Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Believing Without Seeing
I have a confession. It's tough to admit and I'm not sure how coming clean this way will effect the way I'm perceived, but in this culture where people feel the need to bare even the most minute details of their life ("Going grocery shopping. Hope they'll take these expired Fruit Loops coupons.") I figure you might as well know the truth.
I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's ridiculous, I know. I mean I probably shouldn't care what color you decided to paint your bathroom, what vegetable you steamed for dinner, or anything about your latest pictures of your cat.... but I do. I check Facebook so often on my phone that I think my wife is about to stage an intervention. I check it in meetings, before and after dinner, while I'm watching TV, when I'm on the phone with someone else.
Help me. I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's not all bad though. Occasionally I stumble on something useful or thought provoking. Such was the case when to my surprise, I saw this article in the Toronto Globe written about this fair city we call home. It comes to us from a reporter, who for reasons unnamed, decides to stop here for the night on his way from someplace north of Lima, to someplace south. In the article, the reporter is surprised at the decay he finds in the city. Abandoned buildings. Empty houses. Urban blight. In Detroit, he says, he expects such things, but in towns like Lima he's surprised at the effects of our community being "crushed by the tectonic plates of the global economics" (or some such similar overwrought metaphor). And then he takes a plenty of potshots at our two-WalMart metropolis as a place where people eat at faux-Mexican restaurants only wear baseball caps, stretch pants, and camouflage. He paints us as a post-industrial apocalyptic community where drug dealers no longer hang out due to a lack of financial opportunity.
In short, in the words of the author, living in Lima is "a no-job, no-hope reality". A place Phyllis Diller, once joked, you escape from.
If you live here, or lived here, you get used to people taking potshots at your home. I mean, I don't know why the author of the article is so surprised at the condition of our town. He could find the same kind of blight in Toledo, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, Youngstown, Akron, Ironton, and countless other cities and towns all over Ohio. Heck, hasn't he ever heard the song "Allentown"...
Well we're living here in Allentown
Where they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem their killing time
Filling out forms. Standing in line.
Billy Joel wrote this 25 years ago. As the industrial fortunes of the country have continued to decline, discovering a depressed section of the City of Lima in 2011 is akin to going to Berlin and discovering they tore down the Wall. And while I'm sure there are more than a few people locally ready to affirm everything the Globe reporter observed, by no means is this a place where hope has jumped ship. I'd concede that from an economic standpoint, at least over the last thirty years, we've racked up more losses than wins, but that doesn't mean that Lima as a community is losing.
If that's what you see, then, well.... your eyes deceive you.
Like a lot of kids growing up in Lima, in high school I was bucking to get out of here to someplace "not boring". I went off to college, married my high school sweetheart, and after a few more years living here while working on my graduate degree, moved off looking for greener pastures.
But then a funny thing happened... after eight years away, we actually started missing Lima, Ohio and when the opportunity presented itself, we moved back.
Part of the reason for our willingness to return was that we learned something the author of the article apparently doesn't know: there's a post-apocalyptic section or two in every town and city in every town, everywhere. Columbus, for example, has become a mecca for people across the state and the country. It's a place of opportunity, where a mix of public and private sector jobs in every field imaginable are available to qualified applicants. And yet, in Columbus, while there are better bookstores, a larger mall, and more places to eat, there are still drug addicts, crime, run down buildings, empty factories, and in addition to all of that, it seems to take at least 40 minutes to get anywhere. Lima might not be Disneyworld, but what place is? I mean, Disneyworld is built on the backs of a lot of part-time laborers working for little more than minimum wage without benefits.
Where exactly is Nirvana? If you live on the beach in Hawaii, and your neighbor's kids are crying from hunger, have you found paradise?
Name me a town, and I'll point to statistics that show growing social ills. Lima once rode growth spurred by the discovery of oil. Now we know the truth about boomtowns where the future appears to be nothing but bright and rosy: their foundation is built on a bubble that eventually, as the winds of fortune blow elsewhere, burst.
And all the while the poor are shut out either way due to a lack of jobs or an affordable cost of living. Silicon Valley for example is riding a second wave right now of tech fueled growth, but if all you can afford is a house that five families have to share in a dilapidated part of town, how much better off are you really?
No. With the Globe columnist, I'll have to disagree. The quality of life in a community, any community, can't be based on what can be seen and observed. Rather, that which is important, which should be counted, when a community, or for that matter any organization, family, or individual is measured as desirable or undesirable, are characteristics that can't be seen down your nose from a car window. In fact, it can't be seen at all.
I know that sounds confusing. Some sort of preacher's hocus pocus. But it's true.
I have a friend who works for a large corporation in Detroit. For two or three years before he was re-located to a city which has become the poster child for America's industrial decline, he lived in Southern California. SoCal is a place where temperatures start in the 70's and sunshine every day. A place so filled with opportunity that even the Kardashians can become huge stars. And yet, his only regret now as a Motor City resident was that he didn't leave SoCal sooner.
"Detroit is filled with the same people we grew up with", he told me. "Hard-working, honest, decent, good people. If character counted for anything, Detroit would be one of the finest places in the world to live. All I know, is I hope we never leave."
All of this from a man who, with his wife, just adopted two young foster children left in the wake of the only dimension of the city the Globe reporter could see. It's people like my friend the father who yields pictures of his young son and daughter with great pride and enthusiasm who make Detroit, or Toledo, or even Lima a great place to live. You either get that, or you don't.
You can't see good. You can't see decent. You can't see honest. You can't measure character. You just can't. I wish the Globe columnist had recognized this. His entire column might have been different. For while certainly there is here in Lima a hunger for something better than what is, there is also an abundance of people who live hopefully, instill it in their children, and realize what someday some lucky people in post-industrial apocalyptic Shanghai will learn: what makes life worth living has nothing to do with shifting tectonic plates of economic fortune.
Everything important can't be seen. When you believe that, you'll know it's true.
That's why I think Jesus made it a point to let Thomas, who now believed death was beaten as he put his hand in Christ's side, that the greater blessing would be for those who did not see, and yet still believed in the message of the Gospel. A message filled with hope, love, grace, mercy, and a belief in a Kingdom of Heaven that couldn't be seen, but was yet still present and emerging. Jesus calls us to pursue all these things with the fervor and passion that can't come from out of a properly applied scientific method, but rather only through a faith realized so completely that a slave trader was compelled to write the words, "Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I'm found. Was blind but now I see."
The greater blessing is for anyone, living anywhere, who doesn't trust their eyes, but rather only trusts that which can't be seen. Understand that, and the Kingdom is at the gate Lima, Ohio. It's at your gate, wherever you are.
If you keep reading the story after Luke ends, and Acts begins, you'll discover that Jesus' resurrection becomes the confirmation Peter, James, John, and the rest of disciples need to put their faith into a Kingdom that by all acceptable and normal measures, seems ridiculous. A place where the first become last and the last become first. A place where peacemakers are blessed and those who earnestly want to know and live righteously find fulfillment. A place where leaders wash the feet of their followers and assure them that what they'll accomplish will be far greater than anything the leader accomplished in his own lifetime.
A Christian's whole life is invested in what can't be seen, and a refusal to accept as true a no-hope reality.
The fact is that nobody who lives in Lima and likes it (of which there are many of us) is devoid of hope or broken beyond measure. It is possible to make a very nice living here, but if that's not possible countless volunteers, agencies, churches, and service organizations band together, striving to form a safety net to catch those who are falling between the cracks. It's a place where the soup kitchens get funded out of a sense of humility one check or dollar at a time, and where the Rescue Home keeps the "Jesus Saves" sign on with donations from people who know "there but by the grace of God, go I". Its a place where people are always dreaming and working toward something better because, while they can't see it, they know it still exists. Maybe tectonic forces crushed many of our factories, but our spirit is left intact.
I'll close with this.... last fall our community buried a great man. Dr. Gene Wright. Dr. Wright was my doctor growing up. As a kid he made me stick out my tongue and say "ah", and later as an adult, he chastised me about my weight. I was one of thousands, I suppose, who could say the same. In his life he was instrumental in not only keeping Lima healthy, but also training up generations of new doctors, improving our health care facilities (which are now our principle employers), and because he was well aware of the challenges people without health insurance faced, the founding of Allen County Health Partners, a publicly and privately funded agency that provides health care to thousands of people who currently are not insured. He was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things all because when he sat in the pew, he believed what he heard when he was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. He spent his whole life making sure that on his watch, all God's children here would get to stick out their tongue and say "ah".
I serve a congregation in community filled with Dr. Wrights. They bust their hump raising millions of dollars for causes of all kinds. They donate hours upon hours of their time. They pray "thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven", and then live it out. They understand that there are variations on the joke, "First Prize: A week in Lima, Ohio. Second Prize: Two weeks in Lima, Ohio", and are still love this place they call home enough that they give back to it, willingly and passionately.
And like Dr. Wright, they are strangely compelled by their belief in things unseen. A hope not yet fully realized. A love that defies logic. And a willingness to make sacrificially an investment in the kinds of mercy and grace that make town like ours, a great place to live.
I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's ridiculous, I know. I mean I probably shouldn't care what color you decided to paint your bathroom, what vegetable you steamed for dinner, or anything about your latest pictures of your cat.... but I do. I check Facebook so often on my phone that I think my wife is about to stage an intervention. I check it in meetings, before and after dinner, while I'm watching TV, when I'm on the phone with someone else.
Help me. I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's not all bad though. Occasionally I stumble on something useful or thought provoking. Such was the case when to my surprise, I saw this article in the Toronto Globe written about this fair city we call home. It comes to us from a reporter, who for reasons unnamed, decides to stop here for the night on his way from someplace north of Lima, to someplace south. In the article, the reporter is surprised at the decay he finds in the city. Abandoned buildings. Empty houses. Urban blight. In Detroit, he says, he expects such things, but in towns like Lima he's surprised at the effects of our community being "crushed by the tectonic plates of the global economics" (or some such similar overwrought metaphor). And then he takes a plenty of potshots at our two-WalMart metropolis as a place where people eat at faux-Mexican restaurants only wear baseball caps, stretch pants, and camouflage. He paints us as a post-industrial apocalyptic community where drug dealers no longer hang out due to a lack of financial opportunity.
In short, in the words of the author, living in Lima is "a no-job, no-hope reality". A place Phyllis Diller, once joked, you escape from.
If you live here, or lived here, you get used to people taking potshots at your home. I mean, I don't know why the author of the article is so surprised at the condition of our town. He could find the same kind of blight in Toledo, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, Youngstown, Akron, Ironton, and countless other cities and towns all over Ohio. Heck, hasn't he ever heard the song "Allentown"...
Well we're living here in Allentown
Where they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem their killing time
Filling out forms. Standing in line.
Billy Joel wrote this 25 years ago. As the industrial fortunes of the country have continued to decline, discovering a depressed section of the City of Lima in 2011 is akin to going to Berlin and discovering they tore down the Wall. And while I'm sure there are more than a few people locally ready to affirm everything the Globe reporter observed, by no means is this a place where hope has jumped ship. I'd concede that from an economic standpoint, at least over the last thirty years, we've racked up more losses than wins, but that doesn't mean that Lima as a community is losing.
If that's what you see, then, well.... your eyes deceive you.
Like a lot of kids growing up in Lima, in high school I was bucking to get out of here to someplace "not boring". I went off to college, married my high school sweetheart, and after a few more years living here while working on my graduate degree, moved off looking for greener pastures.
But then a funny thing happened... after eight years away, we actually started missing Lima, Ohio and when the opportunity presented itself, we moved back.
Part of the reason for our willingness to return was that we learned something the author of the article apparently doesn't know: there's a post-apocalyptic section or two in every town and city in every town, everywhere. Columbus, for example, has become a mecca for people across the state and the country. It's a place of opportunity, where a mix of public and private sector jobs in every field imaginable are available to qualified applicants. And yet, in Columbus, while there are better bookstores, a larger mall, and more places to eat, there are still drug addicts, crime, run down buildings, empty factories, and in addition to all of that, it seems to take at least 40 minutes to get anywhere. Lima might not be Disneyworld, but what place is? I mean, Disneyworld is built on the backs of a lot of part-time laborers working for little more than minimum wage without benefits.
Where exactly is Nirvana? If you live on the beach in Hawaii, and your neighbor's kids are crying from hunger, have you found paradise?
Name me a town, and I'll point to statistics that show growing social ills. Lima once rode growth spurred by the discovery of oil. Now we know the truth about boomtowns where the future appears to be nothing but bright and rosy: their foundation is built on a bubble that eventually, as the winds of fortune blow elsewhere, burst.
And all the while the poor are shut out either way due to a lack of jobs or an affordable cost of living. Silicon Valley for example is riding a second wave right now of tech fueled growth, but if all you can afford is a house that five families have to share in a dilapidated part of town, how much better off are you really?
No. With the Globe columnist, I'll have to disagree. The quality of life in a community, any community, can't be based on what can be seen and observed. Rather, that which is important, which should be counted, when a community, or for that matter any organization, family, or individual is measured as desirable or undesirable, are characteristics that can't be seen down your nose from a car window. In fact, it can't be seen at all.
I know that sounds confusing. Some sort of preacher's hocus pocus. But it's true.
I have a friend who works for a large corporation in Detroit. For two or three years before he was re-located to a city which has become the poster child for America's industrial decline, he lived in Southern California. SoCal is a place where temperatures start in the 70's and sunshine every day. A place so filled with opportunity that even the Kardashians can become huge stars. And yet, his only regret now as a Motor City resident was that he didn't leave SoCal sooner.
"Detroit is filled with the same people we grew up with", he told me. "Hard-working, honest, decent, good people. If character counted for anything, Detroit would be one of the finest places in the world to live. All I know, is I hope we never leave."
All of this from a man who, with his wife, just adopted two young foster children left in the wake of the only dimension of the city the Globe reporter could see. It's people like my friend the father who yields pictures of his young son and daughter with great pride and enthusiasm who make Detroit, or Toledo, or even Lima a great place to live. You either get that, or you don't.
You can't see good. You can't see decent. You can't see honest. You can't measure character. You just can't. I wish the Globe columnist had recognized this. His entire column might have been different. For while certainly there is here in Lima a hunger for something better than what is, there is also an abundance of people who live hopefully, instill it in their children, and realize what someday some lucky people in post-industrial apocalyptic Shanghai will learn: what makes life worth living has nothing to do with shifting tectonic plates of economic fortune.
Everything important can't be seen. When you believe that, you'll know it's true.
That's why I think Jesus made it a point to let Thomas, who now believed death was beaten as he put his hand in Christ's side, that the greater blessing would be for those who did not see, and yet still believed in the message of the Gospel. A message filled with hope, love, grace, mercy, and a belief in a Kingdom of Heaven that couldn't be seen, but was yet still present and emerging. Jesus calls us to pursue all these things with the fervor and passion that can't come from out of a properly applied scientific method, but rather only through a faith realized so completely that a slave trader was compelled to write the words, "Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I'm found. Was blind but now I see."
The greater blessing is for anyone, living anywhere, who doesn't trust their eyes, but rather only trusts that which can't be seen. Understand that, and the Kingdom is at the gate Lima, Ohio. It's at your gate, wherever you are.
If you keep reading the story after Luke ends, and Acts begins, you'll discover that Jesus' resurrection becomes the confirmation Peter, James, John, and the rest of disciples need to put their faith into a Kingdom that by all acceptable and normal measures, seems ridiculous. A place where the first become last and the last become first. A place where peacemakers are blessed and those who earnestly want to know and live righteously find fulfillment. A place where leaders wash the feet of their followers and assure them that what they'll accomplish will be far greater than anything the leader accomplished in his own lifetime.
A Christian's whole life is invested in what can't be seen, and a refusal to accept as true a no-hope reality.
The fact is that nobody who lives in Lima and likes it (of which there are many of us) is devoid of hope or broken beyond measure. It is possible to make a very nice living here, but if that's not possible countless volunteers, agencies, churches, and service organizations band together, striving to form a safety net to catch those who are falling between the cracks. It's a place where the soup kitchens get funded out of a sense of humility one check or dollar at a time, and where the Rescue Home keeps the "Jesus Saves" sign on with donations from people who know "there but by the grace of God, go I". Its a place where people are always dreaming and working toward something better because, while they can't see it, they know it still exists. Maybe tectonic forces crushed many of our factories, but our spirit is left intact.
I'll close with this.... last fall our community buried a great man. Dr. Gene Wright. Dr. Wright was my doctor growing up. As a kid he made me stick out my tongue and say "ah", and later as an adult, he chastised me about my weight. I was one of thousands, I suppose, who could say the same. In his life he was instrumental in not only keeping Lima healthy, but also training up generations of new doctors, improving our health care facilities (which are now our principle employers), and because he was well aware of the challenges people without health insurance faced, the founding of Allen County Health Partners, a publicly and privately funded agency that provides health care to thousands of people who currently are not insured. He was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things all because when he sat in the pew, he believed what he heard when he was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. He spent his whole life making sure that on his watch, all God's children here would get to stick out their tongue and say "ah".
I serve a congregation in community filled with Dr. Wrights. They bust their hump raising millions of dollars for causes of all kinds. They donate hours upon hours of their time. They pray "thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven", and then live it out. They understand that there are variations on the joke, "First Prize: A week in Lima, Ohio. Second Prize: Two weeks in Lima, Ohio", and are still love this place they call home enough that they give back to it, willingly and passionately.
And like Dr. Wright, they are strangely compelled by their belief in things unseen. A hope not yet fully realized. A love that defies logic. And a willingness to make sacrificially an investment in the kinds of mercy and grace that make town like ours, a great place to live.
Friday, March 04, 2011
How Big Is Your Dream?
We started this series asking the question, "What is the sign of Jonah?". It's a question raised in Matthew 16 when the Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus to do something miraculous, perform a sign, that would prove he was the Son of God, and Jesus said that only sign they needed was the sign of Jonah.
And if they didn't understand that sign, no other was necessary.
So for the last three weeks, Charlotte, Daniel and I have been unraveling the mystery of what the sign of Jonah actually is, and what it might mean to us.
To date we've picked up a lot of clues. Initially we discovered that God has a will for all of us. It might at times be pretty broad - live righteously - and at other times it might be quite specific. Like, for example, to go to Nineveh and tell its inhabitants to get their act together or face the Lord's judgment. In either case, God will use us either because we been faithful, or as a cautionary tale - as a living example of what happens when we do the opposite of what God desires for us. In either case, if you remember, God uses Jonah even in his disobedience, and the sailors on the boat sailing for Tarshish who begin the story as pagans, end the story offering sacrifices to the living God. Pharisees and Sadduccees can't imagine God using anybody except those who perfectly kept the Law. But they were wrong...
Clue #1: People moving in the wrong direction in life are still used by the Lord.
Next, Daniel helped us understand that while Jonah believed God lived in the Temple of Jerusalem, he discovered the Lord present in the belly of the fish. Remember this was the popular belief of the day. God lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Only the priests could stand in God's presence, and at that only at certain times of the year. And yet, Jonah calls on God in the last place he should be present, and God shows up. And because God shows up, Jonah finds out that even smelling and looking like someone who had been in a whale for three days, that God, in his presence, would still use Jonah. Pharisees and Sadduccees couldn't imagine God being anywhere but the Holy and Holies, but they were wrong....
Clue #2: God just isn't present in the Temple, but everywhere, even in the foulest places imaginable.
Finally, last week, Charlotte talked about how sometimes the Good News sounds like bad news. But in this case, the Ninevites don't hear bad news. Even though Jonah was outsider who reeked of fish vomit, the word from the Lord was received whole-heartedly by the entire city-state. More than likely God had been preparing their hearts to hear the Good News of God's willingness to reconcile them to Him. Maybe it was because, as some scholars believed, the Ninevites worshipped sea gods, and thus could take a guy vomited out of a fish seriously. Maybe doubt had already existed in the minds of those in power that they were leading people in the wrong direction. Who knows. All we know is the word of the Lord is received by Ninevah. For them, the word is Good News. But in a world where the Pharisees and Sadduccees saw those who didn't know God as second-class citizens, as sinful lost pagans, as the enemy, that God would use an Israelite prophet to call foreigners to repentance, and to do so successfully, was bad news. It was inconceivable. It meant, really and truly, that God wanted to use his people to be a light of hope. To speak in a way that hearts who had not heard Him yet were being prepared to hear. The Pharisees and Sadduccees wanted to write the rest of the world off, but
Clue #3: The Good News doesn't always sound like Good News to us, particularly if we have to make room God's couch (or even give up our seat) to let others rest near Him.
Which brings us today. Jonah, having watched God spare Nineveh, is ticked. In his heart of heart, we find out, unequivocally, that Jonah's biggest fear is that God will forgive a nation of people he deeply hates, and hates with good reason. They have, in the past treated Israel cruelly. They've committed unimaginable crimes against the most innocent Israelites. Jonah doesn't even want to imagine that God might let these people off, let alone actually care about them.
Even love them.
The Pharisees and Sadducees hate a lot of people. They hate sinners because they believe they were blocking the day God's justice and judgment would come. They hated Samaritans because for historical reasons, they worshiped God in a different temple, and while they had Jewish blood in them, had intermarried with, of all people, Ninevites.
And they hated Romans. Man did they hate Romans. They hated them the most of all. They hated them for their cruelty. They hated them for being pagans. They hated because they made life so difficult for everybody with their corrupt, brutal form of government and taxation.
They hated them. Hated them to the degree that the idea that, like Jonah in today's scripture, the idea of being personally inconvenienced bothered them more than the death and destruction of every Roman man, woman, and child. Whole families wiped out meant less than a lack of shade for themselves on a hot, hot day.
The Pharisees and Sadducees prayed for the wrath of God to destroy their enemies, but...
Clue #4: God's mercy is extended to all, and where it's accepted, it will be released like a torrent whether or not you think the receiver is worthy.
Four clues to understand the sign of Jonah. When we add them up, what do we get?
God's desire is to be reconciled with all humanity.
So, here's the question: Are you a sign of God's desire?
That's a big question. For all their knowledge of scripture... all the energy in living a Holy life... even the work they would do for the widows and orphans.... the Pharisees and Sadducees weren't signs of God's desire.
I find this to be personally very sobering. We can hate sin and what it does to people, but we've no license to hate people themselves no matter how infuriating we might think they are. In fact, we're called to be sign posts of God's desire of reconciliation and peace. To speak in ways that hearts are already being prepared to hear. In Jonah's case, the word was straight and simple, covered in fish vomit and seaweed.
I know there are plenty of people out there who would be happy to speak a straight and simple word to people who they felt were the most vile sinners. But they'd rather speak that word on a high horse, gleaming white in the bright sunlight assured that God's smiting would smite those needed to be smoted.
The best example, bar none, that I can think of is the Phelps family in Topeka, Kansas. The folks who travel around to let you know that God's judgment on America is sealed. Do you know these folks have called you dogs? They've called you whores? They've called our church, this church, a dog kennel, and me a son of hell? A young man from our community whose grandmother, in particular, was a long-time faithful member of this church, died in action while serving in Iraq. When Christian Neff's death was announced, it didn't take 24 hours for the Westboro Baptist Church to announce their intention to picket his funeral at this church.
They said he was going to hell. That our church is a dog kennel. That you are all whores. That I am a false prophet. And not one word uttered at us, or to anyone else anywhere, is said with the hope that you or I will be redeemed. In their sick, twisted minds, all the Phelps family wants is for you and I to hate them with even greater passion. For their contempt for humanity, anyone who is not them, is so great, that they would pray that your hate would grow so that your torment in hell, forever would be greater and greater.
They have no idea what the sign of Jonah is.
For it doesn't really matter how virtuous a life you lead. If it's devoid of love and compassion for others - particularly the most unlovable of the unlovable - Paul, a Pharisee who one day woke up to discover that even though he knew Jonah's story backwards and forwards, didn't live a life that understood it's meaning, tells us that if you gave everything you had to the poor, possessed the power to make mountains jump, or even offer yourself as a martyr for the faith, if you don't love, if you don't stand as a sign post of God's desire to be reconciled with everyone, every chip you think you've earned with God, is a sham and a dream.
Listen... be principled. Be disciplined. Hold yourself to the highest standards. Believe passionately in God's righteousness and put yourself to the task of working out that righteousness out in your own life.
But don't hate. Don't scapegoat. Not anybody.
Not your that person who hurt you. Not that person who abandoned you. Not that person who is a vile pig. Nobody.
God is calling you to dream His dream... the reconciliation of his children to Himself.
Now, don't get me wrong. I get that what I'm asking you to do is virtually impossible. Everybody hates somebody, me included. African warlords who enslave children to slaughter in their name. Druglords who rule with fear and intimidation to enslave others. Adults who do unmentionable things to children.
If it were up to me, I'd say just kill 'em all, and let God sort them out. I don't care about the circumstances. I don't care about what happened to them as children or whatever it is that has turned these people into sociopaths.
But I hate to say this... God's compassion for whoever it is you've decided is the scum of humanity it not withheld. It does not yield. There is an ocean of mercy that need only to be accepted waiting to wash over every single one of these people.
And what's more, I just might be the person who needs to be the sign of God's forgiveness for the very person I hate. A sign that may, out of my unwillingness to go when called to speak the Good News in a way hearts are already being prepared to receive, might have to be delivered with a humiliated, defeated me, smelling of fish vomit and covered in seaweed.
So, let me leave you with this. Sin, I think, has left each of us just little bit challenged. Emotionally challenged. Intellectually challenged. Spiritually challenged. We have obstacles to overcome to begin embracing God's dream. Challenges to be overcome to be an effective disciple of Jesus. Challenges to be overcome so that we can effectively disciple others.
We hate somebody. We don't believe in ourselves. And we're tempted to put others down so we can stand on their bent backs to try to put us a little bit closer to God.
But even if we're imperfect, if we trust God, we can in certain moments, with certain people, being the perfect mirror, reflecting the light of love into a dark place not suitable anyone.
Are you a sign of God's desire? Will you trust Him to fashion you into beacon of hope He needs you to be?
And if they didn't understand that sign, no other was necessary.
So for the last three weeks, Charlotte, Daniel and I have been unraveling the mystery of what the sign of Jonah actually is, and what it might mean to us.
To date we've picked up a lot of clues. Initially we discovered that God has a will for all of us. It might at times be pretty broad - live righteously - and at other times it might be quite specific. Like, for example, to go to Nineveh and tell its inhabitants to get their act together or face the Lord's judgment. In either case, God will use us either because we been faithful, or as a cautionary tale - as a living example of what happens when we do the opposite of what God desires for us. In either case, if you remember, God uses Jonah even in his disobedience, and the sailors on the boat sailing for Tarshish who begin the story as pagans, end the story offering sacrifices to the living God. Pharisees and Sadduccees can't imagine God using anybody except those who perfectly kept the Law. But they were wrong...
Clue #1: People moving in the wrong direction in life are still used by the Lord.
Next, Daniel helped us understand that while Jonah believed God lived in the Temple of Jerusalem, he discovered the Lord present in the belly of the fish. Remember this was the popular belief of the day. God lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Only the priests could stand in God's presence, and at that only at certain times of the year. And yet, Jonah calls on God in the last place he should be present, and God shows up. And because God shows up, Jonah finds out that even smelling and looking like someone who had been in a whale for three days, that God, in his presence, would still use Jonah. Pharisees and Sadduccees couldn't imagine God being anywhere but the Holy and Holies, but they were wrong....
Clue #2: God just isn't present in the Temple, but everywhere, even in the foulest places imaginable.
Finally, last week, Charlotte talked about how sometimes the Good News sounds like bad news. But in this case, the Ninevites don't hear bad news. Even though Jonah was outsider who reeked of fish vomit, the word from the Lord was received whole-heartedly by the entire city-state. More than likely God had been preparing their hearts to hear the Good News of God's willingness to reconcile them to Him. Maybe it was because, as some scholars believed, the Ninevites worshipped sea gods, and thus could take a guy vomited out of a fish seriously. Maybe doubt had already existed in the minds of those in power that they were leading people in the wrong direction. Who knows. All we know is the word of the Lord is received by Ninevah. For them, the word is Good News. But in a world where the Pharisees and Sadduccees saw those who didn't know God as second-class citizens, as sinful lost pagans, as the enemy, that God would use an Israelite prophet to call foreigners to repentance, and to do so successfully, was bad news. It was inconceivable. It meant, really and truly, that God wanted to use his people to be a light of hope. To speak in a way that hearts who had not heard Him yet were being prepared to hear. The Pharisees and Sadduccees wanted to write the rest of the world off, but
Clue #3: The Good News doesn't always sound like Good News to us, particularly if we have to make room God's couch (or even give up our seat) to let others rest near Him.
Which brings us today. Jonah, having watched God spare Nineveh, is ticked. In his heart of heart, we find out, unequivocally, that Jonah's biggest fear is that God will forgive a nation of people he deeply hates, and hates with good reason. They have, in the past treated Israel cruelly. They've committed unimaginable crimes against the most innocent Israelites. Jonah doesn't even want to imagine that God might let these people off, let alone actually care about them.
Even love them.
The Pharisees and Sadducees hate a lot of people. They hate sinners because they believe they were blocking the day God's justice and judgment would come. They hated Samaritans because for historical reasons, they worshiped God in a different temple, and while they had Jewish blood in them, had intermarried with, of all people, Ninevites.
And they hated Romans. Man did they hate Romans. They hated them the most of all. They hated them for their cruelty. They hated them for being pagans. They hated because they made life so difficult for everybody with their corrupt, brutal form of government and taxation.
They hated them. Hated them to the degree that the idea that, like Jonah in today's scripture, the idea of being personally inconvenienced bothered them more than the death and destruction of every Roman man, woman, and child. Whole families wiped out meant less than a lack of shade for themselves on a hot, hot day.
The Pharisees and Sadducees prayed for the wrath of God to destroy their enemies, but...
Clue #4: God's mercy is extended to all, and where it's accepted, it will be released like a torrent whether or not you think the receiver is worthy.
Four clues to understand the sign of Jonah. When we add them up, what do we get?
God's desire is to be reconciled with all humanity.
So, here's the question: Are you a sign of God's desire?
That's a big question. For all their knowledge of scripture... all the energy in living a Holy life... even the work they would do for the widows and orphans.... the Pharisees and Sadducees weren't signs of God's desire.
I find this to be personally very sobering. We can hate sin and what it does to people, but we've no license to hate people themselves no matter how infuriating we might think they are. In fact, we're called to be sign posts of God's desire of reconciliation and peace. To speak in ways that hearts are already being prepared to hear. In Jonah's case, the word was straight and simple, covered in fish vomit and seaweed.
I know there are plenty of people out there who would be happy to speak a straight and simple word to people who they felt were the most vile sinners. But they'd rather speak that word on a high horse, gleaming white in the bright sunlight assured that God's smiting would smite those needed to be smoted.
The best example, bar none, that I can think of is the Phelps family in Topeka, Kansas. The folks who travel around to let you know that God's judgment on America is sealed. Do you know these folks have called you dogs? They've called you whores? They've called our church, this church, a dog kennel, and me a son of hell? A young man from our community whose grandmother, in particular, was a long-time faithful member of this church, died in action while serving in Iraq. When Christian Neff's death was announced, it didn't take 24 hours for the Westboro Baptist Church to announce their intention to picket his funeral at this church.
They said he was going to hell. That our church is a dog kennel. That you are all whores. That I am a false prophet. And not one word uttered at us, or to anyone else anywhere, is said with the hope that you or I will be redeemed. In their sick, twisted minds, all the Phelps family wants is for you and I to hate them with even greater passion. For their contempt for humanity, anyone who is not them, is so great, that they would pray that your hate would grow so that your torment in hell, forever would be greater and greater.
They have no idea what the sign of Jonah is.
For it doesn't really matter how virtuous a life you lead. If it's devoid of love and compassion for others - particularly the most unlovable of the unlovable - Paul, a Pharisee who one day woke up to discover that even though he knew Jonah's story backwards and forwards, didn't live a life that understood it's meaning, tells us that if you gave everything you had to the poor, possessed the power to make mountains jump, or even offer yourself as a martyr for the faith, if you don't love, if you don't stand as a sign post of God's desire to be reconciled with everyone, every chip you think you've earned with God, is a sham and a dream.
Listen... be principled. Be disciplined. Hold yourself to the highest standards. Believe passionately in God's righteousness and put yourself to the task of working out that righteousness out in your own life.
But don't hate. Don't scapegoat. Not anybody.
Not your that person who hurt you. Not that person who abandoned you. Not that person who is a vile pig. Nobody.
God is calling you to dream His dream... the reconciliation of his children to Himself.
Now, don't get me wrong. I get that what I'm asking you to do is virtually impossible. Everybody hates somebody, me included. African warlords who enslave children to slaughter in their name. Druglords who rule with fear and intimidation to enslave others. Adults who do unmentionable things to children.
If it were up to me, I'd say just kill 'em all, and let God sort them out. I don't care about the circumstances. I don't care about what happened to them as children or whatever it is that has turned these people into sociopaths.
But I hate to say this... God's compassion for whoever it is you've decided is the scum of humanity it not withheld. It does not yield. There is an ocean of mercy that need only to be accepted waiting to wash over every single one of these people.
And what's more, I just might be the person who needs to be the sign of God's forgiveness for the very person I hate. A sign that may, out of my unwillingness to go when called to speak the Good News in a way hearts are already being prepared to receive, might have to be delivered with a humiliated, defeated me, smelling of fish vomit and covered in seaweed.
So, let me leave you with this. Sin, I think, has left each of us just little bit challenged. Emotionally challenged. Intellectually challenged. Spiritually challenged. We have obstacles to overcome to begin embracing God's dream. Challenges to be overcome to be an effective disciple of Jesus. Challenges to be overcome so that we can effectively disciple others.
We hate somebody. We don't believe in ourselves. And we're tempted to put others down so we can stand on their bent backs to try to put us a little bit closer to God.
But even if we're imperfect, if we trust God, we can in certain moments, with certain people, being the perfect mirror, reflecting the light of love into a dark place not suitable anyone.
Are you a sign of God's desire? Will you trust Him to fashion you into beacon of hope He needs you to be?
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Sanctification
1 Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, 2 make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves ; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling ; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. 14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing ; 15 so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain. (Philippians 2:1-4, 12-16)Almost from the very beginning the church has faced an ongoing dilemma. On one hand, it is (theoretically at least) the most inviting movement on the face of the planet. All people from everywhere with every kind of background are welcome among her ranks. Everyone is invited to come worship, study, prayer, and break bread with the body of believers. Particularly in Paul's world (the guy who wrote the scripture) this was largely unheard of in every corner of the culture. Culturally, people largely stuck to their own "kind", and only reached out to others if there was some immediate base need they had someone else could fulfill. The church was made up of rich and poor, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, male and female... compared to the world it was an unknown, wild jungle of the human spirit. When you entered the world of the church, you had to leave your labels behind, and as people gave up whatever labels they came in with, and exchanged them for "Disciple of Jesus", the church just continued to become the increasingly diverse.
But that didn't meant, even if our prince is the Prince of Peace, doesn't mean we've gotten along.
But just because you profess faith in Jesus doesn't mean that you automatically shake your influences. Putting all these different types and kinds of people might sound beautiful in an "Up With People" sort of way, but in the real world it created a lot of conflict. People who came from religious backgrounds that celebrated, for example, wild uninhibited acts of religious ecstasy in worship, generally brought that tradition with them into the church. So when they'd experience "speaking in tongues", they felt right at home. But other people from more subdued religious backgrounds related more to times of prayer and fasting, and when these two people, and many others with other spiritual affinities (some of which were downright unacceptable) all got together, it created conflict.
Lots of conflict.
That's a myth of the church, I think. We read something like Philippians 2, which calls us to be of the same mind, maintain the same love, unite in spirit, and intent on one purpose, and we tend to think of it as proscriptive. As an order, like from a doctor when we've gone to her when we're sick. But I think we miss the tone of Paul's writing as we read what he writes. Paul has learned long ago that you can't force anybody to do what you want them to do or believe what you want them to believe. His is just one voice. An important one, no doubt, but still only one in a world where even the Apostles are struggling to understand what it means to "be of one mind".
So when I read the text above, I hear in it a bit of exasperation. A frustration that comes from having too many times to quell too many disagreements among too many people who, in theory, should take "love your neighbor as yourself" much more seriously.
14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing ; 15 so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.
That doesn't sound like a guy to me who is used to speaking, and seeing immediate results. He's basically asking these people to get along if for no other reason, than because they like and respect him. Like a father begging a son addicted to pain killers at an intervention to go to rehab for Dad or Mom if he can't do it for himself. That's the degree of strife and resistance to his teaching Paul encounters in the church.
The church has always been filled with tension, strife, differences, and challenges, and it still continues.
I know this first hand. I got a couple of reminders earlier today. At the beginning of this post you see a picture of our pastoral staff. You got me, in all my button-down tied glory. You have Charlotte, our site pastor at our Bath campus who is in the picture, the rose among thorns. And then you have Daniel, who all of us other pastors have nicknamed "Pastor Eye Candy".
A white guy. A white woman. A black guy. Can't say there are too many other pastoral staffs who look like ours... anywhere. I remember seeing that picture for the first time and just kind of being surprised. And the first time I saw it, I saw it in a newspaper that had been distributed to more than 90,000 people that very morning. It surprised me when I saw it.
And guess what, so was the public.
Yesterday I received two different phone calls from surprised, even angry, people who I don't know and said they don't go to our church. In fact, they made it point to tell me that they wouldn't dare attend our church. One person, a woman, lectured me for about fifteen minutes on how unbiblical we were because we had a female pastor. She knew a lot of scripture - at least a lot of scripture regarding a woman's role in the church - and let me know that I was inviting "the wrath of God" upon us.
That was the friendly phone call.
The second one I received from someone who somehow got a hold of my cell phone number, and knew how to block theirs from showing up on my screen. He had a lot to say about race and religion. He had a lot to say about me. I don't feel compelled to repeat exactly what was said. Let's just say this person isn't a fan of people who look different worshiping together.
3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves ; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
Both of these other people claimed to be Christians, and I'm not sure what they would do with Philippians 2:3-4 if I had repeated it to them. More than likely, they would have blew me off.
But that what it's like in this faith of ours. We all come to the feast prepared for us by Jesus at the table with all kinds of experiences, backgrounds, beliefs and attitudes. On our way to that table, we often bump into people who are strange, and sometimes even upsetting, and often we want to just go find a place where we won't get stretched. Where we'll be more comfortable. A place where we aren't just fed, but catered to.
Jesus is no caterer. The table is set, but you still need to come forward and sit down with everyone else who has been invited. We do a good job, in this life, most of us in this family of God, sequestering ourselves so that we don't have to see, or smell, or hear others so different from ourselves. But I want to tell you... there aren't different houses of worship in Heaven. Just one, and John the Revelator told us that it was revealed to him that in the presence of God, together, there were people of all tribes, nationalities, races, and tongues. God won't let us keep our blinders on for eternity. Sooner or later, we'll have to take a good look at the other folks singing his praise next us, and realize that realize how different they are. The question is how soon God wants us to wake up to this reality.
Let me share something with you as we end five weeks of looking at ways Jesus restores us when sin, anger, pain, success, or something else steals away our identity. When Christ restores us, he's not interested in restoring us to be the us we were before whatever it was that derailed us, derailed us. His is a complete restoration. He wants to haul out all the junk. Paint every wall. Re-carpet every floor. Replace the electrical and plumbing. He's looking for a total rebirth.
Jesus restores us, only to take what our identity was away, and to give us a completely new one. And the way he does the work is through the work we're already doing, in humility, with much fear and trembling.
We call the restoration work Christ wants to do in us, sanctification. The Greek word is "Qadash" which means to "vindicate the holiness" or to "separate to make holy". Its the work we do, like to an old house that needs made over, to tear out the ugliness that marks us. Paul tells us in v.12-13 that as we do the hard work of tearing out all the ugliness, God come alongside of us in that work, and begins working through us, like a spiritual interior designer and contractor.
To make us "perfect" in his sight.
Perfect is a funny word isn't it. Life is so imperfect, perfection seems virtually unattainable. But perfection, as we understood in our Wesleyan tradition, hasn't as much been a destination (a finished home), but rather a continued journey that only is made complete when we stand fully in the presence of God. A journey of loving God more and more, and loving our neighbor increasingly with a grace greater than our sin.... more and more like Jesus loves us.
Jesus wants to steal our identity, and give us a perfect one. And the way we know we're on the right track, as we do all of this work, is by how far you can extend your love as you faithfully do God's bidding, and as far as you can outside of your little circle of family and friends. It's the movement from looking to be fed by the Jesus the Five-Star Caterer, to finding a seat at the Lord's table next to somebody who makes us very uncomfortable, or angry, or conflicted, or even deeply, deeply sorrowful.
Doesn't seem to make much sense does it. You'd think this Christian journey would be all uplifting prayer meetings, songs that take us to new heights, and preaching that would inspire the angels. Not a difficult journey made with people who could even exasperate a saint like Paul.
But that's how it works.
All of us, doing the work of tearing out the ugliness, while the Holy Spirit renews, strengthens, and makes us over. There is learning in the work, and that education is never free. But if you want to get right with God, you gotta do the work of getting right with others, otherwise you'll never learn who you are supposed to be. You've gotta run - not walk - but run to the table looking for a seat in the place of least honor, with the people who seem least worthy of being there. Even next to the woman who thinks I'm going to Hell for working proudly with a female pastor, and even next to the guy who is a prejudiced bigot. At the table you learn where they've come from, what's been done to them, what their limitations are, how imperfect things are, and yet how important it is to keep them in your prayers, in your orbit, even if they don't want to be there.
Doesn't matter if you ever change them. You can't change anybody anyway. That's the work God does, as we do the work on ourselves, with fear, trembling, and humility. What matters is what's being separated out, the wheat from the chaff, the crap from the holy, so that we might start looking for, maybe even getting a little excited about, running to the Lord's table to find a seat next to the person who isn't the dinner companion we might have, on our own, chosen.
You gotta run, not walk, but run, to the table. Sit down. That's where the feast is.
I just want to tell you, that's the kind of church I want us to be. The church who runs to the table to sit down next to the least, the last, the lost, the hurting, the difficult, and the sick. The church that looks, well, really different, because it seeks out people looking for healing, and is filled with people looking to help heal.
A family of faith being sanctified, doing the hard work of ripping out the ugliness inside, to reveal something God has done that is individually more beautiful, more perfect, and collectively more heavenly. A light, even, in the darkness of what could be the darkest moment of the soul.
It can only happen one restoration at a time. Each of us doing the hard work. All of coming to the table the Lord has prepared.
Won't you come to the table?
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