1 Corinthians 9:24-27
February 15, 2008
Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I discipline my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
What would you say is the greatest sports event ever? For me it is very clear: the 1980 USA Olympic ice hockey win against the Soviet Union and the eventual winning of the gold medal. If ever there was a David and Goliath event, this was it. It would be the equivalent, in today’s terms, of a college-aged team of all-stars from Canada beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in football. Who could imagine such a thing?
If you are old enough to remember, the USA ice hockey team went into the Olympics with a team comprised basically of college hockey players in an era when very few Americans were even making it to the NHL. Only one person in the world actually believed that this team could win a gold medal, and that was the coach, Herb Brooks. He knew that for the Americans to win the gold medal they had to beat the Russian team, which was the best ice hockey team in the world. I don’t mean that they were the best team outside of the NHL. They were the best team in the world. They had a goalie, Vladisak Tretiek, considered to be the best goalie in the world even by NHL players. They had a center considered to be perhaps the best center in the world, Valery Karlamov. What made them the best team was that it was comprised of players who would have been stars in the NHL, had they been allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Instead, they were all forced to serve in the Soviet army by serving their commission as members of the Soviet hockey team. They were by far the most talented team ever assembled. They skated and passed better than any team in the world, and their system was designed to hold onto the puck for most the game and beat you with high percentage shots. They were so good that before the 1980 Olympics they had beaten an NHL all-tar team 6 to 1, making the NHL players look incompetent in the process.
To beat the Russians, Herb Brooks devised a plan. He believed that the USA team could beat the Russians by combining an NHL style of game with the Soviet style. The players would skate, hit, and shoot like NHL players, taking the game to a high tempo, but he would also have them pass, move, and control the puck the way that the Soviets did. One other thing: he believed that if his team was the best-conditioned and mentally toughest team ever, he could beat the Russians at their own game. Thus, what made the USA team able to achieve greatness was their determination and their discipline. They didn’t have to be great players to be a great team. All they had to do was to be the most disciplined, hardest skating, and committed team.
There was one particular event, in the lead-up to the Olympics, that gave the USA team the needed grit and determination to eventually beat the Soviets, and it wasn’t even planned. They had an exhibition game in Norway against the Norwegian national team. The Norwegians were not a very good team, and it was expected that the USA team would blow them out. Instead they played a lackluster game, tying the Norwegians 3 to 3. Some of the players were so disinterested in playing the game that in the third period, instead of focusing on the game, they were talking on the bench about which women in the stands were the best looking.
By the end of the game Herb Brooks was furious. The players went to center ice to shake hands with the Norwegian team, and then skated for the exit off the rink. There they found the assistant coach, Craig Patrick, blocking the exit. He told them to get back on the ice. “What for?” the players asked. “You’ll see,” said Patrick. Brooks told the to get on the goal line. He told them if they weren’t going to work during the game, they could work now. He had them do a spring cycle (goal line to blue line and back, to the red line and back, to the far blue line and back, to the far goal line and back. These are sprints designed to burn the lungs and the legs out. When the finished the springs, Brooks sent them on another cycle. And then another. And then another. In-between he chastised them: “What makes you think you can just show up and beat a team? You don’t have enough talent to just show up and beat a team!” Again he sent them on a cycle. “You either work to win, or you can go home!” He sent then on another cycle. “When are you gong to learn that the name on the front of your jersey is more important than the name on the back!” He sent them on another cycle.
The rink manager, who wanted to clean the ice and go home, sent a message to Brooks that he wanted to leave. Brooks told him to leave the keys. In anger, the rink manager shut off all the lights. That didn’t deter Brooks. Under the dim glow of emergency lights, Brooks sent them off again to another cycle. Then another. Then another. By now some players were starting to throw up. Brooks continued to lecture them, trying to get the message across that what they were trying to do was uncommon, and that if they were going to be successful, they could not be common men. It went on and on until finally, Mike Eruzione, the captain, shouted out something stopped it all. Ever since the training camp months before, Herb Brooks would periodically ask a player to introduce himself by saying his name, where he was from, and what team he played on. They would say things like, “Mark Johnson, Madison Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin,” or Neal Broten, University of Minnesota.” Eruzione, finally getting what Herb Brooks hoped he would say, shouted out, “Mike Eruzione, Windsor, Massachusetts, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”
Eruzione finally understood Brooks’ message: To be a team we have to be willing to have the self-control, discipline, and determination to do whatever it takes to achieve our destiny. When I watch this movie, I see so much in common with the lesson the apostle Paul tried to teach in our passage. Paul describes the work of faith as being similar to the work that an athlete goes through. To grow in faith, we need determination and discipline. Otherwise we end up going nowhere.
Now I don’t want to pretend that to be a great Christian means to do endless wind sprints, but there is a lot that is in common with the experience of the 1980 Olympic ice hockey team and growing as a Christian. Let me share with you three lessons I learn from both the experience of the 1980 USA ice hockey team and from Paul.
The first lesson is the lesson of commitment and community. The reality is that just like in sports, nothing good happens without commitment, but here’s the rub: we live in a commitment-averse culture. People worry about commitment. They worry about what happens if they make a commitment and things don’t work out. They worry about making a commitment and finding it was the wrong one. They worry that making a commitment will bind them and keep them from being free. When it comes to religion and church, so many people worry that committing to a church means giving up independence, self-identity, and personal beliefs. The problem is that just as no team can do well without commitment, no individual can truly do well in faith without commitment. Faith needs commitment to do well, but it’s not just a commitment to a set of principles. It’s a communal commitment. One of the lessons that Christianity, as well as every other world religion, teaches is the importance of commitment to a community. To say that we are spiritual but not religious is a contradiction of terms to every major religion because faith is always both individual and communal. Without a commitment to community we become self-focused, creating our own faith while ignoring what a community has to teach us. It is in commitment to the community that we learn to love others. It’s in commitment to community that we find opportunity to love others. And just like on a sports team where commitment to the team is the beginning of success, so commitment to a community of faith is the beginning of real growth in faith.
Second is the lesson of self-sacrifice and perseverance through difficult times. This is much like commitment, but takes it a step further. In the incident I described above, any of those players could have quit at any time. But if they had they would have been robbed of the opportunity to do something truly great. It would have robbed them of the chance to become better. There are many people who believe that if we have faith nothing bad should happen to us. That’s a promise found nowhere in the Bible. What the Bible does teach is that if we persevere through difficult time, keeping our faith despite our pain, God will make us better. God will make life better. In order to persevere, though, we need to be willing to self-sacrifice. We need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around “me,” and that to persevere through tough times means letting go of me so that I can follow Christ through the bad times and to be transformed through them. Ultimately self-sacrifice and perseverance leads to transformation. The U.S. players understood both concepts, and it’s what gave them to strength to overcome such long odds.
Finally, there is the lesson of learning. To be an athlete means to be a constant learner. There is no great athlete who does not devote his or her life to learning more and more about his or her craft. The USA players were constant learners, even if they didn’t want to be. Herb Brooks demanded that they learn a new system that no one had seen before. He demanded that they learn both an NHL-style of play and a Russian style. He demanded that they study film and understand the tactics of the opponent. He also demanded that they meticulously learn how to be better players through refining their technique. Just as athletes must learn, so must we if we are to grow in faith. We are called to learn by reading scripture, by reading spiritual books, and by coming to church and listening to sermons and taking the adult education classes. To grow in faith means to learn more about God and life with God. If we aren’t willing to learn, we can’t grow in faith.
When we’re called to live a Christian life, we’re not called to do it recreationally or on the side. We’re called to be like athletes who work hard at it, who are willing to commit to it, are willing to sacrifice for it, are willing to do what’s necessary for it. It’s when we do these things that we discover the rewards of a life lived with Christ.
Amen.
Like Others for God
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
About a year ago I had a conversation with one of our members who I hadn’t seen in church for about two years. I saw her in the parking lot of a grocery store, and went out of my way to say hi to her and to find out how she was. I told her that I missed her, and that I wished she would come back to the church. We then talked about why she wasn’t coming to church anymore. I don’t normally make a habit of sharing these kinds of conversations in my sermons, but I feel comfortable sharing this with your because since our conversation she hasn’t been in church, which means that she really hasn’t been to church in almost three years.
Basically, the gist of what she said to me was that she didn’t come to church anymore because the church had just changed too much. She said that she was much more comfortable with the church when it was always the same, and when it didn’t have so many new people. She didn’t like the fact that we’ve added so many new members, and that we’ve changed so much to attract these new members. She said that she liked the church much better when new people didn’t come, when she knew all the faces in worship, and when it didn’t change. She was adamant that she wasn’t upset with me, but that she just didn’t like the fact that the church had changed so much.
So let me ask you a question. How would you have responded to her comments? Keep in mind that you have to keep our passage in mind when you answer. As Presbyterians part of our charge is to put scripture at the center of our faith and actions, which means that we have to apply scripture to this question. So how do you respond to her complaints that the church had changed too much to reach out to new people, especially after reading what Paul said in our passage? He said, “I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.”
So how do you respond to her concerns? If you agree with her, are you ignoring what Paul says? Remember, Paul is not saying that we need to adapt ourselves to others for the sake of adapting. He is very clear that we adapt to others so that we can win them for Christ. What that means is that our focus has to be on creating a church for others, not ourselves.
I think these issues get right to the heart of what our calling is as a church, and how difficult it is to be a church in this day and age. How do we be a church in an age in which there is such a diversity of people who we are called to reach? In Paul’s day and age he had basically two groups that he had to satisfy in opening them to the Christian faith. He had the Jews, who had a very structured faith rooted in the reading of scripture, preaching, reciting psalms and certain memorized prayers. They also believed that new Christians should subscribe to the Jewish tradition of circumcision. The Gentiles, on the other hand, had a completely different approach. When they worshiped, they worshiped in temples to Greek gods. They loved philosophical debate. They loved to speculate and discuss Aristotle, Plato, as well as Epicurean, Stoic, and other philosophical ideals. And they did not want to be circumcised. How does one reach out to Jews who want one kind of worship, and then to Gentiles who expected another?
The struggle of our age is that we don’t just have two different approaches that conflict with each other. We have many. Today people not only have Christian beliefs, but they also have Buddhist, New Age, atheistic, agnostic, and a mish-mash of cultural beliefs about God, religion, and spirituality. We have fundamentalist Christians, moderate Christians, liberal Christians, those who are spiritual but not religious, religious but not spiritual, and everything in-between. How do we adapt ourselves to reach out to all of them?
The biggest problem is that we in the Presbyterian Church have not always been so good at adapting ourselves. Let me give you an example. In 1991 the Presbyterian Church came out with a new hymnal, the “blue” hymnal that we use on Sunday mornings. It was hailed as a great achievement. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It restored a lot of classical hymns to their original meter (making them harder for untrained worshipers to sing), brought in a lot of traditional hymns from other denominations, and included some hymns from around the world (many of those were good, but others are very difficult to sing). It was short on contemporary hymns or any hymns that might attract younger Christians at the time and now. For instance, I was 32 when it came out, and even though I kept hearing about how wonderful it was, my sense at the time was that very few hymns spoke to me. It reflected a fact about the Presbyterian Church: we do not do a very good job traditionally of adapting ourselves to others, whether that means people of different generations, ethnicities, or cultures.
In the 20 years that I’ve been a pastor, everything has changed in the world of churches. Last week, while I was at a conference, I spoke with a retired pastor about what worship was like for most of his career. I asked him if he thought much about adapting worship to different generations or people when he was serving the church 30 years ago. He laughed and said, “When I was in my prime, we never thought about things like that. We sang the hymns we had always sung. We played everything on the organ. We never tinkered with worship at all. We just did what we had always done.” All this has changed. In the past 30 years, people have left the mainline churches such as the Presbyterian Church in droves, some to join evangelical churches, many more to create their own spirituality, saying that they are spiritual but not religious. To me what they are saying is that they are spiritual and would like to find a place to grow in faith, but that our churches haven’t done anything to reach out to them. We have not followed Paul, and in a culture that becomes constantly diverse, we fall behind.
What do we do, as a church, in the face of this? The woman I spoke to, whom I mentioned in the beginning, would have said that we should do nothing. We should let other churches reach them. I don’t think that’s our calling.
The real problem is something that a church researcher, Bill Easum, spoke about. He said that the problem of the modern church is that we are stuck in a wormhole. Unless you are a Star Trek fan, or a student of theoretical physics, you probably don’t know what that means. A wormhole is a theoretical connection between two distant parts of a galaxy or the universe. There is a belief among some scientists that a small opening in space can form that connects parts of the universe separated by thousands of light years. Theoretically, a person traveling through such a wormhole can travel through it and reach the distant part of the universe in hours, rather than in light years, because the wormhole makes such a short connection. The problem is that the inside of a wormhole is filled with forces that would rattle, twist, slam, buffet, and maybe even destroy a spaceship, making it a very difficult trip, and one that can lead to destruction.
He says that the church today is like that spaceship traveling through the wormhole. Like travelers in a wormhole going from one galaxy that is known to another that is unknown, we have left an era in which the way things are done in a church are certain. We are traveling to an era in which a new way of doing church will be accepted in twenty years. But in the meantime we are in that in-between time in which there are no constants, no complete rules. Everything is changing. The way we did things no longer works, but we don’t know what the new rules will be. It means that we are left guessing when it comes to reaching out to the different generations, ethnicities, and cultures that surround us.
I know that the worship staff of our church constantly struggles with this issue. We are constantly asking what we need to do to adapt ourselves to the realities of the world around us? As a church, we have become very intentional about balancing tradition and adopting more contemporary worship practices. But when it comes to how we worship, finding the right balance is hard. Let me show you what I mean.
One of the struggles we have is between something called “retraditioning” and “trending.” A lot of what we do here at Calvin Church is based on the idea of retraditioning. To retradition means to take a traditional practice of the church and update it in a way that makes it relevant for today. For instance, the way we do communion is a retraditioning of communion. For instance, instead of reading words out of a worship book I try to use common everyday language. I’m still participating in the tradition of communion, but I’m doing so in a way that tries to make the words more relevant. In addition, I always try to connect the introduction to communion with the sermon and scripture. We offer both grape juice and wine in an attempt to make our communion meaningful both to lifelong Presbyterians who are used to grape juice and to those who come from the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Lutheran traditions, where they are used to wine in communion. In our first service, our using a common loaf and passing it through the pews is retraditioning, harking back to Jesus’ passing the loaf to his disciples. The point is that we try to stay rooted in the tradition, but also change it so that it is relevant to today. The whole point of retraditioning is to help people connect with and experience God more fully in worship.
There is another way of changing worship that we do not follow, and that is called “trending.” Trending is making changes to worship in order to attract people to worship. Connecting people with God is secondary. Trending is rooted in marketing, retraditioning in spirituality. So, when churches engage in trending, they offer incentives to induce people to come church. In the process they confuse inspiration with entertainment. They choose music that seems popular. They raffle off trinkets and material inducements to visitors. They try to make worship easy. They follow the marketing trends of the culture in order to get more people in their churches. This is something that we do not do at Calvin Church. The problem, though, is that there is always a fine line between retraditioning and trending. When we retradition, it often attracts people, but mainly people whose main focus is connecting with God. We believe that retraditioning helps us to grow, but to grow in the right way.
We face so many other challenges. For instance, what do we do about the different generations of our culture, generations that all seek something different. Lyle Schaller, one of the best-known church researchers of recent years, has said that if you really want your church to grow, the most effective way is to start a new church that targets only one generation. If you want to understand the growth of the large, evangelical churches in our area, it has to do with them targeting one generation: the baby-boomers. Their worship is designed to attract people born between 1945 and 1964.
What does that say to us? We’ve taken a much harder track in our growth. If you look around our sanctuary on a Sunday morning, you’ll notice that there is no one, dominant generation. We have decided to be multi-generational. That’s a difficult balancing act, though. What it means is that we have to be intentional about choosing music that reaches out to different generations. I have to preach in a way to speaks to different generations. We have to be structured in a way that reaches different people. Our way of doing that musically is to be intentional about using different forms of music. We start out with a contemporary song. Then we do an ancient chant. Then we sing a traditional hymn. Then we sing a hymn that might be contemporary, traditional, or something else. We also are intentional about balancing our anthems. You might hear an anthem on any Sunday that is classical or gospel or contemporary or bluesy or folk. We try to offer a wide variety because you, our members, and the community like a broad variety.
Everything we do is intended to reach across different generations in order to attract a wide variety of people. We are intentionally trying to follow Paul by adapting ourselves to different people. What makes it difficult is when certain people want only uni-generational worship. It may be the older person who wants only classical anthems, traditional hymns, and music played on the organ. It might be the baby-boomer who wants only contemporary worship with drums and guitars. It might be anyone who only wants one kind of worship and who doesn’t want to adapt. It may be the person who likes a variety of worship, but doesn’t like new members in the church. All of this makes doing worship difficult.
Reflecting on Paul’s passage, the question for us is how we adapt ourselves to a culture that is so diverse? How do we become all things to all people? We are all part of a very dynamic church, and we face a very dynamic challenge: how do we become like others in order to open people to Christ?
Amen.
If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
About a year ago I had a conversation with one of our members who I hadn’t seen in church for about two years. I saw her in the parking lot of a grocery store, and went out of my way to say hi to her and to find out how she was. I told her that I missed her, and that I wished she would come back to the church. We then talked about why she wasn’t coming to church anymore. I don’t normally make a habit of sharing these kinds of conversations in my sermons, but I feel comfortable sharing this with your because since our conversation she hasn’t been in church, which means that she really hasn’t been to church in almost three years.
Basically, the gist of what she said to me was that she didn’t come to church anymore because the church had just changed too much. She said that she was much more comfortable with the church when it was always the same, and when it didn’t have so many new people. She didn’t like the fact that we’ve added so many new members, and that we’ve changed so much to attract these new members. She said that she liked the church much better when new people didn’t come, when she knew all the faces in worship, and when it didn’t change. She was adamant that she wasn’t upset with me, but that she just didn’t like the fact that the church had changed so much.
So let me ask you a question. How would you have responded to her comments? Keep in mind that you have to keep our passage in mind when you answer. As Presbyterians part of our charge is to put scripture at the center of our faith and actions, which means that we have to apply scripture to this question. So how do you respond to her complaints that the church had changed too much to reach out to new people, especially after reading what Paul said in our passage? He said, “I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.”
So how do you respond to her concerns? If you agree with her, are you ignoring what Paul says? Remember, Paul is not saying that we need to adapt ourselves to others for the sake of adapting. He is very clear that we adapt to others so that we can win them for Christ. What that means is that our focus has to be on creating a church for others, not ourselves.
I think these issues get right to the heart of what our calling is as a church, and how difficult it is to be a church in this day and age. How do we be a church in an age in which there is such a diversity of people who we are called to reach? In Paul’s day and age he had basically two groups that he had to satisfy in opening them to the Christian faith. He had the Jews, who had a very structured faith rooted in the reading of scripture, preaching, reciting psalms and certain memorized prayers. They also believed that new Christians should subscribe to the Jewish tradition of circumcision. The Gentiles, on the other hand, had a completely different approach. When they worshiped, they worshiped in temples to Greek gods. They loved philosophical debate. They loved to speculate and discuss Aristotle, Plato, as well as Epicurean, Stoic, and other philosophical ideals. And they did not want to be circumcised. How does one reach out to Jews who want one kind of worship, and then to Gentiles who expected another?
The struggle of our age is that we don’t just have two different approaches that conflict with each other. We have many. Today people not only have Christian beliefs, but they also have Buddhist, New Age, atheistic, agnostic, and a mish-mash of cultural beliefs about God, religion, and spirituality. We have fundamentalist Christians, moderate Christians, liberal Christians, those who are spiritual but not religious, religious but not spiritual, and everything in-between. How do we adapt ourselves to reach out to all of them?
The biggest problem is that we in the Presbyterian Church have not always been so good at adapting ourselves. Let me give you an example. In 1991 the Presbyterian Church came out with a new hymnal, the “blue” hymnal that we use on Sunday mornings. It was hailed as a great achievement. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It restored a lot of classical hymns to their original meter (making them harder for untrained worshipers to sing), brought in a lot of traditional hymns from other denominations, and included some hymns from around the world (many of those were good, but others are very difficult to sing). It was short on contemporary hymns or any hymns that might attract younger Christians at the time and now. For instance, I was 32 when it came out, and even though I kept hearing about how wonderful it was, my sense at the time was that very few hymns spoke to me. It reflected a fact about the Presbyterian Church: we do not do a very good job traditionally of adapting ourselves to others, whether that means people of different generations, ethnicities, or cultures.
In the 20 years that I’ve been a pastor, everything has changed in the world of churches. Last week, while I was at a conference, I spoke with a retired pastor about what worship was like for most of his career. I asked him if he thought much about adapting worship to different generations or people when he was serving the church 30 years ago. He laughed and said, “When I was in my prime, we never thought about things like that. We sang the hymns we had always sung. We played everything on the organ. We never tinkered with worship at all. We just did what we had always done.” All this has changed. In the past 30 years, people have left the mainline churches such as the Presbyterian Church in droves, some to join evangelical churches, many more to create their own spirituality, saying that they are spiritual but not religious. To me what they are saying is that they are spiritual and would like to find a place to grow in faith, but that our churches haven’t done anything to reach out to them. We have not followed Paul, and in a culture that becomes constantly diverse, we fall behind.
What do we do, as a church, in the face of this? The woman I spoke to, whom I mentioned in the beginning, would have said that we should do nothing. We should let other churches reach them. I don’t think that’s our calling.
The real problem is something that a church researcher, Bill Easum, spoke about. He said that the problem of the modern church is that we are stuck in a wormhole. Unless you are a Star Trek fan, or a student of theoretical physics, you probably don’t know what that means. A wormhole is a theoretical connection between two distant parts of a galaxy or the universe. There is a belief among some scientists that a small opening in space can form that connects parts of the universe separated by thousands of light years. Theoretically, a person traveling through such a wormhole can travel through it and reach the distant part of the universe in hours, rather than in light years, because the wormhole makes such a short connection. The problem is that the inside of a wormhole is filled with forces that would rattle, twist, slam, buffet, and maybe even destroy a spaceship, making it a very difficult trip, and one that can lead to destruction.
He says that the church today is like that spaceship traveling through the wormhole. Like travelers in a wormhole going from one galaxy that is known to another that is unknown, we have left an era in which the way things are done in a church are certain. We are traveling to an era in which a new way of doing church will be accepted in twenty years. But in the meantime we are in that in-between time in which there are no constants, no complete rules. Everything is changing. The way we did things no longer works, but we don’t know what the new rules will be. It means that we are left guessing when it comes to reaching out to the different generations, ethnicities, and cultures that surround us.
I know that the worship staff of our church constantly struggles with this issue. We are constantly asking what we need to do to adapt ourselves to the realities of the world around us? As a church, we have become very intentional about balancing tradition and adopting more contemporary worship practices. But when it comes to how we worship, finding the right balance is hard. Let me show you what I mean.
One of the struggles we have is between something called “retraditioning” and “trending.” A lot of what we do here at Calvin Church is based on the idea of retraditioning. To retradition means to take a traditional practice of the church and update it in a way that makes it relevant for today. For instance, the way we do communion is a retraditioning of communion. For instance, instead of reading words out of a worship book I try to use common everyday language. I’m still participating in the tradition of communion, but I’m doing so in a way that tries to make the words more relevant. In addition, I always try to connect the introduction to communion with the sermon and scripture. We offer both grape juice and wine in an attempt to make our communion meaningful both to lifelong Presbyterians who are used to grape juice and to those who come from the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Lutheran traditions, where they are used to wine in communion. In our first service, our using a common loaf and passing it through the pews is retraditioning, harking back to Jesus’ passing the loaf to his disciples. The point is that we try to stay rooted in the tradition, but also change it so that it is relevant to today. The whole point of retraditioning is to help people connect with and experience God more fully in worship.
There is another way of changing worship that we do not follow, and that is called “trending.” Trending is making changes to worship in order to attract people to worship. Connecting people with God is secondary. Trending is rooted in marketing, retraditioning in spirituality. So, when churches engage in trending, they offer incentives to induce people to come church. In the process they confuse inspiration with entertainment. They choose music that seems popular. They raffle off trinkets and material inducements to visitors. They try to make worship easy. They follow the marketing trends of the culture in order to get more people in their churches. This is something that we do not do at Calvin Church. The problem, though, is that there is always a fine line between retraditioning and trending. When we retradition, it often attracts people, but mainly people whose main focus is connecting with God. We believe that retraditioning helps us to grow, but to grow in the right way.
We face so many other challenges. For instance, what do we do about the different generations of our culture, generations that all seek something different. Lyle Schaller, one of the best-known church researchers of recent years, has said that if you really want your church to grow, the most effective way is to start a new church that targets only one generation. If you want to understand the growth of the large, evangelical churches in our area, it has to do with them targeting one generation: the baby-boomers. Their worship is designed to attract people born between 1945 and 1964.
What does that say to us? We’ve taken a much harder track in our growth. If you look around our sanctuary on a Sunday morning, you’ll notice that there is no one, dominant generation. We have decided to be multi-generational. That’s a difficult balancing act, though. What it means is that we have to be intentional about choosing music that reaches out to different generations. I have to preach in a way to speaks to different generations. We have to be structured in a way that reaches different people. Our way of doing that musically is to be intentional about using different forms of music. We start out with a contemporary song. Then we do an ancient chant. Then we sing a traditional hymn. Then we sing a hymn that might be contemporary, traditional, or something else. We also are intentional about balancing our anthems. You might hear an anthem on any Sunday that is classical or gospel or contemporary or bluesy or folk. We try to offer a wide variety because you, our members, and the community like a broad variety.
Everything we do is intended to reach across different generations in order to attract a wide variety of people. We are intentionally trying to follow Paul by adapting ourselves to different people. What makes it difficult is when certain people want only uni-generational worship. It may be the older person who wants only classical anthems, traditional hymns, and music played on the organ. It might be the baby-boomer who wants only contemporary worship with drums and guitars. It might be anyone who only wants one kind of worship and who doesn’t want to adapt. It may be the person who likes a variety of worship, but doesn’t like new members in the church. All of this makes doing worship difficult.
Reflecting on Paul’s passage, the question for us is how we adapt ourselves to a culture that is so diverse? How do we become all things to all people? We are all part of a very dynamic church, and we face a very dynamic challenge: how do we become like others in order to open people to Christ?
Amen.
Getting Rid of Unclean Spirits
They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
What do you think about this idea of unclean spirits, this idea of demons or some sort of dark force inhabiting us? It can seem pretty weird, especially in our day and age when we know so much more about human psychology, the brain, and our bodies. It’s hard to believe in unclean spirits in this day and age. Belief in unclean spirits seems so naïve. Of course the people of Jesus’ day believed in unclean spirits. They were ignorant and superstitious. They didn’t know what we know today.
I used to think that believing in unclean spirits and demons was silly, too. How could I not? I was a psychology major in college. I have a master’s degree in counseling. I’ve had over 25 years of experience with all sorts of mental disorders. How can I, a rational man who understands mental illness, believe in demons and unclean spirits? But I do. Over the years I’ve had too many experiences that tell me that many people have something dark going on in them, something that isn’t just explained by mental illness. These are people who make choices in their lives that open them to darker influences.
I first noticed the power of these choices when I worked as a counselor with adolescents and children in a psychiatric hospital in the early 1980s. We had a particularly difficult group of teenage girls and boys who were listening to all sorts of heavy metal music by Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Judas Priest, and more. I saw how the songs and their lyrics influenced the kids in a negative way, and how it opened them to self-destructive thoughts. Everything about these kids was negative and dark, and few of them actually had what I would call a mental illness. Mostly they had behavioral disorders, and while I won’t blame heavy metal music for the disorders, It contributed to it by opening them to darker thoughts, perceptions, and forces.
It’s not only in the psychiatric hospital that I’ve seen the prevalence of darker forces. People all throughout life seem to open themselves constantly to darker forces. They do it through their self-destructive choices, attitudes, and approach to life.
Let me tell you about one guy I knew who seemed to me to have what I can best describe as an unclean spirit. He was a classmate of mine in junior and senior high school. He was a great athlete, student, was very popular, and one of the best-looking guys in our class growing up. He had everything. We all were jealous of him because everything seemed so easy for him. And, to top it all off, he was wealthy. When he was eighteen he inherited a huge inheritance. He managed to get into a very good college, but after one year he dropped out. He would periodically go back to school somewhere, but eventually he dropped out completely. With his inheritance, he bought a house and pretty much lived a life filled with alcohol and drugs. At some point in his drug-induced haze of life, he managed to convince himself that he was another John Lennon. He built a recording studio in his basement, and even dressed like Lennon and wore the same glasses. He was pretty much wasted most of his time. Even when he tried to get his life together it was a mess. I remember seeing him at a party while I was still in seminary. It was the last conversation I ever had with him. He was completely smashed, and he came up to me and started telling me about how he was getting his life in order and reading the Bible everyday. By age 28 had died of a drug overdose. I realize that part of his problem was that he suffered from addiction, but there was also something else there that led him down a darker path.
The reason I say that he still made his own choice to follow something unclean is that I have seen others from similar backgrounds eventually make better choices. For instance, let me tell you about another friend of mine, Nibbles. Nibbles was not a particularly great student in college. In fact, his main major in college was partying, which is how he got the nickname “Nibbles.” After partying with substances that gave him the munchies, he would wander around the dorm asking people if they had any food. He was always nibbling. He was the kind of person you didn’t really expect to do particularly great things in life. You just expected him to fade out in a haze of parties, perhaps like the other friend I mentioned above.
Back in 2003, when I was visiting my mother in Philadelphia, I had an interesting experience. We were visiting my mother, and on Sunday morning went to church with her. She belongs to a large Episcopalian church. The church itself had no air-conditioning, and it was a hot July morning. I was fidgety and hot, and so were Erin and Shea, who were only four years old at the time. Since Diane normally is the one who has to deal with squirming kids on Sunday mornings, I volunteered to take them outside. I took them to the front steps, where they joyfully hopped up and down on the steps. Another little girl out there with her father joined in. I looked up at him to ask him how old his daughter was, and I stopped.
We stared at each other for a bit, and then he said, “Graham?” I said, “Nibbles!” He was one of the last people I expected to see on the front steps of a church. It turns out, as best as I can remember from our conversation, that Nibbles graduated from college and wandered out west to Aspen, Colorado, or some other ski resort town, so that he could work a little, ski a little, and party a lot. He went from job to job throughout his twenties, and slowly realized that he was wasting his life. He began to put his life together. He met a woman who helped him get his life in order. He got a job in the software industry, got married, and began to take faith and God more seriously. This was a slow process, but it eventually led him to move to the Philadelphia suburbs and become a member of my mother’s church. He told me that he was now very involved in the church, and that his life was very different from college.
Nibbles made a choice to let go of the unclean spirits and to live a much better life. He made the choice to follow the Spirit, and it made all the difference. We all face choices in life about whether we will walk in the ways of the light or the dark. It may sound naïve to suggest that they open us to clean or unclean spirits, but I’m not sure how else you describe it. The reality is that most of us have some sort of demons in our lives. I don’t know whether they are true or figurative demons, but they are demons that have the power to drag our lives down.
I’ve thought a lot over the years about what opens us to these spirits. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a category of people in life who constantly open themselves to these darker forces. While they may struggle with mental problems and substance abuse, they never quite get to the point of having a full-blown mental illness or addiction. Still, they consistently make bad choices in life. If given the choice between a path that leads to success but requires hard work, and one that leads to difficulty by seems painless, they choose the latter step.
I’ve often dreamed of starting a group for these people that I would call MUA. That stands for “Messed Up Anonymous.” I just think that we need a group for people who are chronically messed up, for people who make consistently bad choices and open themselves up to unclean spirits, demons, or whatever. In fact, I’ve even gone far enough to create a three-step program to help them. What I’ve realized is that if these people are going to overcome their problems, they need to take three basic steps: let go of fear, step toward wisdom, walk with God.
The first step to living a better one is to let go of fear. Fear is the life killer. Most of these people have problems in their lives because fear dominates their decisions. They are afraid—afraid of being hurt, afraid of failing, afraid of changing their lives, afraid of the unknown, afraid of the future. So, what I’ve realized is that they don’t understand is a simple fact: When you live in fear, your decisions are weird. Decision-making is a constant problem for them, and the result is that they just make weird decisions. They do things that we scratch our heads over and say, “Why would you ever think to do that, especially knowing what the consequences will probably be?” They make weird decisions because they are afraid of the consequences of doing things normally, never thinking that by making the choice they are making that they will suffer worse consequences. As a result, they never really quite learn these lessons that we’ve all mostly learned:
The second step of living a better life is to step toward wisdom. To overcome a messed up life, we have to learn a basic spiritual lesson: Living in God’s kingdom helps you find wisdom. There are also lessons to be learned on how to step towards this wisdom and into God’s kingdom:
The third step is to walk with God. Unhealthy people need to learn that the way to a great life is to become open to the Spirit—be centered and you’ll hear it. There are things we need to do everyday that lead us to this kind of health. To really be healthy and overcome being messed up, we need to create a practice of life that helps us make better decisions by helping us understand the path God sets before us. What we need to do is to:
I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to start this group, but I know that if you follow this guide you’ll live a wonderful life. The question for you to reflect on this morning is this: what kind of life are you living
Amen.
Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
What do you think about this idea of unclean spirits, this idea of demons or some sort of dark force inhabiting us? It can seem pretty weird, especially in our day and age when we know so much more about human psychology, the brain, and our bodies. It’s hard to believe in unclean spirits in this day and age. Belief in unclean spirits seems so naïve. Of course the people of Jesus’ day believed in unclean spirits. They were ignorant and superstitious. They didn’t know what we know today.
I used to think that believing in unclean spirits and demons was silly, too. How could I not? I was a psychology major in college. I have a master’s degree in counseling. I’ve had over 25 years of experience with all sorts of mental disorders. How can I, a rational man who understands mental illness, believe in demons and unclean spirits? But I do. Over the years I’ve had too many experiences that tell me that many people have something dark going on in them, something that isn’t just explained by mental illness. These are people who make choices in their lives that open them to darker influences.
I first noticed the power of these choices when I worked as a counselor with adolescents and children in a psychiatric hospital in the early 1980s. We had a particularly difficult group of teenage girls and boys who were listening to all sorts of heavy metal music by Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Judas Priest, and more. I saw how the songs and their lyrics influenced the kids in a negative way, and how it opened them to self-destructive thoughts. Everything about these kids was negative and dark, and few of them actually had what I would call a mental illness. Mostly they had behavioral disorders, and while I won’t blame heavy metal music for the disorders, It contributed to it by opening them to darker thoughts, perceptions, and forces.
It’s not only in the psychiatric hospital that I’ve seen the prevalence of darker forces. People all throughout life seem to open themselves constantly to darker forces. They do it through their self-destructive choices, attitudes, and approach to life.
Let me tell you about one guy I knew who seemed to me to have what I can best describe as an unclean spirit. He was a classmate of mine in junior and senior high school. He was a great athlete, student, was very popular, and one of the best-looking guys in our class growing up. He had everything. We all were jealous of him because everything seemed so easy for him. And, to top it all off, he was wealthy. When he was eighteen he inherited a huge inheritance. He managed to get into a very good college, but after one year he dropped out. He would periodically go back to school somewhere, but eventually he dropped out completely. With his inheritance, he bought a house and pretty much lived a life filled with alcohol and drugs. At some point in his drug-induced haze of life, he managed to convince himself that he was another John Lennon. He built a recording studio in his basement, and even dressed like Lennon and wore the same glasses. He was pretty much wasted most of his time. Even when he tried to get his life together it was a mess. I remember seeing him at a party while I was still in seminary. It was the last conversation I ever had with him. He was completely smashed, and he came up to me and started telling me about how he was getting his life in order and reading the Bible everyday. By age 28 had died of a drug overdose. I realize that part of his problem was that he suffered from addiction, but there was also something else there that led him down a darker path.
The reason I say that he still made his own choice to follow something unclean is that I have seen others from similar backgrounds eventually make better choices. For instance, let me tell you about another friend of mine, Nibbles. Nibbles was not a particularly great student in college. In fact, his main major in college was partying, which is how he got the nickname “Nibbles.” After partying with substances that gave him the munchies, he would wander around the dorm asking people if they had any food. He was always nibbling. He was the kind of person you didn’t really expect to do particularly great things in life. You just expected him to fade out in a haze of parties, perhaps like the other friend I mentioned above.
Back in 2003, when I was visiting my mother in Philadelphia, I had an interesting experience. We were visiting my mother, and on Sunday morning went to church with her. She belongs to a large Episcopalian church. The church itself had no air-conditioning, and it was a hot July morning. I was fidgety and hot, and so were Erin and Shea, who were only four years old at the time. Since Diane normally is the one who has to deal with squirming kids on Sunday mornings, I volunteered to take them outside. I took them to the front steps, where they joyfully hopped up and down on the steps. Another little girl out there with her father joined in. I looked up at him to ask him how old his daughter was, and I stopped.
We stared at each other for a bit, and then he said, “Graham?” I said, “Nibbles!” He was one of the last people I expected to see on the front steps of a church. It turns out, as best as I can remember from our conversation, that Nibbles graduated from college and wandered out west to Aspen, Colorado, or some other ski resort town, so that he could work a little, ski a little, and party a lot. He went from job to job throughout his twenties, and slowly realized that he was wasting his life. He began to put his life together. He met a woman who helped him get his life in order. He got a job in the software industry, got married, and began to take faith and God more seriously. This was a slow process, but it eventually led him to move to the Philadelphia suburbs and become a member of my mother’s church. He told me that he was now very involved in the church, and that his life was very different from college.
Nibbles made a choice to let go of the unclean spirits and to live a much better life. He made the choice to follow the Spirit, and it made all the difference. We all face choices in life about whether we will walk in the ways of the light or the dark. It may sound naïve to suggest that they open us to clean or unclean spirits, but I’m not sure how else you describe it. The reality is that most of us have some sort of demons in our lives. I don’t know whether they are true or figurative demons, but they are demons that have the power to drag our lives down.
I’ve thought a lot over the years about what opens us to these spirits. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a category of people in life who constantly open themselves to these darker forces. While they may struggle with mental problems and substance abuse, they never quite get to the point of having a full-blown mental illness or addiction. Still, they consistently make bad choices in life. If given the choice between a path that leads to success but requires hard work, and one that leads to difficulty by seems painless, they choose the latter step.
I’ve often dreamed of starting a group for these people that I would call MUA. That stands for “Messed Up Anonymous.” I just think that we need a group for people who are chronically messed up, for people who make consistently bad choices and open themselves up to unclean spirits, demons, or whatever. In fact, I’ve even gone far enough to create a three-step program to help them. What I’ve realized is that if these people are going to overcome their problems, they need to take three basic steps: let go of fear, step toward wisdom, walk with God.
The first step to living a better one is to let go of fear. Fear is the life killer. Most of these people have problems in their lives because fear dominates their decisions. They are afraid—afraid of being hurt, afraid of failing, afraid of changing their lives, afraid of the unknown, afraid of the future. So, what I’ve realized is that they don’t understand is a simple fact: When you live in fear, your decisions are weird. Decision-making is a constant problem for them, and the result is that they just make weird decisions. They do things that we scratch our heads over and say, “Why would you ever think to do that, especially knowing what the consequences will probably be?” They make weird decisions because they are afraid of the consequences of doing things normally, never thinking that by making the choice they are making that they will suffer worse consequences. As a result, they never really quite learn these lessons that we’ve all mostly learned:
- Avoiding problems creates problems—this is an issue for so many people. People who live messed up lives chronically avoid problems. They won’t talk with people about what’s bothering them, they deal in an unhealthy way with people who are hurting them, they won’t take responsibility for the problems they’ve created, they won’t take steps to deal with problems they face. They never really learn that to be healthy we have to face problems and deal with them head-on.
- Shortcuts get you lost—again, most people who live messed up lives chronically take shortcuts. In school, they wait until the last minute to study. At work they do sloppy work because they don’t feel like taking the time to do things well. They always come up with schemes to make money quick, and then wonder why they have no money.
- Defensiveness makes you offensive—they are constantly defensive because they are self-protective, and so in their defensiveness they tend to attack the people who love them and try to care for them. Then they wonder why people don’t want to help them.
- Being selfish makes you self-destructive—they tend to be very selfish, focusing only on their own problems, never taking the time to reach out to and care about others. The result is that their obsessive self-focus causes them to ignore every healthy voice around them, to join others in healthy activities, and reach out to others in need. If they did so, it would give them a wonderful sense of perspective about their own lives.
- When you protect yourself from hurt, you hurt those you love—because they are so self-protective, secretive, and self-destructive, they wear out those they love. They hurt them by lashing out. They hurt them by being parasites who drained loved ones of time and money. They hurt them by simply making it hard to be loved.
The second step of living a better life is to step toward wisdom. To overcome a messed up life, we have to learn a basic spiritual lesson: Living in God’s kingdom helps you find wisdom. There are also lessons to be learned on how to step towards this wisdom and into God’s kingdom:
- Honesty and integrity creates prosperity—there is no substitute for doing our best to be honest in all we do, whether it is in taking responsibility for our failures and mistakes, gently and charitably letting others know what our thoughts and feelings are, being honest with ourselves about our fears, and being honest in all our actions with others. The same is true for integrity. Having a sense of integrity in all we do makes a difference because it is the wise way and the kingdom way. It’s the kind of life Christ had and that God wants for us.
- Keeping commitments leads to contentment—I think that a failure to make and keep commitments is a huuuuuuuuge problem in modern life. People are afraid to commit to marriage, church, or anything else that may cause them to stay with something long-term. Again, we are afraid of something bad happening. A similar problem is that we constantly make commitments to things that don’t matter, while breaking commitments to things that do. For instance, I see as a huge problem the commitment to sports among our children and teens. Sports has become such a big deal that it overwhelms all other commitments. Think about this for a moment. Given a choice between your commitment to God to worship each Sunday, and a commitment to soccer, hockey, or baseball team to play or practice each Sunday morning, which commitment are you likely to keep. Most parents and kids choose the sport. Sports are fun, but they last for a season. Commitment to God and worship is for life. This isn’t a recent conflict. I faced this both as a teen, young adult, and as a pastor. I remember in my late twenties, when I was still playing lacrosse, we had games that started at 12:30 p.m. on Sundays. For many of those Sundays I could have either taken the Sunday off, or left church early. Instead, I knew where my commitment was. I used to come to church dressed with my lacrosse uniform underneath my jacket and tie. I would stay and greet people calmly and patiently, and then jump in my car to race off to the game. I would show up five minutes late, but I kept my commitments straight. I knew that lacrosse would end, but not my faith.
- Putting others before yourself is the pathway to health—this is a constant in God’s kingdom. We are called to live to help each other. Putting others first helps us overcome selfishness and self-destructiveness. I realize that putting others first can lead us to become unbalanced by neglecting ourselves, but the truth is that this is only a remote possibility for messed up people.
The third step is to walk with God. Unhealthy people need to learn that the way to a great life is to become open to the Spirit—be centered and you’ll hear it. There are things we need to do everyday that lead us to this kind of health. To really be healthy and overcome being messed up, we need to create a practice of life that helps us make better decisions by helping us understand the path God sets before us. What we need to do is to:
- Read Scripture and spiritual books each week and learn how to find what you seek—how often do you read the Bible? How often do you read books that are intended to help you live a better life? Even those of us who are religious or spiritual don’t do this enough. I believe that it’s not enough to pray. We need to learn different ways of seeing life and living life? That’s what transforms us. That’s what we get from reading.
- Pray everyday to discover God’s way—having said that it’s not enough to just read. We still need to pray every day. I would take this a step further. I think we need to talk with God and listen to God all throughout the day. Having problems? Talk with God. See something beautiful? Thank God. Gain an insight? Speak with God about how to spread it through your whole life.
- Worship once a week, which makes you strong—Why do we worship? What’s the point? The point is to immerse us in God’s way, to give us a weekly discipline that helps us learn how to overcome fear, step into wisdom, and walk with God.
- Strive to live in God’s way and God will bless you everyday—this speaks for itself. I believe God wants us to live really wonderful, happy, healthy lives. The question is whether we believe it and strive for it.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to start this group, but I know that if you follow this guide you’ll live a wonderful life. The question for you to reflect on this morning is this: what kind of life are you living
Amen.
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