relationships.  When I first started writing this sermon, I thought I'd cover all three relationships in one message.  But the farther I got into it, I quickly realized that wasn't going to happen.  So I'm making a series of this, and will talk about the other two relationships in the next two weeks.

I

First, let's look at what Paul says about your relationship with your self.

"Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to what is good."  The fight for your inner integrity is a constant daily battle.  In all the little choices we make, we are fighting for the wholeness and holiness of our inner self.

Paul encourages  believers to run from evil.  The trick that evil tries to dupe us with is the speed.  Instead of running from evil, we think if we walk from it, we are doing well enough.  But pretty soon, you find yourself looking over your shoulder.  You begin thinking, The evil behind me doesn't look that bad.  And it doesn't look that dangerous.  I should be able to handle it if it catches up with me.  So we slow down a bit more, and a bit more, and soon we are overcome.

There's a story about a faithful man who came to the sinful city of Sodom hoping to save the people of that city.  He began preaching and holding up signs.  He went from street to street, marketplace to marketplace, shouting, "Men and women, repent!  What you are doing is wrong.  It will kill you, it will destroy you."  They laughed but he went on shouting until one day a child stopped him.
"Poor stranger," she said.  "Don't you see it's useless?"
"Yes," said the man.
"Then why do you go on?" the child asked.
The man answered, "In the beginning I was convinced that I could change them.  Now I go on shouting because I don't want them to change me."

The importance of what Paul is saying here is that if there is going to be significant change in the world, it has to start somewhere.  It has to start with an individual.  It has to start with you.  The battle for personal integrity is being waged in every human heart.  If the world is going to become a better place, each individual's heart and soul has to be a better place.

Probably one of the more tragic stories is that of Madame Bovary by Flaubert.  Emma Bovary, the daughter of a French farmer, marries a physician.  She could have lived a very comfortable life--a life of service and integrity.

But she was invited to the home of a wealthy noble.  A whole different world she had not experienced was opened up to her, a world of glitter and glamour.  She borrows heavily to dress herself to fit into that glamorous and exciting world.  She takes a series of lovers.  She bankrupts her husband and brought ruin to the entire family.  Finally, because she couldn't cope with what she had done to herself and others, she ends her life with poison.

Instead of running from the evil in the world, she turned and embraced it.  She gained an evil life at the expense of inner bankruptcy.  Without an inner sense of integrity, without holding on fiercely to the good, it became a short trip for Madame Bovary from the glitter to the gutter.  When your inner integrity is neglected, or given over, step by step to evil, your sense of spiritual disaster is dulled.  The end is near.



II

The next thing that Paul says about your relationship with your self is, "Don't be a quitter; be a prayer."  I have a sense that this one goes with the first one about running from evil.  When you find yourself surrounded by evil, like the man in the first illustration, preaching in Sodom; when you find yourself surrounded by such a pervasive and subtle evil, it's easy to start thinking about giving up.  To not only quit being a witness, but to just give in to the ways of the world.  It is just so hard to be all the time swimming up stream, against the heavy current of evil that most others are just ridding along with.  Just give up and go with the flow.

Or be like Madame Bovary, getting enticed by the glittery trap of the world, but then wake up some day realizing you have let yourself get so far down you might as well just give up.  It's over.  You've compromised your life away.  Just quit.

I found a quote by one of my favorite poets, Charles Bukowski, this week.  He said, "People are strange; they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice."  What happens when you do finally notice?  That you may be totally wasting your life? What do you do?  Quit?  Give up?

Paul says, "NO!" to all those questions.  "Don't quit," he says.  "Instead, pray."   When it feels like you've lost your integrity, or compromised a lot of it away, and it seems too late for you,
it is not.  Instead of quitting it's time to get on your knees and start praying.

Prayer is the only weapon we have in life, especially when we realize we ran for dear life towards evil and let go of all that is good.  Prayer is need finding a voice.  Prayer is shame seeking relief and acceptance.  Prayer is a friend in search of a friend.  Prayer is a quest in the darkness of midnight.  Prayer is knocking on a door that seems to have no latch on your side.  Prayer is the expectation of receiving something even when we know we deserve nothing.

A husband and wife were traveling across Texas.  They saw a tornado coming and were, of course, terrified.  They pulled the car off the road into a ditch and tried to climb under it as best they could.

The twister was coming straight for them, but at the last second, veered off across a field and hit and totally demolished a small wooden house.  The man and woman, still shaking, got out and drove down the long drive to the house, which now consisted of little more than kindling and toothpicks and a hole in the ground.  They looked down the hole and saw an old man holding on for dear life to a piece of timber, his eyes tightly closed.  The woman called down to him, "Hey down there, are you all right?"
The old man opened his eyes, looked around cautiously and said, "I guess so."
The woman asked, "Was there anyone else with you?"
The old man replied, "Just me and God, and we were having an urgent conversation."

When the tornado of evil has come upon your life, and shattered much of what you thought you had, maybe it's time not to quit or give up, but have one of those "urgent conversations" with God.  I think you'll find how ready God is to talk with you.

III

The third thing Paul says about your relationship with yourself is to keep yourself fueled up.  "Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame," Paul says.  It is so easy to get burned out in our society.  What's crazy is that there have been all these projections that computers and other technology is going to do all our work for us, and we'll have all this free time.  But just the opposite seems to be happening.  We're working harder and longer, almost as if we are afraid of leisure time.

The "Coronary and Ulcer Club" lists the following rules for members:
1. Your job comes first. Forget everything else.
2. Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays are fine times to be working at the office. There will be nobody else there to bother you.
3. Always have your briefcase with you when not at your desk. This provides an opportunity to review completely all the troubles and worries of the day.
4. Never say "no" to a request. Always say "yes."
5. Accept all invitations to meetings, banquets, committees, etc.
6. All forms of recreation are a waste of time.
7. Never delegate responsibility to others; carry the entire load yourself.
8. If your work calls for traveling, work all day and travel at night to keep that appointment you made for eight the next morning.
9. No matter how many jobs you already are doing, remember you always can take on more.

Many believers do the same thing in their work in the church.  There are the handful who always say, "yes," and end up doing all the work for those who make excuses.  Then they get burned out, and quit, or disappear, and everyone else goes, "I wonder what happened?"

The best way to keep yourselves from burn out, is to take care of yourselves.  So many people think self-care is selfish.  But if you don't take care of yourself, who will?  And self care involves all aspects of the self:  physical, spiritual, emotional, relational.

One of the best ways to take care of yourself, says Paul, is to rely more on the Holy Spirit than on yourself.  Think of it this way.  The candles we have on the Communion Table are oil filled.  The wick is placed in oil, and then lit. If the oil runs out, the wick burns. As long as there is oil, the wick doesn't burn, it's the oil being pulled up by the wick that is burning.  The Holy Spirit is our oil, so to speak.  As long as we are living in dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit, we don't burn out. The question we need to ask ourselves in taking care of ourselves is, "What's burning?"

IV

And the last aspect of our relationship with our self that we need to look at, says Paul, is our own sense of ego.  "Don't be the great somebody," Paul wrote.  In other words, don't be puffing yourself up all the time.

Idolatry has been a problem almost as long as there have been people.  In Moses' day it was the golden calf.  Other cultures have different beings as idols.  In our society, it's said that money is our main idol.  Or power.  But I think something else, larger than money, larger than power has taken over the number one idol spot in our culture.

It's very similar to one of the idols from ancient Assyria:  it's the idol of the self.  Assur-Nasir-Pal was an evil Assyrian ruler whose writing described well this idol, and kind of idolatry:
And now at the command of the great gods, my sovereignty, my dominion, and my power are manifesting themselves; I am regal, I am lordly, I am exalted, I am valiant, I am lion-brave, and I am heroic.

There's nothing wrong with having a positive self image.  Christ said that the second great commandment is, "Love your neighbor as yourself.  So self love has to be part of a healthy humanity and spirituality.  But excessive self love becomes narcissism, which is a rampant idolatry in our culture.

Narcissus, according to Greek mythology, was renowned for his beauty.  He was exceptionally proud of his own beauty. Nemesis noticed this behavior and attracted Narcissus to a pool, where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely his own reflection. Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus died.  Thus we have narcissism, the love of self above all other things--which is idolatry.

Trying to be "the great somebody" as Paul wrote to the Roman Christians is the folly of the idolatry of narcissism.  It leads to your own demise.  The emphasis of Paul in these verses, in terms of your relationship with your self, is finding those things that lead to life, not to death.  Things that really enhance your relationship with the self, through the Holy Spirit.  But a narcissistic personality takes the Holy Spirit out of the feedback loop.  The narcissist only has themselves in their feedback loop.  That is, they are only getting their own opinion.  Without the Holy Spirit in the feedback loop of the self, without the a Holy Spirit in control of the self, the end is near.

V

So, in your relationship with your self, through the Holy Spirit, you are going to run from evil and hold on to what is good; you're not going to be a quitter, you're going to be a prayer; you're going to keep yourself fueled in order to avoid burnout; and you aren't going to puff yourself up.

Next week we will look at the relationship you have with those people you like.