Why Bother,... with Mission

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1 Corinthians 16:1-4

February 3, 2013

Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

            I want to start with some pet peeves this morning. I want to rant and rave about some statements I’ve heard over the years regarding mission in the church. They aren’t necessarily said in this church. They’re just statements I’ve heard Christians say over the years that kinda bug me. For example, have you ever heard someone say, “Why should we send our money to places like Africa or South America when we have enough poor here to take care of”? Of course you have. Maybe you’ve even said it. It bugs me, though, because I always wonder if God sees things the same way. I wonder if God says, “You know, that fella over there really shouldn’t send money to Africa to help the crushingly poor when there’s enough for him to do in his own country.”

            Another comment I hear at times is “It’s nice to give to the poor and all, but how do we know they’ll use our charity for something worthwhile?” How many times have you said this or even heard it? Why does it bug me? Because God seems to care much more about whether or not we love, than about how effective our love is. God doesn’t say, “give only to people who’ve proved their worthiness!” God says, “love others as ourselves, lay down our lives for others, treat others as better than ourselves,” and more.

            Also, have you heard anyone who has said this: “Why should we give to people who refuse to take care of themselves—who refuse to lift themselves up like I did. I lifted myself up by my bootstraps. They should, too.” The irony is that everyone who says that they’ve lifted themselves up by the bootstraps ignores the fact that so many people in their lives, from parents to teachers to coaches to friends to strangers, have helped them along the way. They’ve also ignored those who gave them opportunities, loans, and more. Also, God’s way isn’t to only help those who are worthy, but to see all as worthy of love.

            The basic problem with the thinking behind these statements is that it misses the point of mission. Mission isn’t about the results, it’s about Love. Christian mission has a simple source: love of God, love of others, a love of serving God and others. Christian mission doesn’t care so much who we love, or who we serve in love.  The central idea in Christian mission is THAT we love, and THAT we serve.

            This idea and emphasis comes out clearly in our passage for this morning, if we are willing to dig a little deeper to understand it. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth about a mission to widows in Jerusalem. Corinth is a sophisticated Greek city filled with wealthy and educated Romans and Greeks. It rested on the isthmus between the northern and southern parts of the Greek peninsula. The Romans and Greeks had built a roller system across the twenty-mile isthmus at Corinth where ships could be pulled out of the water, dragged across land, and put back in the water on the other side; thus avoiding the winter storms and rocks that plagued the southern coastline. These Corinthians, being sophisticated, wealthy people really didn’t care much about the poor widows in Jerusalem. These widows, abandoned by their own families, and their dead husbands’ families, were often left to beg or become prostitutes. One of the first missions of the Christian church was to care for them. But why should the Corinthians care about them? These widows were in a backwater part of the Roman Empire, and they were Jews. So what if they struggle?

            The same questions could be asked of the Galatians, who were mentioned in the passage. They lived in north-central Turkey, a mountainous and isolated area. They were of Celtic descent, and had little to do with the Jews. Why should they care about widows in Jerusalem when there were enough people in their own backyard to care for? Besides, what if the widows misused these funds? What if the collected money didn’t get to them or was misspent? Paul faced the same questions about mission that we do today. But Paul emphasized that part of being a Christian was caring for those we don’t know by taking up collections for them. And we do this because God calls us to do so.

            One of the biggest challenges to Christian mission today is that we don’t live in particularly loving times. When people talk about the problems of our culture, they tend to be more “Me” and “I” focused. They say things like, “MY taxes are too high. They want to limit MY guns. Why should I care about people who are poor and struggling? What is the government doing for ME? How is the government oppressing ME?  How is any of this good for ME?“ We don’t talk publically as much about who we should reach out to and care for. This is not a comment about gun control or taxes. It’s a comment about how ME-focused the ruling generation is.

            Ironically, the younger generation (many of whom consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” because of how ME-focused Christians seem to be) is often very focused on caring about others. For example, have you noticed how many of Seneca Valley’s senior projects are focused on raising money to help some organization, group, or people. This generation is very “other” and “them” focused. So many of them are dropping out of church, but holding onto the Christian ideal of loving others. My lament is that I wish they would also root their love of others in a deep, deep love of God because that would actually enhance their ability to love others. The point, though, is that they understand the need to love.

            As Christians, what matters is that we love not just in mind, but through our actions It’s not enough to say that we love. We also need TO love. And that love has to be rooted in God first.

            There’s a big mission movement in the Presbyterian Church right now, which I think is a good thing. But one problem with it is that it is not quite rooted in the biblical model of mission. Biblically, mission is a mark of Christian maturity, not an entry point into religion. The most powerful mission of the Bible is carried out ,not by young Christians, but by the most mature Christians. The reason is that mission is a response to God’s grace and love. We reach out best in mission when it is rooted in a deep desire to share God’s love, and when time is spent in prayer seeking how we are called to share that love.

            Something that you wouldn’t necessarily know about Calvin Presbyterian Church is that we have a guiding paradigm that not only helps us understand how to develop programs in the church, but that also helps guide us in moving people to become mature Christians who naturally want to reach out to others in mission.

            We developed this paradigm about 12 years ago on the Spiritual Nurture Committee, and it subtly guides us. We realized that in looking at the gospels, there are really four levels of Christian maturity represented. There are Onlookers, Followers, Disciples, and Sent Ones (really they are “apostles,” but calling them that seemed grandiose). What we try to do is to create programs in the church that help move people one level up so that they move, step-by-step, toward becoming more mature and more mission-minded. Here’s an explanation of the four levels:

1. Onlookers: These are the people who mainly come to church on Christmas, Easter, and other occasions. They like the church, they can be inspired by the church, but their commitment level is really low. They’re not sure they understand the value of church, so they’re a bit ambivalent about it. Our question is how we help them to move to the next level. The main program we use to move them is to try to make our worship service and Sunday morning experience as accessible and inspirational as possible. Our music is varied, we try to make our preaching dynamic and deep, and we try to be as friendly and hospitable as possible. What we hope to do, through worship, is to help them want to become followers. By the way, the model for understanding onlookers is a scene from the Monty Python film, Life of Brian. In it, Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and the camera pulls back. You see Jesus’ disciples crowded close to him, then his followers on the hillside and up the next hill. Finally, three hills away, the onlookers watch and listen. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But the onlookers can’t quite hear him. So one says, “What did he say?” Another replies, “He said, ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.’” The first asks, “Well why are the cheesemakers so blessed?” The other replies, “He’s not talking about cheesemakers per se. He’s talking about anyone in a trade.”  The point is that onlookers want to hear the Gospel, but they don’t quite get close enough, and then they mishear and misinterpret what we Christians say, preach, and do.

2. Followers: These are folks who are either new to faith, or inexperienced in in-depth study on matters of faith. They are more committed, and want to live a more spiritual life. What holds them back is that they have so many commitments: family, work, friends, sports, dance, theater, social organizations, and so much more. We have a lot of programs to help move them from being followers to disciples, such as youth groups & teen Bible studies, the Beth Moore Group, Sunday adult education, Financial Peace University, and our new member classes. These are designed to move people deeper, and hopefully make them want to become disciples.

3. Disciples: These are people who have a yearning to move deeper into the Christian life, and to become a “disciple,” a student, of Christ. Their focus becomes much more deeply on learning how to live as Christ’s servants and friends. The programs we offer to move people from discipleship to becoming “sent ones” are our Tuesday and Wednesday devotional groups, our Science & Spirituality Group, the Presbyterian Women’s circles, the Tuesday Centering Prayer Group, the Thursday Morning Prayer Group, the Men’s Group, and our committees and session. I put the last two here, but you’ll also find them also among the “sent ones.” We start every committee meeting and session meeting with 30-45 minutes of prayer and study. The point is that we help our leaders move from discipleship to apostleship.

4. Sent Ones: These are technically are “apostles”(in Greek, ἀπόστολος or ”apostolos”). These are those ready to serve God in Mission and Ministry, choosing to be Christ’s hands, feet, and voice in the world. They include our session and committee members. These are the ones with the maturity to serve in mission because they have a real desire to make a difference. And if you look at Calvin Presbyterian Church, you find a lot of “sent ones.” I want to share with you a list of the mission we are doing at Calvin Presbyterian Church, because it is impressive. What it really says about us is that we have a spiritually mature congregation. The main reason I say this is that this isn’t centralized mission sparked by a central committee. Most of it comes from members who say, “I feel called to do this.”  Here’s the list:

·      Mission Trips: Each year Calvin Church sends out three mission trips. Two are for youth to work at Camp Westminster on Higgins Lake in Michigan. Camp Westminster is a ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church of Detroit, and is devoted to giving inner-city children an opportunity to discover and learn about nature, while also growing spiritually. The other mission trip is to the Wayside Christian Mission in Louisville, Kentucky. Wayside is devoted to helping people with homelessness, addictions, and other urban problems.

·      Project Hope: Project Hope of Zelienople, Inc. Is an organization dedicated to inspiring HOPE during the traumatic event of a child’s unexpected or long-term hospitalization. We provide support and encouragement for families during this stressful time. We believe parents and guardians must take care of themselves physically, emotionally and spiritually in order to meet the needs of their hospitalized children.

·      Special Mission Fund: Calvin Church is committed to helping people locally and in the region meet their basic needs and respond to crisis. The Special Mission Fund is a fund we use to respond when people are in need. Through this fund we have helped abused women pay for new housing, families in need buy food and other needs, support missionaries, support families in which the primary provider has become suddenly unemployed, pay medical expenses for families facing medical emergencies, help with disaster relief, support medical clinics in Africa, buy sleeping bags for the homeless, support the work of shelters for the homeless and abused women, aid in the building of a library in Columbia, send books to a pastor in Uganda, and so many other needs.

·      The Zelienople Food Cupboard: The Zelienople Food Cupboard offers food and other essentials to families in need. We do this with other churches in the area.

·      The Ladle and the Hearth Ministry: Several times a year Calvin members provide and serve meals at the Ladle, an organization that provides a hot meal every Monday to the hungry in the Ambridge community. We serve about 60-90 people per meal.

·      Clean Water for Connoquenessing Families: Calvin Church has teamed up with several other churches to provide clean water for 31 neighbors in Connoquenessing Township whose water has become tainted. While the local government attempts to determine if it was related to drilling in the area, the church has been the collection point for water contributions from Calvin and other churches. We have joined with others to provide over 200 gallons of clean water a week.

·      SERRV: Calvin Church warehouses products for SERRV’s ministry in the region, as well as hosting a SERRV Sale in the church every year. SERRV is a nonprofit organization with a mission to eradicate poverty by providing opportunity and support to artisans and farmers worldwide. It markets their crafts and foods, finds joint solutions to their challenges, and helps them grow and embrace the future. One of the first alternative trade organizations in the world, SERRV is a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization and a founding member of the Fair Trade Federation.

·      The Green Team: Calvin Church is committed to being Green. We have created a task force called the Green Team that oversees ways to make us greener, such as florescent and LED lighting, recycling church and member paper, using recycled paper, low-flush facilities, and more.

·      Campus Ministers at Kenyon College: Calvin Church has helped to support Jen and Zane Sanders, Christian Coalition Campus Ministers, as they minister to college students at Kenyon College

·      Mission Trip Support: Calvin Church is committed to being a permission-giving, mission-supporting congregation that nurtures and encourages everyone’s personal calling to mission. We find ways to raise funds and offer other support for individuals called to mission. Over the past few years we’ve supported members helping to build a preschool in South Africa, a medical mission to Lithuania, and disaster relief and clean-up in Joplin, Missouri.

·      30-Hour Famine: We sponsor an annual 30-hour fast to raise awareness and funds for hunger projects supported by World Vision, an international hunger and relief organization.

·      Wounded Warrior Project: Calvin Church has collected and sent backpacks and plastic containers for hospitalized troops in Afghanistan.

·      Presbyterian Church (USA) Disaster Relief: Calvin Church periodically provides funds to support the work of our denomination’s Disaster Relief organization, which has helped people recover from earthquakes in Pakistan and Haiti, tornados and hurricanes in Missouri and Louisiana, and much more.

·      Other Mission We Support

o   Samaritan Counseling Center

o   Oikocredit

o   Hot Metal Church

o   The Alliance Against Drugs

o   Bread for the World

o   VOICe

o   The Heiffer Project

o   The American Cancer Society Relay for Life

·      Peace Candles: On the pedestal behind the communion table, you will find peace candles. If you are a visitor to Calvin Church or a member planning to visit another church in the next few weeks, we invite you to take a votive with you. Present it to your church or the one you’re visiting on behalf of Calvin Church as a reminder to pray for peace.

·      Gifts that Matter: Calvin offers its members an alternative to buying gifts for loved ones at Christmas. Donations may be made to a charity in honor or memory of someone. A certificate is mailed to the honoree informing him/her of the donation in his/her name

·      Financial Peace University: This is a program that teaches a biblical, spiritual, and practical way of handling money. Through video teaching, class discussions, and interactive small group activities, FPU presents practical steps to get financial stability and peace. This shows how to get rid of debt, manage your money, spend and save wisely, and much more.  So many people struggle financially but don’t know where to turn. This program, developed by internationally known consultant Dave Ramsey, has helped thousands get their finances, and lives, in order.  The 90-minute classes meets Thursday evenings for 9 weeks from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.

·      Narcotics Anonymous: Calvin Church hosts a Narcotics Anonymous meeting for those in recovery from addiction.  The meetings are on Wednesday evenings from 7-8 p.m.

·      Zelienople Nursery School: Zelienople Nursery School holds 3yr old and 4yr old half-day classes in the lower level of Calvin Presbyterian Church. Three year olds attend Thursday and Friday AM or PM. Four year olds attend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday AM or PM.

            What I’ve given you is a listing, but there is much more personal mission going on. For instance, the Stubenborts have been so inspired by the Wayside mission trips we do each year that they started taking Karen’s BC3 social work students down at Thanksgiving to serve Thanksgiving meals there. Our Financial Peace University started because Bethany Shreckengost said to me, “I’ve been blessed by so much that I want to give back to God by offering these classes.” We also support the Circle of Friends Choir, which was a community choir that performs as a way of raising funds for many local and regional charities. They started out, painfully, from a conflict in a local church that caused them to part ways with the church. There were about fifteen of them without a church, and they decided to turn their choir in to a service to God. They have now grown to about 40—way beyond their original size. And they practice here every Tuesday night.

            The key in all of this is that we have a mantra here, which is that we only do mission over which we’ve prayed about and feel called to. We don’t do mission out of guilt or a sense of “should” or “ought.” We do it because God calls us to it, and that’s why you’ve seen an explosion of mission in this church. The mission in our church is done because people are called, not coerced. 

            As a way of summing up this morning, you are called to grow ever deeper as a Christian, and as you do, you are called to become increasingly God-focused, other-focused, and love focused. So,… where’s your mission?

            Amen.

Why Bother,... Reading the Bible

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Acts 8:26-39

January 20, 2013

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:


‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
   

      and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
     

                  so he does not open his mouth.


In his humiliation justice was denied him.
   

      Who can describe his generation?
     

                  For his life is taken away from the earth.’ 


The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

            You know, this story about the Ethiopian eunuch became the first story of millions of stories like this throughout Christian history. Over the past 2000 years, an incredible multitude of people have had their lives transformed simply by reading the Bible. What other book has had this kind of lasting, transforming power? There’s a reason the Bible is consistently the top-selling book, year after year. It has a transforming power unlike any other book.

            It’s not just people like the Ethiopian eunuch who’ve been transformed. It has transformed people you know, too. For example, do you remember Pat Summerall? You may remember him as a football broadcaster. He was paired with Tom Brookshier for many years, and then with John Madden. He was known for his deep voice and casual manner of doing the play-by-play. He also has had the honor of broadcasting 16 superbowls. He’s retired now (when I originally gave this sermon I mistakenly said that he had died), and living in retirement. He’s also struggled with health problems from a bad liver, the result of many years of hard drinking.

            Summerall had a difficult life growing up. Due to his parents’ unstable marriage, he was raised by his aunt and grandmother, and at one point was almost put up for adoption. He also was born with a clubfoot. To correct it he had to undergo a series of painful operations, which today are commonplace, but in the 1930s were very experimental. After healing, he discovered that he was a good athlete and fell in love with football. He eventually played at the University of Arkansas, then professionally for the Detroit Lions, the Chicago Cardinals (who eventually became the St. Louis, then Arizona, Cardinals), and finished his career with the New York Giants.

            In retirement from professional football he became a broadcaster. And he was great at it. The problem, for him, was that the combination of residual body pain from his playing days, and long, boring hours in hotel bars as he traveled to announce football games, Summerall became an alcoholic. He was a functional alcoholic, meaning that he was able to work and succeed, but the drinking was taking a toll on his body, his family, and his whole life. Eventually a family intervention convinced him to check into the Betty Ford Clinic so that he could become sober.

            In interviews he has often said that he is deeply thankful for the help he received at the clinic, but that what really transformed him was the fact that in the clinic he only had two books to read, and little else to do for entertainment. His choice was to read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous of the Bible. He read both, but it was his reading of the Bible that really transformed him.

            Summerall grew up in a religious family, like many people did. And like many kids growing up in church, he didn’t necessarily let the religion penetrate deeply. He kept his religion at a surface level. But when his life needed to be transformed, that’s when he opened up and discovered God in a whole new way, simply by reading the Bible.

            The fact is that reading the Bible transforms people’s lives, and yet it is not an easy book to read. I know this from personal experience. I hadn’t really read the Bible at all until the summer before going to seminary. That summer I read the Bible cover-to-cover, and I figure that I understood about 20% of it. For the most part it was REALLY HARD to do. Each summer afterward, while in seminary, I read it again, cover-to-cover, each time understanding it a bit more, but still being perplexed quite a bit of the time.

           

            The fact is that some parts of the Bible are very easy to understand, while some are really hard to understand. For example, when I read the prophets, it was confusing. There are seventeen of them, and they all sound the same. They all just seemed so ticked off all the time. I couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t till much later, when I learned more about each one, that I discovered their anger had to do with the injustices they saw toward the poor, the lack of faith they saw in the Jewish people, and the personal attacks many of them suffered.

            What also makes the Bible hard to read and understand is that some parts are timeless, while some are completely bound in their times. For example, the Sermon on the Mount is timeless in its wisdom. But some, like Deuteronomy 21:18-21, teach completely time-bound messages, such as “If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.” Stoning an unruly child may be biblical, but it certainly isn’t acceptable in our day and age.

            Understanding how the Bible came to be formed actually explains why it’s so hard to just sit down, read, and understand it. The fact is that the Bible is probably the most complex book ever written because it wasn’t really written as a book. The Bible is a collection of books that span a 1000-year period, but contains orally handed down stories and beleifs that may be as much as 1000 years older. All of these books are written not by one person, but by hundreds of people. And the Bible doesn’t necessarily put all of their writings in a nice, neat order. Sometimes it throws two different, contrasting stories, one after the other, with no explanation or determination of which one is right.

            As a result, the Bible does not present one theological and spiritual perspective. It provides many perspectives. For example, just looking at the first five books of the Bible, there are as many as 4 different perspectives, all written by a collection of people, and all jammed together. For example, there is the Elohist perspective. You know you are reading the works of an Elohist writer whenever you see God being called “God.” If you see a sentence that says, “And God said….” then you are pretty sure it was written by an Elohist. Whoever these writers were, they were called Elohists because, writing in Hebrew they used the name, “El-ohim” for God. Their understanding of God was more transcendent. They saw God as being somewhat detached from the world, residing in heaven, and having created everything as good. You find Elohist writing in the first chapter of Genesis, as God creates the world in seven days.

           

            The Jawist perspective is marked by those writings in which the name for God is translated as “the LORD.” That is the way the Bible normally translates the name, YHWH, or Yahweh. You find this in the second chapter of Genesis, which tells the Garden of Eden story of Creation. Thus, in the very beginning of Genesis you have two different perspectives on creation, each telling completely different stories. We modern Americans have a need to jam them together to make one story, but the fact is that they come from two different Jewish religious perspectives, and each one tries to teach a different view on God.

            There is also the Priestly perspective, which you find an example of in the Noah story. The original story comes from the Elohist tradition, but there is a priestly version that is different, and even calls God by the name YHWH rather than El-ohim. In the Elohist version Noah puts two pairs of every creature on the ark. The priestly version puts seven pairs of every ritually clean animal, and two pairs of every ritually unclean animal. The priestly writers cared deeply about ritual purity, so for them it was a way of telling the Noah story while emphasizing the importance of purity. Again, the Bible doesn’t try to reconcile the two stories. It puts them side-by-side, and this is what makes reading the Bible hard. The priestly tradition is seen mostly in the book of Exodus, where the written laws emphasize what we need to do to maintain purity in our lives.

            The fourth perspective is the Deuteronomic perspective. The Deuteronomists cared most about the Law and obedience to the Law. The deuteronimic laws are different from those of the priestly laws, which care about purity. The Deuteronomic laws flow more from the Ten Commandments, and have to do with relationships within the Jewish culture and religion. You find this perspective mostly in the book of Deuteronomy.

            So, you can see how complex just the first five books of the Bible are. Beyond there, you also have other perspectives: Wisdom, Prophetic, Exilic, Post-Exilic, Gospel, and Apostolic. Even when it comes to the gospels, there are four different perspectives. Again, we try to jam them together to make one, nice, neat version, but the Bible doesn’t do that. No wonder so many people want to read the Bible, but aren’t really sure how to do so in a way that makes it understandable. The Bible isn’t a book like other books.

            All of these different perspectives aren’t a weakness. They are the Bible’s strength. The fact is that the Bible is a 1500-year collection of people’s experiences and understandings about God, life, and the universe. Any other book about God and life, including mine, are time-bound and culture-bound. Even the holy books of other religions are limited. The Quran was reportedly dictated to the prophet Mohammed over a 23-year period. The word “Quran” itself literally means “the recitation.” The holy book of the Hindus, the Bhagavad Gita, was written at some particular point between 800 and 500 B.C., but is said to be the dictation of a story by Krishna. Again, these come from one religious, spiritual, and theological perspective. The Bible is incredibly expansive in its view, and will not force people to look at it from merely one perspective, not matter how much we demand that it does.

            What makes reading the Bible even more confusing is our contemporary tendency to only read it from one religious perspective when there are so many different perspectives. There’s the Protestant perspective, which tends to make the Bible the central authority while recognizing all the different perspectives of the Bible I just spoke about (that’s why you’re hearing this sermon, which you wouldn’t from preachers coming form other traditions). There is the Roman Catholic perspective, which holds the Bible up, but treats it as equal to their religious tradition and theology. Then there is the Evangelical perspective, which is concerned with simplifying the Bible for those who are new to faith.  As a result they tend to homogenize the Bible by insisting on seeking the one, true perspective on interpretation. There’s the Pentecostal perspective, which emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit. Add to these the Eastern Orthodox perspective, and even an atheistic perspective (there are atheists who do read the Bible, but treat it merely as a great piece of literature or a flawed book of history). What this leaves us with is a book that offers a wide variety of perspectives on God, that is interpreted by a wide variety of religious traditions. This makes the Bible even harder to read and understand.

            Brian McLaren, a pastor and author who has written a number of really good books, talks about all of this in his book, A New Kind of Christianity. He says that the modern problem is that we tend to treat the Bible like a constitution, much in the way we use the U.S. Constitution. When we argue over the Bible, we pick and choose passages that promote our belief, even if another passage of the Bible might conflict with it. He says that treating the Bible like this forces it into a use that it’s not designed for. It’s not a constitution, but the greatest holy library ever collected. And just as in a library where we don’t demand that the different books agree perfectly, but instead read them all to learn and grow, we should treat the Bible as a great collection of books to grow from. In essence, the Bible isn’t a book but a collection of holy books designed to help us grow ever closer to God by learning how to live a God-filled, God-permeated life.

            All of this makes the Bible a really hard book to read, no matter how much it can transform us. We want it to be a simple, easy book on spirituality, much like the books we might find at Barnes and Noble or at Amazon.com. But it’s not. The reason is that those books take piece of the Bible and distill them down so that they are easier for us to read, but in the process they always lose the depth and breadth of the Bible.

            So what do you do? Preachers like me keep telling you that you’re supposed to read the Bible, but then I’ve just said that it’s hard to read the Bible. Let me simplify it for you, without trying to reduce the Bible’s teachings. If you are going to read the Bible, read it the way the eunuch did, that Pat Summerall did, and that so many others have done over the past 2000 years. Read it to discover what God is saying to you about how you are to live your life. Don’t read it as a constitution telling you how to argue over the great political and social issues of our day. I’m not saying to ignore these issues when trying to figure out what you believe about them. I’m just saying that if you really want to understand the Bible, read it with YOU in mind. Here are three suggestions:

            First, start with the gospels and get to know them the best. Don’t do what I did before going to seminary, where you read it cover to cover. That just makes things harder.. Start with Matthew, then move onto Mark, then to Luke, and then to John. When you’re finished, move onto Acts. Then start all over again. Whenever you feel that you have the gospels down, then move onto the rest of the letters of the New Testament. Then, when you’re ready to go into the Old Testament, start with the psalms and Genesis, and move forward from there. Make this a ten-year project, not a one-year project.

            Second, use a study Bible. I don’t think it matters all that much which kind you use. There are literally hundreds of good ones. I use the Life with God Bible, but there are other ones such as the Spiritual Formation Bible, the Women’s Devotional Bible, the Men’s Devotional Bible, the Harper Study Bible, and so many more.  The point is to pick a version and go with it. You’ll learn from any of them.

            Finally, whichever one you use, and whatever part of the Bible you read, read it “spiritually.” That means reading it slowly, reflectively, prayerfully. Take your Bible-reading in small chunks. You may spend 30 minutes in reading, but only read for ten minutes while you pray and think over what you’ve read. And you may only cover a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence. Break it up by reading what feels natural. You don’t have to just follow the chapters and numbers. The whole point is to read in a way that helps you hear what God is saying to you about your life, and let God teach you what God wants you to know so that you can live a full, loving, joyful life.

            You don’t have to become a Bible expert to grow from the Bible. You only have to read and listen.

            So, to answer the question in the title of this sermon, we bother to read the Bible because the Bible teaches us how to live.

            Amen.

Why Bother,... with Worship?

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Matthew 6:1-6

January 13, 2013

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

      And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

            Why are you here?  Seriously,… what do you expect to get by coming to worship? Are you here out of guilt, thinking that something bad will happen to you if you don’t come to church? Are you hoping that your sins will be forgiven? Are you hoping to find God?  You could be home, sitting in your jammies, enjoying another cup of coffee. Why get up early one more morning of the week? Don’t you get up early enough five other days of the week? Why are you here?

            Actually, you’re here to get healthier, and you’re doing it in more ways than just spiritually. Did you know that coming to church on Sunday actually makes you healthier? It does, and that’s not just my opinion. There has been a lot of research done over the past 25 years showing that going to church on a regular basis makes you a healthier person. David Larson, M.D., Ph.D., who died a few years ago, discovered this through his research. He was a medical doctor and psychiatrist who was trained by, and worked at, the Duke University Medical School before he eventually became the director of the National Institute of Healthcare Research. As a young psychiatrist, he had often heard his colleagues say that religious pursuits were a sign of mental weakness and disorder, and that people who were truly mentally healthy didn’t need religion.

            Like a good scientist he decided to see if research supported that conclusion. He did a survey of hundreds of scientific studies testing the impact of religion on health, and he found the exact opposite to be true. Religion didn’t make us weaker. It made us healthier. He found hundreds of studies showing that when extraneous factors were controlled for (a fancy way of saying that they made sure there couldn’t be some other reason for the result), the research overwhelmingly showed that people who attended church were healthier than those who didn’t. He found that obese churchgoers lived longer than obese non-churchgoers. He found that smoking churchgoers were healthier than non-smoking non-churchgoers. In every survey the health differences were significant. So just by being here in worship you are healthier than those who aren’t here.

            It’s not just adults who get health benefits from being in church. So do kids. When you are willing to brave the morning arguments to get your kids up and out to church, you make a difference in every part of their lives. A few years ago I was interested in seeing what the connection between going to church and childrens’ lives was, and what I found was pretty interesting. Google “church attendance and health,” and see what you find. One website I found cited the benefits found that church attendance:

§  increases the average life expectancy of your children by 8 years;

§  significantly reduces their use and risk from Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs;

§  dramatically lowers their risk of suicide;

§  helps them rebound from depression 70% faster;

§  dramatically reduces their risk for committing a crime;

§  improves their attitude at school and increase their school participation;

§  reduces their risk for rebelliousness;

§  reduces the likelihood that they would binge drink in college;

§  improves their odds for a "very happy" life;

§  provides them with a life-long moral compass;

§  and even gets them to wear their seatbelts more often.

            As the website says, “These findings are supported by research from Duke University, Indiana University, The University of Michigan, The Center for Disease Control, Barna Research Group, and the National Institute for Healthcare Research” (http://www.sundaysoftware.com/stats.htm).

            Going to church makes you healthier, it makes your kids healthier, but can’t you get the same benefits just by being spiritual but not religious? You would think doing your own thing spiritually, by virtue of being spiritual, would offer you the same health benefits, but it doesn’t. According to a recent article in the British Journal of Psychiatry being spiritual but not religious is not the same as being religious, whether you are or aren’t spiritual at the same time. In fact, the “spiritual but not religious” struggle significantly more with drug abuse and addictions, as well as with mental issues  (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/09/the-spiritual-but-not-religious-likely-to-face-mental-health-issues-drug-use-study-says/?iref=allsearch). 

            But I know you’re not here to get healthier. You’re here to get God, and the health benefits of church are a side effect. Why do we bother with worship? We bother with worship because it is the best way of finding God. I don’t say this because I’m a church guy, I say this because I’ve experienced it. You’ve heard me talk about this before. I walked away from the church at 15 and decided to do spirituality on my own. For nine years I described myself as spiritual but not religious. But then I went through a crisis. And it was in the midst of that crisis that I realized something significant about why religion has such a powerfully positive influence on people’s lives.

            It’s not just that religious worship helps us find God, but it helps us find God TOGETHER. This is a really significant point. One of the problems facing those who call themselves spiritual but not religious is that they pick and choose beliefs and practices from different religions, but in the process they generally ignore one of the most important attributes. Every religion, whether you are talking about Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American, or any other, emphasizes community. They emphasize the communal nature of seeking and finding the Holy, the Divine,… God. Every single one of them emphasizes that you cannot be truly spiritual if you do it alone. There may be times when adherents are sent out by themselves, but that’s an episode in which they leave the community to eventually return to the community. Whether it is Buddhists worshiping in a temple, Muslims in a mosque, Jews in a synagogue, Native Americans in a sweat lodge, or Christians in a church, it is essential that we seek and worship God TOGETHER.

           

            This insight was so significant to me, and my experience of finally deciding to relent on my solo journey in order to join a church, so profound, that I used the experience as the basis of my Ph.D. dissertation. This is a 400-page dissertation exploring the movement from an individualistic to a communal spirituality.

            What I learned at 24 is the age-old message of church. This is that we can try to find God on our own, but we can’t truly find achieve it on our own because finding God is communal. That is why worship is so important to spiritual growth.

            Worship is unlike any other event in life because it’s sole focus is the connection between God and us. What other activity in your week do you take part in where connecting with God is the focus? There is no other event in the week that emphasizes that as a group. Worship offers practices that are designed to hit us at the conscious, subconscious, and soul levels. Think about the whole worship experience.

            Our church’s worship begins even before you walk into the sanctuary. We have meditative music playing throughout the church. It is intended to put you in the right spirit. As you walk through Fellowship Hall, we place tablecloths on the tables that reflect the church season, and you see a large, lighted stained glass window of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Walking into the sanctuary you enter a space filled with religious symbols and artwork, from banners, to Celtic crosses, to stained glass, to special lighting. The whole idea is to get you centered and ready to encounter Christ before we start worshiping.

            After we do the announcements, we sing a chant together and do a silent prayer. The point is to help us become quiet and centered so that we are in the right place to open up to God. We read passages from the Bible to get us thinking about God. We then sing a hymn meant to get us praising God. We confess sins so that we can put aside our pride and selfishness. Then we do a children’s sermon so that we can speak to kids about God. We do an anthem, which is designed to inspire us and prepare us to reflect on God’s Word. The Sermon is designed to hit our cognitive brains, and to get us thinking about God, our lives, what the purpose of life is, how we can connect with God, and so much more. The offering is designed to give us a chance to practice generosity—to give back to God. The prayers and sacraments are meant to get us to go deeper in God. And then the final prayer is to prepare us to take this hour into our hearts and manifest it throughout our lives. What other practices do you engage in throughout your life that has this kind of God intention and intensity? Worship isn’t just a tradition or a ritual. It is essential to connecting with God because it hits every part of our being: our conscious minds, our subconscious minds, our emotions, our thinking, our bodies, and our very core.

            Like exercise, eating right, and getting enough sleep, worship is a discipline that leads to spiritual growth. And like exercise, it requires a willingness to do it regularly. It’s something offered to you to help you get healthier in every way. The key is that it’s something we offer, but don’t force on anyone. We don’t take attendance in order to determine whether you have or haven’t been her. And if you stop coming, we don’t run out to find you or find out why. It’s not because we don’t care about you. It’s not because we’re ignorant. It’s because we understand that what we offer is an opportunity to grow closer to God, but that you bear the responsibility to take up that offer. You have to develop the maturity to come to God with passion, and if you can’t, you’re responsible for asking us to help you, which is a big part of what we do. Rev. Frierson and I are here to primarily help people connect with God. If you need us to run after you to get you to go to church, you aren’t ready to meet God. Worship is about being mature and seeking to grow more spiritually mature. If your maturity requires us to coax you to church, you won’t grow, and our efforts are wasted.

            The fact is that taking up the discipline of worship is hard. There are a lot of forces that keep us from wanting to worship. Many are internal, but others are external. Even if we do attend worship, there are forces within and without that keep us from wanting to worship with openness, passion, and a deep desire to connect with God. Let me show you what I mean.

            A number of years ago there was an older woman who decided to clean out her basement freezer. At the bottom of it she found a Butterball turkey she had put there 23 years earlier and had forgotten about. She didn’t want to throw it out and waste it, but she wasn’t sure if it was still edible. So she decided to call Butterball’s helpline.

            The man on the line asked how he could help, and she told him about her 23-year-old turkey, asking, “Can I still eat it?” He said, “Did you keep it below zero all that time, or were there any significant power outages that might have allowed the turkey to thaw?” “Nope, it’s been in deep freeze all these years,” she replied. He paused and said, “Well, then it’s probably good to eat, but it’s not going to taste very good. I mean,… it has been sitting in a freezer for a really long time. “ She replied, “That’s okay. I’ll just give it to my church.”

            This is how many people are with worship. They don’t come giving their best. They give their frozen, stale parts to God in worship. They see worship and church as secondary activities that don’t really matter that much as long as they do what’s necessary. Their focus isn’t on connecting with God. Their focus is on slogging through.

            As flawed as it is, worship is here to keep us in connection with God. In a funny way, some of the people who attend the least understand this the most. It’s not a huge number, but we have some people in the church who show up mainly when their life is going wrong. They go through a crisis, and then they start coming to church. After a bit their lives improve. Unfortunately, they then disappear until the next crisis. But they still have a very clear understanding that church helps them connect with God when in need. It’s just that they walk away from that connection when they no longer feel that need. For that short while, though, they understand the need to come to God with passion.

            As we ending to all this, I have a question I want you to reflect on. Think about how you are when you come to church. When you worship, do you come to really worship?

            Amen.

Bearing the Light of Christ

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Ephesians 3:1-13

January 6, 2013

This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—for surely you have already heard of the commission of God’s grace that was given to me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow-heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him. I pray therefore that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are your glory.

             A number of years ago there was a mother who volunteered a lot in her church. And when she did she would bring her young daughter with her. The daughter loved being in the large, stately sanctuary of the church. She especially liked to study the stained glass windows. One day, while her mother was doing something to set up the front of the church for communion, her daughter pointed to the windows and asked, “Mom, who’s that?” “That’s St. Peter,” her mother replied. “And that?” “That’s St. Paul.” “And that, and that, and that, and that?” “That’s St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John.” The girl continued to study the windows for a long time. The next Sunday in worship, as they were singing a hymn, the girl tugged on her mom’s sleeve and said, “Mom, Mom. I know what a saint is. A saint is someone the light shines through.”

            A saint is someone the light shines through. That little girl captured the essence of who we are called to be as Christians. When you think of a saint, what do you think of? Most of us are used to thinking of them in the way the Roman Catholic Church sees saints. They believe that saints are those who have been truly great Christians who exceeded, and transcended, normal life. Many of them did miraculous things during their lives. Others were incredible teachers. Others lived exemplary lives. While these are people truly to be admired and held up as examplars on how to live the Christian life, the Bible has a different definition for what a saint is. In the New Testament, a saint is simply someone who has faith. Literally, it is someone God has made sacred through faith and grace. You are a saint already, if you are a person of faith. You don’t have to die to be a saint. And as saints, we are called to be people through whom God’s light shines through.

            What really binds us together as Christians is our willingness to let God’s light shine through us. And what harms us as Christians are those times when we unplug from God, turning off our lights. I believe in this idea so much that you’ll notice that at the end of the worship services, during my closing prayer, I often ask God to help us to be light-bearers and Christ-bearers to the world. We are called to be people through whom God’s light shines through.

            Jesus said that we are called to be light in his Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).

            The more I study the Bible, theology, spirituality, history, and human nature, the less confident I’ve become that anyone has the right answers. We’re all so divided by our theologies and beliefs, and yet we’re all so convinced that it’s we who have the right answers. I’ve seen this early on in my adulthood in the division between Catholics and Protestants. Having married a Roman Catholic, who’s family is VERY Irish Catholic, and having gone to a Catholic university for my Ph.D., I’ve spent a lot of time around Catholics who are so very sure that the only true way to God is through Roman Catholicism. And I’ve been around just as many Protestants, if not more (because I AM Protestant), who are so very sure that to be Protestant, or a strain of it (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc…), is the only true way to God. I’ve also come across conservative and liberal, evangelical and progressive, Protestants who are all so certain that their understanding of God, Christ, the Bible, and life is the only true belief. How can each one be absolutely right and the other so wrong?  

            For a long time I’ve been fascinated by how we form opinions, and the certainty we have about truth. A significant influence in this has been my interest in Near Death Experiences, or NDEs. I don’t read as much about them as I used to in my 20s and 30s, but periodically I’ll read a new book, or look online for NDEs. One of the things that has been consistent among virtually all those who’ve experienced NDEs is how they feel like they entered a heaven, a dimension, a… something, where they were able to access instantaneous answers on the truth of everything. They consistently say that the beliefs and truths they thought mattered so much didn’t. They discovered that what they thought was true wasn’t. At the same time, they all emphasize learning the lesson that what matters is love, being light to others, and being a positive, compassionate presence in life. In other words, it didn’t matter so much what they believed as it did how they lived.

            In our Science and Spirituality group, we are about to start studying a book by a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon who worked both at the Harvard University and University of Virginia medical centers. His name is Eben Alexander, M.D. He describes himself as having been a typical rationally-minded, scientifically-oriented doctor who believed in the here and now. He went to church, but only on Christmas and Easter, and mainly out of obligation. His belief about NDEs was that they were simply the musings or hallucinations of an oxygen starved brain. His belief was that the brain did this to comfort someone who was dying.

            That all changed when he contracted a certain strain of bacterial, e. coli., meningitis that put him in a seven-day coma. He literally had no brain activity other than his brainstem for seven days. He came out of it after being on the point of death. When he got better, he studied his seven-day EEGs, and realized that there was no way his brain could have conjured up hallucinations. There was no activity there to conjure anything. But during those seven days he had intense experiences of heaven, experiences he said were more real than what we experience now. Like other NDE experiences, he received instantaneous answers. And like so many others, he said that what seemed to matter was not beliefs about economics, politics, theology, or the rest, but how we live and care about others.

            He also had another interesting experience. He said that the whole time he was in heaven (or whatever it was), he kept hearing this incredible music. It had a melody that was both incredibly simple and complex. He couldn’t remember the tune, but it haunted him. Then, the first Sunday he went to church after coming out of his coma he heard that music in every hymn and anthem. He said that it wasn’t the tune that was the same, but the spirit of the music. He could hear heaven in them. And when he sang, which he hadn’t done much of previously, he felt as though he was singing the holy

            What I have become confident of is that what matters is not so much the purity of our belief, but the brightness of our light. I think that in the end, Christian faith comes down to the simplest thing, which is to what extent are we light to the world, radiating God’s love and grace?

            Do our small actions throughout the day—how we treat co-workers, how we treat family members, how we treat people who struggle, and even how we treat people who bug us—shine with love and light? No matter what we do, does is reflect God’s light? If we are a teacher, an accountant, a writer, a nurse, a store owner, a computer programmer, a student, a secretary, a plant manager, an architect, an engineer, or a pastor, do we shine through with God’s light?

            It’s not the rightness of your opinions, or the purity of your belief, that matter. It’s the ability of your words and actions to bring light to other people’s lives. I believe that how brightly we shine all has to do with the extent to which we are able to pause spiritually long enough to be light-bearers and Christ-bearers.

            As a final thought, I want to share some musings on phrases. I’ve been captured by how some phrases that seem so certain can be changed if we just pause for the Spirit. For example, look at this phrase below, which reflects the beliefs of so many atheists:

GOD IS NOWHERE

           

            If we take that phrase and pause with it, we can discover in it a whole different idea:

GOD IS NOW HERE

           

            Many agnostics, and those who are religious, often believe that God is not part of this world, and that God is up in heaven, watching and waiting for us to die in order to judge us. They are like the Deists, the movement that held many of our founding fathers, believing that once God created the world, then God stopped being part of the world. So they would believe in the phrase below,

GOD IS APART

            Again, if you pause for the Spirit, you can discover another message:

GOD IS A PART

            In other words, God is a part of our lives, not apart from our lives.

            Each of us is called to be like stained-glass—to shine with God’s light so that we brighten people’s lives. Look at your life and ask yourself one simple question: “With what kind of light do I shine?”

            Amen.