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Earth to Echo – Aliens Away From Home

July 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

 

 

 

 

God on Film: Earth to Echo – Aliens Away From Home
Sycamore Creek Church
July 13/14, 2014
Tom Arthur

 

 

Have you ever felt lost?  Have you ever felt like you’re in the wrong place?  The wrong school?  The wrong friends?  The wrong job? The wrong city?  The wrong marriage?  The wrong life?  The wrong planet?  All of us have felt lost at some point.  All of us have felt a long way from home.  Maybe you even feel lost or away from home right now.  What do you do when you’re lost and away from home?

A hunter went out for a day of hunting and along the way got lost.  After stumbling around in the forest for several hours in was tired, but he kept searching for something that looked like home.  Eventually after several days he stumbled into someone else’s camp. He said, “I sure am glad to see you.  I’ve been lost for three days.” The other hunter replied, “Don’t get too excited, buddy.  I’ve been lost for three weeks.”

A week ago I took my son, Micah, on his first backpacking trip.  We went to North Manitou Island.  I gave him a small whistle to wear around his neck at all times under his shirt.  I told him that if he ever felt scared or lost to blow the whistle.  I told him that his daddy would find him.  Don’t you wish you had a whistle that you could blow when you were lost or scared, and then your heavenly daddy would come find you?

Today I’d like to look at a story in the Bible about a time when Israel was lost and away from home.  I want to give four tips to aliens who find themselves lost and away from home.

1.     We’re All Aliens In Exile
First, you’re not alone.  We read from the prophet Jeremiah about a time when the Babylonian Empire came to Jerusalem and lay siege to the city.  Eventually the walls came down and the Babylonians carted off all the people of influence away to Babylon.  We read in Jeremiah:

This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem.
~Jeremiah 29:4 NLT

The siege lasted four months and Jerusalem fell in 597BC.  The Hebrew people were no longer a Jewish cultural cocoon.  They could no longer assume certain religious rituals or cultural practices or communal identity.  They couldn’t plan on eating kosher food.  They couldn’t plan on observing the Sabbath.  They couldn’t follow the rituals of temple sacrifice.  And they couldn’t keep separate what they considered clean and unclean.  They were thrown into the mixing pot of Babylon and became aliens in exile away from their home.

We’re all aliens in exile.  There is a way in which we are all living in foreign land.  C. S. Lewis says:

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death.
~ C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

I don’t think Lewis meant to suggest that we weren’t made to live on the earth in these bodies, but rather that something has gone wrong with the intent of God’s creation and until Jesus comes back to restore creation and make all things new, we will always be living in a world that we were not made for, a broken, wounded, sinful, enemy-occupied world.

Or to put it another way, Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon write:

The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another.  In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens.
~Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon (Resident Aliens)

The original word in Greek for the church is “ecclesia.”  Ecclesia is made up of two parts: Ec = “out” and Kaleo = “to call.”  The church is the community that is called out of the world and country they live in.  Their primary allegiance isn’t to any flag or country, but their primary allegiance is to God’s community, God’s kingdom, the church.  We are then all resident aliens, living in a place we don’t belong.

If you feel like you are an alien lost and away from home, know that we are all aliens in exile.

2.     Work for Peace and Prosperity
So should we neglect or ignore the world in which we find ourselves living?  Absolutely not!  As we continue reading God’s word to Israel in exile through Jeremiah, we hear a clear call to live where we are.

“Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”
~Jeremiah 29:5-7 NLT

It would be easy to give up on the foreign country of Babylon.  It would even be easy to do all you could to undermine the place where you live, especially if they were responsible for sacking your home town and pulling you away from home.  But Jeremiah tells the people to put down roots by building houses.  If you’ve ever built or bought a house you know how it roots you in a place.   Jeremiah tells them to produce the things they need to sustain themselves: gardens, food, produce.  Go on with your dreams and hopes for the next generation.  Marry.  Have children.  And grandchildren!  Don’t whither away but multiply.  Grow.  Add people to the family of God!  Then maybe most shocking of all, Jeremiah tells the people to pray for the wellbeing of the Babylonian Empire.  Pray for your enemies!  Pray for the people who make you feel lost and away from home.  Pray for their welfare and their prosperity.

You know that bully who makes you feel lost at school.  Pray for him.  You know that boss or co-worker who makes your job miserable.  Pray for her to get a raise.  You know that wife who you can’t ever remember why you married her in their first place because all the love and spark is gone from your marriage, pray for her and serve her so that she thrives.

If you find yourself feeling like an alien lost and away from home, work for the peace and prosperity of the place where you find yourself.

3.     Rest in God’s Future Plans
What about the future?  What will it hold?  Will things get better?  Will you ever stop feeling lost and away from home?  Will you ever cease to be an alien?  If we go back to the prophet Jeremiah, we read one of the most well known passages in all of the Bible:

This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen.
~Jeremiah 29:10-12 NLT

Notice that God says “I know.” God knows your future, you don’t.  And notice that God doesn’t just have one place for you but God has many plans.  I think that too often we think of God’s plan our future like a multiple choice question with one right answer.  If we miss the right answer, then we’re out of luck for the rest of our lives.  We’ve blown it all.  But God’s will isn’t like a test with one set of right answers.  I think God’s will is more like a playground surrounded by a fence.  There are lots of right things to do within the playground.  The fence around the playground is the moral law.  The fence is more about how you live and play on the playground.  You do to others as you would have them do to you.  You love your neighbor as you love your self.  You don’t steal, cheat, lie, murder, covet, and the like.  Don’t go outside the fence but inside the fence, God delights in watching you find your own joy.  There are many plans that God has for you in this playground of life, not just one plan.

When you find yourself lost and away from home, rest and relax in God’s plans for you.

4.     You Will Go Home
The last tip Jeremiah has for aliens who find themselves away from home is this: know that you will eventually go home.  Jeremiah says:

If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord. “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”
~Jeremiah 29:13-14 NLT

You will not be an alien for all eternity.  You will come to your heavenly home.  What image do you have of heaven in your imagination?  Do you think of fat little baby angels sitting on clouds playing harps and singing for all eternity?  If so, then your imagination is probably shaped more by a toilet paper commercial than the Bible.  The primary images of heaven in the Bible are a party, a garden, a new city and community, a place without evil, a mansion with a room for you, a homecoming, and a banquet or feast.

Today we each have the opportunity to get a little taste of heaven as we come to the heavenly feast that is communion.  In communion we get a glimpse of what heaven is like.  A community of friends energized by a shared mission and vision sitting around a table together sharing a feast in the presence of God.  It’s like the old gospel tune, Sweet By and By:

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

 

 

Prayer
Make it soon, Lord.  Make it soon.

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Carols – Away in a Manger / Sandy Hook

December 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

 

 

 

 

Carols – Away in a Manger
Sycamore Creek Church
December 16 & 17, 2012
Tom Arthur

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
Psalm 42:3 NRSV

Today we mourn.  Today we cry.  Today our hearts our broken.  And how can we continue this Christmas celebration after the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut?  We’re in the middle of a Christmas series called Carols.  We’re supposed to be looking at a new carol each week and unpacking it and exploring it.  Today we were supposed to look at the carol, Away in a Manger.   I had a great sermon lined up to ask the question: is the “little Lord Jesus” Lord of a little of your life or all of your life?  But somehow that just didn’t work anymore, so I had to throw that sermon out and start again.

I must admit, even the carol, Away in a Manger, felt like a bunch of sentimental B.S. as I began reworking this sermon.  But as I collected my thoughts for what new thing God was calling me to say, I felt that the carol still had something to say to us today, or at least provided a framework for a word that God might be speaking to us today.  So to refresh your memory, here’s a music video for the song:

 

Away in Enemy Occupied Territory
Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed,
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head;
The stars in the heavens
Looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay.

This is a quaint image of the “little Lord Jesus” in a cute little hay filled manger.  But the spiritual reality of what’s going on here is something much deeper.  Have you ever read the Christmas story in the book of Revelation?  You get a much different picture of what’s going on.

Revelation 12:1-9 NRSV
A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.  Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.  His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.  And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.  And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  

The “little Lord Jesus” is born at ground zero of a spiritual war going on in heaven.  There are two forces at work in the world, the forces of light (heaven) and the forces of darkness (hell).  It isn’t always a clean cut issue of who is on what side, because each one of us is a mixture of light and dark, heaven and hell.  If you look within yourself and are honest with yourself, you’ll see some good stuff and some ugly stuff.  But in Jesus Christ, there is no darkness, only light.

1 John 1:5 NRSV
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

So the first thing we need to recognize about our world when we encounter tragedies like the one that took place at Sandy Hook is that it is taking place amidst enemy occupied territory.

Away in a Manger: Jesus Does Cry
The cattle are lowing,
The poor Baby wakes,
But little Lord Jesus,
No crying He makes.
I love Thee, Lord Jesus;
Look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle
Till morning is nigh.

This is one verse that needs some work.  It needs some work because it implies some kind of not-human baby.  We need to separate fact from fiction in this carol.  There is no mention of animals in the Christmas story.  And there is no mention of Jesus’ crying status.  But somehow we have got it in our collective imagination, probably due to this song, that Jesus doesn’t cry, and if Jesus doesn’t cry as a baby, then Jesus probably doesn’t cry as an adult.  Not true.

When Jesus showed up four days after his friend, Lazarus, had died, Jesus wept (John 11:35).  It’s an odd place for Jesus to cry because it’s just before Jesus raises him from the dead!  But Jesus gets caught up in the emotion of the situation.  He feels the pain of those around him.  He suffers with them.  Jesus knows what its like to have a loved one die, and Jesus wept.

Jesus also knows what it’s like to suffer.  He was executed in a very painful way: crucifixion.  Crucifixion kills you not from bleeding, but because over time you get too  tired to pull yourself up to take a breath, and you suffocate.  Jesus was born in enemy occupied territory so as to lead a rescue mission to save all who would follow him by giving us the ability to follow his teachings on how to love God and others in a right way.  But the world encountered this perfect love and executed him.  Jesus didn’t want to die this way. He even asked his heavenly Father to do something else, but submitted to whatever happened.

And while Jesus hung on the cross he felt abandoned by God.  He cried out the first line of Psalm 22, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?  In the face of his own suffering, Jesus asked God Why?  If Jesus asked God Why? then surely it’s OK for us too to ask God Why?  And let us remember too that in the midst of Jesus’ death on the cross, the Heavenly Father knows what it is like to lose a child.  The Father and the Son are not removed from our suffering but know intimately what it is like.

Sometimes It Gets Worse
Be near me, Lord Jesus;
I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever
And love me I pray!
Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care,
And fit us for Heaven
To live with Thee there.

When I heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook, the first scripture that came to mind was the massacre of the innocents.  Here’s the story:

Matthew 2:13-18 NRSV
Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”  Then Josephgot up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men,he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

When Jesus comes into the world and enters enemy occupied territory, sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better.  The forces of darkness don’t just lie down and play dead.  They punch back with everything they’ve got.  In fact, sometimes Jesus’ very presence, the presence of light amidst the darkness, is the very thing that causes it to get worse before it gets better.

In the face of things getting worse, sometimes we Christians say some things that I don’t think are very helpful.  One thing I think we often say to comfort one another in times of tragedy is that everything happens for a reason.  Is this really true?  This idea implies that God orchestrated these things to happen so that God could accomplish something.  It’s as though God set up the domino pieces of tragedy so that they would fall into suffering in just the right way.  According to this view, God caused these shootings to happen so that God could get something else to work the way God wanted it to work.

But does everything happen for a reason?  Did God cause this to happen for a reason?

Was this the will of God?

Closely related to these questions are some other questions: How can you believe in God in the face of something like this?  If God is good and all-powerful, how does God allow something like this to happen?

There are no easy answers to these questions but let me offer some ideas that point us toward answers.

First, the Bible isn’t Pollyanna.  Everyone in the Bible doesn’t get what they want and live a perfect and charmed life.  The Bible is full of stories of people hanging on to faith amidst great and terrible suffering.  So don’t think for a second that what the Bible is about is getting rid of all the suffering in your life.  My own experience is that often times following Jesus in a broken world causes me more suffering.

Second, Jesus is the “little Lord Jesus” because he does not force or coerce himself on us.  God allows freedom in the creation, but the natural world of “mother nature” and the human world of each one of our hearts.  God gives each one of us the wonderful and terrible gift of the freedom to choose or reject God and God’s ways.  This is not to say that God is disinterested in our lives or that God is a God who simply created the clock, wound it up, and lets it run.  But rather, most of the time God allows us all to live with the natural consequences of our behavior and the natural consequences of others’  behaviors.  And in that freedom, we people who are all a mixture of heaven and hell, do some bad things.  Some of those bad things are small, and some of those bad things are tremendous.

Third, God can and often does take something bad and turn it, twist it, conform it, even push it into something good. St. Paul tells us that “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28 NRSV).  Let me make sure you understand the distinction between what Paul is saying and the idea that everything happens for a reason.  “Everything happens for a reason” means that God made it happen.  What Paul is saying is that once something happens, God can use it to God’s purposes and God’s ends.  These are two very different ideas.  Do not confuse them.  Paul is not saying that everything happens for a purpose of God.  Paul is saying that everything that happens can be used for God’s purposes.

Lament is OK
Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed,
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head;
The stars in the heavens
Looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay.

It’s Christmas time and we want to celebrate.  But this tragedy won’t let us celebrate.  And it is OK to lament.  It’s OK to lament because the Bible is full of laments.  The prayer book of the Bible, the Psalms, have more laments in them than any other kind of prayer including praises.  The book of Job, one of the longest books in the Old Testament, is basically one big lament.  Then there’s even a book of the Bible called Lamentations, written after the city of Jerusalem was sacked and many were taken off into exile in Babylon.

We are living in a world that is both already and not yet.  Jesus already entered into enemy occupied territory to initiate the great rescue mission, but the mission is not yet complete.  In the midst of it being not yet complete, it is OK to lament.  So I would like to end this message on a lament.

Lamentations 2:18-19 NAB
Cry out to the Lord;
Moan, Daughter Zion!
Let your tears flow like a torrent
day and night;
Let there be no respite for you,
no repose for your eyes.
Rise up, shrill in the night,
at the beginning of every watch;
Pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord
Lift up your hands to God
for the lives of your little ones.

Lord, have mercy.

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Love Wins By Rob Bell

August 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Love Wins

Love Wins
By Rob Bell
Library (Book/Audio)
Rating: 6 of 10

I think I gave this book a rating of 6 of 10 because it’s really only half a book.  There is so much white space on the pages, that I feel like I mostly read a pamphlet and not an actual book.  I find Bell an incredibly gifted and exceedingly compelling communicator and preacher and a not very good writer.  I have wept powerfully and uncontrollably several times listening to Bell preach.  I have never wept while reading his books.  This is not to say that I find nothing helpful in this or other books of his.  Perhaps my expectations are too high, but something is missing, and I can’t put my finger on it.  Enough about style…let’s get to the content.

Bell offers a vision for heaven and hell that doesn’t fit in any box I have been given growing up in Evangelicalism.  He most certainly leans toward a universalism at the most and an inclusivism at the least, but I was taught growing up that these views always ended up with a less than orthodox Christology, or belief in Jesus.  The reading that I did while in college complemented this view.  John Hick, a classic “Protestant liberal” universalist (every way is a different path up the same mountain), has written of The Myth of God Incarnate.  Jesus really wasn’t God. He was just a really great teacher and model who had a uniquely powerful connection to God.  Then there’s the issue of God’s very own self.  Bishop John Shelby Spong, the controversial Episcopalian bishop, declares that we need to give up a theistic view of God as personal in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.  These are the end points, I was taught, for universalism.

But Bell ends somewhere else: an “exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity” (155).  For Bell, Jesus is everything I have been taught about him growing up.  He is as the Nicene Creed states: “The only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”  Bell holds an orthodox view of Jesus while at the same time being very optimistic about the salvation of others.  This is an intriguing theological mix and one that Bell is not the first to hold in Christian history, as he makes sure we know (107).  For Bell, salvation has less to do with entrance and more to do with joyful participation (179).  This sounds very much like Wesley’s view of salvation when he says in his sermon The Scripture Way of Salvation:

First, let us inquire, What is salvation? The salvation which is here spoken of is not what is frequently understood by that word, the going to heaven, eternal happiness…it is a present thing; a blessing which, through the free mercy of God, ye are now in possession of. Nay, the words may be rendered, and that with equal propriety, “Ye have been saved”: so that the salvation which is here spoken of might be extended to the entire work of God, from the first dawning of grace in the soul, till it is consummated in glory.

On this point, Wesley sounds a lot like Bell and Bell sounds a lot like Wesley.

On the flip side of things Bell says that “hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story” (170), and so we live in agony right now like the older son in the parable of the prodigal son who sees his father as a slave master demanding obedience or the younger son who wanders from his father’s love and must ask himself the question of whether he can again be his father’s son.  This parable (and others) leads Bell to see heaven and hell not as some separate place but more as a state of being which intermingle with one another.  Hell is the older brother being at the party, heaven, but unwilling to participate.

My major critique of Bell is that he has drawn a classic either/or scenario.  It seems that for Bell heaven and hell are either separate places or intermingling places.  I don’t know why they can’t be essentially both things.  I think C.S. Lewis offers a more powerful vision of hell in his book The Great Divorce.  In this classic book we see Lewis describing hell as a place that someone chooses both to become and to dwell.  The more that they choose this place, the further they move from heaven.  There is a kind of gray area in between where shallow hell and shallow heaven are something of a purgatory, and these places touch by way of a daily bus ride between the two.  The further one gets into heaven, the more impossible it becomes for them to enter into hell and vice versa.  In his introduction to The Great Divorce, Lewis rightly points out that this is fiction and ought not be taken as doctrine, but fiction has a way of helping the imagination as it ponders doctrine.  While The Great Divorce has clearly influenced Bell, Lewis does with fiction what Bell is not able to do with nonfiction: hold both a state of being and a place of being in creative tension with one another.  The old adage is true: it’s not either/or but both/and.

Currently Reading/Listening
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman
Exponential by Dave and Jon Ferguson
The Busy Family’s Guide to Spirituality by David Robinson
Parenting with Purpose by Oddbjorn Evenshaug, Dag Hallen, and Roland Martinson
At the Still Point compiled by Sarah Arthur
Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
Ignite by Nelson Searcy

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Rob Bell – Love Wins

March 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Love WinsSo if you haven’t been on the planet lately, you may have missed the storm of controversy over Rob Bell’s newest book, Love Wins.  Nothing controversial there, but the subtitle goes a little further: A Book about Heaven and Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.   Now that’s one heck of a subtitle!

OK, so there’s really nothing all that controversial in the subtitle because it makes no claims except the claim that this issue is going to be explored.  The big firestorm began with the promo video:

The video suggests that Bell’s book is going to claim a kind of universalism, the belief that no one goes to hell but everyone goes to heaven.  (Side note: This American Life did a fascinating story on another mega-church pastor who decided he didn’t believe in hell: The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of Hell, and with it everything he’d worked for over his entire life.)  Lots of discussion began even before the book came out.  Finally the book hit the shelves, and we could all read what Bell really believed.  While I haven’t had the time to read it myself (I hope to at some point), I have kept up a little bit with some of the reaction.  Here are a couple of noteworthy responses:

1. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presents a classic conservative evangelical response to Bell’s ideas in this relatively short press release.  While I don’t agree with everything Mohler says about the Bible and Christianity, he is an important enough figure in today’s American Christian landscape that he can’t be ignored.

2. Martin Bashir of MSNBC presents a pretty pointed Q&A session with Bell and attempts to nail him down a little more than Bell prefers to be nailed down.  I found this video even made me squirm!  In the end I appreciated Bashir’s straightforward persistent approach.

3. Good Morning America: Bell receives a much warmer reception on Good Morning America.

The Great DivorceIf you’re looking for a helpful book or resource to dive into this question of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, I’d suggest two books.  The first is the book that my Agnostic Pub Group just finished reading: The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  Lewis presents a somewhat more palatable view of hell where those in hell have chosen to be there because they can’t bear the reality of heaven.  (By the way, this group continues its reading on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays at Old Chicago Pizza in Okemos at 7PM with noted atheist Phillip Pullman’s newest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.  The group includes atheists, agnostics, Christians, and every shade in between.  Come join us for some good brew and good discussion.)

The second book I’d recommend is a book edited by my theology professor while I was at Wheaton, Tim Phillips, and Dennis Okholm titled, Four Views of Salvation in a Pluralistic World.  The book includes four different authors who believe in four different ideas about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  Each is given a chapter to present their view and following that chapter is a response from each of the other three.  The original author then writes a response to the responses.  The book is a little dense at times and also repetitive (you hear what one author believes in his chapter, his response to the other three responses, and his three responses to the other three chapters), but well worth the time to better understand the issue at hand.

If you’re wondering where I fall in the spectrum of this book, I personally like Clark Pinnock’s “inclusivism.”  He’s perhaps a little left of center without dropping key orthodox beliefs about who God is and who Jesus is.  So what is inclusivism?  You’ll have to read the book to find out (or wait for the sermon series that is building in my mind).

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Questions – What’s Up with Heaven or Hell?

April 13, 2010 by

Questions

Questions – What’s Up with Heaven or Hell?
Matthew 22:1-14
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
April 11, 2010

Peace, Friends!

This past Monday was a pretty heavenly day for me.  Yeah, you knew it was coming.  I had the opportunity to go watch my alma mater, Duke University, win the NCAA championship.  I had an awesome time if you consider three hours of gut wrenching anxiety awesome.  So my step-dad got his hands on some tickets and offered for me to come down to Indy to go to the game with my mom.  It didn’t really fit in my schedule, but this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I made it work.  So I drive down and get to my mom’s house.  We leave about three hours early to find good parking and brave the crowds at the Lucas Oil Stadium.  I’m pumped walking in amidst a sea of Butler fans.  It was a zoo.  The street we’re on has been shut down because there are too many people to walk on the sidewalks.  So we’re walking down the street and Lucas Oil Stadium comes into view.  I’m even more pumped.  We go under a bridge and come out right in front of Lucas Oil Stadium.  I’m even more pumped.  I turn my head to the right and there’s these two guys wearing red and one of them is holding a big red sign that says, “You don’t deserve Jesus.  You deserve hell.”  What?!  All of a sudden it’s like I’m at a family reunion and uncle Jack is spouting off his wacko theories again.  Embarrassment.   I try not to look.  I try to ignore them, but their sign is designed to not be ignored.  “You don’t deserve Jesus.  You deserve hell.”  Do I even really believe that?  Is this strategy for drawing people to Jesus Christ even working?  But they’re family, Christian family, so I chalk it up to the more eccentric side of the family and head into Lucas Oil Stadium to root for the Devils, the Blue Devils!

Today we continue the series of Questions.  Each question is being introduced by a teenager in our church.  Last week Alex asked the question: How do I know that Jesus is who he said he is?  We explored uncertainty, doubt, and faith.  Today Alyssa asks the question: What’s up with heaven or hell and what about my friends who die?  Is it just like that sign said: You deserve hell?  Or is there another way to look at this heaven or hell question?  Let’s dive into a story that Jesus tells to begin exploring this question.  It’s the parable of the wedding feast.

Matthew 22:1-14 (NLT)

1 Jesus told them several other stories to illustrate the Kingdom. He said, 2 “The Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding feast for his son.  3 Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify everyone that it was time to come. But they all refused!  4 So he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!’  5 But the guests he had invited ignored them and went about their business, one to his farm, another to his store.  6 Others seized his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them.

7 “Then the king became furious. He sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their city.  8 And he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor.  9 Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’

10 “So the servants brought in everyone they could find, good and bad alike, and the banquet hall was filled with guests.  11 But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding.  12‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how is it that you are here without wedding clothes?’ And the man had no reply.  13 Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

What we’ve just read is something unlike anything we’ve read up to this point in my time with you.  It’s a parable or what the NLT calls a “story.”  It’s not about something that actually happened, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.  Parables are symbolic stories.  We understand symbols because they are used in our story telling today.  Take these numbers for instance:

4    8    15    16    23    42

Those aren’t just any numbers.  They are very special numbers.  They’re the mysterious numbers that have driven Lost fans crazy ever since the first season.  What do they stand for?  Where did they come from?  In this final season we’ve learned that the numbers are symbols.  They each stand for one character in the show:

4 – Locke

8 – Hurley

15 – Sawyer

16 – Sayid

23 – Jack

42 – Sun and/or Jin.

So now we know what the symbols stand for, but what do they mean?  What does it mean that each number represents one character.  And what about the characters that don’t have a number?  Ah, we know but we don’t know.  We see but we don’t see.  We hear but we don’t hear.  A parable kinda drives us crazy sometimes.

There are two lines of thinking about parables.  One line of thinking says that a parable has one main point and the details aren’t really very important.  A second line of thinking says that the details are what  make the story work and that the details have lots of different possible meanings.  I tend to take a third line when it comes to parables.  I tend to think a parable has one main point and that the details are flexible.  A parable then has a certain amount of flexibility in its interpretation.

So what do the symbols stand for in the parable of the wedding feast?    I think it’s fairly obvious that the King equals God.  So who are the first guests who were invited: “Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify everyone that it was time to come. But they all refused!” (Matthew 22:3, NLT). These first guests stand for the nation of Israel.  God invited the nation of Israel into a covenant with God through Abraham.

Amazingly all these invited guests refuse!  Here we catch the first glimpse of what God’s judgment is like.  God’s knee jerk reaction is mercy.  We read, “So [Again] he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!’” (Matthew 22:4, NLT).  The king makes a second invitation!

What kind of king are we talking about here?  This is no king I know about.  We don’t quite have the experience here in America of what it must be like to have an absolute sovereign like a king.  I have had two run ins with authority that approximate what it must be like to be summoned by a king, but only approximate.  The first was the one and only one time I’ve been called to the principal’s office.  Actually, it was the vice principal.  It was in ninth grade.  I was having a bad year with my math teacher.  This teacher was horrible.  One day I got so fed up with her that I told her to shut up just as the bell was ringing for the end of class, and I walked out of the room.  She chased me down the hall and gave me a demerit.  Later that day I was called to the principal’s office.  What would have happened had I refused?!  Certainly it would not have been good for me.

The other time I faced down an authority figure similar to a king was one night in a show-down with my dad.  I don’t really remember what the argument was about.  We didn’t have too many arguments growing up, but this one was pretty intense.  I don’t remember what my dad said, but I just got up and walked out of the room.  My bedroom was in the basement so I headed for my room.  I remember my father standing at the top of the stairs with his voice booming like a loud speaker demanding that I come back up those stairs.  He started to count.  He had never counted with me before.  I stood my ground…1…2…I caved and came back up the stairs.  Had I refused, I might not be alive today to tell the story!

Now neither the principal nor my dad have the kind of power and authority that a king has, and no king has the power and authority that God has, and this king was refused and sent a second invitation.  This tells me that the king is first and foremost a merciful king.  This king does not rush to judgment but gives every possible chance to accept the invitation.

What kind of invitation is this?  This merciful king makes an urgent and generous invitation.  We read, “So [the king] sent other servants to tell them, “The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!” (Matthew 22:4, NLT)  Hurry! The food is getting cold.  The meal is ready right now.  Don’t dawdle or you’ll miss the good stuff.  Good stuff?  Yeah.  The good stuff.  Choice meats.  This is an extravagant celebration.  I’m reminded of the kind of feast that was put on for us every night when my parents took us on a cruise.  Every kind of meat, cheese, vegetable, and sweet you could imagine.  You want a second lobster tail?  No problem.  Would you like some filet mignon with that?  No problem.  Choice meats.  The king makes an urgent and generous invitation.

Recently I came across a commercial that shows the absurdity of what’s going on in this story.  Check it out:

This is crazy.  The guests are at the table.  Your loved one too.  A beautiful meal is ready.  And here you are laying on the ground playing with the cat!  C.S. Lewis reminds us of what’s going on in moments like this:

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory).

The generous invitation is really an invitation filled with joy.  It is an invitation made to goodness that is beyond our imagination.  And it is urgent.

So how do the guests respond?  We see two responses from the guests: apathy and antipathy.  We read, “But the guests he had invited ignored them and went about their business, one to his farm, another to his store.  Others seized his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them” (Matthew 22:5-6, NLT).  Some responded with apathy by simply ignoring the invitation.  Others responded violently and killed the messengers!

Let’s look at the first group, those who responded with apathy.  It’s a little hard for us to imagine what it would mean to respond to God’s invitation with apathy, but we do it all the time, even those of us who call ourselves Christians.  We, like the people in the story, are more interested in our business, our food, or what we’re going to buy next.  Our apathy is based in our character.  Who would ignore a king’s invitation?  Usually we think that people will care about God and love God when they see God after death.  But what if they ignore God just as much then?  If they don’t like God’s invitation now, what makes you think they’ll like it any more when they die?  Perhaps people actually choose hell because they don’t like heaven!

C.S. Lewis helps us wrap our imaginations around what hell might be if we chose it over heaven.  In his novel, The Great Divorce, he tells the story of a bus that travels from hell to heaven and back every day.  People in hell can get on it any time they want, and usually when they get to heaven, they choose to go back to hell.  The natural inclinations they had when they were alive only develop further in the same direction when they die.  If they were aiming toward God in life, then they develop more love for God after death.  If they were aiming toward self when they lived, then they only become more selfish when they die.

The narrator in The Great Divorce meets another person on the bus on their way from hell to heaven.  He comes to find out that in hell, anyone can build anything they want by simply thinking about it.  At first this sounds great, but then he hears about how people move away from their neighbors at the first sign of conflict.  They simply move one street over and build a house by thinking about it.  Pretty soon the houses in the neighborhoods are miles, even tens of thousands of miles apart.  Hell becomes a place where people who want to be isolated can live out their selfishness in perfect isolation.

One character goes to hunt down Napoleon and after hundreds of years of traveling finally finds him.  What he sees is a man pacing back and forth in his house blaming this general or that general.  Napoleon is in hell pacing back and forth for hundreds of years blaming others for his failures thousands of miles away from the nearest person. Now that’s what I call hell: allowing our own selfish tendencies to play out to their logical conclusion.  This is a hell that we choose both here on earth and after death.  This is a hell that is a natural out flowing of our natural nature.

So how does the king in Jesus’ parable respond after the second merciful invitation is refused?  The king responds with proportionate judgment.  We read, “Then the king became furious. He sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their city” (Matthew 22:7, NLT).  Notice that the king destroys those who killed his messengers.  This seems odd coming from Jesus who taught that we are to turn the other cheek.  Wouldn’t God do the same thing?  Remember, God is the king, and we are not.  Never forget that we are not the king.

Interestingly enough no mention is made of what happens to those who responded with apathy by ignoring the king’s invitation.  Does this suggest that there is still time for those people to respond and reconcile with the king?

So at this point the king has had enough of those who were first invited and the king opens up his invitation to others.  Who are these others?  If the first batch was Israel, then the others are you and me, the church.  We read, “[The king] said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see’” (Matthew 22:8-9 (NLT).

This third invitation is like the first.  It is urgent and generous, even to the point of being gratuitous.  The wedding feast is still ready.  The food is still getting cold.  Come right now or else you’ll miss the amazing feast that is prepared.  This invitation is made to everyone.  Not just a select group but to the entire kingdom.  Come!

Something odd happens at this point.  After many have responded the king finds someone who doesn’t quite fit in.  We read, “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding” (Matthew 22:11, NLT).  This seems somewhat odd.  What are the wedding clothes and what do they stand for?  The wedding clothes are faith and good works.  We must not only respond to the invitation, but we must respond with the actions that are appropriate for such a response.  I can’t say I love my wife and then ignore her.  I can’t say I’m a good employee and always show up late.  I can’t say I’m trustworthy with money and then blow it every time I get some extra in my pocket.  There are clothes that are appropriate for a wedding and there are clothes that are not appropriate.

So the king responds again with proportionate judgment.  It is apparently within the king’s power to destroy his enemies, but the king does not destroy this individual.  He “bind[s] him hand and foot and throw[s] him out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:13, NLT).  Weeping and gnashing of teeth?  I wonder if this isn’t the kind of weeping and gnashing of teeth that we saw Napoleon doing pacing back and forth year after year after year blaming this person and then that person, never coming to recognize one’s own responsibility in the matter.

Let’s get back to the question that Alyssa asked: What’s up with heaven or hell and what about my friends who die?  Alyssa, I don’t know that any of us can know about the eternal state of someone else after death, but what we do know is that God is like a king who while making an urgent and generous invitation responds first with mercy when refused and judges proportionately to the wrong doing.  In other words, we worship a God who is good and we can rest in the good and merciful judgment of God, both for us and for our friends.  The parable that Jesus tells us of the king and the wedding feast does put before us and our friends an invitation.  Hurry!  Have faith.  Meet that faith with good works that show your love for God and others.  Hurry!  The food is getting cold.  Hurry!  The offer is generous.  Hurry!  The king is good and merciful.  Hurry!

Next Steps

1. Submit Questions (via email, questions@sycamorecreekchurch.org, or in the comments below)
2. Join Small Group (to explore questions with others)
3. Make your neighborhood a little less like hell and a little more like heaven (by getting to know your neighbors and reconciling with them)
4. Other

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What’s up with heaven or hell?

April 6, 2010 by

We’re currently in a series called Questions.  The questions I’m answering each week are based on questions the students in my church asked me one day when I met with them.  I thought they should present the question then themselves.  So here’s the question for this Sunday asked by Alyssa: What’s up with heaven or hell?

On the last Sunday, I’ll be answering (or attempting to answer!) questions submitted by you.  Got a question?  Post it in the comment section below.

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