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Some Things Are Just Essential – Christ

August 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment

essentials

 

 

 

 

 

Some Things Are Just Essential
Sycamore Creek Church
July 31 & August 2
Tom Arthur

 

 

Peace friends!

When you pack to go on a trip, what are the essentials?  When you buy a new car, what are the essentials?  When you go to the grocery store, what are the essentials you need to bring home?  Some things are just essential whatever you happen to be doing.  The same thing is true when it comes to our faith.  Some beliefs are just essential.  Over the next five weeks we’re going to be looking at five essentials of belief.

This five-week series is what we like to call a belief-series.  We do several kinds of series around here at Sycamore Creek.  We do Buzz series.  These are series designed to create a buzz for Big Day outreach events.  Then we do HABITS series about spiritual practices.  Once a year we do a vision series looking at the mission and vision of Sycamore Creek.  Twice a year we do a Bible series.  One series on an Old Testament book and one series on a New Testament book.  Then we’ve got the holiday series of Lent/Easter and Christmas.  And once a year we do a belief series looking at doctrine, theology, and beliefs.

Why do a belief series once a year?  Why do beliefs matter?  Beliefs matter because they have much to do with how you live.  If you believe in an angry God, then you’ll live like God is out to get you.  If you believe in an uninvolved and disinterested God, then you’ll live like God doesn’t care what you do.  But if you believe in a loving God, then you’ll live like you’re on God’s mission in this world.

A good sermon speaks to your heart (emotions), hands and feet (action), tummy (humor), and head (intellect).  Unless you think your brain, your mind, or your intellect is entirely unimportant, then our beliefs matter.  So once a year we seek to speak to the head, your mind and intellect.  That’s what we’ll be focusing on primarily over the next five weeks.  We hope to hit the heart, hands and tummy along the way too!

Sola?
Back in 2013 a big conference came to Lansing.  It’s probably not one that registered on many of your radars, but it was called Sola 13.  It was hosted by the more reformed & “conservative” churches in the area.  Some big name theologians and church leaders were in the area.  It was too good to pass up.  A couple of us went, but as I sat through some of it (I wasn’t able to attend all of it), I kept thinking, I agree with much of what is being taught, but I’d say it in a slightly different way or put a slightly different emphasis on it.  This series is an opportunity to chart a more moderate (or middle way) course for the essentials of belief.

The word “sola” is Latin for “alone” or “solely.”  There were five “solas” that were being discussed at this conference:

  1. (Sola) Christ Alone
  2. (Sola) Faith Alone
  3. (Sola) Grace Alone
  4. (Sola) Scripture Alone
  5. (Sola) God’s Glory Alone

These five solas come from the 16th Protestant Reformation.  The Protestant Reformation was a “protest” movement against the Roman Catholic Church.  It was a theological and political, even nationalistic, struggle.  The debates often ended in life or death decisions.  These solas really mattered to the founding fathers of the Protestant Reformation.

Most of you have probably heard of Martin Luther.  He was the German monk who first broke from the Roman Catholic Church to found the Lutherans.  In 1517 he nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.  Luther was protesting most famously the Pope and the selling of indulgences (financial payments made to the church to raise money for remodeling St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and get your relatives out of purgatory).

But Luther wasn’t the only Protestant reformer.  Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin founded reformation movements that resulted in the Reformed and Presbyterian churches in Switzerland (Zurich and Geneva).  There was also the Radical Reformation which resulted in the Baptists, Mennonites, and other churches all across Europe.  They were non-conformists (now you know why it’s so hard to talk to some Baptists…it’s in the DNA of their founding!) and non-state sponsored churches.

Then there was the Church of England or Anglican Church and its off-shoots—the Episcopalian Church in America and the Methodist churches (and later the Pentecostal churches).  The Church of England officially broke from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 when King Henry VIII wanted a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she wasn’t giving him a son, an heir to the throne.  The Pope wouldn’t grant a divorce so King Henry VIII simply broke from the church and began his own.  He became the head of the Church of England which eventually charted a middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism.  Methodists are the descendants of that “middle way.”  So let’s get back to the Solas…

Sola Polemics (Protestant vs. Catholic)
Each of the five Solas was an argument between the Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church.  The five Solas and their arguments were:

  1. Christ Alone – You don’t need priests (and their role presiding over sacraments) as mediators.
  2. Grace Alone – You don’t deserve and aren’t entitled to anything, especially salvation.
  3. Faith Alone – You didn’t earn your salvation by good works.
  4. Scripture Alone – The Bible is enough without regard to the church’s tradition.
  5. Glory Alone – You don’t worship saints, the church, or anything except God.

These five Solas were life or death matters for most of the Protestant Reformers so they put them in strong “argumentative” language.  These arguments from the sixteenth century are still alive today.  Protestants are still protesting the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.  In this series I want to chart a middle way.

Middle Way: Sola or Solus
Because the Church of England attempted a middle way between the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Church and the Methodist movement is a descendent of the Church of England (John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement was a priest in the Church of England during the 1700s), I’d like to suggest that these five Solas are best understood as five essentials or five primary beliefs.  They aren’t “Sola” or “only’s” but they are “Solus” or “Primaries”:

  1. Primacy of Christ
  2. Primacy of Grace
  3. Primacy of Faith
  4. Primacy of Scripture
  5. Primacy of Glory

Today I want to look at the Primacy of Christ or the Essential beliefs we hold in Jesus Christ.  I’d like to turn to the book of the Bible that tells the story of the beginning of the Church.  Peter has healed a man in the name of Jesus and has been brought before the religious court of his day to explain why he’s healing in the name of Jesus, who that same religious court had crucified only days before.

Acts 4:8-12 NLT
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers and elders of our people, are we being questioned today because we’ve done a good deed for a crippled man? Do you want to know how he was healed? Let me clearly state to all of you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead. For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures, where it says,

‘The stone that you builders rejected
has now become the cornerstone.’ (Psalm 118:22)

There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”

Jesus Alone is Essential and Primary
Let’s begin with a description of “Solus Christ” or the “Primacy of Christ.”

By virtue of who Jesus is (fully God and fully human) and what Jesus did (life, death, and resurrection), Jesus is the only all-sufficient (Anselm: Cur Deus Homo) atonement for sin (theosis/healing, christus victor/freedom, substitution/forgiveness).  Therefore, salvation (the entire work of God’s grace: prevenient, convicting, justifying, sanctifying, and glorifying) is available only through Jesus Christ.

That’s a lot to chew on but that definition answers five questions:

  1. Who is Jesus?
  2. What did Jesus do?
  3. How does Jesus fix the problem?
  4. What are the results of Jesus’ solution?
  5. How do we receive this solution?

Let’s look at each of these five questions and their answers in turn.

  1. Who is Jesus?

Christians believe that Jesus is eternally fully God and fully human.  Over time there was disagreement about this belief in Jesus.  The Gnostics taught Docetism, that Jesus only seemed to be human (Jesus was NOT eternally fully God and fully HUMAN).  Theodotius taught a belief that became known as adoptionism: Jesus was a mere man adopted as God’s Son (Jesus was NOT eternally fully GOD and fully human).  Apollinaris taught that Jesus had a human body and divine mind (Jesus was NOT eternally FULLY God and FULLY human).  Arius taught that Jesus was a created being (Jesus was NOT ETERNALLY fully God and fully human).  And Nestorius taught that Jesus has one “new” nature (Jesus was NOT eternally fully God AND fully human).  Jesus is essential and primary because he was eternally fully God and fully human.

  1. What did Jesus do?

There was a problem that Jesus fixed.  The problem was sin, or straying from the path.  We are all guilty of straying from the path (we do it unintentionally and intentionally).  We are also broken from straying from the path (we were made to live on the path, not in the rough).  Lastly, we are in bondage off the path (Off the path we’re in enemy occupied territory and held hostage).  Jesus atoned for these problems.  Atonement means being made “at-one-ment” or in harmony with God.  Because of sin, we were out of harmony with God but Jesus fixed that.  He fixed it with his life (his teaching, his exemplary model of perfectly living that teaching, and the community he called together to learn and live his teaching).  Jesus fixed it by his death.  Jesus was innocent of any crime and yet he willingly gave himself up for execution for each one of us.  Jesus fixed the problem of sin with his resurrection.  He was raised by the power of God and defeated and destroyed death.  His resurrection proves that he was eternally fully God and fully human.  Jesus’ resurrection is the first-fruit pointing to each of our resurrections when we are in Christ.

  1. How does Jesus fix the problem?

Why was Jesus essential or primary to fix the problem?  Or why Christ alone? Why not another human?  Why not an angel?  Why not nothing (i.e. God just saves without atonement)?  Anselm of Canterbury wrestled with this question in the 11th century and came up with this answer: Only God could fix the problem and only humanity needed it to be fixed, so a God-human was necessary and fitting or appropriate to fix the problem.  Only God could deliver us from sin and only humanity needed to be delivered from sin.  Only God could forgive sin and only humanity had to be forgiven of sin.  Only God could absorb the disease of sin and only humanity had the disease of sin.  Thus, a God-human was the solution.  Jesus alone was the essential and primary solution to fixing the problem.

  1. What are the results of Jesus’ solution?

The results of Jesus’ solution is our salvation.  Salvation is the entire work of God’s grace in our lives.  God’s grace works “preveniently” before we even recognize it.  God first loved us and we then respond to that love.  God’s grace works to convict us of our disease, bondage, and guilt.   God’s grace works to justify us or make us right with God.  God’s grace works to sanctify us or mature us, complete us, and make us whole.  God’s grace purifies us and perfects us in love.  God’s grace glorifies us in the perfection and glory of heaven.  Jesus alone is essential to unlocking God’s saving grace in our lives.

  1. How do we receive this atonement?

So how do we receive this solution, this atonement for our sin?  We receive it through Christ’s work alone.  There are three basic ways Christians have described who receives the benefits of God’s grace through Christ.  One idea is called “exclusivism” (sometimes “particularism”).  Exclusivists believe that only through conscious assent of the need for Christ and the reception of Christ as Lord and Savior is one saved.  Exclusivists are very pessimistic about non-Christians receiving salvation.

On the other end of the spectrum is pluralism or universalism.  Pluralists believe that all are saved.  There are many paths up the mountain.  Jesus is not the only way to salvation.  He is not even necessarily the primary or essential way.  He is just one way.  Pluralists are extremely optimistic about the salvation of everyone.

Then there is the middle way called “Inclusivism.”  I am an inclusivist.  I believe that through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection God is at work in every person bringing every knee to bow and tongue to confess that Jesus Christ alone is Lord whether they are cognizant of it or not.  Inclusivists are optimistic about God’s grace at work in non-Christians.  Inclusivists believe that Jesus is the way that all will eventually come to know God, some just don’t realize yet that it’s Jesus.  Jesus is essential.

So What?
Why do all these beliefs matter?  As I said at the beginning, what you believe has much to do with how you live.  Do you believe that Jesus is essential?  Have you received the gift of Jesus alone?   When you understand that your situation is broken, that you are stuck in your sin, and that God left the comforts of heaven, that Jesus emptied himself of his right to heaven, and took on the weaknesses of flesh so that the weaknesses of flesh could take on the strength of his divinity, then you live differently.  You ask for forgiveness for the ways you are complicit in your own sin.  The only fitting response to God’s love becoming human in Jesus Christ is to love God back through Jesus Christ and to worship God through Jesus Christ.  When you realize how much Jesus gave up so that you might be saved, you give your life back to Jesus as a “living sacrifice” to follow Jesus and spread the good news of Jesus to the entire world.  You don’t live under the impression that God is an angry God out to get you, or a disinterested God not concerned with the problems of your life, but you live in God’s love joining the mission of God to the entire world.  Jesus isn’t just one of many things important to your life.  Jesus is primary.  Jesus is essential.  Jesus alone.

Prayer
God, forgive me for the ways I have sinned. Forgive me for the ways I have strayed from the path.  Forgive me for the unintentional and intentional ways I have broken my relationship with you and those around me.  Through Jesus Christ, forgive me, heal me, free me.  Perfect your love in me.  And let me share your mercy, your grace, and your love with all those around me.  Make Jesus and his mission essential to my life.  In Jesus’ name alone, amen!

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I Am the Vine

October 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment

IAmJesus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Jesus – I Am The Vine
Sycamore Creek Church
October 12/13, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Have you ever been on a swing when the rope or chain became disconnected from the frame?  I was swinging on a porch swing one time when one chain broke as I was swinging toward the edge of the porch.  I went backwards over the back of the swing, somehow rotated in the air and tucked into the fetal position.  My body went between the porch post and a tree stump.  I came down on my head but rolled out of the fetal position so that I was laying flat on my back on the driveway.  I jumped up as if to say, “Look I’m OK.”  In the split second that this whole thing happened, I learned the dangers of becoming disconnected.

Today we’re talking about being connected and disconnected.  We’re in a series called I Am Jesus.  In the book about Jesus written by one of his closest followers, John, Jesus makes seven different “I am” statements.  He says:

I am the way the truth and the life.
I am the bread of life.
I am the gate/door.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the vine.
I am the resurrection.
I am the light of the world.

Last week we looked at his statement, “I am the good shepherd.”  Today we look at what it means when Jesus says, “I am the vine.”

In the book of John, we find the following statement in chapter fifteen:

Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
~Jesus (John 15:5 NLT)

It is important to understand the context of this statement.  In chapter thirteen Jesus begins the last supper he will have with his disciples before his crucifixion.  In chapter eighteen Jesus is arrested.  Chapters fourteen to seventeen record Jesus’ dinner conversation.

This is the last conversation Jesus is going to have with his friends.  If you were having a last conversation with family and friends, what would you say?  Jesus decides to talk about grapes.  He begins this chapter saying, “I am the true grapevine” (John 15:1 NLT)

If Jesus is the true vine, then that implies that there are some false vines.  Too often we connect ourselves to all kinds of false vines hoping it will bear fruit in our lives.  If I make more money next year and climb one rung on the ladder, I’ll have fruit.  If I get a certain number of friends on Facebook, then I’ll have fruit.  If I have an appearance of a perfect home (2.5 kids, wife, dog, perfect lawn, etc.), then I will finally have fruit.  But it doesn’t quite work that way.  We have to stay connected to the true vine.  There are at least two reasons why.

1. Staying Connected Produces Fruit
When we stay connected to the true vine, our lives produce fruit.  These fruit are described by Paul, the first missionary of the church, in his letter to the Galatians.  He says:

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.
~Galatians 5:22-23 NLT

This isn’t the fruit of more money, or a better looking husband.  It’s an internal fruit.  The fruit of virtue in your life.  This kind of fruit requires staying connected.  It rarely happens overnight.  It’s like learning to ride a bike.  To learn to ride the bike you have to  stay connected to the bike.  You can’t expect to learn to ride a bike if you don’t get on it.  And it takes time staying connected to the bike along with some bumps and bruises to learn the fruit of balancing on the bike.  I came across this boy whose perseverance in staying connected to his bike has finally born fruit.  His encouragement to keep practicing can encourage us to stay connected to the true vine.

 

Recently I’ve been struggling with a particular question: I am staying connected to the true vine, but I’m not seeing the fruit in my life.  One particular challenge lately has been with being a parent.  Too often being a parent brings out all the bad stuff in me.  Why is that?  As I’ve pondered why I’m not seeing fruit in my parenting, I realized that while I’m thirty-nine years old, and in general I have thirty-nine years of remaining connected to the true vine, when it comes to parenting, I’m only three years old.  In other words, in most of my life, I’ve got the maturity and fruit of a thirty-nine-year-old. But in parenting, I’ve only got the maturity of a three-year-old!  But if I stay connected to the true vine, the fruit will come.

If you’re staying connected to the true vine by praying for a friend to come to Christ but it’s not happening, stay connected.  If your anger is still explosive.  Stay connected.  If your lust continues.  Stay connected.  If your impulsive spending persists.  Stay connected.  Here is your “Fruit forecast:” 100% probability of fruit.  But we have to remain.  We have to stay connected.  Continue.  Continue.  Continue.

There are some apple trees on the side of the office.  Sarah and I swung by them this past week to see if there were any apples.  But they only bloom every other year.  Stay connected.  There’s a Ceiba (“SAY-ba”) tree on MSU’s campus that blooms “as little as once every 5 years.”  Or there’s the Corpse Flower that gets its name by smelling like rotting flesh.  It bloomed this past year but “the plants rarely bloom, going years, even decades between showings.”

Stay connected.  Stay connected.  Stay connected.

2. Being Disconnected Produces Nothing
A second reason we need to stay connected to the true vine is because being disconnected produces nothing.  Jesus says:

Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned.
~Jesus (John 15:6 NLT)

Sometimes being disconnected is deceptive.  Sometimes it looks like fruit is still being produced.  After one of the big storms we had this past spring, I went on a walk in my neighborhood and came across a tree that had lost several branches.  The branches were lying on the ground, and I was surprised to find that the branches had blossoms on them.  But this was only because there was a limited amount of life left in the disconnected branch.  The next week I walked by this same tree and those branches has been picked up and carted away.

Have you ever plugged your cell phone in before you went to bed only to wake up the next morning and realize that the cord was not plugged into the wall?  Yes, there is some battery left, but not enough to get you through the day.

It’s important to guard against becoming judgmental at this point.  If we become judgmental we can easily end up right in the middle of the very thing we’re judging.   I say to myself, “I’ll never have an affair” but then I do.  Or I say, “My kids are never going to act like that” and then they do.  Or “I’m never going to put my job before my family,” but you do.  Anybody is capable of anything when you’re disconnected from the vine.

So if it’s important to stay connected to the true vine because it produces fruit and because being disconnected produces nothing, how do we stay connected?  Here are two ways.

1. Do What Jesus Says
To learn what Jesus says, it seems like a good place to start is with what Jesus actually says.  So Jesus says:

When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
~Jesus (John 15:10 NLT)

One of my first jobs when I got married was at a fancy Italian restaurant in Petoskey.  The owner, Alex, described himself as not always fun but fair.  He had a very accurate self understanding.  One day he took about ten minutes to show me how he wanted the cheese for the pizzas to be made.  There was a specific ratio of Mozzarella to Muenster that he wanted.  He had a particular way he wanted it run through the grinder.  And then there were more instructions for how to handle it once it was all properly mixed.  After Alex took the time to show me this, I did it his way for about five minutes.  Then I decided I knew better and began doing it my way.  A couple of minutes later he came by and saw that I was not doing it the way he had taken time to show me, and I got a stern lecture about it all.  I was hurt in the moment (no one likes to be corrected), but after thinking about it for a while I realized that even if my way was better, he’s the one who owns the restaurant and he’s the one who’s paying me, and he’s the boss, so I should do it the way he wants.  It was really quite simple.  He was hiring me to do things the way he wanted them done.  And that’s how I should do it.

Let’s admit it.  Christians can be a bunch of loop-hole fanatics.  We find every possible reason not to actually do what Jesus says.  Francis Chan has this provocative insight on not doing what Jesus says:

Go clean your room!  As Chan says, “We have too many believers and not enough disciples.”

So where do you need to quit talking and praying about it and to finally do it?  Someone tells you to lead a small group.  Clean your room!  You need to spend more time with your kids.  Clean your room!  Be more selfless and get outside yourself.  Clean your room!  Serve in the church.  Clean your room!  Serve in the community. Clean your room!  Set time aside to pray.  Clean your room!  Read your Bible.  Clean your room!

Make extra payments on your debt.  Clean your room!  Stay connected to the true vine by doing what Jesus says.

2. Love Like Jesus Loves
The second way to stay connected to the true vine is to love like Jesus loves.  Jesus says:

This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
~Jesus (John 15:12 NLT)

Loving each other can be a kind of subjective call.  You might think its one thing while someone else thinks it’s something else.  But Jesus makes sure we can’t wiggle out of this.  He puts some definition on this love.  “Love as I have loved you,” he says.  He steps it up a notch.  Just before this dinner conversation and last supper together, Jesus shows them what this love looks like by serving them.  He washes their feet, the job of a slave or servant.  He explains what this love looks like in himself: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13 NLT).  Jesus raises the standard way high!

A year or so ago I was reading a book called Sacred Parenting.  It was about how parenting itself is a spiritual discipline.  It is a great book, and I highly recommend it to others.  I was sitting quietly in the morning reading the chapter about sacrifice.  The sacrifices a parent makes for their child can be a way that we enter into God’s presence and know something of the sacrifices that God makes for his children.  As I was enjoying reading this chapter and thinking about how sacrifices for my children could draw me closer to God, Micah woke up about thirty minutes early and began crying.  I remember thinking, “Sarah will get him.”  Then the iron struck.  I would rather read about sacrifices in parenting than actually sacrifice in parenting!  Henri Nouwen says, “It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people.”

This loving like Jesus loved is hard stuff.  It’s really hard stuff.  That’s why we’ve got to stay connected.  We can’t do it alone, and it pushes us back to the vine.

Are you staying connected?  Have you become disconnected?  What fruit is your life producing?  What fruit is it missing?  If you desire to stay connected to the true vine, Jesus Christ, then join me in this prayer:

Jesus, you are the true vine.  I want my life to produce fruit, but I confess that too often I try to do that while being disconnected from you.  Help me to do what you say and love like you love so that I might stay connected to you and produce your fruit in my life.  In the power of your Spirit.  Amen.

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I Am the Good Shepherd *

October 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment

IAmJesus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Jesus – I Am the Good Shepherd *
Sycamore Creek Church
October 5 & 6
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Today we begin I Am Jesus.  No, I’m not saying that I am Jesus.  Rather, I’m referring to Jesus’ “I am” statements in the book of John in the Bible.  There are seven of these “I am” statements.  Jesus says:

I am the way the truth and the life.
I am the bread of life.
I am the gate/door.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the vine.
I am the resurrection.
I am the light of the world.

In this series we’ll explore the last four.  Today we begin with Jesus saying:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
~Jesus (John 10:11 NRSV)

If Jesus is the good shepherd, then it suggests that there is some good news here.  But if Jesus is the good shepherd, then that also suggests that not all shepherds are good.  In fact, Jesus begins by saying:

Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.
~Jesus (John 10:1 NLT)

Jesus is talking about our spiritual enemy and the evil side of creation.  Sometimes he goes by the name Satan or the devil.  Jesus tells us that he comes only to steal, kill and destroy.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
~John 10:10 NLT

Satan’s mission can be compared to Jesus’ mission.  One is good, the other not so good.  Of course, in this metaphor, we’re the sheep.  This is not so great news to begin with because sheep are some of the most challenged animals on earth.  You’ve probably been to a circus and seen trained elephants, trained dogs, and trained monkeys.  But when was the last time you saw a circus with a trained sheep?  Never!  So say it with me, “You’ve got challenges.”  Here are three challenges that we all share with sheep.

1.     Sheep are Defenseless
Almost every other animal has some kind of defense: claws, fangs, horns, camouflage, etc.  But what happens when you attack a sheep?  It says, “Baaaack off.”  Sheep are classified by those who study them as prey.  Their main defense is to be part of a herd.  Together they are more protected than alone.  Unfortunately there’s a down side to this defense strategy.

2.     Sheep can Mob
Did you know that a herd of sheep is called a mob?  Sheep tend to follow a herd mentality.  They unthinkingly follow the lead sheep which can often get them in trouble.  I came across an article about 450 sheep who jumped off a cliff to their death.  There were actually 1500 sheep who went over the cliff but the first 450 cushioned the fall of the other 1050!  The loss to the Turkish families was over $100,000.  That’s a huge sum in country where the average family makes $2700/year.

We tend to get stuck in groupthink and herd mentality too.  We keep using the same bait everyone else is using even though we keep catching the wrong kind of guy or gal.  Maybe you need to change your bait.  Or if we’re financially in a hole, you need to go to the mall and shop it out.  No!  That’s what the herd does.  Sheep can mob, so can we.

3.     Sheep are Filthy
Have you seen white sheep on TV or at the fair?  Those sheep were power-washed!  I spoke with Alan Culham, MSU Sheep Farm Manager, who told me he has never seen a sheep licking itself clean.  Of course, they’re at a distinct disadvantage.  They’re white?  Whenever I buy something white, no matter how careful I am, I always spill or splatter something on it the first time I wear it!  The same thing is true of our spiritual state.  The prophet Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way” (Isaiah 53:6 NRSV).  Our own way has left us spiritually broken and dirty thinking like everyone else in need of rescue.

In the same way that sheep need a shepherd and we need a savior.  The good news is that Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  He’s so good he’ll lay down his life for the sheep!  Let’s look at four qualities of the Good Shepherd: He leads, he feed, he corrects, and he protects.

1.     The Good Shepherd Leads
One of the most famous passages of scripture is Psalm 23.  It’s worth reading in full this afternoon.  In fact, if you’re going to memorize anything in the Bible, this is a good one to memorize.  The whole psalm is about how God is like a good shepherd.  We read:

He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
~Psalm 23:3 NRSV

The good shepherd leads us.  To let God guide, you have to know God’s voice.  Jesus explained this when he said I am the Good Shepherd saying:

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
~Jesus (John 10:3-4 NRSV)

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t know the voice of God.  Does God speak audibly?”  God rarely speaks audibly, although I have experienced one time in life where I think I heard God audibly.  It was a word of encouragement to me as a child.  But more often than not, God speaks through his Word, circumstances, people, the message in worship and in all different kinds of ways.

There are at least two reasons you may not know his voice.  Consider this.  If my wife, Sarah, were standing in a room with fifty other women while all of them were talking, could you pick out her voice?  It is unlikely that you could pick out her voice amidst all the other noise in the room.  That would be because you either don’t know her at all or you haven’t spent enough time with her.  It is very likely that after seventeen years of marriage, I could easily pick my wife’s voice.  Or maybe you’ve had the experience of hearing your child cry and knowing immediately that it is your child.  It’s because you know your child and have spent hours with him or her.  The same is true with hearing and recognizing God’s voice.  You either don’t know him at all or you haven’t spent much time with God.

One of the amazing things about sheep is that they do have the ability to recognize the shepherd’s voice.  They can distinguish it from all others.  The Good Shepherd calls us each by name.  I find that remembering people’s names can be very powerful.  I once remembered the name of the guy who checked Sarah and me into a hotel in Chicago.  He was so impressed that I remembered his name, that he treated us like kings and queens all weekend long!  God is calling you by name today.  Can you hear his voice as he leads you?

2. The Good Shepherd Feeds
Going back to Psalm 23 we find that the Good Shepherd feeds us, not just physically but feeds our spirits:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
~Psalm 23:1-3 NRSV

Sheep won’t lie down unless they’re well fed and feel safe.  The Good Shepherd does both.  Not only that but he leads me beside still waters.  Why still waters?  Have you ever tried to get drinking water from a body of water that has a swift current or big waves?  It’s almost impossible.  In the same way that you don’t want to go near raging waters because of fear of falling in, the Good Shepherd leads his sheep to still waters so that they don’t fall in.  Jesus is the water that gives life.  This life giving water of Jesus restores my soul.  We receive a supernatural peace amidst chaos.

I’ll never forget the moment sitting at the dinner table when Micah at about age one and a half began choking.  I got down to his level to see if he needed help, and as his face began to turn blue and no noise came out of his mouth, I saw the look of fear in his little eyes.  To this day I’m still amazed at how calmly I unbuckled him, turned him over on my arm and slapped his back until he threw up what he was choking on along with everything else in his little tummy.  Actually his tummy isn’t so little.  How much can a one and a half year-old throw up?  A lot more than you would imagine!  He threw up all over me, all over himself, and all over the floor.  Finally he stopped, and I handed him to his mom to go clean up.  Somehow I had stayed calm amidst the chaos of staring my son’s death in the eyes.  And then I fell apart!  But when it counted, I had this kind of supernatural peace.  That’s what it’s like when Jesus restores your soul.  Your whole life can be falling apart.  You can be staring death in the eyes, and deep down where it really counts, all is well.

The Good Shepherd feeds our soul.

3. The Good Shepherd Corrects
While it may not seem like good news if you are the sheep who is wandering, it is good to be corrected.  Amidst his life falling apart, Job says:

Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.
~Job 5:17-18 NIV

Recently Sarah and I went up to Petoskey for a week of vacation where we own a house.  We’re within walking distance of the waterfront and the Little Traverse Bay.  I was really looking forward to introducing my youngest son, Sam, to the waterfront.  One morning we walked out on the break wall.  It’s a pretty big platform and there’s no immediate danger of him falling in, but guess where he always wanted to go.  Right to the edge.  Guess what I never let him do.  Go right to the edge.  I always kept myself between him and the water correcting his direction any time he was in danger of going too close to the edge.  Did he like this?  No way.  Was I being a good shepherd of my son?  Absolutely.

Of course, none of us likes being disciplined and corrected.  No one says, “Oh, yay, I’m being disciplined!  I’m grounded.  Maybe dad will take away my cell phone too!”  The author of the book of Hebrews says:

No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.
~Hebrews 12:11 NLT

The Good Shepherd leads, feeds, corrects, and protects.

4. The Good Shepherd Protects
Maybe one of the deepest moments in Psalm 23 is found in verse four.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.
~Psalm 23:4 NRSV

When have you been afraid walking through the valley of the shadow of death?  When have you feared for your own safety?  My son, Micah, when he was about two and a half and still in his crib told me one morning when I came to get him up that he had been scared of something the night before.  I told him that when he was scared he could pray to God.  He said, “I don’t need to pray. I just yell Daddy, Daddy!”  At first I thought he wasn’t getting it.  Then I realized that I was his first experience of the protection that God provides.  He’s not quite old enough to realize that his daddy has limits to his ability to protect, but God does not.

While God does protect us, he does not always protect from death itself.  We will all die.  But our Good Shepherd, Jesus, has gone before us.  When Jesus said that he was the Good Shepherd, he said,

“The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.”
~Jesus (John 10:11)

Jesus conquered death so that he might usher us beyond it.  When I became pastor here at Sycamore Creek Church, one of my first experiences walking alongside someone through dying was with Ken Ziegler.  Ken had multiple sclerosis commonly referred to as MS.  I visited with Ken many times in the hospital during my first couple of years at SCC.  Toward the end of Ken’s life when he could no longer talk, I would sit beside his bed and pray with him.  I came to realize that Ken had memorized many of the great prayers and creeds of the church.  I would say the Apostles Creed and see him mouthing, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”  I would pray the Lord’s Prayer with him and see him mouthing, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”  And I would pray Psalm 23 with him and see him praying along with me, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”  Ken had hope even in the face of death that death was not the end.  It was not the end because he had a Good Shepherd, Jesus, who had laid down his life for his sheep and conquered death through the resurrection.

Jesus once told a story about a hundred sheep.  He said that ninety-nine were safe in the pen.  One went missing.  The Good Shepherd left the ninety-nine to go find the one.  Maybe today you’re the one that the Good Shepherd is seeking.

Prayer – Psalm 23 NKJV
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.

 

* This sermon is based on a sermon originally preached by Craig Groeschel

 

 

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Why Did Jesus Die: The Rescue

August 11, 2014 by Leave a Comment

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Why Did Jesus Die: The Rescue
Sycamore Creek Church
August 10/11, 2014
Tom Arthur

 


Peace friends!

As you can see in that video, there’s a wide set of answers to the question: Why did Jesus die?  Some people just don’t know but most who do give an answer focus on one thing: Jesus died to forgive us of our sins.  This is the general answer that gets most of the air time in the churches and Christian leaders in our culture.  But it is not the only answer.

Today we begin a new four-week series where it’s our intent and hope to widely expand your imagination about the cross and Jesus’ death.  It’s our hope that in expanding your imagination by seeing more answers to the question Why did Jesus die? that you will have a deeper appreciation of the breadth and depth of how God is saving the world in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and will see how many different ways there are for you to participate in that salvation.

This series is what we call a “belief series.”  We do many different kinds of series over a given a year.  Some of the more well known ones we call Buzz Series.  A buzz series speaks to our felt needs and our emotions.  Other times we do H.A.B.I.T.S. series and we speak to your will by helping you develop more spiritual practices or habits.  At other times we do a Bible series and cover a book of the Bible or a character in the Bible.  This series as a belief series, is intended to help you grow in your depth of understanding of some of the basics and essentials of Christian belief and doctrine, and there’s not much more basic and essential to Christianity than Jesus’ death on a cross.

Now it would be a mistake to assume that this will be a dry series because it is a belief series.  It would be a mistake because while it is a belief series I also believe it is something of a felt-need series too.  The question, “Why did Jesus die?” or its counterpart, “Why did Jesus have to die?” are two questions I get asked over and over again.  There are many misconceptions about why Jesus died and much hangs on our answer to this question.  So we are doing this series because you have asked us to do it.  It is a belief that you want to know more about.

This series has been deeply informed by a book that you may find helpful.  The book is called The Nature of Atonement.  It’s the kind of book that I really like.  It has four different authors.  Each author presents a different answer to the question: Why did Jesus die?  I like this kind of book because it shows me that there are options, and options are always good!

The Nature of Atonement has a big word in the title: “Atonement.”  When we ask the question: Why did Jesus die we are asking a question of atonement.  Atonement as Merriam-Webster defines it is: “the reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.”  So when we talk about atonement we’re talking about reconciliation.

There are at least three different theories that Christians present to answer the atonement question: Why did Jesus die?  The first is what most of us are familiar with and is usually called a Substitution Atonement.  Substitution Atonement says that the problem is that we are guilty and Jesus’ death reconciles us to God by forgiving us.  This is the theory that gets most of the air time.  Another theory is the Healing Atonement.  The Healing Atonement says that the problem is that we are wounded and broken and in need of healing.  We will cover these two theories in the coming two weeks.

The atonement theory I want to explore today is called the Rescue Atonement or Christus Victor as scholars like to call it (why do they always like to use Latin?).  The Rescue Atonement says that the problem is that we are in captivity and we need freedom.  Today I want to explore four keys to a Rescue Atonement.

Four Keys to a Rescue Atonement

1. The Bible describes an epic battle between the forces of good and evil where the forces of good ultimately win.

Gregory Boyd says, “The biblical narrative could in fact be accurately described as a story of God’s ongoing conflict with and ultimate victory over cosmic and human agents who oppose him and who threaten his creation.”  We can see this over and over in scripture but here are three examples to give you a sense of how we’re in a battle of good vs. evil.

I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
~Genesis 3:15 NRSV

You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.
You crushed Rahab like a carcass;
you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
~Psalm 89:9-10 NRSV

[The angel] said to me, “Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me twenty-one days. So Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and have come to help you understand what is to happen to your people at the end of days.”
~Daniel 10:12-14 NRSV

This last one is my favorite.  I love the image of an angel coming to talk to Daniel but being held up by another enemy angel.  Michael, the chief angel or archangel, has to come and join the battle so that the first angel can get through enemy lines to show Daniel this amazing vision!  Over and over again on every page of the Bible we find this imagery of a battle being waged between good and evil.  This is the first key to understanding a rescue atonement.

2. Sin is not just individual but structural and cosmic.

I think that most of us think of sin as something very personal.  I sinned.  But sin is bigger than something personal.  It is structural (all of our sins put together) and cosmic (forces beyond even human control).  Paul describes this in his letter to the church at Ephesus:

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
~Ephesians 6:12 NRSV

Lately I’ve begun to watch the HBO mini series The Pacific.  It’s about the Pacific theater of war in WWII.  The show begins with the battles at Guadalcanal.  I was astonished at the carnage of Japanese soldiers.  They just keep coming and coming at the Americans, and what they find themselves facing is an almost impregnable line of defense anchored by machine guns.  These machine guns allow the Americans to lose very few men compared to hundreds and thousands of Japanese deaths.  It’s a terrible unbeatable force that the Japanese encounter.

The same thing is true when it comes to our own human efforts against the forces of evil.  By ourselves, we are like the Japanese soldiers who throw themselves against the American machine guns and are utterly unable to break through.  We need someone who is able to break through the line of the enemy and set us free.

Gregory Boyd says:

Paul does not see ‘sin’ first and foremost as a matter of individual behavior, as most modern Westerns do.  He rather conceives of ‘sin’…as a quasi-autonomous power that holds people groups as well as individuals in bondage…This is why people can never hope to break the power of sin and fulfill the law by their own efforts.  As in much apocalyptic though, Paul believed what was needed was nothing less than God breaking into human history to destroy the power of sin and rescuing us from the cosmic powers that keep us in bondage to sin.  This is precisely what Paul and all early Christians believed happened with the advent of Jesus Christ.  And this is the essence of the Christus Victor view of the atonement.

If sin is something structural and cosmic, then something is needed more than just forgiveness of individuals.  Jesus rescues us from this captivity.  But how?

3. The character of this battle is self-sacrificial love.

Most of the language used around the Rescue Atonement theory is battle language.  It would seem then that what is needed is a warrior who is going to show up and bash some heads in to rescue us.  But this isn’t what Jesus did.  Jesus dies.  On a cross.  He gives of his own life self-sacrificially.  He turns war on its head.  He rescues not by being violent, but by giving his life on a cross.  Jesus’ follower, John, puts it this way:

Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
~John 12:31-32 NRSV

When Jesus says “when I am lifted up from this Earth” I think it’s a double reference to both being lifted up by the cross and his ascension to the right hand of God the Father.  But his glorification through ascension only happens because he first goes through the ascension upon the cross.  That ascension is that he gives his life up that we might be rescued even from death itself.

Perhaps one of the best modern illustrations of this I’ve seen is a scene from the movie Captain America.

Before he’s Captain America, Steve Rogers faces a test with a grenade.  He willingly throws himself upon the grenade to save his fellow soldiers from dying.  He gives his own life to save the lives of others.  This is what makes Steve Rogers fitting to be Captain America.

Martin Luther King Jr. picked up on the spirit of Jesus rescue mission as he developed a rescue mission to save black people from the captivity of segregation.  He called his method active non-violent resistance.  Here’s how he described it:

To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe.  Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.  We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force.”
~MLK Jr. (An Experiment in Love)

We would do well to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. as he followed in the footsteps of Jesus’ self-sacrificial love.

4. Salvation means gaining freedom from evil forces and participating in the battle of good over evil.

So if the problem is that we’re in bondage to the forces of evil and the solution is that Jesus came on a rescue mission to free us, how are we to understand salvation?  Well, salvation is joining this rescue mission by gaining freedom from evil and participating in the battle for good!

John, Jesus’ disciple said it this way:

The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
~1 John 3:8 NRSV

Jesus’ purpose is our purpose: to destroy the works of the devil.  As the psalmist says:

Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies your footstool.
~Psalm 110:1 NRSV

Jesus sits at the right hand of God and as we sit at the right hand of Jesus, we participate in the rescue mission of making evil the footstool of God.

Forgive me if I go back to Martin Luther King Jr. again, but he preached an amazing sermon called “Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool” (listen to it here).  In it he describes a moment of deep despondency where he met Jesus over a cup of coffee.  Jesus calls him to join in this battle over injustice and oppression (underline emphasis mine):

And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer; I was weak. (Yes)
Something said to me, you can’t call on Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta a hundred and seventy-five miles away. (Yes) You can’t even call on Mama now. (My Lord) You’ve got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about. (Yes) That power that can make a way out of no way. (Yes) And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me and I had to know God for myself. (Yes, sir) And I bowed down over that cup of coffee—I never will forget it. (Yes, sir) And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. (Yes) I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. (Yes) I think I’m right; I think the cause that we represent is right. (Yes) But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now; I’m faltering; I’m losing my courage. (Yes) And I can’t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.” (Yes) I wanted tomorrow morning to be able to go before the executive board with a smile on my face.

And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, (Yes) “Martin Luther, (Yes) stand up for righteousness, (Yes) stand up for justice, (Yes) stand up for truth. (Yes) And lo I will be with you, (Yes) even until the end of the world.”

And I’ll tell you, I’ve seen the lightning flash. I’ve heard the thunder roll. I felt sin- breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, (Never) never to leave me alone.

Do you hear the call to join in the rescue mission?  Do you hear the attempt of evil to conquer Martin Luther King Jr.?  Do you hear the call to fight on?  Martin Luther King Jr. joins in the rescue mission of Jesus by finding his own freedom from captivity and seeking the freedom of those who are captive yet today.

So have you found that freedom?  Are you participating in that battle?  Are you being saved?  That’s what Jesus did on the cross.  That’s why Jesus died.  As Gregory Boyd says, “To have faith in what Christ did is to walk faithful to what Christ is doing.”  Do you have that faith?  Are you walking faithfully?

Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.  So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name.
~Book of Common Prayer

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So You Want to Follow Jesus

March 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment

jesus iconEach week those who attend worship have the opportunity to check that they’re interested in following Jesus.  So you checked a box.  Great!  But what’s next.  Is that all there is?  Check a box and you’re done?  No way!  Here’s a “brief” guide on what to do next.  Ok, it’s not so brief.  But turning your whole life toward following Jesus is no small thing.  So find a comfortable place to sit and read and ponder and be open to God’s leading.  Your life is about to be transformed!

If you’re still not sure what you’re signing up for by following Jesus, I recommend watching this brief video about what it means to follow Jesus.  It’s from James Chong’s book, True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In.

If you want to explore that further, check out my sermon on the question: What Is a Christian?

So now that you’ve got a better idea of what you’ve signed up for, what do you do next?  The next step is to begin practicing following Jesus.  Practicing following Jesus is just like practicing anything else, except that you’ve got God’s presence, the Holy Spirit, as your coach helping you along the way!  Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to practice following Jesus.

1. Have you been baptized?  If not, then drop me an email and let’s talk further.  At SCC, we host a nine-session small group called Christianity 101 that prepares you to be baptized at our annual Baptism at the Beach in late June.  If you want to explore further what baptism is all about, check out this sermon: Baptism Q&A.

2. Build your community of faith, your spiritual friends.  There are two things you can’t do alone in life: get married and be a Christian.  First, attend worship regularly.  Every week.  If you can’t make it on Sunday, come on Monday.  If you’re out of town, find a church where you’re at.  Worship is what cultivates the soil of your heart so that the seeds of God’s grace can take root and grow.  Second, get into a small group.  We have three semesters each year: February – April, June – August, and October to December.  You can sign up for small groups in January, May, and September.  For more information on Small groups, email Mark Aupperlee.

3. Start praying.  What is prayer?  It’s simple.  Prayer is talking and listening to God.  Of course, there are just about as many ways to pray as there are ways to talk and listen.  If you want to explore prayer further, I did a series on the book of Psalms called Prayers that Stick.  You can find them here:
Just Sayin (Prayers of Praise),
OMG (Prayers of Awe and Wonder),
CRAP (Prayers of Cursing and Lament),
DUH (Prayers of Confession).

4. Start reading your Bible.  Pick up a free Bible at the info table on Sunday morning, or drop me an email, and I’ll make sure you get one.  But the Bible is a big huge book.  Where do you start?  What kind of Bible do you read?  The answers to those questions are simple: starting anywhere is better than not starting and reading any Bible is better than reading no Bible.  But if you want to explore this issue further check out these blog posts:
What Bible Should I Buy?
Bible Reading Plans
Can Books Be Added to the Bible?
How to Interpret the Bible
Old Testament Help

5. Start tithing.  Tithing?  Is that some kind of ribbon you tie around a present?  No.  Tithing literally means 10% and it’s a reference to God’s command that we give him back 10% of the “first-fruits” of what we make.  God owns it all and asks only for 10% back.  We get to keep 90% !  That’s a pretty good deal.  But maybe your money situation is pretty messed up.  Maybe you’re loaded down with debt.  Then give something regularly while you work really hard to get out of your financial mess.  We did a great series on money called Strapped.  Check it out here:
The Buck Starts Here
Act Your Wage
Put God First (Guest Speaker: Mark Aupperlee)
Financial Q&A (Guest Speaker: Craig Groeschel)

6. Build some positive spiritual H.A.B.I.T.S.  Not all habits are bad, some are good.  How are your spiritual habits?  You can find the sermon series we did on H.A.B.I.T.S. here:
H.A.B.I.T.S. Introduction
Hang Time with God
Accountability
Bible (Sarah Arthur)
Involvement with the Church (Mark Aupperlee)
Tithing
Serving

7. Find a place to serve in the church, community, and world.  What talents do you have?  What is your passion?  What needs do you see around you?  You’ll have the greatest impact when your talents and passions converge with the needs around you.  To help you do that, consider taking this online inventory.  It will take about twenty minutes but it will help you learn more about who you are and how God is calling you to serve.  Weekly we post in our bulletin what community service opportunities you can participate in.  Join one of those service teams.  Twice a year we send a medical mission team down to Nicaragua.  You don’t have to have medical knowledge to go and be helpful.  Check out this video I made about my own trip on a Nicaragua medical mission.  To explore serving further, check out this sermon.

These steps are the basics, but it will take you a lifetime of practicing to do them with beauty and grace.  Want to go deeper still?  Check out my favorite blog posts here.  Or browse through my sermon catalogue here.  A favorite author of mine that I would recommend is C.S. Lewis.  He is best known for his children’s books, The Chronciles of Narnia.  I’m a Christian today because of those books.  I’d also recommend The Screwtape Letters, a fictional account of a senior demon mentoring a younger demon on how to trip up his “client”, and Mere Christianity, a defense and explanation of those beliefs that all Christians hold in common.

Would you drop me an email and let me know how it’s going and if I can be of further help.  If we haven’t met, please introduce yourself before or after worship some day.  I’d love to meet you.  In the mean time, may God’s Holy Spirit guide you and coach you as you begin to practice following Jesus!

Peace,
Pastor Tom

 

Filed Under: Ponderings Tagged With: ,

Expect a Miracle

December 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

bday

Christmas Is Not Your Birthday – Expect a Miracle *
Sycamore Creek Church
December 8/9, 2013
Tom Arthur 

Merry Christmas Friends!

Is it too early to say that?  No way.  Stores started decorating for Christmas weeks ago.  We put our Christmas decorations up the week before Thanksgiving so they’d be up to enjoy over Thanksgiving weekend.  So, Merry Christmas!  It’s never too early to say it.

But what are we saying when we say Merry Christmas?  What we’re really doing is saying, “Be merry because a birthday is coming!”  But whose birthday?  Your birthday?  Your kids birthday?  Your grandkids birthday?  No, Christmas is not your birthday.

That’s the series we’re beginning today: Christmas Is Not Your Birthday. Over the next several weeks we’re going to look at how to celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ birthday rather than our own.

Here’s the problem we run into every year with Christmas: Christmas has become too predictable.  What we need this year is a miracle!  Christmas is the perfect place for a miracle:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
~The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6 KJV)

Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth the prophet Isaiah predicted a miraculous birth, the birth of a baby who would be God and who would bring peace.  That’s quite a birth, quite a miracle!  But how did we get from that, Jesus’ birthday, to this?

The traditional “perfect” Christmas today includes: chaotic consumerism, stressed shopping, a terrible to-do list, disastrous date books, awful agendas, and deep deep debt (a pledge of allegiance to an economic Christmas orgy of overspending and debt).  Jesus was to be called the Counselor.  Maybe we should call him the Financial Counselor?  The traditional Christmas isn’t traditional at all.  It’s a “mixture of…a little biblical truth…some eighteenth-century Victorian practices, and…a double shot of Santa theology” (Thank you Mike Slaughter) on steroids provided by Madison Avenue with a shot of eggnog to make it all go down.

We’re left with the question: What exactly does God look like if this is how we celebrate the birth of the one called The Mighty God?  God ends up looking like Santa Claus?  God becomes a genie in a bottle with three wishes (if you’re good enough).

My own Christmas growing up was like this.  I remember when my grandma would hand me the J.C. Penny Catalogue and tell me to circle the things I wanted from it.  Now that I look back on this, it seems absurd to me.  My grandma lived so simply that when she died all my mom had to do to clean out her possessions was to empty one drawer at the nursing home!  And yet she bought into the whole traditional Christmas when it came to her own grandkids.  Another aspect of the traditional Christmas with my family was that kids of divorced parents cashed in big at Christmas.  Here’s how my Christmas schedule went:

Christmas Eve: Gifts with my dad’s parents
Christmas 6AM: Gifts with my dad and step-mom
Christmas 8AM: Gifts with my step-mom’s family
Christmas Noon: Gifts with my mom’s family
Christmas Afternoon: Gifts with my mom and step-dad.

Boom baby!  It’s one of the few times that being a kid in a divorced family pays off.  And of course, all these family members are doing their best to make sure that the other side of the family doesn’t one-up them!

So if this is how we celebrate the birth of the one called Mighty God, what does that God look like?  Something is really jacked up, isn’t it?  It’s jacked up because this baby wasn’t called Santa.  This baby was called Jesus, the Prince of Peace.  God doesn’t look like Santa, God looks like Jesus:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
~St. Paul (Colossians 3:15 NLT)

In Jesus we see God and also humanity, at its fullest.  Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your mind around God, but Jesus is easier.  Jesus is a God I can believe in.  And that’s a miracle.

The miracle of Jesus is that he was ordinary and yet extraordinary.  He was ordinary in that he was born in an empire-occupied territory to an unwed mother.  His parents were poor and lived as refugees in Africa amidst genocide back home.  He grew up in Nazareth, a small town in the middle of the U.P. (OK, just kidding about the U.P. thing).  He was a basic laborer.  He worked with his hands as a carpenter.  Jesus’ background was not extraordinary.  It was about as average or below average as they come.

And yet Jesus’ birth was also extraordinary and miraculous.

All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).
~The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14 NLT)

Jesus is God with us and he was extraordinary in so many ways.  His message was a message of healing.  Jesus’ first sermon was also from the prophet Isaiah.  He stood up in the synagogue and read:

God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
(Luke 4:18-19 The Message)

He was the son of God full of power and yet he reached out to those who were powerless.  He was ultimately executed on a cross and resurrected three days later.  He was ordinary but extraordinary.  If God can work an extraordinary miracle through an ordinary Jesus, then he can work a miracle through any ordinary person, including you and me this Christmas.  In fact, you are God’s miracle worker!

This miracle is going to take some preparing for.  Christmas is Jesus’ birth and that means there is going to be a labor.  Preparing for the miracle this Christmas requires the cost of labor pains.  This birth was no “silent night.”  In fact, that song is really just about as silly as they come.  Sentimental, yes.  Realistic, no.  The birth probably looked more like this:

 

Jesus’ life cost him something.  He lives.  He taught and was persecuted by the religious establishment.  He was executed on a cross.  He raised from the dead.  All of those who closely followed him were persecuted and executed as well, except one who was sent into exile.  Those are some serious labor pains, not sentimental silent nights.  As Mike Slaughter says, “The real Christmas was a snapshot of poverty and anxiety, not feel-good warm fuzzies.”

So this Christmas we need another miracle.  We need the miracle of giving up on the “traditional Christmas” and building new traditions that put the celebration back on Jesus’ birthday, and this miracle is going to take some birth pains.  It’s going to require you to give up some stuff that makes Christmas look more like your birthday or your kids birthday.  It’s going to require you instituting some new traditions that look more like celebrating Jesus and what Jesus’ life was all about, his purpose.

What’s the goal or purpose of your life?  Is it “the good life”?  Retirement?  Golf every day?  Walking on the beach and collecting shells?  Sitting in your man cave watching ESPN1, 2, & 3 on your 80 inch HD TV?  Shopping till you drop?  Lying around in a hammock?  Those all might be OK for a season, but if that’s the ultimate goal of your life, then you’re life is going to get pretty boring pretty quickly.  My step-dad just retired.  He’s done good as a small business owner.  He sold his business to one of his most faithful employees.  He’s got a good life with my mom.  They have a house in Indianapolis and two in Florida.  They’re pretty set for the rest of their lives.  But about two weeks into retirement he got pretty bored sitting in his living room with his iphone watching sports on his super huge TV.  He told me that he was trying to figure out what to do with his life now that he’s retired.  He went to his pastors and asked if they could use him volunteering fifteen or twenty hours a week.  He wants his retirement to make a difference in somebody’s life.  He wants to serve others.  He wants his life to be like Jesus’ life.

As Mike Slaughter says, the new meaning and purpose of our lives at Christmas is that “We find meaning when we give sacrificially to those in need, because by doing so, we are giving to Jesus himself.  It is his birthday after all!”

So take up a new tradition this Christmas: celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ Birthday!  One way we’re doing this is by changing how we spend our money at Christmas.  Most of us spend way more than we even have to spend.  We go into debt to have the “traditional” Christmas.  New rule: don’t go into debt to celebrate Jesus’ birthday!  Rather, make this commitment: give away as much as you spend on Christmas.  For some of you that means simply being more generous at Christmas.  For others it means cutting your spending in half.

We’re going to give you an opportunity on Christmas Eve to give away as much as you spend on yourself.  Usually our offerings all year long go to supporting the immediate mission and ministry of SCC, but at Christmas Eve we receive an offering and give it all away.  This year we’re giving it all away to our medical missions in Nicaragua.  Twice a year we send teams to Nicaragua to bring life-giving and life-changing medicine, medical expertise, and hope to individuals all across the second poorest country in the Americas.

Over the life of our church we’ve been able to give away over $31,000 in our Christmas Eve offerings.  Last year we gave away $3800.  Our record is $5800 in 2011.  I’d love to see us smash that record this year.  Can we do $6000?  No, that’s too low.  Let’s shoot for $10,000.  Come on, if we give away as much as we spend at Christmas, we can easily do $10,000.  Get your family and friends in on it.  Give them an invite card to join you for Christmas Eve (one service at 5PM at Lansing Christian School and one service at 7PM at Jackie’s dinner with a $10 Christmas dinner), and tell them not to spend any money on you but to give it to our Christmas Eve offering.  Now that’s a miracle!

During Christmas we’re not only focusing on giving overseas, but we’re also giving away lots of money locally.  This is the last year in a three-year capital campaign at SCC to save money for a building.  When we began the campaign we decided to tithe on what we received for the capital campaign, so we’ve been setting aside 10% for missions.  We’ve received about $330,000 so we’ve set aside $33,000 for missions.  Half of that is going to our medical missions in Nicaragua and half of it is staying here locally.  Part of the local money is going to the ministries and missions that our church’s small groups have committed to.  So over the course of December, each of our small groups is getting a $1000 check to give to their local charity.  We’re going to show you a video each week of that miraculous moment when someone from our church gets to give $1000 to a ministry they’ve been volunteering at for a long time.  You’re not going to want to miss that!  That’s what your giving does.  It changes lives both here in SCC, in our community, and our world.  Here’s a miracle for Holt Senior Care:

 

*This series and sermon are inspired by Mike Slaughter’s book, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday.

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What is a Christian – Why Follow Jesus?

July 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
July 14/15, 2013
1 Corinthians 15:3-58  

Peace friends!

We’re continuing a series where we’re searching for an answer to the question: What is a Christian?  The problem with the word Christian is that it only shows up in the Bible three times.  And in each of those instances, it’s an outsider labeling Christians.  So if the word only shows up three times, then it’s super easy to make it mean whatever you want it to mean.  And herein lies the problem with the word Christian.  If you can make it mean whatever you want it to mean, then you can very easily confuse secondary beliefs with primary ones.  You can make being a Christian about things that it really shouldn’t be all about.  You can make certain things essential that really aren’t essential.

I’ve had my share of confusing secondary things with primary things.  Growing up I believed certain things were primary that I have since come to believe are secondary.  I confused certain views about the Bible as primary.  But the Bible always requires interpretation, so what we were really saying is that certain interpretations of the Bible are primary.  I had views about who was holy and who wasn’t.  If you raised your hands in worship then you were good to go.  If you didn’t, then you were suspect in my mind.

I held certain views about who’s in and who’s out.  Who’s going to heaven and who isn’t.  Who’s part of the right church, the right belief system, the right behaviors, and who had it so messed up that they were certainly going to end up in hell.  I even lost my faith for a time period over these secondary things.

I suspect I’m not alone.  I came across this list of ten things Christians don’t need to believe.  It’s Martin Thielen’s book, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? Martin Thielen is a pastor in Tennessee and here’s his list of ten things Christians don’t need to believe and what he thinks is the truth about each one (in italics):

  1. God Causes Cancer, Car Wrecks, and Other Catastrophes
    Although God can and does bring good results out of tragedy, God does not cause tragic events to occur.
  2. Good Christians Don’t Doubt
    Doubt is not the enemy of faith but part of authentic Christianity.
  3. True Christians Can’t Believe in Evolution
    Science and faith are fully compatible, and theistic evolution is a perfectly acceptable Christian belief.
  4. Women Can’t Be Preachers and Must Submit to Men
    Women are fully equal with men in marriage, in church, and in society.
  5. God Cares about Saving Souls but Not about Saving Trees
    God cares about personal salvation and social justice and so should God’s church.
  6. Bad People Will Be “Left Behind” and Then Fry in Hell
    Left-behind rapture theology is neither a biblical nor a historical Christian belief and should be left behind by mainline and moderate evangelical Christians.
  7. Jews Won’t Make It to Heaven
    The ultimate destiny of non-Christians is in God’s hands, and God can be trusted to do what’s right.
  8. Everything in the Bible Should Be Taken Literally
    Although we must always take the Bible seriously, we don’t always have to take it literally.
  9. God Loves Straight People but Not Gay People
    All persons, including homosexual persons, are welcome in God’s church. However, beyond that, mainline and moderate churches are not of one mind on this issue. For now, “welcoming but not affirming” best describes most mainline churches, and the discussion goes on.
  10. It’s OK for Christians to be Judgmental and Obnoxious
    True Christians leave judgment to God.

I find that churches confuse these secondary things with primary things all the time.  We make this list of ten to be essentials, to be foundational, to be fundamental.  We use them to decide who’s in and who’s out of Christianity.

So if the word “Christian” only shows up three times is there some other better word to describe who we are?  Yes.  There is a word that is so clearly defined by the Bible that you can’t ignore what it means.  It’s the word “disciple.”  “Disciple” shows up over two-hundred and seventy times.  A disciple is a follower, apprentice, pupil, student.  A disciple of Jesus learns from Jesus about how to live life.  And Jesus said that we would prove we were his disciples by our love for one another.

This raises an important question which gets at, I think, what should be our primary belief: Why trust following Jesus?  Why follow Jesus rather than anyone else?  Why not follow Buddha or Confucius or Muhammad or any other historical or contemporary figure?   Why trust Jesus?  Or why is Jesus trustworthy to give your whole life over to him?  That’s the primary question.

Recently daredevil Nik Wallenda crossed over a part of the Grand Canyon on a high wire.  If you didn’t catch this in the news, here it is:

 

That’s a pretty amazing feat, but the question I have related to today’s message is: Why trust the wire?  Nik Wallenda is obviously a skilled person, but he put an amazing amount of trust in the integrity of the wire that was going to see him across the canyon.  The same thing is true for Jesus.  Why trust Jesus with your life the way that Nik Wallenda trusts that wire with his life?  That’s the primary question.  That’s the primary belief.  That’s what we cannot afford to confuse with any other secondary belief.  Let’s search the Bible and see if we get any direction on this question.

St. Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament in the form of letters, wrote a letter to a church he helped plant in Corinth.  As he struggles with them about all kinds of things that they’re messing up, he has this to say about what is primary:

1 Corinthians 15:3-58
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,  and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time…

Did you catch that?  Paul is passing on to the Corinthians and to us what is primary, of first importance.  This brief passage is worth some pretty intense study because it’s Paul saying here’s what’s most important of all things.  Jesus died and was buried in accordance with the scriptures of the Old Testament.   But death couldn’t hold him, and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures of the Old Testament.   Then he appeared to all kinds of people, his closest followers first and then more and more people and eventually to Paul himself.  That’s what’s most important.  God had a plan laid out in the Old Testament that Jesus would die and would be raised and would appear to many people as the risen Lord.  So here’s the point of today’s message.  If you get nothing else out of this message today get this:

The Point
Trust Jesus with your entire life because of who he is.  Jesus is the risen Lord, the risen Son of God.  You can trust following Jesus, you can trust Jesus with your life because of who Jesus is.

Sarah and I had a recent addition to our family.  Samuel Lewis came three weeks early.  When we got to the hospital Sarah was fully dilated.  They rushed us into labor and deliver and guess who was there, Teresa Miller, a member of our church.  Shortly thereafter our doctor, Amanda Shoemaker, also a member of our church, showed up.  Amanda and Teresa then spent the next three hours helping us deliver Sam into this world.  When they told us to do something, we did it.  We trusted them with the life of this precious little boy.  Why did we do this?  Because of who they are: a labor and delivery nurse and a doctor.  We trusted them with all that was precious to us in that moment because of who they are.  The same is true of Jesus.  We trust following him because of who he is.

Two weeks ago we baptized or reaffirmed ten people.  As they stood before you I asked them several questions.  Some of those questions were from the Apostles’ Creed, a statement of faith almost as old as the Bible itself.  It is split into three sections: The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit.  I asked each person if they believe in the Father, in the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The word “creed” comes from the Latin word credo which implies not just intellectual assent but trust.  I was asking them if they trust Jesus with their whole life.  They said yes and the baptism was an outward sign of the inward reality of that trust.  Will you join me in confessing the Apostles Creed with them:

Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.

That’s what I want you to do today.  This is what is primary.  All other things are secondary.  I want you to trust Jesus with everything you’ve got because of who Jesus is, the risen son of God.  He is trustworthy because of who he is.  He is faithful because of who he is.  Follow Jesus, be Jesus’ disciple because of who Jesus is.

I recently came across a payer that sums this up well.  May this be the prayer of your heart today.

Prayer
Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

 

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Curious

September 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Church on the Move

Church on the MOVE – Curious
Sycamore Creek Church
September 9, 2012
Tom Arthur
Mark 9:17-27 

Peace, Friends!

In March, 2009 NASA held a contest to name the rover that was going to Mars.  On May 27, 2009 the winning name was announced: Curiosity.  This name was originally submitted by Clara Ma, a sixth-grader fromKansas.  In her essay suggesting the name she said, “Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder.”

On November 26, 2011 the Mars Science Laboratory launched fromCape Canaveralon an Atlas V rocket.  Eight months later on August 5, 2012 Curiosity Rover landed on Mars.  Here is what curiosity looks like:

 

 

Today we begin a new series called Church on the MOVE. Sycamore Creek Church isn’t a static church.  We’re on the move.  We’re going to Mars and back!  And this series will explore the culture of that move in three words: curious, creative, and compassionate.  These three words are the jet propulsion that moves us forward, reaching out to new people and growing.  Today we begin with the first word: curious. 

  1. Curious: Eager to know or learn something

When you look up the word “curious” in a dictionary you will find variations on two meanings.  The first meaning for “curious” is “eager to know or learn something.”  The NASA scientists were eager to know or learn something about Mars.  The initial proposals for Curiosity came in April 2004, eight years before Curiosity landed on Mars.  That’s a pretty intense eagerness to learn that sustained them over that time period.  And while there were certainly some answers over time, the journey of Curiosity was marked more by questions than answers.

When we think about faith, many of us tend to fall into a kind of rut: we think we must have it all figured out before we make a decision to launch on the journey of following Jesus.  But that’s rarely if ever how it works.  Rather the journey is launched because of curiosity about God.

When I was in college I went through a faith crisis, I wanted certainty about my faith, but what I found was uncertainty.  I let my faith go, and what I found was that when I no longer believed, I was no more certain.  What I had when I believed was uncertainty with hope and meaning.  What I had when I didn’t believe was uncertainty with hopelessness and meaninglessness.  So I made a conscious decision to believe even though I wasn’t certain.

Lately I’ve been talking to someone about coming to church.  This person thinks they have to get their life together and have everything figured out before they start the journey.  But if we wait for our curiosity to be satisfied, we’ll never go anywhere.  It’s the curiosity that propels us forward.  We’ll never get every question answered.  As one friend of mine recently posted on her Facebook status: “I had lots of questions I just couldn’t answer today so I found the answers in a cup of Death by Chocolate smothered in chocolate sauce!”

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to have it all figured out to follow Jesus.  One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament tells about a man who found himself in a similar situation.

Mark 9:17-27 NRSV
Someone from the crowd answered [Jesus], “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak;  and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.”  He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”  And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.  Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.  It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.”  Jesus said to him, “If you are able!– All things can be done for the one who believes.”  Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”  When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!”  After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.

Here’s the main point of this sermon: Following Jesus is a mixture of belief and unbelief.

Or as the father said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).  And here’s the greatest part of this story to me: Jesus doesn’t cast him out.  He receives this man’s honesty and curiosity and he heals his son!  Thank you, God!

We get stuck thinking that to belong we must first become the right kind of person and to become that kind of person we must first believe the right things.  But today I want to tell  you that you belong first because you are curious about Jesus, and in that belonging  you become the kind of person that Jesus calls us to become, and perhaps at the end of the day after belonging and becoming you begin to believe that Jesus is really who he says he is.

SycamoreCreekChurchis a mix of all kinds of curious people.  Do you know that on any given Sunday morning we’ve got people here who are atheists, agnostics, spiritual (but not religious), religious, and on and on and on.  I lead a small group that meets every first and third Thursday at a local pub called an Agnostic Pub Group.  We read books and ask questions and explore God together.  Usually I’m the only Christian in the group.

We are often afraid of this kind of uncertainty, asking questions, and even doubting.  But recent research done by the Fuller Youth Institute suggests that:

Suppression of doubt can sabotage a young person’s faith. Contrary to what many of us might believe, students who feel the most free to express doubt and discuss their personal problems actually exhibit more internal and external faith indicators in high school and college. Doubt in and of itself isn’t toxic. It’s unexpressed doubt that becomes toxic.

Following Jesus means trusting, but not necessarily being in total agreement of belief.  When Jesus called his disciples to follow him, they didn’t have it all figured out.  The Bible tells all kinds of stories about the disciples really getting it all wrong.  They were curious enough to follow Jesus, whether they got all their questions answered or not.

Psalm 25:4 says “Show me Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths.”  Curiosity leads us to being eager to learn and know Jesus’ ways, and the faith and trust to follow is sometimes scary.  When I was learning to ski, I had to trust the instructor that the best way to get safely down the hill with these supper slippery boards strapped to the ends of my feet was to actually lean down the mountain rather than lean back up the mountain.  Lean down the mountain?  Isn’t that just going to make me go faster?  Well, no.  Leaning down the mountain when you ski lets the edges of your skis bite into the snow and slow down.  Leaning backwards keeps them up above the snow and speeds you up.  To learn the best path down the mountain, I had to trust the instructor over my fear of leaning down the mountain.  It makes total sense to me now, but in the beginning it was a mystery.

Maybe that’s why we call communion and baptism a sacrament.  “Sacrament” is Latin for “mystery.”  The sacraments of communion and baptism aren’t dependent upon us fully understanding what’s going on.  If participation was dependent upon us fully understanding it all, then none of us could partake.  We’d all have to simply sit in our seats, me included.  The conditions we put on participating in communion are a curiosity and desire to live at peace with God and with others.  Children are welcome to the communion table because they are often the most curious!  A couple of months ago I took Micah with me to a Saturday night worship service at another church.  They were serving communion so the two of us went up and received communion.  I told Micah that this was the body and blood of Jesus as we ate the bread dipped in the cup.  After we got back to our seats, Micah looked up at me and signed “more.”  Did he get what he was asking for?  Probably not, but perhaps deep in his spirit, in his curiosity was a desire to have more of Jesus.  A sacrament is a mystery, and Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

What questions do you have about God and following Jesus?  When you are curious about God and follow Jesus you become a little (and then a lot!) curious…  What do I mean by that?

  1. Curious: Strange; unusual

“Curious” has a second meaning: strange or unusual.  When you’re curious about God and you begin following Jesus you become a little (and sometimes a lot!) strange and unusual.  Unfortunately the church inAmericahas become too normal, dull, ordinary, and conventional.  According to George Barna, a researcher on trends in the American religious landscape, “Casual Christians represent 66% of the adult population of theU.S.”  Casual Christians are marked by “moderation in all things” vs. “extreme devotion to…God regardless of the worldly consequences.”  Let me give you an example: when it comes to divorce, those who identify as “born again” have “divorce [figures] statistically identical to that of non-born again adults: 32% versus 33%, respectively.”  Christians should be different, but in many ways we’re not.  Our curiosity or eagerness to learn and know should lead us to being curious or strange and unusual.

Here’s a surprise second main point of this message: Following Jesus is a countercultural movement that makes us odd. St.Peter says, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9 KJV).  I like that old King James language: “a peculiar people.”  When we follow Jesus we should be peculiar, countercultural, curious.  We should look and live differently than the rest of our neighbors, co-workers, family, and friends.

Who are the people you most admire?  They are most likely unique, peculiar, curious…They live their lives against the grain of culture.  They are countercultural.  Let me tell you about some of the people I want to be like when I grow up.

Jo Snedden is a woman of prayer.  Her life of prayer led her to finishing her basement so that her aging mother could live with her family.  After her mother died, her grandchildren were having a rough time so she and her husband took them in and raised them.  She would tell me that while being a grandparent she didn’t have the energy of her parenting years, she had a kind of wisdom that she didn’t have as a younger mom, especially when it came to nurturing faith in her grandchildren.  When I grow up I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like Jo Snedden.

Hank Kuehl was a seventy-year-old retired shop teacher who volunteered with the youth of a church I worked at.  He would run full tilt playing capture the flag with the teenagers.  My wife was always afraid that he was going to stroke out or have a heart attack on a retreat!  Hank also was a Habitat for Humanity volunteer extraordinaire.  Some people have construction skills and some people have teaching skills, but Hank had both.  When one student, Walker, was going through confirmation, and was told he would be assigned a mentor, he asked if he could pick his mentor.  Guess who he wanted to have mentor him.  Hank!  When I am seventy I want to be the kind of peculiar, countercultural and curious kind of old geezer that fourteen-year-old boys ask for me to  be their mentor even when they weren’t told they could ask!

Dennis Myers is my mortgage broker in Petoskey who helped us buy our house (and refinance it several times) and his wife is Cindy.  Dennis has made a good living selling mortgages inNorthern Michigan.  He lives on Walloon Lake in one of the biggest and nicest houses I’ve ever been in.  There are a lot of rooms in the Myers house.  Dennis and Cindy both felt that God had given them a lot and they wanted to give back to others.  So over the course of several years they filled that house with adopted children.  They had one of their own and adopted 3 kids, one with special needs.  When I grow up I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like Dennis and Cindy Myers.

Then there’s Charlie Robinson.  Charlie had a couple of kids of his own but felt compelled to be a foster parent for teenage boys.  Charlie had a rough background himself, getting into trouble as a teenager.  As he began to open his home to foster kids, he felt led to invite more.  Soon he was running out of room, so he built a “wing” on to his house.  He got a license to turn his home into an “institution” and every Sunday morning you could find him sitting in a pew with his wife, two kids, and about five teenage boys.  When I grow up I want to be the kind of person who brings hurting teenage boys to church with me so that we take up a whole row.  I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like Charlie Robinson.

Let me tell you about Rachel and Juliet Serra.  Rachel and Juliet were teenagers in my youth group. When Rachel graduated from college, she wanted to spend a year with Mission Year, a missions organization that hosts college graduates to live in urban areas to minister to the needs of those in the neighborhood.  The only problem was that Rachel couldn’t afford to make it all happen.  So her younger sister, Juliet, decided to move in with her and work to help pay the bills.  When I “grow up” I want to be the kind of person who uses my time and money to support the missions work of my “family” members.  I want to be peculiar, curious, and countercultural like Rachel and Juliet Serra.

Lastly, when I grow up I want to be like David and Rebecca Arthur.  Even though we share a last name, we aren’t part of the same biological family.  Sarah and I met David and Rebecca because we were attending a historically black church while in seminary and David and Rebecca were the only other white people in the church.  They invited the church to their house one day, and we learned that they owned a very large house in the ghetto where they were building a Christian community that offered hospitality to women and children in transition.  David stayed home, raised the kids, and ran the house.  Rebecca worked ¾ time as a physical therapist.  They did this all on a ¾ time income!  They were able to be so generous because they lived simply.  When I grow up I want to live simply enough that I’m able to share what I have with others.  I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like David and Rebecca.

Friend, this kind of strange, odd, countercultural, peculiar and curious living is already happening here atSycamoreCreekChurch.  We’re hospitable and we welcome anyone.  Come as you are.  We seek to live lives of spiritual discipline by seeking God daily in prayer & Bible reading.  We live a curious lifestyle by seeking to live pure and holy lives.  We’re peculiar with our money.  We live simply and give generously.  We’re curiously authentic.  We give a true account of ourselves.  We seek to be countercultural with our time.  We take time to rest and enjoy by practicing Sabbath and not just being concerned with producing, producing, producing.  And most of all we are a peculiar, countercultural, and curious community of love.  We love God with everything we’ve got, and we love our neighbors as ourselves.  Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

SycamoreCreekChurchis a curious people:

  1. We’re curious to learn more about God;
  2. We’re countercultural when we follow Jesus.

So do you want to move with us?  Do you want to get into the current of the creek and go deep in God’s curious grace?  Here’s how you begin:  Connect with God and others in worship.  Grow in the character of Christ in a small group.  Serve the church, community and world with your time, talent, treasure, and testimony. Sycamore Creek Church is curious.  Will you be curious with us?

Questions for Small Groups

Each week we provide discussion questions for small groups that meet regularly to discuss the message for the week.  Want to find a small group to join?  Email Mark Aupperlee – m_aupperlee@hotmail.com.

  1. What is one (or two) question(s) you have about God?
  2. Read Mark 9:17-29.  When was a time you were filled with both belief and unbelief?
  3. How can we pray for your trust to follow Jesus?
  4. Who do you need to invite to join our small group that needs a place to be curious?

 

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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

October 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Good Man JesusThe Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
By Phillip Pullman
Library
Rating: 5 of 10

This book was picked for our Agnostic Pub Group as a change of pace from C.S. Lewis.  Pullman is at least an agnostic and at most an atheist.  Pullman’s book is an interesting attempt to explore “how stories become stories.”  The basic plot line is that Jesus has a twin brother named Christ.  The two grow up alongside one another, and as adults, Jesus becomes prominent in the public eye and Christ recedes into the background.  Christ begins to follow Jesus around and record what Jesus does.  Along the way Christ meets a “stranger” who encourages him “to make history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor.  What should have been is a better servant of the Kingdom than what was” (emphasis is Pullman’s).  So Christ embellishes the story because “without miracles, without a church, without a scripture, the power of [Jesus’] words and his deeds will be like water poured into the sand.”  In the end, Jesus is crucified, and Christ steps in to provide the resurrection.

Throughout this book I was reminded of two historical/theological debates.  The first is an attempt to make a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.  This position tends to hold that Jesus did not claim much about himself and was a wandering prophet or social critic.  Thus, claims about Jesus’ divinity were developed in the early history of the church.  This fundamental assertion lies at the base of Pullman’s story.

The second debate that comes to mind is Albert Schwitzer’s critique of the search for the historical Jesus.  Schwitzer claimed that portraits of a historical Jesus always end up looking like the individuals writing them.  Ironically, Schwitzer went on to write a “historical” portrait of Jesus that scholars now think looks a lot like Schwitzer himself!  Thus, the distinction between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith” tends to break down as one attempts to tease the two apart.

Pullman attempts to separate the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith by introducing a very fanciful plot device: the two were really twins.  Pullman is not attempting to say that there really were twins named Jesus and Christ.  The plot device is simply an experiment in exploring how a religion might move from history to faith.  The problem with this exploration is that it requires such a fantastically non-historical plot device to accomplish it that one is left wondering how the “story became a story” without the plot device: twins.  If Jesus didn’t have a twin named Christ, then how did Jesus really end up being claimed to have been God’s son?  Pullman really hasn’t helped the agnostic/atheist imagination see how the “historical Jesus” ended up becoming the “Christ of faith.”

While I didn’t find Pullman’s plot device particularly compelling, I did find his critique of the church compelling.  Pullman rewrites Jesus prayer from John 17.  In this prayer, Jesus is full of doubt and barely believes that God exists, or if God does exist, then God probably doesn’t listen.  So Jesus prays, “Lord, if I thought you were listening, I’d pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, powerless, and modest.  That it should wield no authority except that of love.  That it should never cast anyone out.  That it should own no property and make no laws.  That it should never condemn, but only forgive.”  The prayer continues in a similar direction.  Pullman really does provide a compelling vision for what a church might or could be.  I don’t agree with everything in this prayer, but the church has unfortunately used its power and authority in abusive and destructive ways.  It is the church’s lack of providing a truly loving community that makes books like The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ possible.  It is important for the church to listen to the prophetic voice of God speaking through those outside the church who critique her.  At times Pullman provides that voice in this book.

Note: Our Agnostic Pub Group is beginning a new book—The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University—on October 20th.  We meet on the 1st and 3rd Thursday at 7PM at Soup Spoon Café (a kind of coffee house/pub).  Join us for great discussion and brew.

Currently Reading/Listening
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
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
Recreating the Church by Richard Hamm
Sticky Teams by Larry Osborn
Fascinate by Sally Hogshead
Talent is Overrated by Geoffrey Colvin

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I Believe – The Son

March 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I Believe

I Believe – The Son (The Apostles’ Creed)
Sycamore Creek Church
March 13, 2011
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

I’ve been finding my journal particularly helpful this past week.  It is a great place to write down what’s on my mind, and how I see the world.  If I gave it to you to read, you’d see the world differently than you see it now.  You’d see it through my eyes.  You’d see things you hadn’t seen before.  And you’d see the same things you see but in a different light.  The Apostles’ Creed is like the journal of the early church.  It is a description of how they saw the world.  When we read the Apostles’ Creed we see the world differently.  We see it through the eyes and experience of so many Christians before us.

C.S. Lewis had this kind of an understanding of Christian beliefs, theology, and creeds like the Apostles’ Creed.  In his book, Mere Christianity, he says:

In a way I quite under­stand why some peo­ple are put off by The­ol­ogy. I remem­ber once when I had been giv­ing a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten offi­cer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a reli­gious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him out alone in the desert at night: the tremen­dous mys­tery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat lit­tle dog­mas and for­mu­las about Him. To any­one who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedan­tic and unreal!’

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had prob­a­bly had a real expe­ri­ence of God in the desert. And when he turned from that expe­ri­ence to the Chris­t­ian creeds, I think he really was turn­ing from some­thing real to some­thing less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turn­ing from some­thing real to some­thing less real: turn­ing from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admit­tedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remem­ber about it. In the first place, it is based on what hun­dreds and thou­sands of peo­ple have found out by sail­ing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of expe­ri­ence just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a sin­gle glimpse, the map fits all those dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences together. In the sec­ond place, if you want to go any­where, the map is absolutely nec­es­sary. As long as you are con­tent with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than look­ing at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

I asked on Facebook this past week about when or how the Apostles’ Creed was meaningful to you.  One friend wrote, “When he was killed by the Russian, Ivan Drago, in Rocky IV, it was the first time I recall crying as a young man. I was with my father.”  Umm…That’s Apollo Creed.  Not the Apostles’ Creed.  Krissy Brokenshire from our church said, “I like being able to vocalize exactly what I believe in. People ask me ‘what does it mean to be a Christian?’ or ‘what makes Christians different from people of other religions?’  I like that I don’t have to resort to vague descriptions or long references to verses.”  Marilyn Mannino wrote, “When I prayed it with my Dad & Father-in-law this afternoon at Sparrow Hospital CICU. My Dad does not have long to live.”  Another friend wrote, “I can tell you that what hasn’t been helpful is listening to it ritually repeated by a congregation in dead, passionless voices.”

So as we continue exploring the Apostles’ Creed this week, let’s begin by praying it together and not doing so with “dead, passionless voices.”

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.

Trinity

Once again we begin by noting the three-fold structure of the creed.  I believe in the Father…I believe in the Son…I believe in the Holy Spirit.  This is what Christians have called the Trinity.  The word “Trinity” does not show up in the Bible, but the idea of the Trinity is found in many places.  One such place is Jesus’ last words to his disciples in the book of Matthew.  He says, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19, NRSV).  Here we see Jesus equating the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together as one.  When Christians say we worship the Trinitarian God, we mean that we worship the God who is eternally one God in three persons.  A commUNITY exists within God, Godself, a community of love.

It is hard to wrap our minds around how something can be three and one at the same time.  There have been over the years weak and strong metaphors for describing the Trinity.  One weak metaphor is an apple.  Sometimes you will hear it said that the Trinity is like an apple.  An apple is made up of seeds, flesh, and skin and yet it is one apple.  Well, this may get us going in the right direction, but its more like seeds, flesh, and skin are just three different parts of an apple.  Whereas the Son is not just part of God and the Father is another part and the Holy Spirit another part still.  Not to mention that you can take away one of the parts of the apple and still have a pretty functional apple.

A stronger metaphor for the Trinity is speech.  Speech always includes at least three things: the speaker, wind/breath, and words.  If you take away one of those three you no longer have speech.  Speech is eternally three and one.  Maybe with the metaphor we can even connect each of those “persons” of speech with a person of the Trinity.  The speaker is God the Father.  The words are God the Son.  And the wind or breath is God the Spirit.  Of course, all analogies break down at some point and this one does too.  That’s why I’m saying there are weaker and stronger metaphors.  Some metaphors for God break down quicker than others!

Fully God and Fully Human

Last week we discovered that when we say “I believe” in the Apostles’ Creed, we aren’t just making a statement about knowledge or fact.  We are saying “I trust…”  Last week we looked at what it means to believe and/or trust in “the Father” and today we look at believing and trusting in “the Son.”

When we look closely at the Apostles’ Creed we realize that this Son, Jesus Christ, is an odd kind of fellow.  He is a unique kind of person.  He is fully God and fully human.  The Bible makes a lot of claims like this about Jesus.

Jesus says: The Father and I are one. John 10:30 (NRSV)
Paul says: Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. Colossians 1:15 (NRSV)
John says: In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God.  John 1:1 (NRSV)

The Bible regularly equates Jesus with God.  The creed points to both Jesus’ divinity and his humanity.  He is both fully God and fully human.  In the Apostles’ Creed we confess that Jesus was “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary.”  We read this same claim in the Bible.  Mary asked the angel, “But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin” (Luke 1:34, NRSV).  Christians believe and trust that Jesus is fully God.

We also confess a belief and trust that Jesus is fully human saying, “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”  Hmmm…He was fully God but we don’t usually think of God as suffering and dying.  So we’re claiming a paradox here.  Jesus was fully God but also fully human.  He suffered like any of the rest of us.  We read in Mark that as Jesus hung on the cross he “uttered another loud cry and breathed his last” (Mark 15:37, NRSV).  He really died.  We tend to have a hard time today believing that Jesus was fully God.  But many early Christians had a hard time believing that Jesus was fully human.  So this confession that Jesus really did suffer and die was scandalous.  How can God be like us?!

Paul puts these two things together in a very early Creed-like statement.  He says, “I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me — that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, NRSV).

How are we to understand that Jesus had two natures?  How can he be fully human and fully God at the same time?  This is kind of like the Trinity.  How can God be three and one at the same time?  In the same way that metaphors help us wrap our imaginations around God, so too can we use a metaphor to help us understand Jesus’ two natures.  If you take a piece of iron and put it in the fire, it will become hot.  The heat will fully penetrate the iron.  You can even take the hot iron out and pound it into the shape you want to pound it into.  In that way you change the iron, but you do not touch the heat.  The iron “suffers” but the heat does not.  Jesus’ two natures are like heated iron.  His human nature is like the iron.  It can suffer and change.  Jesus’ divine nature is like the heat.  It permeates all throughout the iron, but it cannot suffer or change.

Rescue Mission

As we continue on in the creed we read that Jesus descended to the dead.  In one sense this can simply be an extension of our confession that Jesus really did die.  He really was human.  The old way of saying this in the Apostles’ Creed was to say that “he descended into hell.”  The early Christians believed that this meant more than just that Jesus died.  Rather, their imaginations guided by the Bible understood this as a brief description of an amazing rescue mission that Jesus staged.  He descended into hell, the place of the dead, and preached to all those who were there, past, present, and future, so that anyone who wanted to be rescued from hell had the chance to do so.

This idea of rescue mission shows up several places in the Bible.  Paul says, “Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10, NRSV).

I imagine a kind of Chilean mining rescue scene where Jesus goes down in the rescue pod to save those who are buried under ground.  He cares so much for these trapped miners that he even dies in the process of rescuing them.  He gives up his own life so that they might be given Life!

Defeated Death

Ah…but this whole rescue mission and death thing is not the end of the story.  For we also confess that “on the third day he rose again.”  I’ve been to a lot of funerals in my work at churches.  One thing I know with about as much certainty as I know anything: once you’re dead and in the coffin you don’t get back out.  People who are dead don’t come back to life.  But Jesus did!  Jesus conquered death.

We read in Paul’s letter to the Romans that in our baptism we participate in this death and resurrection of Jesus: “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised as he was” (Romans 6:4-5, NLT).  Jesus conquered death and we confess and trust that in Jesus’ death and resurrection we too will conquer death!

Jesus is King!

Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead, but we also confess that he “ascended into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the Father.”  This seems so strange.  One part of me is always a little skeptical about the Christian story at this point.  Isn’t it convenient that this resurrected person ascended into heaven so that the rest of us couldn’t actually see him?!  Yes…but.  The early church understood this ascension very differently than we do now.  For us we think it is strange that Jesus isn’t around any more if he resurrected from the dead, but they would have understood that Jesus’ resurrection meant he was king and the rightful place for the king would have been reigning from the throne room of heaven.  It would have been weird for them had Jesus the king  not ascended into heaven!  It is hard for us Americans to fully grasp the rightful place of a king.

Recently an improv group in New York called Improv Everywhere set a prank at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  They had a 400 year-old king show up to sign autographs next to his portrait.  The Americans didn’t quite know what to do.  We’re not used to interacting with kings.

In Jesus the kingdom of heaven has radically broken into our world.  We read John the Baptist making this claim about Jesus, “Turn from your sins and turn to God, because the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2, NLT).  In Jesus, God’s kingdom breaks into this world in a totally radical and unique way.  The kingdom is not yet full, but it is already present.

Second Coming

As we continue in the Apostles’ Creed we confess that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead” or some of you may have grown up saying “the quick and the dead.”  This is a reference to the time when Jesus will come back and while the kingdom of God is already present but not yet fully present, at that time, Christians claim, it will be made fully present.  What exactly will this look like?  We catch a glimpse of it in Revelation: He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever.  And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making all things new!’”  (Revelation 21:4-5, NLT).  There will be a new heaven and a new earth, but I don’t want to go fully into that, because later this fall we’ll be diving into a series on the book of Revelation.

So What?

So this is all grand and everything to write this stuff down and say it out loud, but what does it mean for me today?  Why should I care about belief and trust in the Son?  The question at stake here is salvation.  In Jesus, the kingdom of God has radically broken into the world.  The brokenness and sin that currently exists in this world has been dealt a mortal blow.  In the person of Jesus we see what this looks like.  He is the first fruit of your garden in the spring season.  You see what is yet to come for you and me.

I’d like to unpack this idea of salvation a bit more.  Because we confess that Jesus was both fully God and fully human we trust that in Jesus, God took on the character of flesh that flesh might take on the character of God.  Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th century church leader said, “That which Christ did not assume he did not redeem.”  In other words, if Christ had not been fully human, then he would not have been able to redeem fully our flesh.  As C.S. Lewis liked to say, “The Son of God became man so that men might become sons of God.”

St. Anselm, an 11th century church leader, wrote a book titled Why God Became Man.  He said that only humanity needed to be saved, but only God could save; therefore, a God-human needed to save.  When we say that Jesus was fully human and fully God we are saying that he was the only one who could build a bridge that would extend to both ends of the chasm that existed between God and humanity.

Jesus’ two natures mean both salvation now and salvation later.  It means that we are transformed now and that we have hope for a good and meaningful life after death in the presence of God.  Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again.  They are given eternal life for believing in me and will never perish. Do you believe this?”  (John 11:25-26, NLT).  The question is still posed to you today.  You need not do anything first to earn this salvation.  You need only trust right now.  Jesus = salvation.  Salvation = eternal life.  Eternal life begins right now.

Join me in the Apostles’ Creed but let us insert the word “trust” in the place of “believe.”

I trust in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

I trust in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I trust in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.

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