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Ant Man – Are You Too Small for the Challenge?

July 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

 

Ant Man – Are You Too Small for the Challenge?
Sycamore Creek Church
July 19/20, 2015
Tom Arthur

 

 

Peace friends! 

So who has actually heard of “Ant Man” before just now?  I had never heard of him as a super hero before looking at the movies coming out this summer.  He isn’t the biggest super hero out there.  In fact, he’s kind of, well, small.  But he packs a big punch!

It’s a good day to be here at SCC because we’re continuing in our summer series, God on Film.  Each week we’re looking at a different summer blockbuster.  We’re exploring one theme in each movie and looking at what the Bible has to say about that theme.  Today’s it’s Antman and the question is: are you too small for the challenges you face?

What BIG challenges are you facing today?  Maybe you feel like one person standing against injustice.  Or you’ve got too many obstacles in the way of your goals.  Or you think your relationship is too far gone.  Or you’ve got no hope for a job or a child is in trouble.  Maybe you’re struggling with a BIG powerful addiction.  Or you feel small and isolated and alone.  Or there’s BIG criticism you’re facing and feeling smaller and smaller with every critical comment.  Maybe at work you’ve got too much to do and not enough time or employees.  Or at church you’ve got too much to do and not enough volunteers.  Or financially there are too many bills and not enough money.  Or maybe you’re on the opposite side and you’ve got too many opportunities and not enough money to take all of them.  Maybe today you know too many people around you who need financial help and you don’t have enough money to help everyone.  Or your bad habits are ingrained in BIG ruts.  Maybe like at my house there’s too much noise and not enough peace and quiet.  Or you’ve got too many kids and not enough time to spend with each one.  Sometimes we feel really small in the face of BIG challenges.

Today I want to look at one person in the Bible who was too small and had too many big challenges for God to do much in his life.  But one day Jesus walked by.

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town.  There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich.
~Luke 19:1-2 NLT

Zacchaeus is an interesting character in this story.  Any Jew reading this in his day would have thought  immediately, Zacchaeus is too much of an enemy for God to do anything with.  He was the “Chief Tax Collector.”  In other words, he was an extortionist.  His job was to get as much tax out of you so that he could have as big of a commission as possible.  You pay more taxes.  He makes more money.  What if the IRS worked on a commission?  Yikes!  Add to that, Zacchaeus was very good at his job.  He had become “very rich.”  Probably too rich.  Remember what Jesus said about rich people?  “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”  (Matthew 19:24 NLT).  And these are just the first two of many BIG problems for Zacchaeus. Let’s keep reading.

He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.
~Luke 19:3-4 NLT

Yes, Zacchaeus is not only too crooked and too rich, he’s also too short!  What a way to punch a man when he’s down.  Zacchaeus has BIG problems for God to work in his life and he’s too short to meet Jesus.

When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.”
~Luke 19:5 NLT

Jesus just walked over a serious line here and you may not have even noticed it.  He wants to be a guest in Zacchaeus’ house!  What’s so bad about this?  Well, Jesus is offering to not only hang out with one wrong person, but he’s going to go hang out in the lion’s den itself!  Zacchaeus certainly has too many of the wrong kind of friends, and Jesus wants to go meet them all.  Well, this puts the people in an uproar!

Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.
~Luke 19:6-7 NLT

More BIG problems.  Now Zacchaeus and Jesus both have a publicity problem.  There’s too much criticism.  People are seriously displeased.  Not just one person but people.  A whole crowd of criticism.  Of course, there’s criticism.  What did Jesus expect?  Zacchaeus is a “notorious sinner.”  Like the Ant Man, he “broke in and stole stuff.”  He cheated people on their taxes.

Needless to say, Zacchaeus had BIG problems and just wasn’t the right kind of person for God to work in.  So why does Jesus do it?  Because Jesus’ mission is clear:

For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
~Luke 19:9-10 NLT

When it comes to feeling lost amidst BIG problems in the world there are two kinds of people:

  1. Those who feel small and lost in a BIG world;
  2. Those who don’t feel small and lost in BIG world.

1.       Those who don’t feel small and lost in BIG world.

Let’s begin with the second kind: those who don’t feel small and lost in a BIG world.  Did you notice what kind of tree Zacchaeus climbed up?  A “sycamore-fig tree!”  Before Jesus walked by, Zacchaeus may have been too short to see Jesus, but he was at the top of the food chain when it comes to living in a BIG world.  He’s likely not very religious.  He’s interested in “BIG” things: money, power, and politics.  But catching a glimpse of Jesus was about to change all that.  As the “Ant Man” says, “This wasn’t my idea.”

It’s my hope that Sycamore Creek would be a “sycamore-fig tree” that provides a glimpse of Jesus for those who don’t yet know they’re lost in a BIG world.  But rest assured, God is at work in that person’s life even though they don’t recognize it yet.  John, one of Jesus’ closest followers said, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NRSV).  God loves that person even before they realize that they need God’s love back.  But for them to respond, there has to be some kind of small stirring in their heart.  I think that we at SCC can provide that stirring.  We can be the sycamore tree that they climb up and catch a glimpse of Jesus.  We do that in many ways but one very significant way: the way we welcome them.

When a first-time guest shows up and gives us their email on the Connection Card, they get an email on Monday welcoming them and are invited to take a 30-second survey.  The first question we ask is: what was the first thing you noticed?  Over the last year or two here are most of the responses we’ve gotten:

  • Friendly people
  • The greeter at the door was playful and friendly
  • The first thing I noticed was how friendly and inviting everyone was to me.
  • Signs inside and greeter
  • relaxed atmosphere
  • nice building (under construction)
  • Everyone was smiling and having a good time.
  • The friendliness everyone we saw was saying good morning and happy Easter. It felt awesome!
  • Everyone that I met was really nice and welcoming
  • Friendly people
  • The friendliness of church ‘regulars’ and representatives from church staff.
  • Welcoming atmosphere, praise & worship team.
  • I could hear the nice music outside of the church
  • I was immediately greeted by very friendly greeters.
  • Warm greeting from so many people
  • Friendly, welcoming people. very accessible worship service
  • Friendliness
  • Friendliness of people when I walked in
  • The friendliness of the congregation.
  • Friendly, welcoming atmosphere and a sense that things are “happening” at Sycamore Creek. Clearly an exciting time of growth.
  • Friendly people
  • The friendliness of congregation
  • When people realized that I was a stranger, they smiled and welcomed me.
  • The greeter
  • There was somebody at the door to greet me as I walked into the building. That was awesome.
  • Age diversity for a contemporary service
  • orange cones directing traffic, children check in point, and food
  • The warm welcome and laid back atmosphere
  • The crowd of people and the happy faces. The general atmosphere of well-being….that everything was right with the world at that moment.
  • Honestly? The smell of popcorn. After that, the smiles.
  • Everyone was so friendly and welcoming!
  • How welcoming everyone is
  • Everyone was super filled with GOD and happy.
  • there was a greeter directing people
  • Pastor Tom’s friendliness.
  • Greeters opened the door for us and were very inviting
  • Friendliest of people
  • How quickly people came up to greet me in a very genuine way.
  • smiling faces
  • Friendly welcome when we entered (and we saw the great sign out front)
  • a warm welcome
  • The friendliness of everyone.
  • Being greeted when we sat down.
  • The welcoming feeling I got from my first step in.
  • Ministry teamwork. Good communication. Preparedness.
  • Warmth

Do you notice any common threads among the answers?  It’s pretty obvious isn’t it?  People experience a warm welcome here.  We don’t always nail it, but we do it more often than not.  In the face of BIG questions about how to reach new people, sometimes a small welcome is all that is needed to help someone catch a glimpse of Jesus.

We do this using one simple tool.  We call it the 5-10-LINK rule.  While we all want to come to worship and reconnect with friends we haven’t seen, we can’t neglect the guest among us.  Five minutes before the service and five minutes after the service focus on getting to know someone you don’t know.  You don’t have to cover the entire building.  Just cover the ten feet around you.  That’s probably the seats beside, in front, and behind you.  Then LINK that person to others around them.  You’ve got ants in your kitchen?  Let me introduce you to Bob, he’s got ants in his whole house!

OK, one caution here.  Welcoming guests can be overdone.  This is a bit of an art form.  Watch for signs and cues about how much that person really wants to interact with you or others.  Are their answers to your questions short and to the point?  Is their body language closed?  Then welcome them and let them move on.

Friends, for those who don’t feel lost in a BIG world, we can be the “Sycamore Tree” that someone climbs up on and catches a glimpse of Jesus.

2.       Those who feel small and lost in a BIG world

While there are some who don’t feel lost in this BIG world, many of us feel like the ant man:

 

 

For those who do feel small and lost in a BIG world, it’s my hope that Sycamore Creek would be a place where Jesus regularly passes by.  I don’t mean a “place” in the sense that the building is where Jesus passes by.  The building is a tool.  The community that meets in the building is the “place.”  Wherever the community is at, that’s the place.  I also don’t mean that a pastor is the place where Jesus passes by.  I mean the whole community.  Each one of you.  The pastor is just the chief equipper, the head coach of the community.  I also don’t mean a formal ministry of the church, as important as that is.  Ministries are tools the community uses to create spaces where Jesus can come to town.  What I do mean is that wherever you are, there Jesus is passing by.  You are the “Sycamore Tree” that people will climb up to see Jesus when he passes by!

When people encounter Jesus at Sycamore Creek, everything changes!  Our “smallness” actually becomes a strength.  As John the Baptist says, “He [Jesus] must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less” (John 3:30 NLT).  I think you could say, “Jesus becomes bigger and I become smaller.”  Your mission in life becomes clear as it lines up with Jesus’ mission.  Why you exist becomes clear as it fits into why Jesus exists.  Your vision for what can be gets bigger.  You see how God can use your small contribution to accomplish BIG things.  Your creativity for how God will get you to where God wants you gets bigger.  Jesus takes you to unexpected places.  Let’s go back to Zacchaeus and see how God does big things through this small man.

Big Outcome for a “Small Person”

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”
~Luke 19:8 NLT

Zacchaeus has a BIG change of heart.  His heart moves from greed to BIG generosity.  He gives away half his wealth!  And some of you complain about 10%.  There’s a BIG turnaround in how he treats people.  He makes things right by giving them back what he stole with interest, 400% interest!

Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
~Luke 19:9-10 NLT

Jesus’ mission is clear: “The son of man came to seek and save those who are lost.”  Jesus’ mission overcomes BIG obstacles and results in BIG salvation.

Are the Obstacles too BIG for SCC?

I want to take a moment and reflect on some unique obstacles that SCC is facing right now.  They are unique because of the size of our church.  Those who study church size describe four different sizes of church from small to big.  The first three sizes are:

  1. Family Size Church (made up of a couple of families) – <75
  2. Pastoral Size Church (made up of the friends one pastor can sustain) – 76-140
  3. Small Program Size Church (made up of several pastoral size churches under one roof with key staff being the “pastor” of each “church”) – 225-400

Notice the jump from pastoral size church at 140 to small program size church at 225.  In between this is a fourth church size:

  1. Transition Size Church – 14-225

It’s a transition size church because it is “too large to be a small church and too small to be a large church” (The Myth of the 200 Barrier).  It is also called the awkward size church.  It’s awkward because a church of this size needs facilities, staff, and programs all at the same time but only has the resources to cover one at a time.

So where is Sycamore Creek?  Sycamore Creek has on average 220 people every weekend.  We are at the top end of the transitional size church, but I think our transitional nature is somewhat exaggerated because we never have 220 people all gathered in one service.  We have three services that are each family to pastoral sized.  When it comes to facilities, staff, and programs, we’ve focused rightfully so on facilities.  But if we are going to continue to grow, we’ll need to focus more and more on the other two: staff and programs.  You can grow programs in one of two ways: with staff or volunteers.  It’s my sense that God is calling SCC to grow our programs primarily with volunteers.  Individuals giving small amounts of time can together accomplish great things.  Consider the ant:

 

 

I think God is calling us to mobilize twice our current volunteers in three different areas: teaching ministries, caring ministries, and hospitality ministries.  When it comes to teaching, you’ll begin seeing more and more volunteers and staff preaching and teaching.  If we’re going to launch seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week, we’re going to need more preachers than just me!  As we continue to reach new families with young children and teenagers, there will be more opportunities to serve in Kids Creek and StuREV than ever before.

When it comes to caring ministries, a family size and pastoral size church can easily receive care from one pastor.  A pastor is essentially a family chaplain for a family sized church!  But that doesn’t work when you’re providing care for 220 people.  Because if there is an average of 220 people in worship on the weekend, that means there are 300-500 people in our orbit.  So you’re going to see Tom Fox, a retired pastor in our church beginning to organize volunteers to provide care in the hospital.  You’ll see our Caring and Listening team providing congregational care for our church so that I’m not the only one doing counseling.  You’ll begin seeing other staff doing funerals and weddings.

When it comes to hospitality we’re about to open a new Connection Café on Sunday mornings.  But wouldn’t it be great to see that café open other days of the week?!  There will be more opportunities than ever before to help provide a warm welcome with a warm drink in our new Connection Café.  Another key aspect to hospitality is a clean facility.  When the building is clean, some small and BIG obstacles are removed from a guest encountering God in this building.

Now we can do this.  We do it pretty regularly.  When we take our worship Live on Location (LOL) “ants” come out of the woodwork to lift the heavy loads.  At Baptism @ The Beach we had sixty people sign up to help make that day happen.  Many hands made light work.  And many hands turned a park into a sacred place where BIG salvation happened in the lives of those who were baptized that day.  Is SCC too small for the task?  Not when Jesus walks by this way!

Prayer
God help us to look to you when we feel small and the obstacles feel BIG.  Use us together to accomplish BIG things in the lives of those we meet.  May we join Jesus in seeking and saving those who feel small and lost amidst this BIG world.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

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Why Did Jesus Die: The Rescue

August 11, 2014 by Leave a Comment

jesus_die-web

 

 

 

 

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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The Big Story

February 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Big Story.  I love this.  It includes creation and community as part of redemption.  This is an “update” of the classic “four spiritual laws”, which have been critiqued for having no description or need of the church and being very individualistic.  This is anything but individualistic.  Check it out…

 

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What should I feel?

November 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Off the TracksAfter this past Sunday’s message, Off the Tracks – Personal Sin, I received the following question:

How do I know when I’m back on the tracks? Does it feel different? Should I feel different after asking God into my life?

It’s a great question.  Let me back up and review just for a moment before answering the question. I suggested that sin is anything whether intentional or unintentional that causes our lives to jump off the tracks of God’s will.  There are two basic steps for getting your life back on the tracks.  First, tell the truth about yourself.  Admit to yourself and God that your life is off the tracks.  Second, receive God’s lift of forgiveness back on the tracks.

So how do you know when you’re back on the tracks?  Does it feel different?  Well, yes and no.  Paul talks about the “Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16-17a).  I think that the general experience of Christians has been that when they experience God’s forgiveness, there is a kind of peace in their spirit and soul.  It is God’s Spirit dwelling in friendship with your spirit.

And yet, not every Christian experiences this quite the same way.  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, desired to experience this “witness of the Spirit” all his life and wrote a couple of sermons about it, but while he sought it himself and preached that we should expect it and look for it, his diary shows that he often did not feel it himself.  Some of us will simply experience a new confidence or commitment in seeking and following God’s way for our life, but nothing that seems “supernatural.”

But on another level we may actually feel worse.  If we continue reading Paul’s thoughts we hear him say, “If, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17b).  We should expect there to be suffering involved in following Christ.  This suffering may come from persecution or it may come from denying our bodies all their passions and lusts.  It also may come from the paradoxical experience that the more spiritually mature you are the more you realize how far you have to go.  The more that sin loses its grip on your life, the more you realize just how deep sin runs. Should you feel different?  Yes.  You should feel peace.  And no.  You may feel worse.

Maybe the best image to help one understand this situation is that of a storm over deep water.  The top of the water may rage at the tempest of the storm with rolling breakers, but below the surface the water is as calm as it ever has been.  The outside of your life may be filled with suffering, but on the inside there is a deep reservoir of peace that was not there before.

Then again, I wonder if God isn’t wonderful enough to work in as many ways as there are individuals, and that means every person’s experience will be a little different.  I will never forget what Rick Ray said when I baptized him last summer: “For forty years I have wondered how God could forgive me for things I couldn’t even forgive myself.  Then I realized that it didn’t matter what I thought.  It only mattered what God thought.”  Amen.

Filed Under: Ponderings, Sermons Tagged With: , , ,

Love Wins By Rob Bell

August 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Love Wins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: , ,

Rob Bell – Love Wins

March 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Ponderings, Video Tagged With: , ,