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.
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.
Treating Our Bodies as Temples
1 Corinthian 6:12-20
January 18, 2008
“All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
When I read this passage, I find it to be one of the more profound passages of scripture. The parts I find to be profound are not so much the parts where Paul talks about prostitution, fornication, and stuff like that. What really captures me is the last few sentences where Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” Why is this so profound? To understand you really have to understand who Paul was writing to and why he wrote it?
To whom was Paul writing? He was writing to the Christians in Corinth, which meant that he was writing to people living in a city that was much like Las Vegas is today. Back then they very easily could have said, what goes on in Corinth stays in Corinth. The Greek city of Corinth had the reputation of being the most enticing or perverted (depending on which perspective you have) city in the Roman Empire. Why? The reason has to do with geography. If you’ve ever looked at a map of Greece, you’ll notice that it is a peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean Sea. About 2/3rds of the way down the peninsula two long inlets carve into the peninsula, leaving a small isthmus connecting the upper peninsula with the lower one. Corinth lies directly on that small isthmus.
The residents of the city were very clever. They knew that during the winter traveling around the bottom of the Greek peninsula could be dangerous because of storms. So they created a system in which a ship could travel down one inlet, be literally pulled out of the water, placed on rollers, pulled for twenty miles, and then put back down in the other inlet. It was much like a rolling Panama Canal. So, it became a major transport city that benefitted from trade coming from the east and the west of the empire. The city quickly became rich, and with that wealth came access to all sorts of pleasures. The city became a center of prostitution and gluttony. It was a place where people sought to break the social conventions of the day regarding self-indulgence. Paul was writing to people who were used to having lots of overindulgence and little personal discipline.
Paul was offering theman alternative vision. He was using the Temple of Jerusalem as a model for how to live life, and especially how to treat out bodies. He was teaching them how to keep a mind, body, spirit balance. To truly understand his teaching, it helps to first learn a little bit about the Temple of Jerusalem.
To begin with the Temple was the center of worship for all the Jews. It was considered to be where God lived on earth. The very center of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, once housed the Ark of the Covenant, which was the throne of God. But there was more to the Temple than just the Holy of Holies.
The Temple itself was massive. The only part that remains today—it was destroyed by the Roman general, Pompey, around 70 A.D.—is what is now called the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall. This wall is one of the holiest sites of Judaism, and it is a place of prayer. A thousand years ago it was integrated into the Temple Mount, which is part of the complex surrounding the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim temple that is said to be built atop a rock where, according to Islamic tradition, Muhammad ascended to Heaven accompanied by the angel Gabriel. It is considered to be the third holiest site in Islam, behind Mecca and Medina.
Before the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed it was massive. It’s hard to get a sense of how large it was, but if it were plopped down in the middle of Zelienople, it would take up most of the town. It’s walls were about ten stories tall. It was a rectangle with a series of small rectangular courts and buildings forming concentric spaces toward the center, where the Holy of Holies was. The first court, the Court of the Gentiles, took up much of the area of the Temple. This is the space where the moneychangers were, who you remember from the story of Jesus turning over the tables. The moneychangers would exchange Roman coins for temple coins, since the temple tax could not be paid with Roman coins.
Moving toward the center of the temple one found interior enclosed courtyards that Gentiles were forbidden to enter. The outermost of those courtyards was the Court of the Women. Jewish women could gather there, but could go no further in. Since this courtyard was covered with a roof, but open along the sides, the women could see further in, but not go further. Moving again into the center, there was the Court of the Israelites, which surrounded the main Temple building. Jewish men could gather there. This courtyard was the place where sacrifices took place. Each Israelite was expected to offer an animal sacrifice at least once a year. The idea was that the animal was sacrificed in place of the person, who rightly should be sacrificed to God for not living life God’s way. Animals served as substitutes for humans. Only unblemished animals could be sacrificed, since their innocence had the power to take on human sin. Rising up out of that courtyard was the magnificent Holy of Holies. It was where the Ark rested. There were two bronze- and gold-lined chambers in the interior this magnificent building. There was the Court of the Priests, where priests would bring the cooked meat from the sacrifices, and then there was the interior Holy of Holies itself, where two large bronze cherubim sculptures rested. This room could be entered only once a year, and only by the high priest.
As you can see, the temple was a highly ordered space for making sacrifices and worshiping God. This is the model Paul uses for how our bodies are to be a temple. He is using this temple in comparison to us, saying that each of us is like this temple in some way, and that we need to treat our bodies like this temple.
So what does it mean that we should treat our bodies as a temple? I believe that there are at least four inherent lessons. First, he is saying, let worship take place in our temples (our bodies), but don’t worship our temples. In our culture this is a huge lesson. We are a culture that too often worships physical perfection. Who do we admire in our culture? Too often it’s movie stars and athletes. I have no problem enjoying their work, but their physical obsessions aren’t a model for people who want to live balanced lives. If you’ve ever read even one issue of People Magazine, you immediately understand the problem of looking to celebrities as models. They may be physically beautiful, but often their lives are a mess. They live in a culture of body worship, but we are called to live lives where worship takes place in our bodies. Worshiping our temples can actually keep God from living in our temples by preventing worship of God from taking place in our temples.
Second, we need to allow our bodies—our temples—to be healthy, whole, and holy spaces where God can live. I am a big believer in this. I truly believe that it is difficult to worship God if we neglect our bodies. I believe in a body, mind, and spirit balance, and too often we either neglect the physical, or we obsess about the physical. I am particularly sensitive to this because I have struggled with my health and weight pretty much my whole adult life. I became very interested in physical health starting in college, when, despite the fact I was athlete playing on one of the top lacrosse teams in the country, and was at the top of physical fitness, I had high blood pressure. I was put on what was then considered to be a good diet, which was a high carbohydrate, low fat diet. Ever since I have been somewhat obsessive about my eating habits and exercise. That doesn’t mean that I don’t lapse every once in a while, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
I exercise virtually every day, either lifting weights, or walking between 3 to 4 miles a day outside or on a treadmill. I’m limited in what I can do because I’ve had three knee operations on my right knee and now have arthritis in it. If I do any kind of impact exercise, my knee swells up like a grapefruit. For instance, three years ago I played badminton at our Calvin softball team’s picnic, and just doing that for an hour swelled my knee so much that I had to walk with a cane for a better part of a week. Thus, I struggle like everyone else to find exercise that is interesting.
I’m a fanatic about eating healthy, which may seem surprising to some people because I am heavy. I’m what I would call a “healthy heavy,” although I’d much prefer to be a skinny healthy. I’ve struggled with my weight all my adult life, but at the same time, I very rarely ever eat junk food. I tend to eat grainy breads, lean meats, and lots of vegetables and fruits. In fact, people who have lunch with me often make fun of the fact that I’m always ordering a grilled chicken salad.
One of the things I’ve recently figured out, and it’s allowed me to lose over 15 pounds without dieting, is that we are a nation of fast-eaters and large portions. I’ve become convinced that the reason so many of us struggle with our weight isn’t that we are unhealthy or don’t exercise. That may be true to some extent, but a bigger problem is that our portions are too large and our eating is too fast. I’m basing this belief on the work of a British man named Paul McKenna, and I find his arguments compelling.
He says that one of the biggest contributors to all of our weight problems is the instructions we got from our parents. I don’t mean to put all the blame on our parents, since they were trying to raise us to be healthy. It’s just that growing up most of our parents told us to “finish everything on your plate—there are starving children in Africa.” Of course, most of us responded by saying, “Well, maybe we can send them some of our leftovers.” Still, the damage was done. Most of us now eat everything on our plates, even if we are full. The result is that we eat more than we should. How we eat as adults is very different from how most children naturally eat. Most children rarely finish their plates. They’ll eat ½ to 1/3rd of what we put on their plates, and then ask, “how many more bites do I have to take?” We now tell them, “Two bites of your vegetables.” When I was a kid, I was told, like almost everyone else my age, “Eat everything.” The result is that nowadays I feel guilty if I leave food on my plate. It feels like wasting. What makes this worse is that plates are now so big now. They are 1/3rd to ½ larger than plates from twenty years ago. By finishing off our plates, we now eat 1/3rd to ½ more food than we did twenty years ago.
We also all eat so fast. Two generations ago, meals took a long time. People weren’t in such a hurry to get here or there. The result is that people tended to sit longer at meals and eat slower, focusing more on the flavors. Today, we are in such a rush that when we eat we mostly gobble and gulp, rather than nibble and sip. McKenna talks about an experiment that showed this. A group of people were taken to a pancake house for a free breakfast. Their breakfasts included scrambled eggs, hash browns, a stack of pancakes, and bacon. Virtually every one of them ate quickly, eating everything on their plates. The same group was then brought back a week later and given the exact same breakfast. This time, though, they were blindfolded, which forced them to slow down. Every one of them ate only ½ of their meals, saying that they were too full to finish. By slowing down they ate less by giving their bodies time to tell their brains that they were full.
You can do a simple, observational experiment to test the theory about weight gain and speed of eating. Go somewhere like a the food court of a mall, and notice the different ways that heavy people eat compared to how thinner people eat. I’ve done this, and I’ve been amazed. I watch the thinner people eat, and they take smaller bites, chew longer, and take longer in-between bites. They also tend leave food on their plates. Heck, I don’t have to compare them to heavy people. I compare them to myself. I eat fast, chew quick, and always clean my plate. It’s been amazing to me that instead of dieting, and by simply slowing down my eating, focusing more on chewing slow and tasting flavors, and not eating everything on my plate, I lose weight. This is what I mean by being healthy not only in what we eat, but in how we eat.
Taking care of our bodies also isn’t just a matter of eating healthy, slowly, and exercising. I think it also means getting enough sleep, taking enough breaks, and giving our lives some pause and balance against a world that screams at us to rush here and there. We aren’t called to worship our temples, but we do have to take care of them.
The third lesson is that we need to let regular prayer and sacrifice take place in our temples. We were created to be in a relationship with God. Temples are created to facilitate that relationship with God. A temple is no good unless it puts God at the center. We are called to put God at our center—to make sure we take time to sacrifice our egos to God, to make time to pray, read scripture, read spiritual books, and do anything that puts worship at the center. We were created to be temples for God, to be places where God resides at the center, just like the Temple of Jerusalem.
Finally, we need to make sure that our temples have the right order. The Temple of Jerusalem had a definite order and discipline. Just as there were courtyards, walls, and sacred spaces in the Temple, we need to have disciplined and ordered lives that allow God to reside at the center. We need to install a kind of discipline to our lives that allows them to overcome the chaos of life in order to let God live in the center. For example, by reading this sermon, you are applying a certain order. When you worship each week, you are applying that kind of order. When you pray each day you are applying that order. Our lives can have too much order, but that’s rarely our problem. We usually suffer from a lack of order and priority.
The point of all of this is that our bodies are our temples—temples for God to reside. Our question is whether we take this seriously. Do we worship our temples or allow worship to take place in them? Are our temples healthy? Do they have the right structure and order? Ultimately, the real question is, “What takes place in our temples?”
Amen.
January 18, 2008
“All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
When I read this passage, I find it to be one of the more profound passages of scripture. The parts I find to be profound are not so much the parts where Paul talks about prostitution, fornication, and stuff like that. What really captures me is the last few sentences where Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” Why is this so profound? To understand you really have to understand who Paul was writing to and why he wrote it?
To whom was Paul writing? He was writing to the Christians in Corinth, which meant that he was writing to people living in a city that was much like Las Vegas is today. Back then they very easily could have said, what goes on in Corinth stays in Corinth. The Greek city of Corinth had the reputation of being the most enticing or perverted (depending on which perspective you have) city in the Roman Empire. Why? The reason has to do with geography. If you’ve ever looked at a map of Greece, you’ll notice that it is a peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean Sea. About 2/3rds of the way down the peninsula two long inlets carve into the peninsula, leaving a small isthmus connecting the upper peninsula with the lower one. Corinth lies directly on that small isthmus.
The residents of the city were very clever. They knew that during the winter traveling around the bottom of the Greek peninsula could be dangerous because of storms. So they created a system in which a ship could travel down one inlet, be literally pulled out of the water, placed on rollers, pulled for twenty miles, and then put back down in the other inlet. It was much like a rolling Panama Canal. So, it became a major transport city that benefitted from trade coming from the east and the west of the empire. The city quickly became rich, and with that wealth came access to all sorts of pleasures. The city became a center of prostitution and gluttony. It was a place where people sought to break the social conventions of the day regarding self-indulgence. Paul was writing to people who were used to having lots of overindulgence and little personal discipline.
Paul was offering theman alternative vision. He was using the Temple of Jerusalem as a model for how to live life, and especially how to treat out bodies. He was teaching them how to keep a mind, body, spirit balance. To truly understand his teaching, it helps to first learn a little bit about the Temple of Jerusalem.
To begin with the Temple was the center of worship for all the Jews. It was considered to be where God lived on earth. The very center of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, once housed the Ark of the Covenant, which was the throne of God. But there was more to the Temple than just the Holy of Holies.
The Temple itself was massive. The only part that remains today—it was destroyed by the Roman general, Pompey, around 70 A.D.—is what is now called the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall. This wall is one of the holiest sites of Judaism, and it is a place of prayer. A thousand years ago it was integrated into the Temple Mount, which is part of the complex surrounding the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim temple that is said to be built atop a rock where, according to Islamic tradition, Muhammad ascended to Heaven accompanied by the angel Gabriel. It is considered to be the third holiest site in Islam, behind Mecca and Medina.
Before the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed it was massive. It’s hard to get a sense of how large it was, but if it were plopped down in the middle of Zelienople, it would take up most of the town. It’s walls were about ten stories tall. It was a rectangle with a series of small rectangular courts and buildings forming concentric spaces toward the center, where the Holy of Holies was. The first court, the Court of the Gentiles, took up much of the area of the Temple. This is the space where the moneychangers were, who you remember from the story of Jesus turning over the tables. The moneychangers would exchange Roman coins for temple coins, since the temple tax could not be paid with Roman coins.
Moving toward the center of the temple one found interior enclosed courtyards that Gentiles were forbidden to enter. The outermost of those courtyards was the Court of the Women. Jewish women could gather there, but could go no further in. Since this courtyard was covered with a roof, but open along the sides, the women could see further in, but not go further. Moving again into the center, there was the Court of the Israelites, which surrounded the main Temple building. Jewish men could gather there. This courtyard was the place where sacrifices took place. Each Israelite was expected to offer an animal sacrifice at least once a year. The idea was that the animal was sacrificed in place of the person, who rightly should be sacrificed to God for not living life God’s way. Animals served as substitutes for humans. Only unblemished animals could be sacrificed, since their innocence had the power to take on human sin. Rising up out of that courtyard was the magnificent Holy of Holies. It was where the Ark rested. There were two bronze- and gold-lined chambers in the interior this magnificent building. There was the Court of the Priests, where priests would bring the cooked meat from the sacrifices, and then there was the interior Holy of Holies itself, where two large bronze cherubim sculptures rested. This room could be entered only once a year, and only by the high priest.
As you can see, the temple was a highly ordered space for making sacrifices and worshiping God. This is the model Paul uses for how our bodies are to be a temple. He is using this temple in comparison to us, saying that each of us is like this temple in some way, and that we need to treat our bodies like this temple.
So what does it mean that we should treat our bodies as a temple? I believe that there are at least four inherent lessons. First, he is saying, let worship take place in our temples (our bodies), but don’t worship our temples. In our culture this is a huge lesson. We are a culture that too often worships physical perfection. Who do we admire in our culture? Too often it’s movie stars and athletes. I have no problem enjoying their work, but their physical obsessions aren’t a model for people who want to live balanced lives. If you’ve ever read even one issue of People Magazine, you immediately understand the problem of looking to celebrities as models. They may be physically beautiful, but often their lives are a mess. They live in a culture of body worship, but we are called to live lives where worship takes place in our bodies. Worshiping our temples can actually keep God from living in our temples by preventing worship of God from taking place in our temples.
Second, we need to allow our bodies—our temples—to be healthy, whole, and holy spaces where God can live. I am a big believer in this. I truly believe that it is difficult to worship God if we neglect our bodies. I believe in a body, mind, and spirit balance, and too often we either neglect the physical, or we obsess about the physical. I am particularly sensitive to this because I have struggled with my health and weight pretty much my whole adult life. I became very interested in physical health starting in college, when, despite the fact I was athlete playing on one of the top lacrosse teams in the country, and was at the top of physical fitness, I had high blood pressure. I was put on what was then considered to be a good diet, which was a high carbohydrate, low fat diet. Ever since I have been somewhat obsessive about my eating habits and exercise. That doesn’t mean that I don’t lapse every once in a while, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
I exercise virtually every day, either lifting weights, or walking between 3 to 4 miles a day outside or on a treadmill. I’m limited in what I can do because I’ve had three knee operations on my right knee and now have arthritis in it. If I do any kind of impact exercise, my knee swells up like a grapefruit. For instance, three years ago I played badminton at our Calvin softball team’s picnic, and just doing that for an hour swelled my knee so much that I had to walk with a cane for a better part of a week. Thus, I struggle like everyone else to find exercise that is interesting.
I’m a fanatic about eating healthy, which may seem surprising to some people because I am heavy. I’m what I would call a “healthy heavy,” although I’d much prefer to be a skinny healthy. I’ve struggled with my weight all my adult life, but at the same time, I very rarely ever eat junk food. I tend to eat grainy breads, lean meats, and lots of vegetables and fruits. In fact, people who have lunch with me often make fun of the fact that I’m always ordering a grilled chicken salad.
One of the things I’ve recently figured out, and it’s allowed me to lose over 15 pounds without dieting, is that we are a nation of fast-eaters and large portions. I’ve become convinced that the reason so many of us struggle with our weight isn’t that we are unhealthy or don’t exercise. That may be true to some extent, but a bigger problem is that our portions are too large and our eating is too fast. I’m basing this belief on the work of a British man named Paul McKenna, and I find his arguments compelling.
He says that one of the biggest contributors to all of our weight problems is the instructions we got from our parents. I don’t mean to put all the blame on our parents, since they were trying to raise us to be healthy. It’s just that growing up most of our parents told us to “finish everything on your plate—there are starving children in Africa.” Of course, most of us responded by saying, “Well, maybe we can send them some of our leftovers.” Still, the damage was done. Most of us now eat everything on our plates, even if we are full. The result is that we eat more than we should. How we eat as adults is very different from how most children naturally eat. Most children rarely finish their plates. They’ll eat ½ to 1/3rd of what we put on their plates, and then ask, “how many more bites do I have to take?” We now tell them, “Two bites of your vegetables.” When I was a kid, I was told, like almost everyone else my age, “Eat everything.” The result is that nowadays I feel guilty if I leave food on my plate. It feels like wasting. What makes this worse is that plates are now so big now. They are 1/3rd to ½ larger than plates from twenty years ago. By finishing off our plates, we now eat 1/3rd to ½ more food than we did twenty years ago.
We also all eat so fast. Two generations ago, meals took a long time. People weren’t in such a hurry to get here or there. The result is that people tended to sit longer at meals and eat slower, focusing more on the flavors. Today, we are in such a rush that when we eat we mostly gobble and gulp, rather than nibble and sip. McKenna talks about an experiment that showed this. A group of people were taken to a pancake house for a free breakfast. Their breakfasts included scrambled eggs, hash browns, a stack of pancakes, and bacon. Virtually every one of them ate quickly, eating everything on their plates. The same group was then brought back a week later and given the exact same breakfast. This time, though, they were blindfolded, which forced them to slow down. Every one of them ate only ½ of their meals, saying that they were too full to finish. By slowing down they ate less by giving their bodies time to tell their brains that they were full.
You can do a simple, observational experiment to test the theory about weight gain and speed of eating. Go somewhere like a the food court of a mall, and notice the different ways that heavy people eat compared to how thinner people eat. I’ve done this, and I’ve been amazed. I watch the thinner people eat, and they take smaller bites, chew longer, and take longer in-between bites. They also tend leave food on their plates. Heck, I don’t have to compare them to heavy people. I compare them to myself. I eat fast, chew quick, and always clean my plate. It’s been amazing to me that instead of dieting, and by simply slowing down my eating, focusing more on chewing slow and tasting flavors, and not eating everything on my plate, I lose weight. This is what I mean by being healthy not only in what we eat, but in how we eat.
Taking care of our bodies also isn’t just a matter of eating healthy, slowly, and exercising. I think it also means getting enough sleep, taking enough breaks, and giving our lives some pause and balance against a world that screams at us to rush here and there. We aren’t called to worship our temples, but we do have to take care of them.
The third lesson is that we need to let regular prayer and sacrifice take place in our temples. We were created to be in a relationship with God. Temples are created to facilitate that relationship with God. A temple is no good unless it puts God at the center. We are called to put God at our center—to make sure we take time to sacrifice our egos to God, to make time to pray, read scripture, read spiritual books, and do anything that puts worship at the center. We were created to be temples for God, to be places where God resides at the center, just like the Temple of Jerusalem.
Finally, we need to make sure that our temples have the right order. The Temple of Jerusalem had a definite order and discipline. Just as there were courtyards, walls, and sacred spaces in the Temple, we need to have disciplined and ordered lives that allow God to reside at the center. We need to install a kind of discipline to our lives that allows them to overcome the chaos of life in order to let God live in the center. For example, by reading this sermon, you are applying a certain order. When you worship each week, you are applying that kind of order. When you pray each day you are applying that order. Our lives can have too much order, but that’s rarely our problem. We usually suffer from a lack of order and priority.
The point of all of this is that our bodies are our temples—temples for God to reside. Our question is whether we take this seriously. Do we worship our temples or allow worship to take place in them? Are our temples healthy? Do they have the right structure and order? Ultimately, the real question is, “What takes place in our temples?”
Amen.
Baptized in the Spirit
Acts 19:1-7
While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. He said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" They replied, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." Then he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They answered, "Into John's baptism." Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied—altogether there were about twelve of them.
Do you remember when you were baptized? Most of you probably don’t, since you were just a baby at the time, but some of you do. If you do remember, was it an amazing spiritual experience? Did you feel the Holy Spirit entering you? Did you receive the Holy Spirit? Most people, even when they are baptized as adults, don’t feel the Spirit entering upon baptism. They feel that it’s an important occasion, they are happy it happened, and they feel wet, but not necessarily filled with the Spirit.
So, have you received the Holy Spirit? I’m not sure that just because you were baptized that it automatically means that you received the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t. It’s just that real baptism in the Holy Spirit means making a choice that many Christians never really make. It’s not that they don’t want to make the choice. It’s that most of us don’t know we need to make the choice, and so what happens is that we end up living less of the life that we are called by Christ to live.
How do we make sure people receive the Holy Spirit at some point in their lives? Some churches only baptize people when they are ready to make the choice to be baptized, with the hope that this choice will open the person to the Holy Spirit. In Presbyterian churches, like ours, we encourage teens to make this choice after confirmation class. Unfortunately, there is a problem with that. Many or most times the teens just aren’t spiritually mature enough to really make the kind of choice that lets the Spirit in. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they would become spiritually mature later in life. Many people never become spiritually mature enough to let the Spirit in, and some are very mature early on and let the Spirit in as children.
So what does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? I think it means making a foundational choice to give ourselves over to the Spirit and to willingly let the Spirit truly, deeply into our lives. It means letting the Spirit not only guide us to what God wants, but to let the Spirit move our lives according to God’s ways.
I think that for a long time I understood this concept in my head, the idea of receiving the Spirit, but I don’t know that I truly understood it from a deeper life-sense. Where I learned what it really meant was from a member of my previous church, where I served as an associate pastor.
This woman’s story is really fascinating, and shows the difference it makes in our lives when we truly become open to and receive the Spirit. The year was 1990, and I was preaching on the particular Sunday she visited. At that time I preached about once every five to six weeks. I was preaching about faith, and about how we needed it to give us purpose and meaning in life. Then I gave an example of what life without faith is like. I read the congregation a passage from a book that my wife, Diane, whom I was dating at the time, had given me. The book was titled The Search for Meaning, by Phillip Berman. Berman had traveled the country, interviewing people from all walks of life about what gave them meaning. He interviewed well-known people from all walks of life, as well as those who were unknown. Each chapter of the book tells of a different interview and a different perspective of meaning.
In my sermon I focused on an interview with one man, a man named Elisha Shapiro. In the book, Shapiro called himself a nihilist, which means that he didn’t believe in anything at all, not God, not meaning, not morality. Then I read a passage from the book in which Shapiro said, “But me, I call myself a nihilist. It’s part of my art to call myself a nihilist. There is no God, and I don’t feel like replacing him with anything, and I like it that way. It’s a joyful experience, not an angst-filled one. My basic belief, if you can call it that, is that there is nothing that’s constant, whether it’s a more or ethical tenet or whether it’s a physical law. Take for example the statement ‘the grass is green.’ That’s not always true. Nor is the sky always blue. Maybe that’s not true. We don’t know. Maybe it’s all a dream. I like the idea that everything that people cling to that’s comforting or gives them a grounding is subject to change. People change, and nothing is constant….
To me, there really isn’t any significance to life, none whatsoever. No significance. And I find that’s a comforting thing. You’re let off the hook that way. (Laughs.) People feel like that’s a terrible emotional deal. But there is no significance to my existing here. I’m a product of… if I were to try to figure out what I was a product of, the best thing I could guess would be billions of years of coincidences, dumb luck. I enjoy my existence as an animal organism—if I’m not just a figment of my own imagination. If I am in existence at all, I’m just this animal organism running by what makes it run, what coincidentally came along with this package.”
After reading that passage, I said to the congregation that I couldn’t understand how anyone could live this way; how anyone could live without a real sense of faith or meaning. At the end of the worship service the woman I mentioned before, who was visiting our church for the first time, shook my hand at the door as she dabbed away tears. She then asked if she could make an appointment with me. We went back to my office and made an appointment for the following Thursday.
Thursday came and she and I sat down to talk. She said to me, “I’ll bet you’re wondering why I had tears in my eyes on Sunday, and why I asked to meet with you.” I told her that the thought had crossed my mind, and that I hoped it wasn’t due to my giving a dreadfully bad sermon. She then went on to tell me her story. She told me how she had grown up in Southern California in a family that was part of the Four Square Gospel church, a fundamentalist church that was highly restrictive and regimented. Growing up, she felt as though she was never allowed to do anything the other children were doing, as though she was a prisoner of her parents’ religion. She couldn’t wait to get out from under her parents’ control.
She met a charismatic and dynamic man after high school—a man who promised her freedom and a life filled with adventure and excitement. She left home to travel with this man, along with a group of others who seemed to be part of his entourage. They lived an exciting life of drugs, partying, and experimentation. But then the life took a downward spiral. The man became more and more controlling. He enticed her to dabble in all sorts of sexual practices with other men, and he turned her into something very close to a prostitute. She found herself trapped in a nightmare. What made it worse was that because of this life, and diseases she picked up, her internal organs were scarred, leaving her with a working ovary on the right side of her body and a working fallopian tube on the other side.
It took her two years to escape his grasp. She moved back home and enrolled in college, majoring in psychology. After graduating she enrolled in a master of social work program so that she could become a counselor working with lost souls like herself. She eventually met a man, a psychologist, whom she married. They moved around a bit as he took on teaching jobs and worked in rehab centers. Their travels brought them to the town where I was an associate pastor. She told me that it had taken her so long to recover from the life with that man who had destroyed so much of her life, and that church was something that helped her tremendously, which is why, whenever she moved to a new town, looking for a new church was always a priority.
She then leaned forward and said to me, “You can imagine my surprise when I came here for church last Sunday, and you gave that sermon, talking about Elisha Shapiro. You see, Elisha Shapiro was the man I told you about.” She then said that she was still living the consequences of that life. All her life she wanted to have and raise children, but because of her internal scarring there was no way to become pregnant naturally. If you know anything about biology, you know that there is no way that an egg can travel across the body cavity to a fallopian tube on the other side. Her only option was in-vitro fertilization, especially since her husband was against adopting children.
She eventually joined the church and became a very active member, and one of our most prayerful members. Over the years she kept trying to have children via in-vitro, but after going through 12 or so treatments without success, at a cost of thousands of dollars, she decided that she couldn’t do it anymore.
A year or so passed. She and I talked over the year about her disappointment, and we even prayed for healing, but nothing seemed to work. She was disappointed and helpless to do anything about it. For a long time we didn’t talk about it. Then, one day, she walked into my office with a big ear-to-ear grin. I asked her what had happened, and she said, “I’m two months pregnant!” I said to her, “But I thought you quit the in vitros.” She said, “I did. This was a natural pregnancy.” I then asked her what had happened. This is the part that continues to inspire me.
She told me that about two months prior, in the midst of despair and sadness, she sat down with God and prayed, “Lord, you know how much I want to be a mother. You know how much I’ve wanted this my whole life. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. So, Lord, I give you my life. If you want me to become a mother, I will become the best mother I can be, and I will serve you as a mother. If not, I will serve you the best I can in whatever you call me to do. All I want to do is to be yours, so I will follow you and serve you however you want.” She said that it must have been during that week that she got pregnant. She was convinced that she became pregnant because she surrendered to God and gave up her demand that God make her pregnant. She gave up control over her life. It was her saying to God that she was God’s no matter what, and that she was willing to give up her dreams, that seemed to open her to God’s Spirit. Her miracle happened because of her surrender. Seven months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Two years later, she gave birth to another healthy baby boy. Both of these conceptions were pretty near physically impossible.
I believe that her life shows what it means to receive the Holy Spirit. It means to surrender to God and to really, truly let God be at work in our lives. She showed me that the path to the Spirit is to let go of our demands on God, to let go of our requirements that we will serve God if such-and-such happens. She showed me that the way to receive the Spirit is to say simply and with conviction, “God, I am yours no matter what you call me to do, no matter how you call me to live, and no matter what happens to me as a result. I am yours.”
Amen.
While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. He said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" They replied, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." Then he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They answered, "Into John's baptism." Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied—altogether there were about twelve of them.
Do you remember when you were baptized? Most of you probably don’t, since you were just a baby at the time, but some of you do. If you do remember, was it an amazing spiritual experience? Did you feel the Holy Spirit entering you? Did you receive the Holy Spirit? Most people, even when they are baptized as adults, don’t feel the Spirit entering upon baptism. They feel that it’s an important occasion, they are happy it happened, and they feel wet, but not necessarily filled with the Spirit.
So, have you received the Holy Spirit? I’m not sure that just because you were baptized that it automatically means that you received the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t. It’s just that real baptism in the Holy Spirit means making a choice that many Christians never really make. It’s not that they don’t want to make the choice. It’s that most of us don’t know we need to make the choice, and so what happens is that we end up living less of the life that we are called by Christ to live.
How do we make sure people receive the Holy Spirit at some point in their lives? Some churches only baptize people when they are ready to make the choice to be baptized, with the hope that this choice will open the person to the Holy Spirit. In Presbyterian churches, like ours, we encourage teens to make this choice after confirmation class. Unfortunately, there is a problem with that. Many or most times the teens just aren’t spiritually mature enough to really make the kind of choice that lets the Spirit in. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they would become spiritually mature later in life. Many people never become spiritually mature enough to let the Spirit in, and some are very mature early on and let the Spirit in as children.
So what does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? I think it means making a foundational choice to give ourselves over to the Spirit and to willingly let the Spirit truly, deeply into our lives. It means letting the Spirit not only guide us to what God wants, but to let the Spirit move our lives according to God’s ways.
I think that for a long time I understood this concept in my head, the idea of receiving the Spirit, but I don’t know that I truly understood it from a deeper life-sense. Where I learned what it really meant was from a member of my previous church, where I served as an associate pastor.
This woman’s story is really fascinating, and shows the difference it makes in our lives when we truly become open to and receive the Spirit. The year was 1990, and I was preaching on the particular Sunday she visited. At that time I preached about once every five to six weeks. I was preaching about faith, and about how we needed it to give us purpose and meaning in life. Then I gave an example of what life without faith is like. I read the congregation a passage from a book that my wife, Diane, whom I was dating at the time, had given me. The book was titled The Search for Meaning, by Phillip Berman. Berman had traveled the country, interviewing people from all walks of life about what gave them meaning. He interviewed well-known people from all walks of life, as well as those who were unknown. Each chapter of the book tells of a different interview and a different perspective of meaning.
In my sermon I focused on an interview with one man, a man named Elisha Shapiro. In the book, Shapiro called himself a nihilist, which means that he didn’t believe in anything at all, not God, not meaning, not morality. Then I read a passage from the book in which Shapiro said, “But me, I call myself a nihilist. It’s part of my art to call myself a nihilist. There is no God, and I don’t feel like replacing him with anything, and I like it that way. It’s a joyful experience, not an angst-filled one. My basic belief, if you can call it that, is that there is nothing that’s constant, whether it’s a more or ethical tenet or whether it’s a physical law. Take for example the statement ‘the grass is green.’ That’s not always true. Nor is the sky always blue. Maybe that’s not true. We don’t know. Maybe it’s all a dream. I like the idea that everything that people cling to that’s comforting or gives them a grounding is subject to change. People change, and nothing is constant….
To me, there really isn’t any significance to life, none whatsoever. No significance. And I find that’s a comforting thing. You’re let off the hook that way. (Laughs.) People feel like that’s a terrible emotional deal. But there is no significance to my existing here. I’m a product of… if I were to try to figure out what I was a product of, the best thing I could guess would be billions of years of coincidences, dumb luck. I enjoy my existence as an animal organism—if I’m not just a figment of my own imagination. If I am in existence at all, I’m just this animal organism running by what makes it run, what coincidentally came along with this package.”
After reading that passage, I said to the congregation that I couldn’t understand how anyone could live this way; how anyone could live without a real sense of faith or meaning. At the end of the worship service the woman I mentioned before, who was visiting our church for the first time, shook my hand at the door as she dabbed away tears. She then asked if she could make an appointment with me. We went back to my office and made an appointment for the following Thursday.
Thursday came and she and I sat down to talk. She said to me, “I’ll bet you’re wondering why I had tears in my eyes on Sunday, and why I asked to meet with you.” I told her that the thought had crossed my mind, and that I hoped it wasn’t due to my giving a dreadfully bad sermon. She then went on to tell me her story. She told me how she had grown up in Southern California in a family that was part of the Four Square Gospel church, a fundamentalist church that was highly restrictive and regimented. Growing up, she felt as though she was never allowed to do anything the other children were doing, as though she was a prisoner of her parents’ religion. She couldn’t wait to get out from under her parents’ control.
She met a charismatic and dynamic man after high school—a man who promised her freedom and a life filled with adventure and excitement. She left home to travel with this man, along with a group of others who seemed to be part of his entourage. They lived an exciting life of drugs, partying, and experimentation. But then the life took a downward spiral. The man became more and more controlling. He enticed her to dabble in all sorts of sexual practices with other men, and he turned her into something very close to a prostitute. She found herself trapped in a nightmare. What made it worse was that because of this life, and diseases she picked up, her internal organs were scarred, leaving her with a working ovary on the right side of her body and a working fallopian tube on the other side.
It took her two years to escape his grasp. She moved back home and enrolled in college, majoring in psychology. After graduating she enrolled in a master of social work program so that she could become a counselor working with lost souls like herself. She eventually met a man, a psychologist, whom she married. They moved around a bit as he took on teaching jobs and worked in rehab centers. Their travels brought them to the town where I was an associate pastor. She told me that it had taken her so long to recover from the life with that man who had destroyed so much of her life, and that church was something that helped her tremendously, which is why, whenever she moved to a new town, looking for a new church was always a priority.
She then leaned forward and said to me, “You can imagine my surprise when I came here for church last Sunday, and you gave that sermon, talking about Elisha Shapiro. You see, Elisha Shapiro was the man I told you about.” She then said that she was still living the consequences of that life. All her life she wanted to have and raise children, but because of her internal scarring there was no way to become pregnant naturally. If you know anything about biology, you know that there is no way that an egg can travel across the body cavity to a fallopian tube on the other side. Her only option was in-vitro fertilization, especially since her husband was against adopting children.
She eventually joined the church and became a very active member, and one of our most prayerful members. Over the years she kept trying to have children via in-vitro, but after going through 12 or so treatments without success, at a cost of thousands of dollars, she decided that she couldn’t do it anymore.
A year or so passed. She and I talked over the year about her disappointment, and we even prayed for healing, but nothing seemed to work. She was disappointed and helpless to do anything about it. For a long time we didn’t talk about it. Then, one day, she walked into my office with a big ear-to-ear grin. I asked her what had happened, and she said, “I’m two months pregnant!” I said to her, “But I thought you quit the in vitros.” She said, “I did. This was a natural pregnancy.” I then asked her what had happened. This is the part that continues to inspire me.
She told me that about two months prior, in the midst of despair and sadness, she sat down with God and prayed, “Lord, you know how much I want to be a mother. You know how much I’ve wanted this my whole life. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. So, Lord, I give you my life. If you want me to become a mother, I will become the best mother I can be, and I will serve you as a mother. If not, I will serve you the best I can in whatever you call me to do. All I want to do is to be yours, so I will follow you and serve you however you want.” She said that it must have been during that week that she got pregnant. She was convinced that she became pregnant because she surrendered to God and gave up her demand that God make her pregnant. She gave up control over her life. It was her saying to God that she was God’s no matter what, and that she was willing to give up her dreams, that seemed to open her to God’s Spirit. Her miracle happened because of her surrender. Seven months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Two years later, she gave birth to another healthy baby boy. Both of these conceptions were pretty near physically impossible.
I believe that her life shows what it means to receive the Holy Spirit. It means to surrender to God and to really, truly let God be at work in our lives. She showed me that the path to the Spirit is to let go of our demands on God, to let go of our requirements that we will serve God if such-and-such happens. She showed me that the way to receive the Spirit is to say simply and with conviction, “God, I am yours no matter what you call me to do, no matter how you call me to live, and no matter what happens to me as a result. I am yours.”
Amen.
What Others Dismiss
Luke 2:22-40
December 28, 2008
22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 29 "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." 33 And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed 35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too." 36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. 39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
I’ve just finished reading a book and it may be the best book I’ve read in years. That’s saying a lot because I’ve read a lot of great books over the past few years. It’s about a Russian Orthodox priest named Father Arseny. I came across the book after giving a talk to about 250 Methodist pastors in North Carolina. During my talk I spoke about how God seems to work through coincidence (or providence), and how many people of faith experience God in this way. While sitting outside with several pastors during our lunch break, one of them said to me, “What you are saying reminds me of Father Arseny.”
I asked him who Father Arseny was. He said, “He’s an Orthodox priest who survived a Soviet Siberian gulag for 20 or more years. During that time he had an amazing faith and cared for others in the camp, transforming their lives and opening them to God.” As I often do when people suggest books to me, I wrote down the information and, when I got home, ordered the book. It took me a while to work through my stack of other books, but once I read this book I realized that this man may have been one of the truly great Christians of the 20th century. And he was a man others dismissed.
Father Arseny was originally an art scholar who became an Orthodox priest. He ended up being sentenced to the gulag after writing several articles about the importance of faith even among communists. In Stalinist Russia, where atheism was the official religion and Christians were persecuted aggressively, to write pro-Christian articles in public papers and magazines was to speak out politically against the government. During Stalin’s reign, Christians were considered to be the worst of all political agitators because belief in God was a threat to the supreme rule of Stalin. As a result, something like 44,000 priests were killed during his reign, and over 150,000 monks and nuns. By the time Stalin died, only 200 priests remained. Remember that statistic the next time someone says that Christianity is responsible for more deaths than anything else. Under Stalin’s atheistic reign, over 25 million people were killed, and millions of them for being Christian. A significant number of them died in the gulags.
The gulags were designed to kill people slowly and with a lot of pain. In the winter, the temperature generally hovered around -15 or -20, and dipping at times to -30. During the summer, the water from the frozen ground was released, making it extremely humid, creating an Eden for mosquitoes, which spread disease. Either way, the majority of people sent to the camps did not return.
The camps were filled with both political prisoners (often highly educated scholars, artists, and reporters) and common criminals (thieves, murderers, psychopath). Both had nothing but disdain for people who were religious. The atheistic political prisoners hated them because they saw religious people as being willfully stupid and superstitious. The criminals hated them because they hated anyone with a sense of morality. The result was that both treated Father Arseny with contempt and brutality. Yet Father Arseny always responded with love, even when they abused and beat him. And I don’t mean that he responded with a weak-kneed love, but with a genuine love. He was a man who cared about people, and often his love brought about miracles.
Father Arseny was easily dismissed by others, especially by those who were smart, powerful, or just wanted to fit in. But being dismissed by others never seemed to bother him. All he cared about was serving God. After he died in 1973, stories about him were collected from those who knew him either in the gulag or elsewhere. That’s what makes this book so fascinating. They tell the stories of Father Arseny from the perspective of those who were transformed by him.
For example, one particular reporter, Andreyenkov, who was sentenced to the same Siberian gulag as Father Arseny, wrote about how Father Arseny saved his life and made him a Christian. Like most other prisoners, Andreyenkov was assigned to work in the quarries, breaking One day he unfortunately stepped on ice that broke, immersing his foot in water, causing his heel to freeze to the boot. His foot went numb, and eventually his body as hypothermic blood spread throughout his body. When he returned to the barracks, he was half-dead from exposure. He could not remove his frozen boot no matter how hard he pulled. He fell back on his bed, thinking that he would die overnight. As he swooned in some sort of daze, he could feel someone pulling on his boots. It must be one of the other prisoners stealing my boots, he thought. If he survived the night, he would be forced to go out barefoot, or in flimsy shoes, the next day, meaning certain death. Still, he could offer no resistance. He just lay there. Then he felt someone massaging his feet and rubbing a balm over the sores. He passed out.
The next morning he was awakened as the other prisoners scrambled to get dressed and line up in formation. He looked around for his boots, terrified that they were gone. He saw Father Arseny walking toward him with his boots, which had been dried along with his socks. He grabbed them from Father Arseny, put them on, and ran outside. The question nagged him, “Why would that ignorant priest have helped him so? What was his angle? What did he want in return?”
That night he collapsed again on his bead, weak from work and exposure. Again, he felt someone tug at his boots. He looked up. It was Father Arseny, who once again rubbed his feet and put a healing balm on his sores. Arseny did this for several nights in a row until the man was strong enough to care for himself. Father Arseny never said a word. Andreyenkov couldn’t figure out how Father Arseny was able to dry the boots each night. He knew that had he left them on the stove and went to sleep, the criminals would have stolen them. What he found out later was that Father Arseny had indeed dried them on the stove, and had stayed up for four night straights to guard them. And this despite the fact that Father Arseny also had to work each day. Why had Father Arseny done this? Out of love. Over time Andreyenkov was so transformed by Father Arseny’s love that he became one of his spiritual children and pledged his life to Christ.
Another time Father Arseny performed a life-saving miracle with a young prisoner named Alexei. Alexei was sentenced to the gulag at age 23. When the criminals saw him, they immediately made plans to beat the young man down. Young prisoners always fared the worst. Pretending to be his friend, they convinced Alexei to play cards with them, betting for clothes. They all colluded to cheat, and soon had won all the young man’s clothes. When they asked for them, Alexei told them that he thought they were kidding and that they wouldn’t relinquish them. Smiling, Ivan the Brown, the leader of the criminals, set upon him like a wolf on a lamb. He began to beat Alexei mercilessly, a beating that everyone knew would lead to Alexei’s death. Seeing this, Father Arseny (knowing that to interfere would lead to his own death) calmly walked over and grabbed Ivan’s arm, preventing him from hitting Alexei again. Ivan spun around to Father Arseny and said, “I’ll get to you soon, Pop” (“Pop” was a derogatory name for a priest). He pulled out a knife to slash Alexei, and Father Arseny hit him in the arm with a surprising force, thus causing Ivan’s arm to go numb and to drop the knife. Ivan didn’t know what to do, but he had lost face. Father Arseny picked Alexei off the ground and took him to the water basin to care for his wounds, telling him that no one would bother him anymore. Amazingly, he was left alone.
The next day the guards came in and grabbed Father Arseny and Alexei and sentenced them to 48 hours in the punishment cell. Ivan had falsely turned them in for fighting. Being put in the punishment for 48 hours meant certain death for both men. The cell was about 8 feet by 8 feet, and lined with sheet metal. There was one open window near the top with iron bars. Outside the temperature was -20, meaning that the temperature inside was very close to that. What did this mean in practical terms? A man might survive 24 hours if he managed to jump up and down for 24 hours, but no one could do this for 48 hours, especially an old man like Father Arseny or the half-dead Alexei. Didn’t matter. They were thrown in anyway.
What happened next was miraculous. Right away Father Arseny stood in the middle of the room and began mumbling something. Alexei asked him what he was doing. Father Arseny said, “I’m praying.” Alexei said, “What good is that, priest? We’re going to die here.” Father Arseny replied, “Well, if we are going to die then what better way to face death than with prayer.” Alexei didn’t know what to say, so he huddled in the corner and watched Father Arseny. Father Arseny prayed, O Lord God, have mercy on us sinners! Ever-merciful God! Lord Jesus Christ who because of They love became man to save us all. Through Thine unspeakable mercy save us, have mercy on us and lead us away from this cruel death, because we do believe in Thee, Thou our God and our Creator…. O, Lord our God, Jesus Christ! Thou didst say with Thy purest lips that if two or three agree to ask for the same thing, then Thy Heavenly Father will grant their prayer because, as Thou didst say, ‘When two or three are gathered in my name, I am among them.’”
As Alexei watched him, he noticed that Father Arseny’s garments changed to the dazzling white vestments of a priest. Soon, out of nowhere, two others in white vestments stood on his right and his left as al three continued the prayer. Alexei then noticed that he was breathing easier and the room had changed. They were in a church. He wondered if he was hallucinating. He felt warm. Listening to the three praying, he found himself starting to repeat the same prayers. Aware that Alexei was watching, Father Arseny told him to rest. Alexei did, and as he did he felt his mother’s presence next to him, holding him (he later found out that she had died while he was in the camp).
He awoke to see the three still praying. Suddenly he heard the sound of a door opening and then shouts. Looking back at Father Arseny, he saw the other two blessing him and Alexei as they disappeared, and Father Arseny was once again dressed in prison garb. A major came in shouting, “How could you have sentenced them to 48 hours? We will be punished for their deaths! What were you thinking…?” He stopped short as he saw Father Arseny and Alexei, both still alive. He had the doctor check them, who felt under their clothes and said, “They are both quite warm. I can’t explain it.”
The two men had survived for 48 hours in conditions that would have killed either you or me in six or seven hours. As you can imagine, Alexei became a Christian that day and stayed under the guidance of Father Arseny, even after both were released.
What Father Arseny’s story really showed is how easy it is for people to miss both how God is present and what God is doing in our midst. Even though we may have a measure of faith, we generally have a hard time knowing what to think about people like Father Arseny. We think of people like him as being too good to be true. But what made him special wasn’t any inherent talent. It was just his willingness to devote his life to prayer. In that way he is just like Simeon and Anna from our story above. What made them able to tell that Jesus was the messiah, while others merely saw a baby? The answer is that both Simeon and Anna were part of a small sect of prayer devotes called the Quiet Ones. They were people who lived near the Temple of Jerusalem, devoting themselves to a life of prayer. They weren’t monks or nuns, but lived normal lives. What made them special was that they brought prayer into everything, just like Father Arseny. The result is that they were able to sense and see things that others dismissed.
Would you like to have this kind of life? Would you like to sense and see God in everything? Would you like to be able to see and understand things that other dismiss? You can, but it takes a desire for four things:
First, we have to always make time for prayer no matter what. The truth is that no one is ever going to walk up to you and say, “Here, have some time for prayer.” Your kids won’t say that to you, your boss won’t, your co-workers won’t, your friends won’t, and your spouses probably won’t. You have to make and take time for prayer. And I don’t mean periodic prayer. I mean constant prayer, speaking to God as often as possible about whatever is going on in your life. If you are able to do this, it leads to the next step.
Second, we need to seek God’s will in each moment to the best we can, even if we aren’t sure what that will is. It’s the seeking that matters, even more than the finding. God wants to guide our lives, but we have to want to be guided.
Third, make worship central to our lives. I don’t know how much this resonates with people anymore. There are so many people today who call themselves spiritual but not religious, or Christian but not attending. Worship is central to the spiritual life. Why? Because worship, even when we find it boring, centers us in God. It is an activity that aims completely at being God-focused. Over time it opens us to God.
Finally, let this kind of prayer and worship lead you to act always in love. Prayer, devotion, and worship are not good if they don’t lead us to act in love.
All of these put together lead us to see and be what others dismiss. So here’s what I want you to do. Reflect on your life and ask a question: are you able to see and do what others dismiss? If not, why?
Amen.
December 28, 2008
22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 29 "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." 33 And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed 35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too." 36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. 39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
I’ve just finished reading a book and it may be the best book I’ve read in years. That’s saying a lot because I’ve read a lot of great books over the past few years. It’s about a Russian Orthodox priest named Father Arseny. I came across the book after giving a talk to about 250 Methodist pastors in North Carolina. During my talk I spoke about how God seems to work through coincidence (or providence), and how many people of faith experience God in this way. While sitting outside with several pastors during our lunch break, one of them said to me, “What you are saying reminds me of Father Arseny.”
I asked him who Father Arseny was. He said, “He’s an Orthodox priest who survived a Soviet Siberian gulag for 20 or more years. During that time he had an amazing faith and cared for others in the camp, transforming their lives and opening them to God.” As I often do when people suggest books to me, I wrote down the information and, when I got home, ordered the book. It took me a while to work through my stack of other books, but once I read this book I realized that this man may have been one of the truly great Christians of the 20th century. And he was a man others dismissed.
Father Arseny was originally an art scholar who became an Orthodox priest. He ended up being sentenced to the gulag after writing several articles about the importance of faith even among communists. In Stalinist Russia, where atheism was the official religion and Christians were persecuted aggressively, to write pro-Christian articles in public papers and magazines was to speak out politically against the government. During Stalin’s reign, Christians were considered to be the worst of all political agitators because belief in God was a threat to the supreme rule of Stalin. As a result, something like 44,000 priests were killed during his reign, and over 150,000 monks and nuns. By the time Stalin died, only 200 priests remained. Remember that statistic the next time someone says that Christianity is responsible for more deaths than anything else. Under Stalin’s atheistic reign, over 25 million people were killed, and millions of them for being Christian. A significant number of them died in the gulags.
The gulags were designed to kill people slowly and with a lot of pain. In the winter, the temperature generally hovered around -15 or -20, and dipping at times to -30. During the summer, the water from the frozen ground was released, making it extremely humid, creating an Eden for mosquitoes, which spread disease. Either way, the majority of people sent to the camps did not return.
The camps were filled with both political prisoners (often highly educated scholars, artists, and reporters) and common criminals (thieves, murderers, psychopath). Both had nothing but disdain for people who were religious. The atheistic political prisoners hated them because they saw religious people as being willfully stupid and superstitious. The criminals hated them because they hated anyone with a sense of morality. The result was that both treated Father Arseny with contempt and brutality. Yet Father Arseny always responded with love, even when they abused and beat him. And I don’t mean that he responded with a weak-kneed love, but with a genuine love. He was a man who cared about people, and often his love brought about miracles.
Father Arseny was easily dismissed by others, especially by those who were smart, powerful, or just wanted to fit in. But being dismissed by others never seemed to bother him. All he cared about was serving God. After he died in 1973, stories about him were collected from those who knew him either in the gulag or elsewhere. That’s what makes this book so fascinating. They tell the stories of Father Arseny from the perspective of those who were transformed by him.
For example, one particular reporter, Andreyenkov, who was sentenced to the same Siberian gulag as Father Arseny, wrote about how Father Arseny saved his life and made him a Christian. Like most other prisoners, Andreyenkov was assigned to work in the quarries, breaking One day he unfortunately stepped on ice that broke, immersing his foot in water, causing his heel to freeze to the boot. His foot went numb, and eventually his body as hypothermic blood spread throughout his body. When he returned to the barracks, he was half-dead from exposure. He could not remove his frozen boot no matter how hard he pulled. He fell back on his bed, thinking that he would die overnight. As he swooned in some sort of daze, he could feel someone pulling on his boots. It must be one of the other prisoners stealing my boots, he thought. If he survived the night, he would be forced to go out barefoot, or in flimsy shoes, the next day, meaning certain death. Still, he could offer no resistance. He just lay there. Then he felt someone massaging his feet and rubbing a balm over the sores. He passed out.
The next morning he was awakened as the other prisoners scrambled to get dressed and line up in formation. He looked around for his boots, terrified that they were gone. He saw Father Arseny walking toward him with his boots, which had been dried along with his socks. He grabbed them from Father Arseny, put them on, and ran outside. The question nagged him, “Why would that ignorant priest have helped him so? What was his angle? What did he want in return?”
That night he collapsed again on his bead, weak from work and exposure. Again, he felt someone tug at his boots. He looked up. It was Father Arseny, who once again rubbed his feet and put a healing balm on his sores. Arseny did this for several nights in a row until the man was strong enough to care for himself. Father Arseny never said a word. Andreyenkov couldn’t figure out how Father Arseny was able to dry the boots each night. He knew that had he left them on the stove and went to sleep, the criminals would have stolen them. What he found out later was that Father Arseny had indeed dried them on the stove, and had stayed up for four night straights to guard them. And this despite the fact that Father Arseny also had to work each day. Why had Father Arseny done this? Out of love. Over time Andreyenkov was so transformed by Father Arseny’s love that he became one of his spiritual children and pledged his life to Christ.
Another time Father Arseny performed a life-saving miracle with a young prisoner named Alexei. Alexei was sentenced to the gulag at age 23. When the criminals saw him, they immediately made plans to beat the young man down. Young prisoners always fared the worst. Pretending to be his friend, they convinced Alexei to play cards with them, betting for clothes. They all colluded to cheat, and soon had won all the young man’s clothes. When they asked for them, Alexei told them that he thought they were kidding and that they wouldn’t relinquish them. Smiling, Ivan the Brown, the leader of the criminals, set upon him like a wolf on a lamb. He began to beat Alexei mercilessly, a beating that everyone knew would lead to Alexei’s death. Seeing this, Father Arseny (knowing that to interfere would lead to his own death) calmly walked over and grabbed Ivan’s arm, preventing him from hitting Alexei again. Ivan spun around to Father Arseny and said, “I’ll get to you soon, Pop” (“Pop” was a derogatory name for a priest). He pulled out a knife to slash Alexei, and Father Arseny hit him in the arm with a surprising force, thus causing Ivan’s arm to go numb and to drop the knife. Ivan didn’t know what to do, but he had lost face. Father Arseny picked Alexei off the ground and took him to the water basin to care for his wounds, telling him that no one would bother him anymore. Amazingly, he was left alone.
The next day the guards came in and grabbed Father Arseny and Alexei and sentenced them to 48 hours in the punishment cell. Ivan had falsely turned them in for fighting. Being put in the punishment for 48 hours meant certain death for both men. The cell was about 8 feet by 8 feet, and lined with sheet metal. There was one open window near the top with iron bars. Outside the temperature was -20, meaning that the temperature inside was very close to that. What did this mean in practical terms? A man might survive 24 hours if he managed to jump up and down for 24 hours, but no one could do this for 48 hours, especially an old man like Father Arseny or the half-dead Alexei. Didn’t matter. They were thrown in anyway.
What happened next was miraculous. Right away Father Arseny stood in the middle of the room and began mumbling something. Alexei asked him what he was doing. Father Arseny said, “I’m praying.” Alexei said, “What good is that, priest? We’re going to die here.” Father Arseny replied, “Well, if we are going to die then what better way to face death than with prayer.” Alexei didn’t know what to say, so he huddled in the corner and watched Father Arseny. Father Arseny prayed, O Lord God, have mercy on us sinners! Ever-merciful God! Lord Jesus Christ who because of They love became man to save us all. Through Thine unspeakable mercy save us, have mercy on us and lead us away from this cruel death, because we do believe in Thee, Thou our God and our Creator…. O, Lord our God, Jesus Christ! Thou didst say with Thy purest lips that if two or three agree to ask for the same thing, then Thy Heavenly Father will grant their prayer because, as Thou didst say, ‘When two or three are gathered in my name, I am among them.’”
As Alexei watched him, he noticed that Father Arseny’s garments changed to the dazzling white vestments of a priest. Soon, out of nowhere, two others in white vestments stood on his right and his left as al three continued the prayer. Alexei then noticed that he was breathing easier and the room had changed. They were in a church. He wondered if he was hallucinating. He felt warm. Listening to the three praying, he found himself starting to repeat the same prayers. Aware that Alexei was watching, Father Arseny told him to rest. Alexei did, and as he did he felt his mother’s presence next to him, holding him (he later found out that she had died while he was in the camp).
He awoke to see the three still praying. Suddenly he heard the sound of a door opening and then shouts. Looking back at Father Arseny, he saw the other two blessing him and Alexei as they disappeared, and Father Arseny was once again dressed in prison garb. A major came in shouting, “How could you have sentenced them to 48 hours? We will be punished for their deaths! What were you thinking…?” He stopped short as he saw Father Arseny and Alexei, both still alive. He had the doctor check them, who felt under their clothes and said, “They are both quite warm. I can’t explain it.”
The two men had survived for 48 hours in conditions that would have killed either you or me in six or seven hours. As you can imagine, Alexei became a Christian that day and stayed under the guidance of Father Arseny, even after both were released.
What Father Arseny’s story really showed is how easy it is for people to miss both how God is present and what God is doing in our midst. Even though we may have a measure of faith, we generally have a hard time knowing what to think about people like Father Arseny. We think of people like him as being too good to be true. But what made him special wasn’t any inherent talent. It was just his willingness to devote his life to prayer. In that way he is just like Simeon and Anna from our story above. What made them able to tell that Jesus was the messiah, while others merely saw a baby? The answer is that both Simeon and Anna were part of a small sect of prayer devotes called the Quiet Ones. They were people who lived near the Temple of Jerusalem, devoting themselves to a life of prayer. They weren’t monks or nuns, but lived normal lives. What made them special was that they brought prayer into everything, just like Father Arseny. The result is that they were able to sense and see things that others dismissed.
Would you like to have this kind of life? Would you like to sense and see God in everything? Would you like to be able to see and understand things that other dismiss? You can, but it takes a desire for four things:
First, we have to always make time for prayer no matter what. The truth is that no one is ever going to walk up to you and say, “Here, have some time for prayer.” Your kids won’t say that to you, your boss won’t, your co-workers won’t, your friends won’t, and your spouses probably won’t. You have to make and take time for prayer. And I don’t mean periodic prayer. I mean constant prayer, speaking to God as often as possible about whatever is going on in your life. If you are able to do this, it leads to the next step.
Second, we need to seek God’s will in each moment to the best we can, even if we aren’t sure what that will is. It’s the seeking that matters, even more than the finding. God wants to guide our lives, but we have to want to be guided.
Third, make worship central to our lives. I don’t know how much this resonates with people anymore. There are so many people today who call themselves spiritual but not religious, or Christian but not attending. Worship is central to the spiritual life. Why? Because worship, even when we find it boring, centers us in God. It is an activity that aims completely at being God-focused. Over time it opens us to God.
Finally, let this kind of prayer and worship lead you to act always in love. Prayer, devotion, and worship are not good if they don’t lead us to act in love.
All of these put together lead us to see and be what others dismiss. So here’s what I want you to do. Reflect on your life and ask a question: are you able to see and do what others dismiss? If not, why?
Amen.
Angels of Faith: Joy
Luke 1:26-38
December 14, 2008
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God." Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
Have you ever wanted to travel for the holidays, to spend Christmas somewhere exotic? The Lederer family did. Years ago they decided that it would be great to spend Christmas in France. What could be better than spending Christmas in France? The lights, the tradition, the cathedrals, the wine? So they planned a trip that would start in Paris, and end in Nice on Christmas Eve. What could be nicer than Christmas in Nice? Unfortunately, the trip pretty much turned into a disaster. As they traveled from Paris to Nice, they found that all the hotels were cheap tourist traps, the weather dripped and rained the whole time, and the car kept breaking down. When the family finally made it to Nice on Christmas Eve they looked for a nice restaurant to have dinner together. Unfortunately, most of the restaurants in Nice were closed, and all they were able to find was a small, greasy restaurant. There were very few others in the restaurant as they ate: two German couples, two French families, and an American sailor sitting in the corner writing a letter, and smiling as he did. Near the bar the piano player listlessly plunked out Christmas tunes.
Other than the sailor, it seemed as though everyone had been hit by a scrooge bug. At the table of one of the French families, the father was scolding one of the children. At the table of one of the German couples, the wife was berating the husband. At the Lederer table, an argument erupted between Bill Lederer and his wife. She had ordered their meal in French, and when the wrong food came to their table, Bill figured it must be her fault for ordering wrong. Everyone was miserable.
To make matters worse, suddenly the door opened, bringing a rush of cold, wet air into the restaurant. In stepped an old French woman selling flowers. She went up to each table, asking, “Flowers, monsieur? Only one franc.” Each time she was shooed away by the people at the tables. She then sat down at the bar and ordered a bowl of soup. She looked at the piano player and said dejectedly, “Can you imagine, Joseph, soup on Christmas Eve?’ He only pointed to his empty tipping plate. Then, something special began to happen. Let me share with you what Bill Lederer says about these events:
The young sailor finished his meal and got up to leave. Putting on his coat, he walked over to the flower woman’s table. “Happy Christmas!” he said, smiling, an picking out two corsages, asked, “How much are they?”
Two francs, monsieur.” Pressing one of the small corsages flat, he put it into the letter he had written, then handed the woman a 20-franc note.
“I don’t have change, monsieur,” she said, “I’ll get some from the waiter.”
“No, ma’am” he said, leaning over and kissing the ancient cheek. “This is my Christmas present to you.” Straightening up, he came to our table holding the other corsage in front of him. “Sir,” he said to me, “may I have permission to present these flowers to your beautiful wife?” In one quick motion, he gave my wife the corsage, wished us a Merry Christmas, and departed.
Everyone had stopped eating. Everyone was watching the sailor. Everyone was silent. A few seconds later, Christmas exploded throughout the restaurant like a bomb.
The old flower woman jumped up, waving the 20-franc note. Hobbling to the middle of the floor, she did a merry jig and shouted to the piano player, “Joseph, my Christmas present, and you shall have half so you can have a feast too.” The piano player began to beat out “Good King Wenceslaus,” hitting the keys with magic hands, nodding his head in rhythm.
My wife waved her corsage in time with the rhythm. She was radiant and appeared 20 years younger… She began to sing, and our three sons joined her, bellowing the song with uninhibited enthusiasm.
“Gut, gut,” shouted the Germans. They jumped on their chairs and began singing in German…. The Germans ordered wine for everyone. They delivered it themselves, hugging the other customers, bawling Christmas greetings. One of the French families ordered champagne and made the rounds, kissing each one of us on each cheek. The owner of the restaurant started singing “The First Noel,” and we all joined in, half of us crying. (from “A Sailor’s Christmas Gift,” Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 1997).
This story reminds us that what really makes the difference at Christmas isn’t the decorations, the presents, the cookies, or the celebrations. What makes the difference is the sense of joy people either do or don’t have. As you can see, just because it’s the Christmas season doesn’t mean that there’s joy in people. Why is that? Why is it so hard for everyone to have joy at Christmas?
One of the problems with Christmas is that we’ve cheapened it. We’ve made it so much about the surface stuff that I’m not sure what kind of spiritual meaning Christmas has to us anymore. It’s typical for pastors and other Christians to complain that we’ve cheapened Christmas nowadays by making it all about retail and parties. But that’s not even what I’m talking about. That cheapening is a given. What I’m talking about is that even we diehard Christians have cheapened it. Some of the most joyless people at Christmas are those who complain that Christmas has lost its spirit. Let me show you what I mean.
Last week I received the following e-mail. It’s one of those e-mails that circulate periodically so that Christians can proclaim their outrage. The e-mail goes,
For years I've been bothered by the politically correct attitude. Lately I have become alarmed that Christmas is no longer a Christian holiday. It's become just a generic holiday. Why is it OK for other religions to celebrate their holidays of Ramadan, Kwanza or Hanukkah, and we have to have a "Holiday tree:, or even a "Celebrate the Season Parade". This is ridiculous, as you'll see by the verse below. So I say either celebrate the Christmas holiday or don't bother. Enjoy it and pass it on...and Oh yeah, Merry Christmas.
*Twas the month before Christmas*
*When all through our land,*
*Not a Christian was praying*
*Nor taking a stand.*
*See the PC Police had taken away,*
*The reason for Christmas - no one could say.*
*The children were told by their schools not to sing,*
*About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.*
*It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say*
* December 25th is just a 'Holiday'.*
*Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit*
*Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!*
*CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod*
*Something was changing, something quite odd! *
*Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa*
*In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.*
*As Targets were hanging their trees upside down*
* At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.*
*At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears*
*You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.*
*Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty*
*Are words that were used to intimidate me.*
*Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen*
*On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!*
*At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter*
*To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.*
*And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith*
* Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace*
*The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded*
*The reason for the season, stopped before it started.*
*So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'*
*Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.*
*Choose your words carefully, choose what you say*
*Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,
not Happy Holiday!*
Please, all Christians join together and
wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Christ is The Reason for the Christ-mas Season!
*When all through our land,*
*Not a Christian was praying*
*Nor taking a stand.*
*See the PC Police had taken away,*
*The reason for Christmas - no one could say.*
*The children were told by their schools not to sing,*
*About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.*
*It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say*
* December 25th is just a 'Holiday'.*
*Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit*
*Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!*
*CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod*
*Something was changing, something quite odd! *
*Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa*
*In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.*
*As Targets were hanging their trees upside down*
* At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.*
*At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears*
*You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.*
*Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty*
*Are words that were used to intimidate me.*
*Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen*
*On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!*
*At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter*
*To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.*
*And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith*
* Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace*
*The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded*
*The reason for the season, stopped before it started.*
*So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'*
*Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.*
*Choose your words carefully, choose what you say*
*Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,
not Happy Holiday!*
Please, all Christians join together and
wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Christ is The Reason for the Christ-mas Season!
So what’s the problem with this e-mail? Makes sense, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we be upset that people have taken Christ out of Christmas? The problem is that even this person misses the point of Christmas. So what if someone says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?” So what if people are so respectful of others that they don’t say “Merry Christmas?”
The problem is that these Christians put their halos on so tight that they have no joy, but instead can only see reasons for complaining. The writer of this e-mail has cheapened Christmas by thinking its’ all about saying “Merry Christmas.” Joy isn’t found in saying “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays.” Joy is found in how we live out the Christmas spirit. We can put just as much spiritual joy in “Happy Holidays” as we can in “Merry Christmas.” But if we are upset about people not saying “Merry Christmas,” then I suspect there’s little joy in us. When we are like this, our focus isn’t on God. It’s on propriety and decorum. People who obsess about things like this aren’t really open to the Christmas spirit. Instead, they are just as bad as those who insist on the politically correct “Happy Holidays.” They’ve lost sight of Christ, and have become like Sadducees or Pharisees who are more concerned for law than for God.
If we have joy that comes from God, we can share it with others regardless of what words we use. You see, the real point of Christmas is the formation of Joy in our souls. Actually, that’s the whole point of the Advent and Christmas season. Advent is meant to be much like Lent. It’s meant to be a time of prayer and preparation for Christ’s coming into our lives. The whole point is that if we spend the month before Christmas in prayer and reflection, as well as doing all that other stuff, then by the time Christmas is here we’re ready for Christ.
Unfortunately, too many of us either let the world around us determine our level of joy, or we let our past determine it. We let the world around us determine our joy whenever we demand that everything around us be perfect for Christmas. We want everyone to be happy. We want our kids to be on their best behavior. We want everyone to be so thankful for what we do. And when that doesn’t happen, we become upset. We let the world around us determine our level of joy. Also, we let the past determine our level of joy whenever we let the pain of our past determine how we’ll approach life in the present. So many of us have had difficult lives. And we’ve learned from that to look at life in skeptical ways, not trusting that good things can happen. We expect bad, and we distrust others, suspecting that they have bad motives. So this colors our lives.
We are called to live appreciative lives. Adrian van Kaam was the one who taught me about appreciation. He said that when we live with appreciation, we look around us and see value in everything—people, situations, sunsets, events, and so much more. We see life as bursting with God’s presence, and that’s what brings us joy. Even if we are in bad situations, we are able to recognize God’s presence and sense God’s hand. This takes us deeper than happiness. Happiness comes from things being good around us and affecting us inside. Joy comes from spirit being good in us and radiating outward. We have joy because our spirit sees the good in everything, even the bad.
On the other hand, we can look at life with a sense of depreciation. When we look at life depreciatively, we not only don’t see value in everything, but we diminish the value of even that which is good. We look at life suspiciously, wondering when the next shoe will fall or who the next person will be who will betray us. Being depreciative brings cynicism and despair to life. It causes us to lack joy, and to be unhappy in happy situations. You know people like this. Even when they are happy, they try not to smile, and when they do smile it looks painful.
The kind of joy that we are called to nurture and let grow in us is the kind of joy that Mary had already formed when the angel appeared to her. It was the kind of joy she expressed to Elizabeth about her pregnancy with Jesus. If you really understand the situation Mary was in, you would wonder why she had any joy at all. She was pregnant, and not pregnant by her husband-to-be, Joseph. Even if she had been pregnant by Joseph, she was pregnant before marriage. Either way, she was facing a life with a stigma. People could do the math and figure out that Mary was pregnant before marriage. Mary knew that she was facing a future in which, at the very least, people would look at her and say, “That’s the woman who go pregnant before marriage.” She knew she was to bear a stigma her whole life, as would Jesus. How did she react?
When she met with her cousin Elizabeth, already pregnant with John the Baptist, she talked about her pregnancy and said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” This is the response of someone with joy. This is the response of someone who faces a bad situation and sees it bursting with God’s grace. This is the response of someone who understands how God wants us to live.
During this time of year we are called to form joy in our souls. It’s the kind of joy that transcends our situation, that transcends our circumstances, that transcends our condition. It’s the kind of joy that comes from the Spirit dwelling in our souls, and that looks for the good in all situations. And it’s the kind of joy that only comes when we make a decision to let God live in our souls so that we can find God’s grace in everything.
Amen.
Angels of Faith: Acceptance and Love
Matthew 1:18-25
December 7, 2008
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Twenty years ago I read a story that had a huge impact on me spiritually. It was a story that taught me the lesson of Joseph in a way I had never considered before. It taught me that sometimes the right way is the way of acceptance, even when everything screams that we should change everything.
The story takes place many years ago in a small village. There was a young teen who became pregnant, yet she wasn’t married. Her father was outraged. How could his daughter dishonor him so? How could she have done this to her family? He and her uncles confronted her one evening, saying, “Who did this to you? Who has brought this shame on our family? Tell us so that we can punish him!”
The young girl didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to reveal that it was the neighbor boy because she knew how he would be treated. So she said to them, “The father is the old hermit who lives on the other side of the village.” The man she implicated was considered to be a great spiritual guide and sage. Many had gone to him for guidance because they knew that he was a deeply prayerful and spiritual man. She thought that they would do nothing about it out of respect for the man. They did not react as she hoped. They were stunned, but then became outraged: “How could this man have betrayed us so? We trusted him! He must be held accountable!” With that they rushed en masse across the village, where they found him sitting in his cottage, praying.
Rousting him from his prayer, they yelled at him, telling him that he had dishonored them and the village. They told him that he must care for the child and make amends. The hermit looked at them, and with a sad face simply said, “Very well. Very well.”
The hermit found a woman in the village who would care for the child and his mother. He ensured that they had food and a healthy place to live. He made sure that the child would grow in a safe and loving environment.
A year passed, and with each passing day the young girl felt guiltier and guiltier. Finally, she told her family that the hermit really wasn’t the father, but that the neighbor boy, whom she loved, was the father. The family was shocked, and embarrassed. They felt guilty. How could they have treated that great spiritual sage in such a dishonorable way? How could they not have believed in him? So they rushed over to his cottage. They found him again in prayer. They apologized to him, asked if he could ever forgive them, told him that they would care for the girl’s young child. The hermit gave a small smile and simply said, “Very well. Very well.”
Why did I find this story so compelling? It’s an odd story—one that goes so much against our natural understanding of right and wrong. How could the hermit have been so accepting? If it were we in his situation, we would stand up for our rights. We would have proclaimed our innocence and have forced them to take a paternity test. We would have been outraged at their accusations. But the hermit, he accepted it. He accepted that perhaps God was calling him to provide care for a young child who otherwise might be abandoned or ostracized. He accepted that God wanted to protect the young girl. He accepted that there was a plan in all this. Is this how we react to difficult situations?
The truth is that we are a people who stand up for justice. And the hermit didn’t stand up for justice—he prayed. How unrealistic is that? Is that your normal response to trouble: prayer? Is that your normal response to anything, good or bad? What the story taught me was that there was another way of life that begins not with a need for justice, but with a desire for centeredness. Justice is important, and I certainly don’t want to diminish its importance, but it seems to me that as Christians everything else has to start with centeredness. Are we centered? Being centered is a way of life that accepts how life is, but at its core trusts even more in whatever God is doing. It’s a way of life that asks a fundamental question: Do I really trust that God is in the world, making everything okay?
When I look at our culture, it seems to me that most Americans have an attitude that one of our members expressed very well to me. He once told me that before joining Calvin Church his personal motto was, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” I believe that this is the unofficial motto for so many people. So many of us believe that we have to make a name or a way for ourselves. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that idea, but when we become consumed by it we can end up losing sight of what really matters. Joseph, in our passage, reflects another, deeper way of life. His motto very easily could have been, “It will be okay, if I trust in God’s way.”
Trusting in God’s way means relinquishing ultimate control of life and trusting in God. It means having hope for the future, even when there are no tangible signs that the future will work out. It means keeping an eternal perspective in mind always, even as we live an earthly life.
Unfortunately, when I say things like this, many people hear me saying something different. They hear me saying that we should do nothing and leave it all up to God. They hear me saying that we should just relax, eat bonbons, and let God take care of everything. That’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is what’s reflected in the Serenity Prayer. This is a prayer that I’m sure you know. It is the central prayer of the twelve-step movement, for so many who suffer from addictions. The prayer goes,
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.
There’s a balance to be kept in life. It’s a balance of wisdom. It’s the balance between accepting what we cannot change, and the courage to change the things we can. Too many of us try to change what we have no power to change. Others of us are fearful, keeping quiet when bad things happen, hoping to avoid hurt and pain.
All of this brings me back to the example of Joseph, for he was the balance between acceptance and courage. Joseph accepted God’s will. When the angel appeared to him in a dream, he very easily could have disbelieved. How many of us have had dreams that we’ve dismissed? Yet he didn’t, which was amazing. Think about him. He finds out that his bride-to-be is pregnant, and not by him. He would have felt dishonored by Mary. Normally, he would have broken the marriage contract and dismissed her and the baby. He would not have been able to live with the shame of her pregnancy by another man. Yet he listened to his dream, accepting God’s way.
I’m inviting you to take time during this Advent season to ask how you are living. Are you accepting? Are you able to accept what God is doing in your life and in life in general? How do you live your life?
Amen.
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