Recently, I watched a presentation by Reverend Candace Lewis. She shared something at the Leadership Institute at Church of the Resurrection I've been reflecting on since.
It's taken a while, but one lesson has come across enough in local church ministry that it's easier to talk about. More of us can now distinguish between ministry to someone and ministry with someone. To someone is a service. Now, it may be a necessary and beneficial service. To someone can quickly meet needs and provide relief. Our perspective changes, though, when with replaces to. With someone ensures dignity and compassion. It also nurtures relationships and fosters greater community. It's also a reminder we're all in this world with each other, with God.
Dr. Lewis presented a third option.
She asked listeners if their churches were simply "in" their neighborhood or community. To-someone ministry is helpful. With-someone ministry is relational. Simply in isn't much of ministry at all. It's isolated. In fact, in churches often prefer their isolation. It keeps strangers, maybe some of "those" people, away. Being a church in a community allows for things to stay the way they've been.
That's a silly notion, by the way. As a local congregation continues to deteriorate, how can we say things are the same? A church that has lost most of its people and resources cannot be the same that it was before.
I'm grateful the churches I've served have never been merely "in" their neighborhoods. Sometimes, the needle wanted to bend that way. Thankfully, God's Spirit moved us in a different direction.
In churches remind me of the rich man in Jesus' parable. He lived in the same place as Lazarus. But they lived completely different lives. In the parable, the man learns of a chasm between he and Lazarus in the afterlife. But there was already a dividing line that kept them separated in their life together. The rich man, probably, was okay just being in around Lazarus. It didn't require much of anything from him.
Imagine what might have been different if he was with him. What would've been difference for Lazarus? For the rich man? For his family?
Now imagine how God would bless your church as you seek to be more with one another.
A few weeks ago I preached a sermon based on Mark 9. Jesus said if your hand, foot or eye causes you to sin, cut it off. I told the congregation to consider what body parts they'd be left with if they had to cut off what made them sin. After worship, someone jokingly confessed they'd never speak again. They would have had to cut off their tongue.
I imagine that's true for a lot of us.
What is it about putting our foot in our mouth that is so common? We all say things we don't really mean. Words pour out that we didn't even know we were thinking. The maturing among us learn to acknowledge when that happens. We own up to what we've said and how it came across. Some stick to blaming others for taking things the wrong way.
We aren't given a specific circumstance behind the words of Psalm 39. The psalm's title says it's merely a psalm of David. Some have suggested the psalm relates to his experience with Bathsheba. Others suggest David is an older man reflecting on past experiences. We don't know what experience he had, but we know we can relate.
Listen to his opening words: I will guard my ways that I may not sin with my tongue; I will keep a muzzle on my mouth (Psalm 39:1).
A muzzle might come in handy sometimes, wouldn't you say?
Of course, there is no restraining device we can rely on. Instead, we have to look to God for that help. We ask the Lord for the strength to "not sin with my tongue." And this is where we're praying for the fruit of the Spirit to take root in our hearts. Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control all have a way to prevent us from having to cut out our tongues.
Based on its etymology, you can say part of what it means to be arrogant is to be overbearing. An arrogant person can overwhelm others with their haughty attitudes and self aggrandizing. It can be much to listen to someone go on and on about how good they are, especially in relation to other people. To add injury to insult, arrogant people may rely on their lowly opinions of others to excuse or dismiss inappropriate behavior.
It's easy to mock someone you already think less of. Spend your time thinking too much of yourself and you're bound to belittle the people around you.
One word to associate with the message of the book of Obadiah is arrogance. Edom had been arrogant in their relation to Israel (even God). Edom refused to help Israel in their desert wandering (Numbers 20). One could, perhaps, chalk that up to sibling and tribal rivalry. But Obadiah's vision also includes other reminders. Edom joined Israel's enemies and even "gloated" over Israel's misfortune (Obadiah 12). Why this overbearing attitude and rejection of their brothers?
God already told them. "Your proud heart has deceived you" (3). Their lofty homes and, supposed, security fooled them. Who they were and what they believed about themselves comes out in their question, "Who will bring me down to the ground?" God was ready to.
What a reminder about our feelings. What you feel in your heart may be just that. Often, though, what you feel has a way of seeping through your life in ways you may not recognize yourself. Oh, but others see it. God certainly does. An arrogant heart has an uncanny way of dismissing the needs of others. Every man for himself, after all. But Edom's overbearing arrogance reminds us God cares about what is in our heart and how we care for others as a result.
When I attended seminary I also served a student appointment. That meant a full time school schedule and a (wink, wink) part time pastor's schedule. To say the least, if I wasn't at school, I was at church. And if I wasn't at church, I was at school. Consequently, in my four years in the DFW metroplex, I never got comfortable with the area, only my everyday route. I just wanted the GPS to take me where I wanted.
I forget where streets end up and what neighborhoods are where. If I traveled on my own, I'd be lost without the GPS device.
If the Bible is God's GPS, that sounds like a good thing to say about it. In one sense, it is. But I used the GPS incorrectly. In actuality, the GPS was a crutch. It kept me from truly knowing my way around. I only went where that machine voice told me to go. As a result, I missed so much of what makes those communities what they are.
Moses was leading God's people to a land they hadn't known. They would need to find their way around so they could "live long" in this unknown place. And God's commands would guide them to their new life. But not as a crutch. They had already learned something about their communion with God. "We have seen this day that God may speak to someone and the person may still live" (Deuteronomy 5:24). Now, the Lord's wisdom would show them how to flourish in their new home.
Likewise, God's word isn't some banal voice telling us where to go in the fastest time. It doesn't keep us from living life. But it's possible to read it that way. To just read it. To only go where we want and simply take a Bible with us. Thankfully, there's a better way to hear God.
Through the Spirit's inspiration, we can truly hear God leading our lives through this beautiful world to a newness and holiness we couldn't know otherwise.
I took one preaching class in seminary. In that class, I learned how to preach a five minute sermon, even though I rarely preach a five minute sermon. And our professor encouraged us to preach a series on the Ten Commandments. It took me a decade to finally get around to doing that. His recommendation was to not preach a sermon on the commandments, but a sermon on each commandment. So, earlier this year, I did just that. And I appreciated the chance to look at each commandment on its own.
It gave me a chance to highlight something Moses said to the people. My series focused mainly on the Exodus recording of the commandments. But, in Deuteronomy, Moses tells Israel to "learn them and be careful do them" (5:1b). Two things came to mind in that reflection.
First, to learn them doesn't only mean being able to recite them. For example, one of the commandments instructs the people to put no other gods before God. I can recite that easily. But can I identify the gods in my life or discern when I've put them before God? I can when I learn what the commandment means.
Secondly, recall that Moses is speaking to an entire community. A few of the divine words seems to focus on individual behavior. Coveting your neighbor's wife seems pretty personal. Otherwise, most of the other commandments could relate to entire communities.
Think of the graven image commandment. Don't we have a familiar story in scripture about all the people worshiping a golden calf? Likewise, whole communities can misuse God's name or dishonor the Sabbath. Learn the other commandments and you can see how they might apply to Christian communities as well. Take the other gods example. When nationalism finds itself front and center in worship, something's backwards.
While the wisdom of the Ten Commandments has a lot for you to reflect on and learn, there's a lot for us to chew on as well. We've got a lot of learning to do together.
In scripture, the image of a faithful marriage is a reflection of our communion with God. And God's faithfulness to us. Of course, the opposite is true, too. We know what adultery is and what it does to a family. Do we know what unfaithfulness does to God?
Thankfully, God receives his adulterine children.
But God also knows who we are. A parent can sense when her child just wants to return to good graces. The child will say they are sorry. They may even clean their room or take out the trash. When Mom or Dad seem satisfied, the child carries on like before.
God's people fit that bill. Israel had turned from God and Judah followed her example. Notice words like divorce, faithless and "prostituted herself" in today's reading. God saw how the people chose to live and saw their lives as adulterous. This was adultery in the extreme. Still, the Lord told Irsrael, "I am your husband" (Jeremiah 3:14).
Judah, apparently, said they were sorry. Who knows if they would have used apologetic words. At the very least, they knew what they could do to appease God. The Lord said, "Judah did not return to me with her whole heart but only in pretense" (Jeremiah 3:10). Most likely, their returning act including forms of worship. That was the central piece of their communion with God. So, they gave offerings. They listened to the words of the covenant. Maybe they even went to Sunday School and signed up for church committees :)
But they weren't interested in living out their covenant with God. As a result, the Lord says they are more guilty than Israel (3:11).
Today's passage gives us a chance to reflect on our worship and what we do with our lives. The question is worth asking, How faithful are we to God? To be sure, we aren't talking about mere religious practice. And I don't mean to suggest our faithfulness only amounts to our willingness to do "work" for God. Rather, what does our communion with God look like? Are we being true to who God is and what God has called us to be?
Praise the Lord, even when we haven't, the Lord receives us back!
I preach with a twofold goal I don't know I always fulfill. First, I want to inform, instruct and encourage. A listener shouldn't have to figure out what I'm talking about. There needs to be a clarity to what I say. But, secondly, I want you to leave a sermon wondering what else I meant. In a way, I want to point you towards more questions than certainty. Clarity and mystery should meet so that a message is more than a presentation or TED talk.
That's how I leave reading Paul's instructions on married life in 1 Corinthians. On one hand, there are straight forward thoughts. Don't divorce, mainly. Scripture doesn't promote or celebrate divorce. Still, there are exceptions where divorce is acceptable.
It's helpful to recognize Paul is addressing specific questions asked of him. And his responses may or may not be most helpful in all situations for us today. He's also aware of particular ideas circulating through the church. Some people would've argued it was their spiritual duty to divorce someone. No, it wasn't.
All that leaves questions for us to mull over.
For example, we often say divorce is acceptable in response to abuse. But where does Paul say that here? In the last several generations, people have often portrayed divorce as a one-sided issue. Women get a lot of that one-sided blame. But how many of those women finally recognized abuse for what it is? They decided to live with dignity and respect for themselves and that happened to include divorce. What would Paul's message be to them? And do we have to define what constitutes abuse? And there we go being one-sided again. What would Paul tell abusive husbands?
Paul also was ready for Christ's imminent return, which we're still waiting for. Would Paul have recognized irreconcilable differences for a couple after a few more years?
Now, none of these questions take away from what we know to be true of God's desires for our relationships. If we are growing in grace, if our lives are connected emotionally, physically and spiritually, why would God want that torn away from us? And who are we to tear it away?
You see?
More questions as we best discern how God wants us to live in peace with God and each other.
Ever had a "wanna get away" moment? In the Southwest Airlines commercials people find themselves in circumstances they'd rather not be. It's humorous for us onlookers because we can feel the tension.
Being in those moments is different.
And I'm not thinking of the awkward kind in the commercials. No, think of the trying times you've endured before. What valleys have you struggled to find your way through? Reflecting on my moments, I had times I would have preferred to get away.
Lord, take me away--another famous line of commercials. Remove me from the situation, from the pressure and the stress of it all. Let me be anywhere in the world besides this meeting. This argument or this circumstance.
The psalmist understood this feeling. His situation had something to do with betrayal and deception. You expect your enemy's opposition. But there's a certain sting when "sweet fellowship" turns against you. This was a "wanna get away" moment for him. He said it this way: "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.”
Not only would he want to get away. He'd want to stay away. Of course, that's not how prayer or life works.
Instead, we stay. We remain where we are and figure out how to maneuver through our pain and distress. Hopefully, we find healing. Do we know to seek healing or do we settle for revenge or resentment? We can't get away from everything we deal with. So, it's best to learn to find God's peace within our troubling times. Prayer doesn't remove us from every trial. It doesn't even remove every trial. But it does strengthen and renew us. And if we're not going anywhere for a while (another commercial), thank God we are made stronger.
Confirmation Sunday is a wonderful day when our youth confirm the faith their family has given them. We say that part of their confirmation is deciding to make their faith their own. It's a rite of passage acknowledging their maturity and the calling God gives to us all.
And confirmation has a long-standing tradition in some churches. I'm still reflecting on something I learned about our Methodist association with confirmation. Did you know early Methodists did not have confirmation? Oh, they had young people, to be sure. But they hadn't incorporated this practice. Confirmation was something other established churches did.
The Methodists had no need for it. Methodists confirmed their faith every week! Their desire to "flee the wrath to come" centered their conversations around God's grace. They knew their sin kept them experiencing new life in Christ. So, they confessed their sin to one another. Prayer wasn't a task best left to some clergy person. Worship and mission was central to who the Methodists were. There was little room for ceremony.
Then we got rich.
That may sound harsh and dismissive. So, I'll say we got comfortable. Our denomination grew and become a status symbol for people. Long story short, we had to keep up with the spiritual Joneses. Those other established churches, with other comfortable people, had confirmation. And we wanted it, too. Yes, confirmation in the Methodist tradition stemmed from a bit of denominational jealousy. Covetousness, perhaps.
Now, borrowing the practice would have been one thing. But confirmation also made sense because our church had smothered that first great desire. We needed a ceremony to give us a sense we were on the right track.
Again, I love Confirmation Sunday--you know how much I thank God for our young people. But guess how many youth I've known who "completed" confirmation only to never be seen in church again.
I'm using confirmation as an example to connect with Romans 8. Paul speaks of freedom from sin and death, submission and pleasing God. He affirms life in Christ, living according to the Spirit and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Is that what we're teaching our young people? Are those priorities for our churches today? We don't want to rely on our ceremonies to motivate us through life. We want the power of God. We need the power of God.
Some couples light a unity candle at their wedding. There are, usually, three candles involved in the ceremony. Two lit candles stand on either side of an unlit candle in the middle. The two lit candles represent each person's family. The unity candle is the one the couple lights as a sign of their union.
Most couples I've married assumed they were to blow out the two already-lit candles. Someone taught me, though, to remember those two families are still there. Yes, there is a new family being born. But that doesn't mean the other families disappear. In fact, those two families are coming together that day to make the new family.
And part of marriage is living with these two families. They have been and will continue to be a part of the life of each individual. That's part of the joy and conflict of making a new family.
The first great controversy in the church centered around a similar struggle. How does a new family live in communion with itself? In the New Testament, it wasn't a husband and wife lighting a candle. It was people groups figuring out how to let Christ's light shine amongst their differences. This was an incredibly hard thing to live out. One one side you had Jewish identity and culture. The other side, so to speak, were Gentiles. And in the middle was this new movement of God.
Some would have preferred one of the two cultures to diminish itself. Jews wanted Gentiles to follow their traditions. I'm sure there were Gentiles who thought less of Jewish customs. And that's what makes the apostle Paul's words so striking. "There is no longer Jew or Greek...slave or free...male and female" (Galatians 3:28). The new family of God was now front and center.
But "there is no longer" seems like strong language. What, did those people groups disappear? Are they gone? Of course not. But they have a new place in relation to the union God has formed. They are no longer at the center.
As God's church, who we are in Christ is of utmost importance. In Christ we live and move and have our being. At the same time, we're still who we are. Our cultural differences shouldn't divide us because Christ unites us. What's different about who we are, the beauty of our culture and heritage should be a blessing to the church and God's mission.
"No one can make you do anything you don't want to do." That's something I can hear my elementary school teacher say. When one of us got caught doing something we weren't supposed to, a common retreat was, "He made me do it!"
It rarely worked for any of us.
In matters of faith, Jesus isn't talking about our Adam-like tendency to blame others for sin. He knows all too well the lure of influence. So often we cling to a sense of self-control and captaincy of our lives that isn't really there. We follow more than we like to admit. So, Jesus needs to tell us to watch our lives. Cut off any body part that causes you to sin. But he also wants us to pay attention to, at least, two other sin-leading efforts.
The first is to watch how others lead us. I am forever grateful for the mentors I had early in my pastoral leadership. They instructed me away from the cult of leadership and power. Their focus on discipleship and faith showed me being a pastor was only one aspect of my faith. I still had to follow. And I needed to rely not on my youthfulness or charisma, but solely on God's grace.
Reflecting on that, there's a two-fold aspect of care that happens. When we hold our Christian leaders accountable to God's mission, we guard our souls and theirs.
But we also need to watch how we lead others. That millstone is heavy, and the image is striking. Jesus takes seriously our care for one another. To be sure, there are no church leadership positions in Jesus' lesson. Don't think you're not a leader because a church committee hasn't nominated you. We all have some kind of agency in our relationships.
The question, then, is, To what are we directing the hearts and minds of those around us?
The beast from the abyss is what most of us, probably, connect to the Antichrist. An image from the book of Revelation, he's the final deceiver in the apocalypse that opposes Jesus. That is, in the final battle between God and this great enemy, the antichrist appears. But scripture includes mentions of antichrist in less direct ways as well. In Revelation, the Antichrist is a character in a narrative. In life, antichrists are right in front of us.
Simply, an antichrist is anyone, anything opposed to Jesus. And this is how the New Testament labels false teachers. These teachers did not teach the truth of Jesus. They left their, supposed, faith in Jesus. They left the church of Jesus. As John says, "you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come" (1 John 2:18).
Many Christians spend much attention and imagination determining who "the" antichrist is. We're sure which world leader or superstar must be the one. To be sure, everyone's been wrong so far. Unfortunately, we spend less time discerning what personal messages and values we consume. Many of these might be more antichrist than we imagine.
They don't seem like much, but they don't lead us to grace or to experience God's freedom. In many ways, to use a term coined as early as the sixteenth century, they make us practical atheists. Practical atheists affirm a belief in God. They just don't live in ways that affirm a belief in God. There's no sense of discipleship. No focus on servanthood. And God tends to only be called on when there's a need.
So, pay attention to what you read and watch. Notice what captures your attention and occupies your time. Are these things keeping you from knowing God? Do they speak against the holiness, love and virtue your faith affirms? Be careful because many antichrists can make us mini antichrists.
