“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 15, 2014
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.
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.
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.
Monday, August 25, 2014
100 Years From Now
"100 Years From Now"
Romans 12:1-2
(Note to readers: This was a round table discussion. The three questions were given to groups of people at worship. They discussed each one and wrote notes about the questions. Then they reported back and answers were compiled during the discussion. Following the discussion, I presented my thoughts that are written beneath the three questions. If you have any thoughts about the questions that you'd like to share, please email me at wingspan19@gmail.com).
Imagine it's 100 years from now. The people in Pratt Presbyterian Church are gathering to celebrate the history of the church. As they look back, what would you hope they would say about this present time (2014 and beyond) in the church's history?
Pretend our church is an 100 year old person. This person is being interviewed. One of the questions is, "Of what are you most proud, as you look back over your 100 years?" What would you answer be if you were this person-church? Another question you are asked is, "To what do you attribute your health and longevity?" What is your answer?
Pretend you can time travel. One of the places you decide to time travel to is Pratt Presbyterian Church 100 years from now. Realistically, what do you think you will find? The reason I used the 100 year time frame is because we just celebrated the 100th anniversary of our church building. I'm not sure if the people back then wondered what we'd be like in 100 years, and how things would change.
100 years from now is a long time. Especially with as fast as things are changing now. Change didn’t happen as fast over the last 100 years as it will the next hundred years. 100 years ago, what changes were coming could be anticipated. Now, we have no idea how much change will be taking place—we assume A LOT! Back 100 years ago, it was assumed not much will change, and if it does there would be plenty of time to adapt.
I think we're still infected with that way of thinking--that if things change, they will change slowly, and we will have plenty of time to adapt. Things don't change very fast in churches anyway--right? Our congregation in particular, has a 130 history. We could call it a DNA, so-to-speak, that has determined a lot of who we are. Changing that congregational DNA is hard--maybe as hard as changing our human DNA. (Although that's not getting very hard either.)
There are two words I want you to pay attention to in these first couple of verses of Romans 12: "...be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." Transformed. Renewing. Other more modern versions have something like, "...change the way you think."
To be transformed literally comes from the word metamorphosis. To go through a metamorphosis means to change from one thing into something else. Maybe as a kid, or even as an adult, you watched a caterpillar create a chrysalis and emerge as a butterfly--two distinct biological entities. That's the kind of transformation Paul is talking about here that needs to happen.
Metamorphosis is not a transformation that happens once and is over, but in Paul's way of thinking, it is a process that happens now and continues into the future.
And we do that by the "renewing of your mind." This word, renewal, means to be new in nature, with the implication of becoming better.
My sense is that we are at a Y intersection. Over the past 100 years we have come so far. But what we have been doing over the past 30 or so years stopped working. The two roads at this Y intersection are very different roads. If we choose one of the roads at the Y, it will mean staying on the road we've been on. Which will, in my estimation, get us closed down in the next 25 years.
The other road at this Y we are at would mean, metamorphosis and renewal. It will mean becoming something very different than what we are now. What we are doing now is not working. What we need to do, if we are going to survive the next 25 years--and beyond--will be to take the road that will cause us to go through a process of complete and utter metamorphosis--to become something else, to start that now so that we can continue into the future. Maybe for the next 100 years. We are going to have to change the way we think about church, and what church is. We are going to have to be willing to go through a painful process, but which pain will set this congregation up for long-term health.
When I was in Bakersfield at the church there, a 1200 member church, the senior pastor and the Session caught a vision for what needed to be done to turn that downtown church around. The vision involved buying up a whole city block, and putting a gym and new administration building in. It also meant buying an existing office building on the property and turn it into the home of a Hispanic and Chinese congregations.
The way they sold the plan to the congregation was to go to the members and say, "We have a vision. But some of you older members will never get to see the fruits of it. It is a bold plan for the health and well being of the congregation into the next 50-75 years. Are you willing to invest in something you will not see the ultimate fruits of?"
They ultimately said yes. The whole project took $5 million dollars as well as supporting the churches annual $1.5 million dollar budget. They paid everything off in 3 years.
Now I'm not saying we need to buy this whole block and build a gym. We don't need another gym, thanks to the foresight of Porter and his bank. But I think the choice of taking the other road in the Y intersection we are at will be just as costly in some ways, and painful, but amazing and exciting. I think God is setting us up, through the Experiencing God study and some other ministries that are emerging, to begin to think BIGGER. Think DIFFERENTLY. Metamorphisically different.
But wouldn't it be just as painful, tragically so, rather than creatively so, to close this church down in 25 years because there's no one left?
We need to think differently, NOW, so that we can begin the process of metamorphosis change that will help this church not just survive, but grow, in the next 100 years.
Romans 12:1-2
(Note to readers: This was a round table discussion. The three questions were given to groups of people at worship. They discussed each one and wrote notes about the questions. Then they reported back and answers were compiled during the discussion. Following the discussion, I presented my thoughts that are written beneath the three questions. If you have any thoughts about the questions that you'd like to share, please email me at wingspan19@gmail.com).
Imagine it's 100 years from now. The people in Pratt Presbyterian Church are gathering to celebrate the history of the church. As they look back, what would you hope they would say about this present time (2014 and beyond) in the church's history?
Pretend our church is an 100 year old person. This person is being interviewed. One of the questions is, "Of what are you most proud, as you look back over your 100 years?" What would you answer be if you were this person-church? Another question you are asked is, "To what do you attribute your health and longevity?" What is your answer?
Pretend you can time travel. One of the places you decide to time travel to is Pratt Presbyterian Church 100 years from now. Realistically, what do you think you will find? The reason I used the 100 year time frame is because we just celebrated the 100th anniversary of our church building. I'm not sure if the people back then wondered what we'd be like in 100 years, and how things would change.
100 years from now is a long time. Especially with as fast as things are changing now. Change didn’t happen as fast over the last 100 years as it will the next hundred years. 100 years ago, what changes were coming could be anticipated. Now, we have no idea how much change will be taking place—we assume A LOT! Back 100 years ago, it was assumed not much will change, and if it does there would be plenty of time to adapt.
I think we're still infected with that way of thinking--that if things change, they will change slowly, and we will have plenty of time to adapt. Things don't change very fast in churches anyway--right? Our congregation in particular, has a 130 history. We could call it a DNA, so-to-speak, that has determined a lot of who we are. Changing that congregational DNA is hard--maybe as hard as changing our human DNA. (Although that's not getting very hard either.)
There are two words I want you to pay attention to in these first couple of verses of Romans 12: "...be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." Transformed. Renewing. Other more modern versions have something like, "...change the way you think."
To be transformed literally comes from the word metamorphosis. To go through a metamorphosis means to change from one thing into something else. Maybe as a kid, or even as an adult, you watched a caterpillar create a chrysalis and emerge as a butterfly--two distinct biological entities. That's the kind of transformation Paul is talking about here that needs to happen.
Metamorphosis is not a transformation that happens once and is over, but in Paul's way of thinking, it is a process that happens now and continues into the future.
And we do that by the "renewing of your mind." This word, renewal, means to be new in nature, with the implication of becoming better.
My sense is that we are at a Y intersection. Over the past 100 years we have come so far. But what we have been doing over the past 30 or so years stopped working. The two roads at this Y intersection are very different roads. If we choose one of the roads at the Y, it will mean staying on the road we've been on. Which will, in my estimation, get us closed down in the next 25 years.
The other road at this Y we are at would mean, metamorphosis and renewal. It will mean becoming something very different than what we are now. What we are doing now is not working. What we need to do, if we are going to survive the next 25 years--and beyond--will be to take the road that will cause us to go through a process of complete and utter metamorphosis--to become something else, to start that now so that we can continue into the future. Maybe for the next 100 years. We are going to have to change the way we think about church, and what church is. We are going to have to be willing to go through a painful process, but which pain will set this congregation up for long-term health.
When I was in Bakersfield at the church there, a 1200 member church, the senior pastor and the Session caught a vision for what needed to be done to turn that downtown church around. The vision involved buying up a whole city block, and putting a gym and new administration building in. It also meant buying an existing office building on the property and turn it into the home of a Hispanic and Chinese congregations.
The way they sold the plan to the congregation was to go to the members and say, "We have a vision. But some of you older members will never get to see the fruits of it. It is a bold plan for the health and well being of the congregation into the next 50-75 years. Are you willing to invest in something you will not see the ultimate fruits of?"
They ultimately said yes. The whole project took $5 million dollars as well as supporting the churches annual $1.5 million dollar budget. They paid everything off in 3 years.
Now I'm not saying we need to buy this whole block and build a gym. We don't need another gym, thanks to the foresight of Porter and his bank. But I think the choice of taking the other road in the Y intersection we are at will be just as costly in some ways, and painful, but amazing and exciting. I think God is setting us up, through the Experiencing God study and some other ministries that are emerging, to begin to think BIGGER. Think DIFFERENTLY. Metamorphisically different.
But wouldn't it be just as painful, tragically so, rather than creatively so, to close this church down in 25 years because there's no one left?
We need to think differently, NOW, so that we can begin the process of metamorphosis change that will help this church not just survive, but grow, in the next 100 years.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Whatever
"Whatever"
Romans 11:30-32
Men’s Bible Study recently finished up a study of the life of Paul. At one point, during Paul’s journeys, he had been arrested. One of the qualities we quickly discovered about Paul was that he never missed an opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter who he was talking to, Paul always worked the Gospel message into the conversation.
On this one particular instance, as I said, Paul had been arrested. He was brought before King Agrippa. Paul told Agrippa about Christ. Agrippa’s response was tragically telling:
Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. (Acts 26:28)
Almost. Not quite, but almost. You almost got me, Paul.
Maybe Paul had that experience in mind when he wrote these lines to the church in Rome. Paul uses the word, “disobedient.” I’ll give you a quick little Greek lesson about this word. In the Greek language that Paul wrote in, the word is “apeitheia.” It’s where we get our word “apathy” from. The root word in the Greek means, convince or persuade. The “a” prefix on the word means “not” or “against.” So a-peithea means not convinced, or not persuaded. Which is what Agrippa was, when Paul shared the gospel.
Our English translations, then decided to use the word disobedient in these lines of Paul to the Roman Christians. So, to be disobedient, in this instance, literally means to be unconvinced and unpersuaded. To be unpersuaded means that you are not certain that something is true. You’re not sure that what you are seeing or hearing can be relied on or trusted.
If you remain unconvinced, you never really give yourself over. You never really get emotionally involved. If someone told you they loved you, but you held on to a handful of skepticism about what they are telling you, you will end up withholding yourself, unpersuaded by their love. That may have nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you, and the spirit within you. If you keep to your stance of being unpersuaded, you never commit yourself fully.
Did you hear about the company that makes blank bumper stickers? They're for people who don't want to get involved. To come at life and people and God with the posture of not allowing yourself to be won over, is like driving around with a blank bumper sticker. You are for nothing, you are allied with nothing, you are passionate about nothing.
In the book of Acts there is the story of Annanias and Saphira. In the early church, people were selling property and giving the proceeds to the apostles. The apostles would then use that money for feeding and taking care of the poor who were coming to Christ by the thousands. But Annanias and Saphira held back a good portion of the sale of their property, just in case. They were not as thoroughly convinced that this Christianity thing was real. They were almost persuaded. But just in case what was happening through the gospel didn’t last, they would have an insurance policy of funds to fall back on.
That’s not being totally persuaded. Gordon Stull used a great example of this in our Sunday School class one time. We were talking about this whole-hearted kind of commitment. Gordon said it’s like the poker player, who at some point pushes all her chips into the middle of the pot and says, “I’m all in.” She lays everything she’s got on the line. She’s all in. Annanias and Saphira were not all in. Their lack of being totally convinced about Christ ended up costing them dearly.
There’s a further step in this slippery slope of remaining adamantly unpersuaded. After a while, you just don’t care. Refusing to be convinced slowly becomes apathy. Remaining unconvinced keeps you from being emotionally involved. No emotional involvement becomes a “who cares” attitude.
Someone asked me the other day, “What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?” I said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
I was going to call the Apathy Hotline one day, but then I thought, “What’s the point?”
And the nice thing about apathy is you don't have to exert yourself to show you're sincere about it.
Remember the early part of the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. Revelation is a vision of the future, written by John the Divine. There are letters to seven churches at the start of the book. The seven letters are messages to those churches from the Risen Christ. In the letter to the church at Laodicea, Christ says,
I know…that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16)
Here, the Risen Christ is equating being lukewarm to being apathetic. Those believers were never passionately all in. They would never allow themselves to be fully convinced. They weren’t emotionally hooked by Christ. Just, “Meh.” “Whatever.”
In the book I mentioned in last weeks message, The Inferno, by Dante, he wrote, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” I think Dante picked up this notion from Christ’s letter to Laodicea in the book of Revelation. Because people who are attempting to remain neutral are people who are not allowing themselves to be convinced. And people who are not persuaded about Christ won’t allow themselves to get passionately involved.
But there are times, as Dante has made the point, times of moral crisis, times of spiritual degradation, times when the flag of warning has been raised when we individually, or as a church, need to take a stand. Need to make our voice heard. Need to throw ourselves into some situation and make a difference. But we won’t do that if we aren't convinced about Christ.
British historian, Arnold Toynbee once said, “Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, which takes the imagination by storm; and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.”
When you meet someone who is enthusiastic about something, isn’t it because they are thoroughly persuaded? You can’t get excited about something you are still unconvinced about. You aren’t going to throw yourself into your relationship with Christ, if you really aren’t sure about him. You aren’t going to be part of some kind of ministry, or make plans for your own ministry, if you are not convinced about the one whom you are serving.
The longer you hold out, the more you hold back, the less enthusiastic you will become, the less chance you will allow yourself to be convinced otherwise. To be like Agrippa in his conversation with Paul, and to be “almost persuaded,” really means you are really unpersuaded. Almost persuaded doesn’t cut it with Christ. That was the warning of Christ to the church at Laodicea, the lukewarm, those who just sit by and remain sort of convinced about Christ get spewed out of his mouth. To be almost persuaded means you are lukewarm. What Christ wants is that you be “all in” as Gordon Stull described, or “all out.” At least Christ knows where you stand that way. It’s the apathetic fence sitters who end up doing nothing, or being nothing that makes Christ gag.
In the cartoon "Mother Goose and Grim," the cat is sleeping. Someone asks, "What are you doing?”
The cat says "Nothing. I's a cat. Cats always do nothing."
"When are you going to get up?" the questioner asked.
"I don't know" says the cat. "The hardest part of doing nothing is knowing when you're finished.”
Christ knows. Christ knows when you’re finished. It’s when you show that half-hearted enthusiasm. It’s when you are passionate, sort of, about your relationship with him. It’s when you say you have a plan about some kind of ministry in the name of Christ, and then that plan just stays on paper. It’s when you’re persuaded, almost, but not fully. You may try and get by with that in the church. But Christ knows. Christ knows if you’re fully convinced. Or not.
Romans 11:30-32
Men’s Bible Study recently finished up a study of the life of Paul. At one point, during Paul’s journeys, he had been arrested. One of the qualities we quickly discovered about Paul was that he never missed an opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter who he was talking to, Paul always worked the Gospel message into the conversation.
On this one particular instance, as I said, Paul had been arrested. He was brought before King Agrippa. Paul told Agrippa about Christ. Agrippa’s response was tragically telling:
Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. (Acts 26:28)
Almost. Not quite, but almost. You almost got me, Paul.
Maybe Paul had that experience in mind when he wrote these lines to the church in Rome. Paul uses the word, “disobedient.” I’ll give you a quick little Greek lesson about this word. In the Greek language that Paul wrote in, the word is “apeitheia.” It’s where we get our word “apathy” from. The root word in the Greek means, convince or persuade. The “a” prefix on the word means “not” or “against.” So a-peithea means not convinced, or not persuaded. Which is what Agrippa was, when Paul shared the gospel.
Our English translations, then decided to use the word disobedient in these lines of Paul to the Roman Christians. So, to be disobedient, in this instance, literally means to be unconvinced and unpersuaded. To be unpersuaded means that you are not certain that something is true. You’re not sure that what you are seeing or hearing can be relied on or trusted.
If you remain unconvinced, you never really give yourself over. You never really get emotionally involved. If someone told you they loved you, but you held on to a handful of skepticism about what they are telling you, you will end up withholding yourself, unpersuaded by their love. That may have nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you, and the spirit within you. If you keep to your stance of being unpersuaded, you never commit yourself fully.
Did you hear about the company that makes blank bumper stickers? They're for people who don't want to get involved. To come at life and people and God with the posture of not allowing yourself to be won over, is like driving around with a blank bumper sticker. You are for nothing, you are allied with nothing, you are passionate about nothing.
In the book of Acts there is the story of Annanias and Saphira. In the early church, people were selling property and giving the proceeds to the apostles. The apostles would then use that money for feeding and taking care of the poor who were coming to Christ by the thousands. But Annanias and Saphira held back a good portion of the sale of their property, just in case. They were not as thoroughly convinced that this Christianity thing was real. They were almost persuaded. But just in case what was happening through the gospel didn’t last, they would have an insurance policy of funds to fall back on.
That’s not being totally persuaded. Gordon Stull used a great example of this in our Sunday School class one time. We were talking about this whole-hearted kind of commitment. Gordon said it’s like the poker player, who at some point pushes all her chips into the middle of the pot and says, “I’m all in.” She lays everything she’s got on the line. She’s all in. Annanias and Saphira were not all in. Their lack of being totally convinced about Christ ended up costing them dearly.
There’s a further step in this slippery slope of remaining adamantly unpersuaded. After a while, you just don’t care. Refusing to be convinced slowly becomes apathy. Remaining unconvinced keeps you from being emotionally involved. No emotional involvement becomes a “who cares” attitude.
Someone asked me the other day, “What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?” I said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
I was going to call the Apathy Hotline one day, but then I thought, “What’s the point?”
And the nice thing about apathy is you don't have to exert yourself to show you're sincere about it.
Remember the early part of the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. Revelation is a vision of the future, written by John the Divine. There are letters to seven churches at the start of the book. The seven letters are messages to those churches from the Risen Christ. In the letter to the church at Laodicea, Christ says,
I know…that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16)
Here, the Risen Christ is equating being lukewarm to being apathetic. Those believers were never passionately all in. They would never allow themselves to be fully convinced. They weren’t emotionally hooked by Christ. Just, “Meh.” “Whatever.”
In the book I mentioned in last weeks message, The Inferno, by Dante, he wrote, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” I think Dante picked up this notion from Christ’s letter to Laodicea in the book of Revelation. Because people who are attempting to remain neutral are people who are not allowing themselves to be convinced. And people who are not persuaded about Christ won’t allow themselves to get passionately involved.
But there are times, as Dante has made the point, times of moral crisis, times of spiritual degradation, times when the flag of warning has been raised when we individually, or as a church, need to take a stand. Need to make our voice heard. Need to throw ourselves into some situation and make a difference. But we won’t do that if we aren't convinced about Christ.
British historian, Arnold Toynbee once said, “Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, which takes the imagination by storm; and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.”
When you meet someone who is enthusiastic about something, isn’t it because they are thoroughly persuaded? You can’t get excited about something you are still unconvinced about. You aren’t going to throw yourself into your relationship with Christ, if you really aren’t sure about him. You aren’t going to be part of some kind of ministry, or make plans for your own ministry, if you are not convinced about the one whom you are serving.
The longer you hold out, the more you hold back, the less enthusiastic you will become, the less chance you will allow yourself to be convinced otherwise. To be like Agrippa in his conversation with Paul, and to be “almost persuaded,” really means you are really unpersuaded. Almost persuaded doesn’t cut it with Christ. That was the warning of Christ to the church at Laodicea, the lukewarm, those who just sit by and remain sort of convinced about Christ get spewed out of his mouth. To be almost persuaded means you are lukewarm. What Christ wants is that you be “all in” as Gordon Stull described, or “all out.” At least Christ knows where you stand that way. It’s the apathetic fence sitters who end up doing nothing, or being nothing that makes Christ gag.
In the cartoon "Mother Goose and Grim," the cat is sleeping. Someone asks, "What are you doing?”
The cat says "Nothing. I's a cat. Cats always do nothing."
"When are you going to get up?" the questioner asked.
"I don't know" says the cat. "The hardest part of doing nothing is knowing when you're finished.”
Christ knows. Christ knows when you’re finished. It’s when you show that half-hearted enthusiasm. It’s when you are passionate, sort of, about your relationship with him. It’s when you say you have a plan about some kind of ministry in the name of Christ, and then that plan just stays on paper. It’s when you’re persuaded, almost, but not fully. You may try and get by with that in the church. But Christ knows. Christ knows if you’re fully convinced. Or not.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Are You Saved?
Are You Saved?
Romans 10:8-13
Are you saved? It’s a simple question. It’s definitely a religious question. We associate the question with evangelistic types who feel no discomfort in walking up to a total stranger and asking the question, “Are you saved?” I haven't seen any street preachers in the past few years who are buttonholing people on city street corners trying to save their eternal souls. Or people walking up and down the sidewalks with a sandwich board that says, “The end is near.”
I don’t know why. It’s still a relevant question. It’s a question all of us have to ask ourselves, or be asked by someone in the church. There are lots of variations on the little question, Are you saved? What is the state of your eternal soul? If you died today do you know where your soul would be? When someone joins the church, the first question they are asked is, “Who is your Lord and Savior?” There is only one acceptable answer.
If you are a thinking person, hopefully you ponder the question, Are you saved? On one level, when you hear that question, you may be thinking the question really is, Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? That’s part of it. But there’s more to ponder here.
If you hear the question, Are you saved?, you may ask, and rightly so, “Saved from what?” It’s like the bumper stickers back in the ’70’s that said, “Jesus is the answer.” Then the backlash bumper stickers started coming out that said, “What’s the question?” Or there were the bumper stickers that said, “I found it!” And the backlash bumper stickers that read, “I didn’t know you lost it.” If I answer “yes” to that question, “Are you saved?”, you also have to be ready for the backlash question: From what are you saved? The word implies that you are saved from something.
The word “save” in the Greek language of the Bible means:
1) saved from serious peril
2) to be kept alive
3) preserve your inner being
So, think of those meanings when you think about being saved. From what serious peril were you actually saved? How were you literally kept alive when you were saved? How was your inner being being preserved when you were saved?
When Paul Tillich retired as professor at Harvard Divinity School, on the occasion of his last class, he preached a sermon to his students on Matthew 10:8, “Heal the sick, raise the dead…” Tillich then said to the ministry students, “You will go out to carry the gospel of healing, but your biggest problem will be persuading people they need to be healed.” His sermon made the point that the biggest challenge Christian ministry faces is that of getting people to realize how sick we are without healing faith in God.
I think he’s right. Most people don’t think they are that bad of a person. They become “saved”—that is, as I mentioned before, they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but won’t allow themselves to think any further about the depth of what they have just been saved from.
Being saved from what? Hell? Eternal damnation? Eternal torment? The fiery flames? Pitch forks and torture? Most of our understanding of what hell is all about comes more from Dante’s book, The Inferno, than it does from the Bible.
A man died and was taken to his place of eternal torment by the devil. As he passed sulphurous pits and shrieking sinners, he saw a man he recognized as a corrupt television evangelist snuggling up to a beautiful woman.
"That's unfair!" he cried. "I have to roast for all eternity, and that TV evangelist gets to spend it with a beautiful woman."
"Shut up", barked the devil, jabbing the man with his pitchfork. "Who are you to question that woman's punishment?”
I want to give you an alternate understanding of what hell is all about based on a couple of things Jesus said, rather than Dante’s seven circles of hell.
First, one of the most quoted and memorized verses in the Bible: John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” The word, perish, in the language Jesus spoke, means total annihilation. It doesn’t have anything to do with eternal damnation, fires, and torturous torment. It means that your soul is fully destroyed.
What Jesus is contrasting here in this most favorite of verses, is between having your soul completely erased, or having everlasting life with God.
And secondly, add to that the statement Jesus made recorded in Matthew 10, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Again, this word destroy has to do with having all traces of your soul expunged from existence. From these two statements Jesus makes, we are forced to rethink what hell is all about.
What if hell is not a place of eternal torment, but is a place where your soul is totally obliterated? What if what you are saved from is not eternal punishment, but the irreversible eradicating of all that you are body and soul? If you had the choice to live eternally with God and with the souls of all who love God, or having even your soul absolutely and forever eliminated, which would you choose?
Francis Schaeffer, in his book, No Little People, described the judgement of God as a great prairie fire. He wrote:
A Christian has only one foundation: Jesus Christ the Savior. And on that foundation he builds—with either combustible or non-combustible material. One day there will be a great judgment and the fire will come. It will be like the great prairie fire which sweeps along burning everything in its path. Suddenly it comes to a great rock outcropping in the midst of the prairie. Everything around the rock will be consumed. Only that which is atop the rock will escape the fire.
That’s what you have been saved from. Not eternal punishment. But total and final incineration of your very soul. Why does that happen? How do people come to that end?
In the opening scene of the movie, La Doce Vita, there is a panoramic view of Rome’s skyline. The focus is on the grand dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the center. Then there is the sound of a helicopter, heard off in a distance, until we catch a glimpse of it, far off, dragging some obscure object through the air by wires.
As the helicopter flies closer, you can clearly make out the cargo. It is a huge statue of Christ being dragged across the skyline of Rome. In the middle of the helicopter's flight, the film cuts to a beach below. Young beach goers, annoyed by the intrusion of the helicopter noise, laugh mockingly, pointing, as the statue flies overhead. The helicopter comes to a stop, hovers in place, then releases the statue into a trash dump-site below, breaking into pieces as it hits.
The message is loud and clear: Modern people have relegated Christ to the trash heap. People act as if Christ really doesn’t matter. In the early days of Christianity, the believers were hunted down and killed in all kinds of heinous ways. The threat of the world was a clear and present danger. But today, we as believers have no such external threat. The world doesn’t see us as a danger anymore. The world only sees Christians and our Christian beliefs as something that can be ignored, or laughed at as antiquated and irrelevant. It is against this grim scenery that the drama of God’s salvation is played out.
That is how a person reaches the point of having their soul erased by God. If you want to live as if Christ doesn’t matter, or as if Christ is some antiquated figure who has nothing to say to our modern sensibilities, or if you want to live as if Christ has nothing to say to you about how you will live your life, to all that God says, “Fine, have it your way.”
Remember when Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26) Notice Jesus doesn’t say if you want to gain the world and ignore Jesus in the process, your soul isn’t eternally tortured. It is forfeited. It is given up. It is erased.
People say, “How can a loving God condemn someone’s soul to eternal punishment?” Well, God doesn’t. God just grants people their wishes. If you want to live as if God doesn’t exist, and not believe in the Savior Jesus, then fine. You won’t be subject to the evil whims of a devil. You will simply reap what you have sown in this life—the total eradication of your soul.
That’s what you’ve been saved from. Let me say again what the meaning of the word “save” is in the Greek: saved from serious peril, to be kept alive, to have your inner being preserved. It isn’t hard to make the connection about what you have been saved from. Is it not serious peril to face having your very soul erased? Doesn’t being kept alive mean more than just your body, but that your soul also has a life and it can be wiped away? And what is your inner being but your soul, and to preserve your soul for eternity, rather than it being quashed at the end of life, is something you should desire? And the only way to do that, as Paul has said here, “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
There is one more piece to this statement by Paul that he goes on to explain in detail. It’s a part of being saved, that is just as important as what we are saved from. It is what we are saved for. It’s not enough for God that we be saved from the peril of losing our soul. God wants to benefit us, if we accept his salvation from annihilation, so that our life now may be full.
Here’s what we’re saved for: to be put right with God (vs. 10); so that we won’t be disappointed (vs. 11)—interesting that the word literally means that we won’t be put to shame—that God saves us for a release from shame and a way to live into a sense of self-esteem and inner strength; that we will be richly blessed (vs. 12); and, that so we will be attended to by God whenever we call out to him (v. 13).
Whenever I talk to people who are going through some grief experience I try to help give them a sense of their resources to deal with that grief. Is not this list of what we are saved for a great trove of resources that God has given us? That no matter what, when we are saved, we are right with God; that we will not suffer ultimate shame and disappointment no matter how tough the situation; that we will be richly blessed no matter what we feel has been taken from us; and that God promises to always be there when we call out to him.
What we are saved from and what we are saved for is truly a cause for exultant worship and praise of God.
The British Parliament abolished slavery in the West Indies on August 1, 1836. But the decree was not to be valid until the next year. On July 1, 1837, twenty thousand slaves united in Jamaica. At 11:00 at night, all of them dressed in white robes, they knelt down, faces turned upward at the clock tower, awaiting midnight. As the clock struck twelve, the twenty thousand slaves rose together and shouted joyously, “We are free! We are free!” They knew exactly what they were freed from. And they were just gaining a sense of what they were freed for.
Can we not also, at the moment we have confessed with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believed in our heart that God raised him from the dead, can we not also raise our hands in joy and shout, “We are saved! We are saved!”
Romans 10:8-13
Are you saved? It’s a simple question. It’s definitely a religious question. We associate the question with evangelistic types who feel no discomfort in walking up to a total stranger and asking the question, “Are you saved?” I haven't seen any street preachers in the past few years who are buttonholing people on city street corners trying to save their eternal souls. Or people walking up and down the sidewalks with a sandwich board that says, “The end is near.”
I don’t know why. It’s still a relevant question. It’s a question all of us have to ask ourselves, or be asked by someone in the church. There are lots of variations on the little question, Are you saved? What is the state of your eternal soul? If you died today do you know where your soul would be? When someone joins the church, the first question they are asked is, “Who is your Lord and Savior?” There is only one acceptable answer.
If you are a thinking person, hopefully you ponder the question, Are you saved? On one level, when you hear that question, you may be thinking the question really is, Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? That’s part of it. But there’s more to ponder here.
If you hear the question, Are you saved?, you may ask, and rightly so, “Saved from what?” It’s like the bumper stickers back in the ’70’s that said, “Jesus is the answer.” Then the backlash bumper stickers started coming out that said, “What’s the question?” Or there were the bumper stickers that said, “I found it!” And the backlash bumper stickers that read, “I didn’t know you lost it.” If I answer “yes” to that question, “Are you saved?”, you also have to be ready for the backlash question: From what are you saved? The word implies that you are saved from something.
The word “save” in the Greek language of the Bible means:
1) saved from serious peril
2) to be kept alive
3) preserve your inner being
So, think of those meanings when you think about being saved. From what serious peril were you actually saved? How were you literally kept alive when you were saved? How was your inner being being preserved when you were saved?
When Paul Tillich retired as professor at Harvard Divinity School, on the occasion of his last class, he preached a sermon to his students on Matthew 10:8, “Heal the sick, raise the dead…” Tillich then said to the ministry students, “You will go out to carry the gospel of healing, but your biggest problem will be persuading people they need to be healed.” His sermon made the point that the biggest challenge Christian ministry faces is that of getting people to realize how sick we are without healing faith in God.
I think he’s right. Most people don’t think they are that bad of a person. They become “saved”—that is, as I mentioned before, they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but won’t allow themselves to think any further about the depth of what they have just been saved from.
Being saved from what? Hell? Eternal damnation? Eternal torment? The fiery flames? Pitch forks and torture? Most of our understanding of what hell is all about comes more from Dante’s book, The Inferno, than it does from the Bible.
A man died and was taken to his place of eternal torment by the devil. As he passed sulphurous pits and shrieking sinners, he saw a man he recognized as a corrupt television evangelist snuggling up to a beautiful woman.
"That's unfair!" he cried. "I have to roast for all eternity, and that TV evangelist gets to spend it with a beautiful woman."
"Shut up", barked the devil, jabbing the man with his pitchfork. "Who are you to question that woman's punishment?”
I want to give you an alternate understanding of what hell is all about based on a couple of things Jesus said, rather than Dante’s seven circles of hell.
First, one of the most quoted and memorized verses in the Bible: John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” The word, perish, in the language Jesus spoke, means total annihilation. It doesn’t have anything to do with eternal damnation, fires, and torturous torment. It means that your soul is fully destroyed.
What Jesus is contrasting here in this most favorite of verses, is between having your soul completely erased, or having everlasting life with God.
And secondly, add to that the statement Jesus made recorded in Matthew 10, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Again, this word destroy has to do with having all traces of your soul expunged from existence. From these two statements Jesus makes, we are forced to rethink what hell is all about.
What if hell is not a place of eternal torment, but is a place where your soul is totally obliterated? What if what you are saved from is not eternal punishment, but the irreversible eradicating of all that you are body and soul? If you had the choice to live eternally with God and with the souls of all who love God, or having even your soul absolutely and forever eliminated, which would you choose?
Francis Schaeffer, in his book, No Little People, described the judgement of God as a great prairie fire. He wrote:
A Christian has only one foundation: Jesus Christ the Savior. And on that foundation he builds—with either combustible or non-combustible material. One day there will be a great judgment and the fire will come. It will be like the great prairie fire which sweeps along burning everything in its path. Suddenly it comes to a great rock outcropping in the midst of the prairie. Everything around the rock will be consumed. Only that which is atop the rock will escape the fire.
That’s what you have been saved from. Not eternal punishment. But total and final incineration of your very soul. Why does that happen? How do people come to that end?
In the opening scene of the movie, La Doce Vita, there is a panoramic view of Rome’s skyline. The focus is on the grand dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the center. Then there is the sound of a helicopter, heard off in a distance, until we catch a glimpse of it, far off, dragging some obscure object through the air by wires.
As the helicopter flies closer, you can clearly make out the cargo. It is a huge statue of Christ being dragged across the skyline of Rome. In the middle of the helicopter's flight, the film cuts to a beach below. Young beach goers, annoyed by the intrusion of the helicopter noise, laugh mockingly, pointing, as the statue flies overhead. The helicopter comes to a stop, hovers in place, then releases the statue into a trash dump-site below, breaking into pieces as it hits.
The message is loud and clear: Modern people have relegated Christ to the trash heap. People act as if Christ really doesn’t matter. In the early days of Christianity, the believers were hunted down and killed in all kinds of heinous ways. The threat of the world was a clear and present danger. But today, we as believers have no such external threat. The world doesn’t see us as a danger anymore. The world only sees Christians and our Christian beliefs as something that can be ignored, or laughed at as antiquated and irrelevant. It is against this grim scenery that the drama of God’s salvation is played out.
That is how a person reaches the point of having their soul erased by God. If you want to live as if Christ doesn’t matter, or as if Christ is some antiquated figure who has nothing to say to our modern sensibilities, or if you want to live as if Christ has nothing to say to you about how you will live your life, to all that God says, “Fine, have it your way.”
Remember when Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26) Notice Jesus doesn’t say if you want to gain the world and ignore Jesus in the process, your soul isn’t eternally tortured. It is forfeited. It is given up. It is erased.
People say, “How can a loving God condemn someone’s soul to eternal punishment?” Well, God doesn’t. God just grants people their wishes. If you want to live as if God doesn’t exist, and not believe in the Savior Jesus, then fine. You won’t be subject to the evil whims of a devil. You will simply reap what you have sown in this life—the total eradication of your soul.
That’s what you’ve been saved from. Let me say again what the meaning of the word “save” is in the Greek: saved from serious peril, to be kept alive, to have your inner being preserved. It isn’t hard to make the connection about what you have been saved from. Is it not serious peril to face having your very soul erased? Doesn’t being kept alive mean more than just your body, but that your soul also has a life and it can be wiped away? And what is your inner being but your soul, and to preserve your soul for eternity, rather than it being quashed at the end of life, is something you should desire? And the only way to do that, as Paul has said here, “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
There is one more piece to this statement by Paul that he goes on to explain in detail. It’s a part of being saved, that is just as important as what we are saved from. It is what we are saved for. It’s not enough for God that we be saved from the peril of losing our soul. God wants to benefit us, if we accept his salvation from annihilation, so that our life now may be full.
Here’s what we’re saved for: to be put right with God (vs. 10); so that we won’t be disappointed (vs. 11)—interesting that the word literally means that we won’t be put to shame—that God saves us for a release from shame and a way to live into a sense of self-esteem and inner strength; that we will be richly blessed (vs. 12); and, that so we will be attended to by God whenever we call out to him (v. 13).
Whenever I talk to people who are going through some grief experience I try to help give them a sense of their resources to deal with that grief. Is not this list of what we are saved for a great trove of resources that God has given us? That no matter what, when we are saved, we are right with God; that we will not suffer ultimate shame and disappointment no matter how tough the situation; that we will be richly blessed no matter what we feel has been taken from us; and that God promises to always be there when we call out to him.
What we are saved from and what we are saved for is truly a cause for exultant worship and praise of God.
The British Parliament abolished slavery in the West Indies on August 1, 1836. But the decree was not to be valid until the next year. On July 1, 1837, twenty thousand slaves united in Jamaica. At 11:00 at night, all of them dressed in white robes, they knelt down, faces turned upward at the clock tower, awaiting midnight. As the clock struck twelve, the twenty thousand slaves rose together and shouted joyously, “We are free! We are free!” They knew exactly what they were freed from. And they were just gaining a sense of what they were freed for.
Can we not also, at the moment we have confessed with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believed in our heart that God raised him from the dead, can we not also raise our hands in joy and shout, “We are saved! We are saved!”
Monday, July 21, 2014
Working Up An Appetite
"Working Up An Appetite"
Romans 8:18-28
"Working Up An Appetite"
Romans 8:18-28
Frederick Buechner, Presbyterian minister and author, once wrote about the time he was visiting Rome during Christmas. He went to St. Peter's Cathedral on Christmas Eve to see Pope Pius XII celebrate mass. Buechner described the huge crowd of pilgrims who were there, and the great anticipation that charged the air with holy electricity. Then the Pope was carried in on his golden throne.
This is how Buechner describes his experience:
Through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face and into all the faces around me and behind me with a look so keen and so charged that I could not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone in particular. He was not a potentate nodding and smiling to acknowledge the enthusiasm of the multitudes. He was a man whose face seemed gray with waiting, whose eyes seemed huge and exhausted with searching, for someone, some one, who he thought might be there that night or any night, anywhere, but whom he had never found, and yet he kept looking. Face after face he searched for the face that he knew he would know--was it this one? was it this one? or this one?--and then he passed on out of my sight. It was a powerful moment for me..and I felt that I knew whom he was looking for...that in the teeming mystery of that place he was looking not just for the Christ in our faces but for the Christ himself... (The Hungering Dark, page 115, 118)
I have known people whose gaze was equally intense, whose eyes were also large and worn with their looking. There was a guy in my college dorm like that. John something-or-other; I can't remember his last name. He was a Jesus Freak of the first order. It was the early 1970's. John had been strung out so far on drugs, probably not too many people would have been surprised or concerned when the last thread broke.
But then John saw The Lord. A meeting so powerful, so real, that it almost instantly, and miraculously, regenerated John's brain and his life. He yearned to see The Lord again. Everyday he yearned with deep moans. One day he came up to me and with a mournful ache in his voice, said, "Steve, when's Jesus coming back; I want to see him so badly."
I said, "I don't know, John. I just don't know." He clapped me on the shoulder, nodding his head, and went on, looking--searching--like the Pope was searching for Jesus, for some visible sign of the Lord's presence.
I sometimes wonder what happened to John, and the few people I know like him who have been so anxious to see The Lord. I wonder if they are still looking, if their eyes are still larger than life in their search for the holy.
There aren't too many people who I know, like John, who are so overt in their search. Most people I know live as if there is nothing really holy in life. Most are trying to avoid a face-to-face with Jesus. Most people don't look for Christ himself as they pass their days.
Dwight L. Moody was once asked, "Why are you always talking about your need to be filled with the Holy Spirit?"
Moody replied, "Because I leak."
Most people, I know, leak. They slowly--or quickly--lose their attentiveness to God and to the things of God. There is so much that pokes holes in our attentiveness to God, that obscures our vision to God and to what God is doing. Or there are those who try to redefine God's activity as something else: politics, fate, social reform, psychology.
But the key is our attention--our appetite--for God and for what God is doing in the world. It is in that driving urge to keep our eyes large in search of God and God's activity. God and God's work is all around us. It's happening in spite of us, whether we're paying attention or not.
There was a farmer who was visiting a friend in New York City. As they were walking down one of the avenues, the farmer suddenly turned to his friend and said, "I hear a cricket."
"Oh, you're crazy," his friend replied.
"No; I hear a cricket. I do! I'm sure of it."
"It's the noon hour," his friend replied. "There are wall-to-wall people, cars honking, taxi's squealing around corners, noises all over the place. How can you say you hear a cricket in the midst of all this noise?"
"I'm sure I do." He listened attentively and then walked to the corner, and listened a little more. Finally, near by, he saw a shrub planted in a concrete planter. He brushed at the leaves that had fallen, and there was a cricket.
His friend was astonished. But the farmer said, "My ears are no different than yours. It simply depends on what you are listening for. Here, let me show you what I mean." The farmer reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change--and dropped the coins on the sidewalk. Nearly every head turned within a block. "You see what I mean?" he said picking up his coins. "It all depends on what you're listening for."
How do we listen for God? How do we keep our attention for God from leaking out? How do we keep from being distracted by so many other things? How do we keep our eyes large with anticipation, looking for the face of Christ in the many people we see each day? How do we keep our eyesight clear so we know what we are seeing when we see it: the face of Christ at work in our lives and in our world? How do we keep looking and not give up?
The apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians that the answer to those kinds of questions was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, according to Paul, arouses our appetite for God. The Holy Spirit makes our souls growl with deep hunger for the things of God. When that appetite becomes distracted, or we try to satisfy it with other things, the Holy Spirit keeps the hunger alive.
Have you ever been really thirsty, and it seems you are drinking every kind of liquid refreshment you can think of, but still your thirst persists? Or, when hungry, you stuff yourself with a lot of junk food, and then feel bloated, but you still feel hungry? In fact, if you kept eating the empty calories you'd literally starve to death.
Spiritually, we stuff or drown our God-appetite with that which is not God. We misread the source of our deep hunger. That's why the Holy Spirit is so important--the Holy Spirit keeps us in touch with where our hunger really lies, that it is a hunger for God. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to make us feel our hunger pains for God over and over, until that pain drives us to true satisfaction. The Holy Spirit makes us realize how starved we are, driving us back to the pantry of God's presence.
Hunger pains can hurt when you are really starving. We ache for deliverance from such pains. But we can't be delivered until we realize the folly of our predicament. We can't take care of the cause of the pains until we gain the knowledge of how we wittingly or unwittingly have been starving ourselves of God. The Holy Spirit not only creates the hunger pains, but then gives the knowledge of our folly and then the direction for how to satisfy our hunger for God.
There is one more role that the Holy Spirit takes on, as mentioned by Paul in this chapter of his letter to the Roman Christians. It is the flip side of what I have just been saying. This role of the Holy Spirit has to do with prayer. Paul says that the Holy Spirit interprets our prayers to God, and even when we don't exactly know what to say, the Holy Spirit prays for us.
Probably one of the most troubling disciplines of being a Christian is prayer. How am I supposed to pray? How long should I pray? What should I say? When should I pray? What is prayer, anyway? These kinds of questions seem to have arisen ever since people discovered communication with God was possible--even expected. Paul certainly must have heard such questions from converts in the churches he was establishing.
His response to those questions? "Don't worry about it." Paul saw that that was one of the great roles of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.
A grandfather was passing his granddaughter's room one night and overheard her repeating the alphabet in a very reverent way. "What on earth are you doing?" he asked her.
"I'm saying my prayers," explained the little girl. "But I can't think of exactly the right words tonight, so I'm just saying all the letters. God will put them together for me, because God knows what I'm trying to say."
That little girl, whether she knew it or not, was taking Paul's teaching to heart. "Don't worry about it; the Holy Spirit puts all the letters together and makes it come out just right before God."
Even our groans and sighs are turned into prayer by the Holy Spirit. Did you ever imagine how holy those noises are: **nasal sigh**; **deep breath**; **sigh**; **groan**. All those are prayers! Noises (or individual letters) transformed into prayers by the Holy Spirit.
In this way, the Holy Spirit is keeping us present to God. Our prayers, fashioned by the Holy Spirit to reflect our true selves and needs, are made known to God--brought into the very presence of God.
Now remember I said that this activity of the Holy Spirit is the flip side of the first role? In the first activity of the Holy Spirit, we are having out attention--our appetite--for God, heightened and directed to God. The Holy Spirit is keeping us looking for God and attentive to God.
In the second role, the Holy Spirit is keeping God attentive to us. God is being made to pay attention to us through our prayers that are being brought into God's presence by the Holy Spirit. It's a two way street, and the Holy Spirit is in charge of keeping the traffic of that communication going both ways.
Romans 8:18-28
"Working Up An Appetite"
Romans 8:18-28
Frederick Buechner, Presbyterian minister and author, once wrote about the time he was visiting Rome during Christmas. He went to St. Peter's Cathedral on Christmas Eve to see Pope Pius XII celebrate mass. Buechner described the huge crowd of pilgrims who were there, and the great anticipation that charged the air with holy electricity. Then the Pope was carried in on his golden throne.
This is how Buechner describes his experience:
Through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face and into all the faces around me and behind me with a look so keen and so charged that I could not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone in particular. He was not a potentate nodding and smiling to acknowledge the enthusiasm of the multitudes. He was a man whose face seemed gray with waiting, whose eyes seemed huge and exhausted with searching, for someone, some one, who he thought might be there that night or any night, anywhere, but whom he had never found, and yet he kept looking. Face after face he searched for the face that he knew he would know--was it this one? was it this one? or this one?--and then he passed on out of my sight. It was a powerful moment for me..and I felt that I knew whom he was looking for...that in the teeming mystery of that place he was looking not just for the Christ in our faces but for the Christ himself... (The Hungering Dark, page 115, 118)
I have known people whose gaze was equally intense, whose eyes were also large and worn with their looking. There was a guy in my college dorm like that. John something-or-other; I can't remember his last name. He was a Jesus Freak of the first order. It was the early 1970's. John had been strung out so far on drugs, probably not too many people would have been surprised or concerned when the last thread broke.
But then John saw The Lord. A meeting so powerful, so real, that it almost instantly, and miraculously, regenerated John's brain and his life. He yearned to see The Lord again. Everyday he yearned with deep moans. One day he came up to me and with a mournful ache in his voice, said, "Steve, when's Jesus coming back; I want to see him so badly."
I said, "I don't know, John. I just don't know." He clapped me on the shoulder, nodding his head, and went on, looking--searching--like the Pope was searching for Jesus, for some visible sign of the Lord's presence.
I sometimes wonder what happened to John, and the few people I know like him who have been so anxious to see The Lord. I wonder if they are still looking, if their eyes are still larger than life in their search for the holy.
There aren't too many people who I know, like John, who are so overt in their search. Most people I know live as if there is nothing really holy in life. Most are trying to avoid a face-to-face with Jesus. Most people don't look for Christ himself as they pass their days.
Dwight L. Moody was once asked, "Why are you always talking about your need to be filled with the Holy Spirit?"
Moody replied, "Because I leak."
Most people, I know, leak. They slowly--or quickly--lose their attentiveness to God and to the things of God. There is so much that pokes holes in our attentiveness to God, that obscures our vision to God and to what God is doing. Or there are those who try to redefine God's activity as something else: politics, fate, social reform, psychology.
But the key is our attention--our appetite--for God and for what God is doing in the world. It is in that driving urge to keep our eyes large in search of God and God's activity. God and God's work is all around us. It's happening in spite of us, whether we're paying attention or not.
There was a farmer who was visiting a friend in New York City. As they were walking down one of the avenues, the farmer suddenly turned to his friend and said, "I hear a cricket."
"Oh, you're crazy," his friend replied.
"No; I hear a cricket. I do! I'm sure of it."
"It's the noon hour," his friend replied. "There are wall-to-wall people, cars honking, taxi's squealing around corners, noises all over the place. How can you say you hear a cricket in the midst of all this noise?"
"I'm sure I do." He listened attentively and then walked to the corner, and listened a little more. Finally, near by, he saw a shrub planted in a concrete planter. He brushed at the leaves that had fallen, and there was a cricket.
His friend was astonished. But the farmer said, "My ears are no different than yours. It simply depends on what you are listening for. Here, let me show you what I mean." The farmer reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change--and dropped the coins on the sidewalk. Nearly every head turned within a block. "You see what I mean?" he said picking up his coins. "It all depends on what you're listening for."
How do we listen for God? How do we keep our attention for God from leaking out? How do we keep from being distracted by so many other things? How do we keep our eyes large with anticipation, looking for the face of Christ in the many people we see each day? How do we keep our eyesight clear so we know what we are seeing when we see it: the face of Christ at work in our lives and in our world? How do we keep looking and not give up?
The apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians that the answer to those kinds of questions was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, according to Paul, arouses our appetite for God. The Holy Spirit makes our souls growl with deep hunger for the things of God. When that appetite becomes distracted, or we try to satisfy it with other things, the Holy Spirit keeps the hunger alive.
Have you ever been really thirsty, and it seems you are drinking every kind of liquid refreshment you can think of, but still your thirst persists? Or, when hungry, you stuff yourself with a lot of junk food, and then feel bloated, but you still feel hungry? In fact, if you kept eating the empty calories you'd literally starve to death.
Spiritually, we stuff or drown our God-appetite with that which is not God. We misread the source of our deep hunger. That's why the Holy Spirit is so important--the Holy Spirit keeps us in touch with where our hunger really lies, that it is a hunger for God. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to make us feel our hunger pains for God over and over, until that pain drives us to true satisfaction. The Holy Spirit makes us realize how starved we are, driving us back to the pantry of God's presence.
Hunger pains can hurt when you are really starving. We ache for deliverance from such pains. But we can't be delivered until we realize the folly of our predicament. We can't take care of the cause of the pains until we gain the knowledge of how we wittingly or unwittingly have been starving ourselves of God. The Holy Spirit not only creates the hunger pains, but then gives the knowledge of our folly and then the direction for how to satisfy our hunger for God.
There is one more role that the Holy Spirit takes on, as mentioned by Paul in this chapter of his letter to the Roman Christians. It is the flip side of what I have just been saying. This role of the Holy Spirit has to do with prayer. Paul says that the Holy Spirit interprets our prayers to God, and even when we don't exactly know what to say, the Holy Spirit prays for us.
Probably one of the most troubling disciplines of being a Christian is prayer. How am I supposed to pray? How long should I pray? What should I say? When should I pray? What is prayer, anyway? These kinds of questions seem to have arisen ever since people discovered communication with God was possible--even expected. Paul certainly must have heard such questions from converts in the churches he was establishing.
His response to those questions? "Don't worry about it." Paul saw that that was one of the great roles of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.
A grandfather was passing his granddaughter's room one night and overheard her repeating the alphabet in a very reverent way. "What on earth are you doing?" he asked her.
"I'm saying my prayers," explained the little girl. "But I can't think of exactly the right words tonight, so I'm just saying all the letters. God will put them together for me, because God knows what I'm trying to say."
That little girl, whether she knew it or not, was taking Paul's teaching to heart. "Don't worry about it; the Holy Spirit puts all the letters together and makes it come out just right before God."
Even our groans and sighs are turned into prayer by the Holy Spirit. Did you ever imagine how holy those noises are: **nasal sigh**; **deep breath**; **sigh**; **groan**. All those are prayers! Noises (or individual letters) transformed into prayers by the Holy Spirit.
In this way, the Holy Spirit is keeping us present to God. Our prayers, fashioned by the Holy Spirit to reflect our true selves and needs, are made known to God--brought into the very presence of God.
Now remember I said that this activity of the Holy Spirit is the flip side of the first role? In the first activity of the Holy Spirit, we are having out attention--our appetite--for God, heightened and directed to God. The Holy Spirit is keeping us looking for God and attentive to God.
In the second role, the Holy Spirit is keeping God attentive to us. God is being made to pay attention to us through our prayers that are being brought into God's presence by the Holy Spirit. It's a two way street, and the Holy Spirit is in charge of keeping the traffic of that communication going both ways.
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