A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on
November 18, 2007
I picked him up by the side of the road on a cold and blustery morning. No, it wasn’t a puppy – but in a way he was. I’ll call him Kevin. He was a young man of twenty four who had come to Huntington the previous day with his father for an overnight stay. Now he was going back home, but something was radically wrong with the entire scenario.
First of all, he shouldn’t have been walking down the side of I -64 during rush hour. Second it was cold and he should have had a jacket and a hat – maybe a hoodie. Instead all he had on was a long sleeve T shirt. Third, he had no backpack or other belongings with him. And fourth, he was attempting to walk – without even trying to hitchhike.
Now most of you know that I pick up hitchhikers and that I’m not too put off by scruffy characters. Even so, the above factors caused me to sit up and take notice. Of course I stopped, but this time when I stopped, I was feeling something I don’t normally experience – the almost visceral concern of a father for a son. Besides the fact that I have no sons – only daughters, this young man moved me deeply in the course of a mere cursory glance at highway speed.
When he got in the car, I asked him where he was going. “Beckley”, he said. “I was told this is the right road to take to get there.” That’s right, I replied as he got in. “I’m going to Charleston, so that should get you about half way. But I have to go on into work and Beckley is about 50 miles beyond Charleston. What takes you to Beckley?” I asked.
“I’m going home. Came down here with my father last night and he was going to take me back, but he decided to get messed up on drugs and this morning at 7:00 am he told me he wasn’t going to take me back home…I’ve got to get back to my job, and I don’t have any money, so I only had one choice – Walk.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed, half in admiration and half in amazement. “Were you planning to walk all the way to Beckley?”
“Yup”
“Wow. So what kind of work do you do?
“I work for McDonald’s”
“And you were going all the way back today just so you wouldn’t miss work?”
“Yup, I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I only make $6.75 per hour, but I need the money.”
He went on to explain that his parents were both involved in drugs, that they had all previously lived in Florida, and that one day when he was 13, his mother and father suddenly left him all alone – and didn’t return until he was 21!
Most amazingly, he had somehow managed to find work on a nearby farm and scrape together enough money to make the house payments and the utility bills. He also continued to go to school, graduating when he was 18! Talk about a Super Kid!
Of course, I expressed my complete amazement, to which he replied, “ Yeah – I didn’t lose the house until they came back. They got divorced shortly after they came back, and the house went back to the bank. I figure I’ve paid about $70,000 over the years, and lost it all. I guess I’ve given my parents one too many chances this time.”
This last comment struck me – Given your parents too many chances! They’re supposed to take care of you, to create safety and security for you and to help you know God! But instead of doing all these noble things, they acted like spoiled children and you had to grow up when you were 13. And somewhere inside there’s a child that still wants his parents to love and nurture him! Again, totally amazing.
We were now about half way to Charleston. I had just enough time to get to work comfortably – and no dollars in my wallet (plastic has become way too easy to use). But at this point, I was hooked. He was the same age as my middle daughter, and he had been abandoned by his father and mother. There was no way I was going to let him walk from Charleston to Beckley – so I took him on to the Greyhound Bus station and he nervously agreed to let me buy him ticket to Beckley.
The only problem was that the bus wouldn’t leave until about 3:30, some 6 hours away. Fortunately the bus depot is only a block from the Town Center mall – and a couple more blocks from a movie theater, so I showed him around the several block area, gave him enough money to see him through the day, and wished him well.
He had a sort of chagrined and embarrassed look on his face as got out of the car, but before he went, he thanked me. It was the look of someone who was accustomed to being independent but had no choice but to accept the “kindness of strangers”.
Turning Hearts
The entire encounter put me in mind of our Scripture from Malachi this morning, “… he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal. 4:6).
The prophet was talking about the coming of about what would happen when Jesus the Messiah showed up on the scene: namely, John the Baptist would appear and announce him – and then the ministry of Christ would cause this wonderful turning of hearts to occur. But many would also reject the message and would fall under judgement. It sounds very contemporary in many ways.
Today, in our land, one of the single most pressing problems facing us – especially in the black community is fatherlessness. Irresponsible men like Kevin’s father leave their children with their mothers (sometimes the mothers leave too!) and abandon their kids to an indifferent upbringing. I’ve said this before, but it behooves us to remember that the illegitimacy rate in the black community is near 80%. In much of the white community it is as high as 50%. Friends, this phenomenon has definite consequences!
Do you also recall that we talked about the percentage of people who do not attend church regularly? That figure too is 80% or better. It’s the majority of people today who have left the church and see no reason to worship God. Is it a coincidence that both these phenomena are occurring together?
I don’t think so.
Psychologist Paul Vitz is the author of a fascinating book called Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. In this book, Vitz explains how Freud put forward the theory of Projection i.e.: “God is a projection of our own intense, unconscious desires.” (pg.6), and turns this notion on it’s head, suggesting that Atheism is itself a mirror image of this theory. In other words, Nonbelief in God is a projection of a person who experienced a weak, ineffective or abusive father growing up, and then who in turn rejects God because of the bad experience.
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dung are all shown to have had physically abusive, distant or cruel fathers, while Albert Schweitzer, GK Chesterton and Dietrich Bonhoffer are all shown to have had close and lovingly involved fathers.
There are of course, other intervening variables such as birth order, philosophical and political trends and the differences that father absence has on males and females. But in general, the theory seems to hold that having a bad father leads to the rejection (by males) of the God principle, and the resultant substitution of an equally vivid belief in some other belief system, such as communism or facism. For men, God seems to embody the principles of right and wrong, good and evil. So the lack of a good father leads to a search for an alternate organizing principle.
In girls, having a bad father seems to lead to the rejection of the Father relationship and the tendency to substitute another equally vivid Relationship for that of the Father. Often this is expressed through lesbianism and the embrace of Feminism as a rejection of the bad patriarchal father. The abuse of the father relationship leads to rejection of the father’s authority.
This pretty much sums up what we see in our culture today. Millions of people have rejected traditional religion because they have had weak, abusive or absent fathers. They have not experienced their father’s heart being turned towards them and their hearts being turned towards their fathers. This tragic lack of love results in much violence, in gangs substituting for fathers and in people being unable to fathom the concept of God The Father. As a result, we have fallen under God’s judgment – namely that we have reaped the results of rejecting God and the very foundations of our culture are at risk today.
The Challenge and Dilemma
What’s a nation and a church to do then? …Quite simply, we must find ways of bringing the Father’s Love to the people who need it most. We do this by showing God’s Love to the people we encounter day by day.
When I picked up Kevin, my father’s heart was moved to compassionate action because of God the Father’s seeking love for the world. After observing his situation and listening to his story, there was no way I was going to allow him to try to walk to Beckley! Admittedly, hanging out at the mall and riding the bus may not have been the greatest experience in the world, but then again, I seem to remember my daughters hanging out at the mall for many hours – so it can’t be that bad.
At any rate, at the risk of holding up my own actions as praiseworthy, I use this story as an example of how we can bring the Love of Father God into a desperate world. And I think there are some principles to be drawn out here.
1) Open Your Eyes
All you have to do is open your eyes and pay attention to what you see. Needs are all around us; they will present themselves to us if we but attend.
2) Be Available
We must be available. Not only must we attend, but we must then be available to the Lord to be an instrument of his peace to those we come in contact with. Each day, renew your availability for God to use as Wishes.
3) Listen. Open the ears of your heart and listen for the still small voice of God telling you what to do. If you don’t know what to do, just stop until you have a clue. If you ask for wisdom, God will give it to you generously and without reproach.
4) Do whatever he tells you. This is what Mary the mother of Jesus told the servants at the wedding of Cana: “Do whatever he tells you to do.” After you hear the plan, take action to alleviate the suffering you have become aware of. This action is often very simple: Listen to someone talk for a while, take them to the bus depot, buy a ticket for them to get home, give them some money for a cup of coffee. The list could go on and on, but the basic point is to bring the Deep Love of God the Father to a hurting world.
Acting in this way, anyone can be a ‘father’ to the world. Although we value spiritual gifting and we want to draw out everyone’s unique individual gifts, still the basic principle is that we all have the ability to be God’s hands and feet to the world. We can all help to protect the weak, the powerless and the oppressed like Kevin.
Will we respond?
I wonder if we can respond to this challenge? This coming week, are you willing to Open your eyes, to Make yourself available to the Lord, to Listen to Him and to act on His behalf? If you are, look for an opportunity, respond to it and then tell your small group about it, or bring the story here and tell us what happened.
This is how we will bring the Love of Jesus to our hurting world.
May God give us grace to apply what we have heard. AMEN.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Beauty and Vengeance
We are accustomed to thinking about how to be loving to one and all, to not be judgmental and to accept others as Christ. But here, God's Word tells us that a day of reckoning will come. It will be a day in which nonbelievers ‘pay the piper’ for playing their song of unbelief – and it will indeed be harsh and categorical. Why will God be so very demanding of the nonbeliever? Because, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:19 and ff:
“… what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
The sheer beauty of this world should, in fact, testify to the nature and existence of our God. Today, some scientists are beginning to acknowledge this link to Truth. The book, “The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet”, discusses at great length how recognizing beauty in our world can point us to Ultimate Truth. Author Thomas Dubay quotes Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman as saying, “you can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity” (pg. 13). Robert Augros and George Stanciu are also cited in their book The New Story of Science, saying “all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth” (pp.41-52).
Scientists look to the traits of beauty to lead them in their researches because in the first place, Beauty is objective – it’s “out there’. It’s not simply what’s in the eye of the beholder, but rather it is a “property of the objective world.” (EPB, pg. 38,39). By this is meant that Beauty is Simple or Pure. It is free from impurities of needless additions. Astrophysicist Roger Penrose, commenting on Einstein’s theory of relativity says, “no rival theory comes close to general relativity in elegance or simplicity of assumption.” (Black Holes” in The State of the Universe, ed. Geoffrey Bath, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980).
This Simplicity is both complete and economical; it takes everything into account and leaves nothing out. It encompasses the classical philosophical traits of Unity and Wholeness. That which is elegantly simple points to Truth.
Scientists also look for the element of Harmony. Einstein himself asserted that ‘without belief in the inner harmony of the world there could be no science.’ (EPB, pg 40). Theories that harmonize previously unrelated facts are considered objectively beautiful.
Finally, the recognition of Brilliance is a third aspect of the scientific understanding of the Beautiful. Sir George Thomason, in his book, the Inspiration of Science says, “in physics, as in mathematics, it is a great beauty if a theory can bring together apparently different phenomena and show that they are closely connected; or even different aspects of the same thing.” (EPB pg. 41). Such brilliance in a theory is considered beautiful.
But this idea of beauty is not just a scientific abstraction.
“Beauty is the Battlefield where God and Satan contend with each other for the hearts of men.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov. EPB. Pg. 20).
When people take a look at our objectively beautiful universe, they must decide what this Beauty means. Does it point to a beautiful, artful Creator who desires a relationship with us, or is this beauty an inexplicable artifact of a meaningless universe in which the biggest question humans face is whether or not to commit suicide? I think you can guess which side I endorse.
As Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “… we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” In other words, God is an Artist. He has created us to live in this beautiful world and to recognize His handiwork in the beauty around us. Our natural response to this beauty should be Wonder. Whoever cannot wonder is not truly Alive. Sadly, the reason why people cannot Wonder is because of their own sinfulness.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. I Cor. 2:14). Such a condition describes a person dead in his sin, unable to respond to beauty, unable to Wonder, unable to recognize the Glory of his Artist Creator. Such a person is in darkness, even while surrounded by Light, that is to say God’s Glory or radiance. Most horribly, God admits no excuse for such a condition. It is a willful turning away from Simple Reality and as such is punishable by eternal separation from God.
Romans 1 again, verses 21-25, “ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."
This is why “…the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” because in “their unrighteousness, [they] suppress – or hold down - the truth.” They refuse to acknowledge the abundant evidences for God’s existence and for His salvific action in our world. Therefore they suffer judgment. And “when he comes… to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed,…” (2 Thes. 1:10), these unrighteous ones will be excluded from fellowship with God. And it will be because of their own willful choices!
But brothers and sisters, we are convinced of better things for you! “ To this end we (like Paul) always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (vv. 11, 12).
As Christians, we are to glorify our God, to reflect back to Him some of the brilliance of the radiant Light that emanates from his person. We are also charged with the mission of reaching out to those who are spiritually dead in their sins and helping them to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ so that they too, may know the blessings of fellowship with him, the blessing of Eternal Life.
Let us remember that there are still 75,000 people in our area (at least) who need this saving knowledge. Let us not rest content until every last one of them has heard the Good News., and let us appeal to that great and merciful Judge to delay the time of his judgment so that He may bring in as many people as possible into that Glorious and Beautiful Light. AMEN.
“… what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
The sheer beauty of this world should, in fact, testify to the nature and existence of our God. Today, some scientists are beginning to acknowledge this link to Truth. The book, “The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet”, discusses at great length how recognizing beauty in our world can point us to Ultimate Truth. Author Thomas Dubay quotes Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman as saying, “you can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity” (pg. 13). Robert Augros and George Stanciu are also cited in their book The New Story of Science, saying “all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth” (pp.41-52).
Scientists look to the traits of beauty to lead them in their researches because in the first place, Beauty is objective – it’s “out there’. It’s not simply what’s in the eye of the beholder, but rather it is a “property of the objective world.” (EPB, pg. 38,39). By this is meant that Beauty is Simple or Pure. It is free from impurities of needless additions. Astrophysicist Roger Penrose, commenting on Einstein’s theory of relativity says, “no rival theory comes close to general relativity in elegance or simplicity of assumption.” (Black Holes” in The State of the Universe, ed. Geoffrey Bath, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980).
This Simplicity is both complete and economical; it takes everything into account and leaves nothing out. It encompasses the classical philosophical traits of Unity and Wholeness. That which is elegantly simple points to Truth.
Scientists also look for the element of Harmony. Einstein himself asserted that ‘without belief in the inner harmony of the world there could be no science.’ (EPB, pg 40). Theories that harmonize previously unrelated facts are considered objectively beautiful.
Finally, the recognition of Brilliance is a third aspect of the scientific understanding of the Beautiful. Sir George Thomason, in his book, the Inspiration of Science says, “in physics, as in mathematics, it is a great beauty if a theory can bring together apparently different phenomena and show that they are closely connected; or even different aspects of the same thing.” (EPB pg. 41). Such brilliance in a theory is considered beautiful.
But this idea of beauty is not just a scientific abstraction.
“Beauty is the Battlefield where God and Satan contend with each other for the hearts of men.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov. EPB. Pg. 20).
When people take a look at our objectively beautiful universe, they must decide what this Beauty means. Does it point to a beautiful, artful Creator who desires a relationship with us, or is this beauty an inexplicable artifact of a meaningless universe in which the biggest question humans face is whether or not to commit suicide? I think you can guess which side I endorse.
As Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “… we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” In other words, God is an Artist. He has created us to live in this beautiful world and to recognize His handiwork in the beauty around us. Our natural response to this beauty should be Wonder. Whoever cannot wonder is not truly Alive. Sadly, the reason why people cannot Wonder is because of their own sinfulness.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. I Cor. 2:14). Such a condition describes a person dead in his sin, unable to respond to beauty, unable to Wonder, unable to recognize the Glory of his Artist Creator. Such a person is in darkness, even while surrounded by Light, that is to say God’s Glory or radiance. Most horribly, God admits no excuse for such a condition. It is a willful turning away from Simple Reality and as such is punishable by eternal separation from God.
Romans 1 again, verses 21-25, “ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."
This is why “…the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” because in “their unrighteousness, [they] suppress – or hold down - the truth.” They refuse to acknowledge the abundant evidences for God’s existence and for His salvific action in our world. Therefore they suffer judgment. And “when he comes… to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed,…” (2 Thes. 1:10), these unrighteous ones will be excluded from fellowship with God. And it will be because of their own willful choices!
But brothers and sisters, we are convinced of better things for you! “ To this end we (like Paul) always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (vv. 11, 12).
As Christians, we are to glorify our God, to reflect back to Him some of the brilliance of the radiant Light that emanates from his person. We are also charged with the mission of reaching out to those who are spiritually dead in their sins and helping them to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ so that they too, may know the blessings of fellowship with him, the blessing of Eternal Life.
Let us remember that there are still 75,000 people in our area (at least) who need this saving knowledge. Let us not rest content until every last one of them has heard the Good News., and let us appeal to that great and merciful Judge to delay the time of his judgment so that He may bring in as many people as possible into that Glorious and Beautiful Light. AMEN.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Increase our Faith!
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on the occasion of the First Anniversary of the founding of the church, and based on Luke 17:5-10
This past week, as I read the words of Jesus, “If you had faith like a mustard seed…” it immediately occurred to me that for the past year we have actually been living out the words of Scripture!
Last year at this time we were coming together for the first time as a worshipping body. We were coming out of prolonged pain with the Episcopal Church and we had finally decided we had had enough. We were taking the plunge – stepping out in faith, Stepping up to the challenge and Stepping into the promises of God. We had nothing, or next to nothing. Mark and I hadn’t even had a chance to buy white albs for ourselves, so we used our black Benedictine robes.
It was a case of ready, fire, aim! And true to that slogan, we have been systematically developing into a fully-functioning body that has its own flavor and reason for being – one that goes beyond just being an angry split from TEC into one that expresses God’s will and plan for us and the communities in which we reside.
Think back and ask yourself: If All Saints Anglican Church had not come into being, would we have had a baptism in this room eight or nine months ago? Would there have been four teens baptized on Dutch Ridge last week? Would Fr. Mark be standing before you today as a priest? Would there be a Hope House today? Only God knows the answer to these questions, but the likely answer is NO!
As we have stepped out in faith, God has richly blessed us – exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. I’d like to now reflect on how the Lord actually does this in our lives.
Sparking a Vision
It seems to me that God typically sparks us with a vision, inspiring us to act. This vision can be positive or negative. To show the contrast, we at All Saints have come out of churches that we thought were following a wrong path. We carried a vision for a body of believers that would not have to be shackled to heretical teaching and so we were willing to launch out and start a new church.
Mike Harris has lived up on Dutch Ridge for about 7-8 years. As he interacted with his neighbors, he began to catch a vision for starting a church to minister to those who were not in church or had been wounded in church situations previously. This I would say was an essentially positive vision of something that wasn’t there, but could be there God willing.
Obstacles
Then, once we have the vision, we have to wait and deal with obstacles. And the purpose of these obstacles seems to be to drive us to prayer. We wait and we suffer, and in the process we learn to be patient, to persevere and to pray.
Resistance
God will often resist us in our efforts so that we will remember who is God and who is not. Often times, we are too eager to trust our own strength and intelligence. The Scripture says God resists the proud but lifts up the humble” If we get ‘too big for our britches’, he will allow us to fail in order to drive us back to prayer and to remember that it is not by strength nor by might, but by my power says the Lord. When God is resisting us, no amount of prayer will remove the obstacle – we’re praying against the wrong person! Instead we need to back off and remember to trust him, to stop our own thrashing and to simply sit still until he is ready to Act.
Dramatic Action
After all that waiting and suffering, when He has us where he wants us, then God will frequently act in a sudden, dramatic fashion. A church suddenly comes into being one Sunday in October after planning on waiting until January. One Baptism turns into Four. A $38,000 house sells for $10,000. These are all examples of how God has made us wait and pray, and then suddenly advocated remarkably on our behalf. It is typical of Kingdom living and working. Just like Moses leading the people of Israel through the Red Sea – there is no doubt Who did that work. And that is important, because there is always the tendency to forget and to slip into the illusion that our works alone made things happen.
Sleep Metaphor
Perhaps this all can be represented by using the metaphor of sleep. After the hectic activity of our day, we retire and fall into the vulnerable mini-death of sleep. In it our strength is renewed, just as Isaiah says, “In returning[1] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” IS. 30:15. We are meant to rest in God as our source and provision, trusting Him for the increase.
The Challenge: Exercise Faith
So our challenge is to Rest in God, but exercise our Faith at the same time. We can say that Faith is a faculty, the development of which enables Human Beings to participate in the Divine Nature (II Pet. 1:4).
As Fallen people, we must Work by the sweat of our brow to sustain ourselves. But we must realize that we cannot overcome the thorns of the fallen earth by ourselves. In order to prosper, we must submit ourselves to God, after the fashion of Proverbs 3:5,6:
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart,and do not lean on your own understanding.6 In all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make straight your paths.
Anglican Temperament
It is especially important for us as Anglicans to do this. Our temperament as a people is to do things deliberately and orderly, according to good reason and best practices. But in the midst of all that managerial competence, we must make room for the leading of the Holy Spirit. As an example from History: If the Anglican Church had found a way to make room for the ministry of John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, all Methodists would be Anglicans today! Failure to make room for what God is doing results in being left behind in the dust.
Warning;
As we go into our First Annual Business Meeting, we must remember that the Church is not a Business; it is a family. Nevertheless, every family must do business in order to survive and thrive.
The Business affairs of the Church support and enable the mission of the church, not vice versa.
The church should not measure its success by how much money it has at its disposal (TEC has lots). Nevertheless, He who is faithful in little is faithful also in Much (Mt. 25:21).
The Church should not measure its value of success by its size, nevertheless, a healthy church grows.
We need to discern what God is doing and then Join Him in that.
How to Increase your Faith
*Take God at His Word. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Eph. 3:20.
*Speak to the Mulberry Bush: (Tell Story of Bruce Taylor and healings) Speak to the condition about the Kingdom of God. Declare God’s purposes to the fallen, and bring the Will of God to bear on earth as it is in Heaven.
*Attempt Something Great for God, something you cannot do alone, and something that takes more than one lifetime to accomplish.
Friends, I think we, as All Saints Anglican Church are living this out. Cindy and I are delighted to be a part of this faithful, orthodox body of Anglican Believers. There were days when we never thought we would have this kind of church to worship in. But here we are! Although we are small, I believe that God will grow us over time, honoring our faithfulness.
Let us celebrate what God has done over this past year and expect that he will do things beyond our ability to imagine in the next year. AMEN.
This past week, as I read the words of Jesus, “If you had faith like a mustard seed…” it immediately occurred to me that for the past year we have actually been living out the words of Scripture!
Last year at this time we were coming together for the first time as a worshipping body. We were coming out of prolonged pain with the Episcopal Church and we had finally decided we had had enough. We were taking the plunge – stepping out in faith, Stepping up to the challenge and Stepping into the promises of God. We had nothing, or next to nothing. Mark and I hadn’t even had a chance to buy white albs for ourselves, so we used our black Benedictine robes.
It was a case of ready, fire, aim! And true to that slogan, we have been systematically developing into a fully-functioning body that has its own flavor and reason for being – one that goes beyond just being an angry split from TEC into one that expresses God’s will and plan for us and the communities in which we reside.
Think back and ask yourself: If All Saints Anglican Church had not come into being, would we have had a baptism in this room eight or nine months ago? Would there have been four teens baptized on Dutch Ridge last week? Would Fr. Mark be standing before you today as a priest? Would there be a Hope House today? Only God knows the answer to these questions, but the likely answer is NO!
As we have stepped out in faith, God has richly blessed us – exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. I’d like to now reflect on how the Lord actually does this in our lives.
Sparking a Vision
It seems to me that God typically sparks us with a vision, inspiring us to act. This vision can be positive or negative. To show the contrast, we at All Saints have come out of churches that we thought were following a wrong path. We carried a vision for a body of believers that would not have to be shackled to heretical teaching and so we were willing to launch out and start a new church.
Mike Harris has lived up on Dutch Ridge for about 7-8 years. As he interacted with his neighbors, he began to catch a vision for starting a church to minister to those who were not in church or had been wounded in church situations previously. This I would say was an essentially positive vision of something that wasn’t there, but could be there God willing.
Obstacles
Then, once we have the vision, we have to wait and deal with obstacles. And the purpose of these obstacles seems to be to drive us to prayer. We wait and we suffer, and in the process we learn to be patient, to persevere and to pray.
Resistance
God will often resist us in our efforts so that we will remember who is God and who is not. Often times, we are too eager to trust our own strength and intelligence. The Scripture says God resists the proud but lifts up the humble” If we get ‘too big for our britches’, he will allow us to fail in order to drive us back to prayer and to remember that it is not by strength nor by might, but by my power says the Lord. When God is resisting us, no amount of prayer will remove the obstacle – we’re praying against the wrong person! Instead we need to back off and remember to trust him, to stop our own thrashing and to simply sit still until he is ready to Act.
Dramatic Action
After all that waiting and suffering, when He has us where he wants us, then God will frequently act in a sudden, dramatic fashion. A church suddenly comes into being one Sunday in October after planning on waiting until January. One Baptism turns into Four. A $38,000 house sells for $10,000. These are all examples of how God has made us wait and pray, and then suddenly advocated remarkably on our behalf. It is typical of Kingdom living and working. Just like Moses leading the people of Israel through the Red Sea – there is no doubt Who did that work. And that is important, because there is always the tendency to forget and to slip into the illusion that our works alone made things happen.
Sleep Metaphor
Perhaps this all can be represented by using the metaphor of sleep. After the hectic activity of our day, we retire and fall into the vulnerable mini-death of sleep. In it our strength is renewed, just as Isaiah says, “In returning[1] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” IS. 30:15. We are meant to rest in God as our source and provision, trusting Him for the increase.
The Challenge: Exercise Faith
So our challenge is to Rest in God, but exercise our Faith at the same time. We can say that Faith is a faculty, the development of which enables Human Beings to participate in the Divine Nature (II Pet. 1:4).
As Fallen people, we must Work by the sweat of our brow to sustain ourselves. But we must realize that we cannot overcome the thorns of the fallen earth by ourselves. In order to prosper, we must submit ourselves to God, after the fashion of Proverbs 3:5,6:
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart,and do not lean on your own understanding.6 In all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make straight your paths.
Anglican Temperament
It is especially important for us as Anglicans to do this. Our temperament as a people is to do things deliberately and orderly, according to good reason and best practices. But in the midst of all that managerial competence, we must make room for the leading of the Holy Spirit. As an example from History: If the Anglican Church had found a way to make room for the ministry of John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, all Methodists would be Anglicans today! Failure to make room for what God is doing results in being left behind in the dust.
Warning;
As we go into our First Annual Business Meeting, we must remember that the Church is not a Business; it is a family. Nevertheless, every family must do business in order to survive and thrive.
The Business affairs of the Church support and enable the mission of the church, not vice versa.
The church should not measure its success by how much money it has at its disposal (TEC has lots). Nevertheless, He who is faithful in little is faithful also in Much (Mt. 25:21).
The Church should not measure its value of success by its size, nevertheless, a healthy church grows.
We need to discern what God is doing and then Join Him in that.
How to Increase your Faith
*Take God at His Word. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Eph. 3:20.
*Speak to the Mulberry Bush: (Tell Story of Bruce Taylor and healings) Speak to the condition about the Kingdom of God. Declare God’s purposes to the fallen, and bring the Will of God to bear on earth as it is in Heaven.
*Attempt Something Great for God, something you cannot do alone, and something that takes more than one lifetime to accomplish.
Friends, I think we, as All Saints Anglican Church are living this out. Cindy and I are delighted to be a part of this faithful, orthodox body of Anglican Believers. There were days when we never thought we would have this kind of church to worship in. But here we are! Although we are small, I believe that God will grow us over time, honoring our faithfulness.
Let us celebrate what God has done over this past year and expect that he will do things beyond our ability to imagine in the next year. AMEN.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Dives Inc.
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on September 30, 2007, based on Luke 16: 19-31
Imagine for a moment that you are living in the 1190’s in Italy – Umbria to be exact. Your father, Pietro di Bernardone, has created a financial empire and you are the young heir to this fortune. Let’s call this enterprise Dives Inc. The core business of the company is high-end Cloth Sales, mostly woolens, but also fancy silks and brocades, purchased by Pietro at the market in Champagne, France and brought back to your town with great care and at great risk –over the mountains – a distance of some 700 miles.
Now, your father is a sharp business man and he prospers and does quite well in his business. People are just beginning to have coined money, and through the course of doing business, it happens that Pietro ends up with a lot of coins, gold and silver. The old families, the landed gentry, have lots of land but very little actual coinage.
Yours is a time of turmoil. Civil war in Italy has created a situation in which a lot of the servants attached to the land have gone off to war and eventually gained their ‘free-agency’, taking their labor with them. Now there is an increased need to hire labor to work the farms of the gentry. But the gentry don’t have a lot of coins, gold or silver laying around. Most of their wealth is in the land. So they’re in a bind. As the need for ready cash increases some, of the poorer gentry end up approaching Pietro with offers to sell their farms to get needed cash. He buys up a dozen farms at a good price and begins to grow crops, and to breed horses and mules. His workers begin to make their own tack- bridles, bits, saddles, etc and later on to make carts for the animals to pull.
With every new product line, Dives Inc. rakes in the cash. Pretty soon, other small business men in the town come to ask Pietro for loans to help their businesses. So Dives Inc. gets into financial services, offering loans and banking services. On his annual trips to France to buy cloth, Pietro realizes that carrying around large sums of cash, or gold and silver is cumbersome, so he collaborates with the other international merchants, rulers, and even the Pope to create instruments of credit and other vehicles that make international trade easier.
Now the journey to France is dangerous, and Pietro has to hire men to provide security for his entourage. He soon realizes that he can also provide security services to other merchants and townspeople, and so is born the Security Services division of Dives, Inc.
The organizational chart of this company would likely look something like this:
Cloth Sales (Core Business)
AG Division:
-Farm Holdings
- Produce -
- Animal Breeding
- Tack Items
- Carts
Financial Services:
-Loans
-Banking
-International Instruments of Credit
-Joint Ventures
Security Services:
-Caravan Protection
-Private Security
-Estate Monitoring.
All in all, a very modern, diversified operation. And best yet, family owned – which means that you, dear heir, stand to inherit everything! Not only that but Papa Pietro is very indulgent and does out the money like it was going out of style! This in turn means lots of partying and new clothes and Fun!
The only hitch is that Papa expects you to work in the family business – to stock the shelves, make deliveries, to visit the peasants that do the sewing of garments and to cajole them into producing more in their miserable little huts, and in general to prepare to take your place as one of the leading citizens of the town.
If you haven’t guessed already, your name, lucky heir, is Francis di Bernardone of Assisi, Umbria, Italy, son of Pietro, an archetypal Dives. By an ironic twist of ‘fate’, one of the “world’s most persuasive exponents of poverty… first played a part in the birth of capitalism” (Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life by Adrian House, pg. 31).
One of Francis’ friends, Angelo di Tancredi relates how initially Francis was “so intent on the business of making money” that he ignored a beggar man who had come into the shop asking for alms. ‘On reflection, he realized that if the beggar had asked for money in the name of some prince he would have given it. After that he decided he would never refuse anything asked in God’s name… ( House, pg. 32).
God was also working on Francis’ attitude towards lepers. Angelo tells us that “Besides being incapable of looking at them [the lepers] he would not even approach the places where they lived… and if he gave them alms he would do it through someone else, turning his face away and holding his nose… (House pg. 57). Now these houses where the lepers lived were called ‘lazar’ houses, after the biblical beggar Lazarus in our reading today. The rich man is often called ‘Dives’, Latin for ‘rich’.
Francis was determined to overcome his distaste for the lepers, but ‘it took a huge effort to stifle his revulsion. One day he met a leper when he was riding near Assisi. Despite his overpowering horror he dismounted, gave the man a coin and kissed his hand. The leper gave him the kiss of peace in return. Francis then knew that to win a complete victory he must follow this first attack on his phobia with a second.
Anglelo writes, “ Some days later he took a large sum of money to the lepers hospital and gathering all the inmates together, he distributed it, kissing each of their hands.” On his deathbed, Francis referred to this episode in the opening words of his Testament: “This is how God inspired me, Brother Francis, to embark upon a life of penance.” (House pg. 58).
And this dear friends is one of the things caused French scholar and agnostic Ernest Renan, to say, “After Jesus, Francis of Assisi has been the only perfect Christian’ (House, pg. 9).
Now contrast Francis’ reaction to that of Dives, the rich man in our reading, who went about in extravagant purple clothes (that could have come from Pietro’s shop in another era) and fine linen underwear, feasting sumptuously and ignoring the poor man, Lazarus.
If you’ll remember from last week, we talked about the four levels of charity according to Ancient Hebrew wisdom:
-The highest is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it.
-The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided.
-The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need.
-The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a poor person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor.” (pg. 26 in Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, Lupton).
Any of the above gestures may have saved the Rich man from Hades. Instead, Dives ignores the poor man, who had specifically been placed at the rich man’s door in order to find help. This earns him the angel-escort to his place in Hades that he so richly deserves.
(By the way, this is the place that teaches us that Angels do indeed attend us on our way to eternity. Also, there is what we can call an intermediate state between death and our final resurrection. During this state we are conscious of our existence and surroundings, whether torment or enjoying Father Abrahams’ presence. There is a gap fixed between heaven and hell such that there can be no traffic between the two – and by extension it is forbidden for the living to try to contact the dead.)
In contrast to Dives, Francis confronts his revulsion in obedience to the Lord and while technically, Francis gave at the lowest level, the radical nature of his gift actually seems to have fractured the giving schema altogether, elevating his gift into the realm of legend, or hall-of-fame status.
The teaching of Jesus is that if you’re rich, you better enjoy it now, because if you unjustly ignore the poor, then God will not forget! Remember Christ’s words in Matthew 25:40…” as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” And to the rich young ruler he says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Mt. 19:21, Lk 18:22.
Francis is our picture in the flesh of someone who actually did literally what Jesus said. His example is awesome and intimidating. While most of us really cannot quite fathom this level of self-giving, perhaps we can relate to this:
The other night, I was listening to the “Infinite Mind” as I was coming home from work. John Hockenberry was commenting on a time in his life when he became fascinated with shoplifting. He observed that shoplifting became attractive, not because he was in great need, or was seeking thrills, but because he could change his identity so easily. With different stuff came a different sense of who he was in the world. His stuff defined him as a person. When he realized how easy and artificial this was, he was brought up short. It suddenly became all too clear that he needed a more intentional approach to things, so he stopped stealing and started paying for things. In this way, he was able to regain an appropriate sense of himself in relationship to stuff.
Now this is not to say that every one of us can do exactly what Francis did. Even those who came after him within his lifetime often could not keep the same radical lifestyle. Many wanted to be able to live in monasteries and to have the use of things just as other monks did. There were also those who desired to remain in their homes and families but to follow the ideals of the Christ-man Francis. For them, he wrote what we call a Third Order rule. The emphasis here regarding things is, as it is with the CoJ ‘detachment’ from things. In other words, we don’t get our sense of meaning or fulfillment from our stuff, we get it in relationship with God first, then in other relationships – our spouses, families and friends.
The Miracle of Change
The rich man learned too late to care about his five brothers. He was also brought up short by the rebuke, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. vs. 27). This is a clear reference to Christ and his resurrection. People who are completely materialistic will not be inclined to believe miracles, even when they see them with their own eyes. This is why I believe that the change of the human heart is the greatest miracle of all.
We should be about the business of trying to help our materialistic friends and neighbors realize that this world is not all there is; that there is a relationship with God available through Jesus Christ and that to ignore this mandate to divine relatedness is to court eternal separation from God.
Justice for the Poor
Following Francis’ example, it’s also important to call for justice for the poor because the plight of the poor is an indication of the overall quality of life in a society. If the poor get justice, then so do the middle class.
Righteousness exalts a nation and a society, while injustice tears it down.
Brothers and sisters, I pray that we may be a people who have a true sense of ourselves as people created in the image of God, who live to enjoy our relationship with him and with other people. I pray that we might serve Christ in every person we meet. I pray that we might be wise in our attempts to help those we meet, and I pray that we might be a people who are known as generous givers, who delight in trying to outgive God. You needn’t walk off naked into the forest as Francis did, but this week, make an effort to notice the poor around you. Do something personally to relieve their plight at any of those four levels we talked about. Look beyond the stuff that makes your life comfortable and think how you may lead others to the eternal comfort that comes from knowing Christ as Savior and Lord.
I close with the prayer that we use in the Company of Jesus rosary:
Almighty God, who by the example of blessed St. Francis…moves your people to love of simple things, grant that after his pattern we may hold lightly to the things of this world and lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven. Amen.
Imagine for a moment that you are living in the 1190’s in Italy – Umbria to be exact. Your father, Pietro di Bernardone, has created a financial empire and you are the young heir to this fortune. Let’s call this enterprise Dives Inc. The core business of the company is high-end Cloth Sales, mostly woolens, but also fancy silks and brocades, purchased by Pietro at the market in Champagne, France and brought back to your town with great care and at great risk –over the mountains – a distance of some 700 miles.
Now, your father is a sharp business man and he prospers and does quite well in his business. People are just beginning to have coined money, and through the course of doing business, it happens that Pietro ends up with a lot of coins, gold and silver. The old families, the landed gentry, have lots of land but very little actual coinage.
Yours is a time of turmoil. Civil war in Italy has created a situation in which a lot of the servants attached to the land have gone off to war and eventually gained their ‘free-agency’, taking their labor with them. Now there is an increased need to hire labor to work the farms of the gentry. But the gentry don’t have a lot of coins, gold or silver laying around. Most of their wealth is in the land. So they’re in a bind. As the need for ready cash increases some, of the poorer gentry end up approaching Pietro with offers to sell their farms to get needed cash. He buys up a dozen farms at a good price and begins to grow crops, and to breed horses and mules. His workers begin to make their own tack- bridles, bits, saddles, etc and later on to make carts for the animals to pull.
With every new product line, Dives Inc. rakes in the cash. Pretty soon, other small business men in the town come to ask Pietro for loans to help their businesses. So Dives Inc. gets into financial services, offering loans and banking services. On his annual trips to France to buy cloth, Pietro realizes that carrying around large sums of cash, or gold and silver is cumbersome, so he collaborates with the other international merchants, rulers, and even the Pope to create instruments of credit and other vehicles that make international trade easier.
Now the journey to France is dangerous, and Pietro has to hire men to provide security for his entourage. He soon realizes that he can also provide security services to other merchants and townspeople, and so is born the Security Services division of Dives, Inc.
The organizational chart of this company would likely look something like this:
Cloth Sales (Core Business)
AG Division:
-Farm Holdings
- Produce -
- Animal Breeding
- Tack Items
- Carts
Financial Services:
-Loans
-Banking
-International Instruments of Credit
-Joint Ventures
Security Services:
-Caravan Protection
-Private Security
-Estate Monitoring.
All in all, a very modern, diversified operation. And best yet, family owned – which means that you, dear heir, stand to inherit everything! Not only that but Papa Pietro is very indulgent and does out the money like it was going out of style! This in turn means lots of partying and new clothes and Fun!
The only hitch is that Papa expects you to work in the family business – to stock the shelves, make deliveries, to visit the peasants that do the sewing of garments and to cajole them into producing more in their miserable little huts, and in general to prepare to take your place as one of the leading citizens of the town.
If you haven’t guessed already, your name, lucky heir, is Francis di Bernardone of Assisi, Umbria, Italy, son of Pietro, an archetypal Dives. By an ironic twist of ‘fate’, one of the “world’s most persuasive exponents of poverty… first played a part in the birth of capitalism” (Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life by Adrian House, pg. 31).
One of Francis’ friends, Angelo di Tancredi relates how initially Francis was “so intent on the business of making money” that he ignored a beggar man who had come into the shop asking for alms. ‘On reflection, he realized that if the beggar had asked for money in the name of some prince he would have given it. After that he decided he would never refuse anything asked in God’s name… ( House, pg. 32).
God was also working on Francis’ attitude towards lepers. Angelo tells us that “Besides being incapable of looking at them [the lepers] he would not even approach the places where they lived… and if he gave them alms he would do it through someone else, turning his face away and holding his nose… (House pg. 57). Now these houses where the lepers lived were called ‘lazar’ houses, after the biblical beggar Lazarus in our reading today. The rich man is often called ‘Dives’, Latin for ‘rich’.
Francis was determined to overcome his distaste for the lepers, but ‘it took a huge effort to stifle his revulsion. One day he met a leper when he was riding near Assisi. Despite his overpowering horror he dismounted, gave the man a coin and kissed his hand. The leper gave him the kiss of peace in return. Francis then knew that to win a complete victory he must follow this first attack on his phobia with a second.
Anglelo writes, “ Some days later he took a large sum of money to the lepers hospital and gathering all the inmates together, he distributed it, kissing each of their hands.” On his deathbed, Francis referred to this episode in the opening words of his Testament: “This is how God inspired me, Brother Francis, to embark upon a life of penance.” (House pg. 58).
And this dear friends is one of the things caused French scholar and agnostic Ernest Renan, to say, “After Jesus, Francis of Assisi has been the only perfect Christian’ (House, pg. 9).
Now contrast Francis’ reaction to that of Dives, the rich man in our reading, who went about in extravagant purple clothes (that could have come from Pietro’s shop in another era) and fine linen underwear, feasting sumptuously and ignoring the poor man, Lazarus.
If you’ll remember from last week, we talked about the four levels of charity according to Ancient Hebrew wisdom:
-The highest is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it.
-The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided.
-The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need.
-The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a poor person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor.” (pg. 26 in Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, Lupton).
Any of the above gestures may have saved the Rich man from Hades. Instead, Dives ignores the poor man, who had specifically been placed at the rich man’s door in order to find help. This earns him the angel-escort to his place in Hades that he so richly deserves.
(By the way, this is the place that teaches us that Angels do indeed attend us on our way to eternity. Also, there is what we can call an intermediate state between death and our final resurrection. During this state we are conscious of our existence and surroundings, whether torment or enjoying Father Abrahams’ presence. There is a gap fixed between heaven and hell such that there can be no traffic between the two – and by extension it is forbidden for the living to try to contact the dead.)
In contrast to Dives, Francis confronts his revulsion in obedience to the Lord and while technically, Francis gave at the lowest level, the radical nature of his gift actually seems to have fractured the giving schema altogether, elevating his gift into the realm of legend, or hall-of-fame status.
The teaching of Jesus is that if you’re rich, you better enjoy it now, because if you unjustly ignore the poor, then God will not forget! Remember Christ’s words in Matthew 25:40…” as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” And to the rich young ruler he says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Mt. 19:21, Lk 18:22.
Francis is our picture in the flesh of someone who actually did literally what Jesus said. His example is awesome and intimidating. While most of us really cannot quite fathom this level of self-giving, perhaps we can relate to this:
The other night, I was listening to the “Infinite Mind” as I was coming home from work. John Hockenberry was commenting on a time in his life when he became fascinated with shoplifting. He observed that shoplifting became attractive, not because he was in great need, or was seeking thrills, but because he could change his identity so easily. With different stuff came a different sense of who he was in the world. His stuff defined him as a person. When he realized how easy and artificial this was, he was brought up short. It suddenly became all too clear that he needed a more intentional approach to things, so he stopped stealing and started paying for things. In this way, he was able to regain an appropriate sense of himself in relationship to stuff.
Now this is not to say that every one of us can do exactly what Francis did. Even those who came after him within his lifetime often could not keep the same radical lifestyle. Many wanted to be able to live in monasteries and to have the use of things just as other monks did. There were also those who desired to remain in their homes and families but to follow the ideals of the Christ-man Francis. For them, he wrote what we call a Third Order rule. The emphasis here regarding things is, as it is with the CoJ ‘detachment’ from things. In other words, we don’t get our sense of meaning or fulfillment from our stuff, we get it in relationship with God first, then in other relationships – our spouses, families and friends.
The Miracle of Change
The rich man learned too late to care about his five brothers. He was also brought up short by the rebuke, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. vs. 27). This is a clear reference to Christ and his resurrection. People who are completely materialistic will not be inclined to believe miracles, even when they see them with their own eyes. This is why I believe that the change of the human heart is the greatest miracle of all.
We should be about the business of trying to help our materialistic friends and neighbors realize that this world is not all there is; that there is a relationship with God available through Jesus Christ and that to ignore this mandate to divine relatedness is to court eternal separation from God.
Justice for the Poor
Following Francis’ example, it’s also important to call for justice for the poor because the plight of the poor is an indication of the overall quality of life in a society. If the poor get justice, then so do the middle class.
Righteousness exalts a nation and a society, while injustice tears it down.
Brothers and sisters, I pray that we may be a people who have a true sense of ourselves as people created in the image of God, who live to enjoy our relationship with him and with other people. I pray that we might serve Christ in every person we meet. I pray that we might be wise in our attempts to help those we meet, and I pray that we might be a people who are known as generous givers, who delight in trying to outgive God. You needn’t walk off naked into the forest as Francis did, but this week, make an effort to notice the poor around you. Do something personally to relieve their plight at any of those four levels we talked about. Look beyond the stuff that makes your life comfortable and think how you may lead others to the eternal comfort that comes from knowing Christ as Savior and Lord.
I close with the prayer that we use in the Company of Jesus rosary:
Almighty God, who by the example of blessed St. Francis…moves your people to love of simple things, grant that after his pattern we may hold lightly to the things of this world and lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven. Amen.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Two Masters?
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on September 23, 2007 and based on Luke 16:1-13
It seems that last week, God received a batch of mail from a group of school kids. One writes:
Dear God,
If you give me a Genie Lamp like Aladdin, I will give you anything you want except my money or my chess set.
Raphael
Well, it seems that our young Raphael might have mentored under the Unrighteous Steward in today’s reading! He seems a bit confused about who is serving whom. He seems to think that God is similar to a Genie that one calls up out of a magic lamp; one that grants you three wishes. And, of course, the owner of the lamp retains control over the nature of the wishes or grants. It’s a bargain with certain understood rules governing the bargain.
Sounds pretty much like the way that many people approach God today doesn’t it?
Here’s another example from the American Anglican Council weekly update:
“Congregants at Pro-Cathedral of St. Clement's Episcopal Church, one of the city's oldest places of worship with hundreds of members and more than a dozen ministries, is leaving the Episcopal Church to carry on with doctrines members said no longer fit those of its former denomination.
The church recorded a 460-41 vote from its congregation on Sunday to dissolve its relationship with Episcopal Church USA and remain part of the Anglican Communion Network.
Late Friday, St. Clement's reached an agreement with Bishop Jeffrey Steenson of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande that will allow the local church to hang on to its property for $2 million.
Who would you say is serving Whom? …
In other news, this past week, I attended a conference in Charleston, with Dr. John Perkins, author of the seminal book “Let Justice Roll Down”. It was sponsored by the City Impact Roundtable, a group of ministers that meets regularly to prayer for the Transformation of the Charleston Area and to support one another in the ministry.
In one of the first sessions, Dr. Perkins was commenting about the various problems in the inner city: drugs, violence, teen pregnancy, etc. He made the striking statement that “Our biggest problem is Materialism”, going on to clarify that this is actually a species of Me-ism or Narcissism. “Ours,” he said, “Is the first generation that has put material things if front of life itself”.
When we see young men decked out with gangsta rap clothes – hats turned sideways, sunglasses big shirts, bling-bling, pants down to the ankle over shoes that cost $200, we’re seeing the signs of a generation that has nothing else besides material things in which to find meaning. And as Jesus says in Luke 16:13, “You cannot serve God and Mammon”.
This sentiment is echoed in numerous other Biblical passages:
Philippians 3:18,19:
18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Romans 8:5:
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Romans 16:18:
18 For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.
Colossians 3:2
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
As Christians, we are to be people who have our sights set higher than the stuff of the world. When somebody asks us “Who’s your Daddy?!” we ought not to answer Snoop Dog, Michael Jordan, or Ralph Lauren. It ought to be clear to us that God is our maker and not we ourselves (Ps. 100.) We are those who have named Jesus Christ as Lord (Kurios) of our lives and therefore we have a different sense of accountability than the worldlings around us.
Our accountability is based on an expectation of a Heavenly reward or consequence for everything we do here on earth. We understand that we are a Pilgrim people whose citizenship is not here, but in Heaven (Heb. 11:16) and that our highest priority is to worship God and seek to become like Christ Jesus. Because of this we are to walk by faith and not by sight – we trust in God as our Provider, not in money or Mammon. So here are some guidelines to determine which we in fact follow:
Faith
Faithful usage of money
Little is the same as much
Able to ‘detach’ from things
Ability to empty oneself for others
Kingdom guides spending priorities
Giving is sign of God’s LordshipDiscernment in giving
Sight
Seeking unjust gain
More is better
Money and things make us feel secure
Using others to get more
Status guides our consuming
Giving as “marketing” our goodness
Attempts at leveling to stop injustice
This last area gets us into heavy going, because it is possible to attempt to fulfill Kingdom priorities in the flesh. We can sincerely try to serve God by alleviating human suffering, but end up in the clutches of the slippery god Mammon nonetheless. This is all too apparent in looking at charitable giving and in the government’s attempts to create a Great Society.
Our basic problem is that we are a fallen race. We have a sin nature and we have an inborn propensity to turn away from the True Master of the Universe and to put our Selves on the throne of our lives. We are inherently prone to doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons – and even in doing the right things with the wrong motive. This is part of the human condition. It cannot be improved or eradicated. Any program of human improvement must take into account this sin nature and the sometimes paradoxical effects that result from attempting to “Do Good”.
In his book, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, Robert, Lupton, PH.D., rethinks 35 years of ministry to the poor and concludes that much if not most Christian attempts to minister to the poor actually fail because they inadvertently put the donor or giver of resources in Control over the receiver, demeaning the recipient and condemning them to the permanent, prideless role of receipient. (pg. 22).
In the process, says Lupton, the sin nature rears its ugly head and Mammon receives his due. You may have seen in the news that the Cridlin Food pantry ran low on funds and that a young man had the idea to have a pancake breakfast at First Presbyterian to raise money. Cindy and I went and were talking with a woman at the table about how the service works through the Information and Referral service located at the Cabell County Library. Like virtually all other free clothing and food pantries, Cridlin must impose rules to prevent their clients from greedily grabbing up every loose item, leaving nothing for others in need. There is a limit to how much you may receive and how often.
It’s great to offer relief to people who are in desperate throes, but there is a paradoxical effect at work here. Programs that seek to lift people from poverty unwittingly create dependency and destroy family structures, resulting in a permanent, bitter underclass. Noble attempts to alleviate suffering end up leaving both the giver and the receiver with a sour feeling in the gut. “A subtle, unintentional message slips through: “You have nothing of worth that I desire in return.” Lupton painfully observes, ”Perhaps the deepest poverty of all is to have nothing of value to offer in exchange.”
We’ve all the heard the aphorism, “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in the boat and drink beer all day.”—OldFox
But seriously… “Ancient Hebrew wisdom”, reports Lupton, “describes four levels of charity. The highest is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it. The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided. The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need. The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a poor person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor.” (pg. 26 in CJCL).
Do not most of our attempts at Christian Charity fall into the latter category?
Yesterday, around noon, Cindy excitedly informed me that there was a yard sale/ hotdog sale being held at the projects near my home. The residents had banded together to raise money for some upcoming activities they wanted to do for their children. In good resourceful fashion, they had taken it upon themselves to work and make some money the old fashioned way. In sixteen years of living in my neighborhood, I had never seen anything like this. So I went with my young friend Eric to the sale, and we happily snarfed some hotdogs and bought some miscellaneous items.
I was happy to participate in the sale, because the exchange of fair value, freely agreed upon by the traders is inherently ennobling and empowering to both parties. It recognizes reciprocity between the parties and can even create friendship amongst equals. Unrighteous Mammon, honestly pursued can be a means of gain in human relationships.
Illustrating this, we got acquainted with the ladies who organized the sale, learning at the same time that they participated in a Resident’s Council, the Fairfield West Improvement Council, and the local Crime and Safety Committee. We also learned that there is a long-term plan to raze the current crop of old housing units and replace them with new single family dwellings that can be purchased for a discount, thus creating real ownership and a basis for self-help, self-respect and self-governance.
These are examples of people banding together to help themselves –even though they are also receiving assistance with their housing. It appears that in the City of Huntington, there is the beginning of awareness that people must be involved in their own improvement. There must be reciprocity in helping, not just one-way giving. We must not only teach people to fish, we must help them to take ownership of the pond and learn to restock the pond in the process. We can combat Mammon by taking into account the very sin nature whose effects we try to eradicate and use worldly resources to help people help themselves, also coming to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, without whom, all the stuff in the world is mere trifle.
I believe that buying Hope House has put us in a unique position to participate in the restoration and preservation of a neighborhood. Though it has “not yet appeared what we shall be”, I think God has given us an opportunity to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into a needy neighborhood by becoming good neighbors who act in community friendly ways and who participate in developing the spiritual and financial resources of the community we seek to impact. As we get to know the people of our area better, we can help them come to know the Master of the Universe. We can also assist them to put things in their right place – not as Mammon to be worshipped, but as useful tools that assist people to live better lives.
May God help us to be faithful to the call to make friends for ourselves by the use of Mammon – for the sake of the Gospel. AMEN.
It seems that last week, God received a batch of mail from a group of school kids. One writes:
Dear God,
If you give me a Genie Lamp like Aladdin, I will give you anything you want except my money or my chess set.
Raphael
Well, it seems that our young Raphael might have mentored under the Unrighteous Steward in today’s reading! He seems a bit confused about who is serving whom. He seems to think that God is similar to a Genie that one calls up out of a magic lamp; one that grants you three wishes. And, of course, the owner of the lamp retains control over the nature of the wishes or grants. It’s a bargain with certain understood rules governing the bargain.
Sounds pretty much like the way that many people approach God today doesn’t it?
Here’s another example from the American Anglican Council weekly update:
“Congregants at Pro-Cathedral of St. Clement's Episcopal Church, one of the city's oldest places of worship with hundreds of members and more than a dozen ministries, is leaving the Episcopal Church to carry on with doctrines members said no longer fit those of its former denomination.
The church recorded a 460-41 vote from its congregation on Sunday to dissolve its relationship with Episcopal Church USA and remain part of the Anglican Communion Network.
Late Friday, St. Clement's reached an agreement with Bishop Jeffrey Steenson of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande that will allow the local church to hang on to its property for $2 million.
Who would you say is serving Whom? …
In other news, this past week, I attended a conference in Charleston, with Dr. John Perkins, author of the seminal book “Let Justice Roll Down”. It was sponsored by the City Impact Roundtable, a group of ministers that meets regularly to prayer for the Transformation of the Charleston Area and to support one another in the ministry.
In one of the first sessions, Dr. Perkins was commenting about the various problems in the inner city: drugs, violence, teen pregnancy, etc. He made the striking statement that “Our biggest problem is Materialism”, going on to clarify that this is actually a species of Me-ism or Narcissism. “Ours,” he said, “Is the first generation that has put material things if front of life itself”.
When we see young men decked out with gangsta rap clothes – hats turned sideways, sunglasses big shirts, bling-bling, pants down to the ankle over shoes that cost $200, we’re seeing the signs of a generation that has nothing else besides material things in which to find meaning. And as Jesus says in Luke 16:13, “You cannot serve God and Mammon”.
This sentiment is echoed in numerous other Biblical passages:
Philippians 3:18,19:
18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Romans 8:5:
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Romans 16:18:
18 For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.
Colossians 3:2
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
As Christians, we are to be people who have our sights set higher than the stuff of the world. When somebody asks us “Who’s your Daddy?!” we ought not to answer Snoop Dog, Michael Jordan, or Ralph Lauren. It ought to be clear to us that God is our maker and not we ourselves (Ps. 100.) We are those who have named Jesus Christ as Lord (Kurios) of our lives and therefore we have a different sense of accountability than the worldlings around us.
Our accountability is based on an expectation of a Heavenly reward or consequence for everything we do here on earth. We understand that we are a Pilgrim people whose citizenship is not here, but in Heaven (Heb. 11:16) and that our highest priority is to worship God and seek to become like Christ Jesus. Because of this we are to walk by faith and not by sight – we trust in God as our Provider, not in money or Mammon. So here are some guidelines to determine which we in fact follow:
Faith
Faithful usage of money
Little is the same as much
Able to ‘detach’ from things
Ability to empty oneself for others
Kingdom guides spending priorities
Giving is sign of God’s LordshipDiscernment in giving
Sight
Seeking unjust gain
More is better
Money and things make us feel secure
Using others to get more
Status guides our consuming
Giving as “marketing” our goodness
Attempts at leveling to stop injustice
This last area gets us into heavy going, because it is possible to attempt to fulfill Kingdom priorities in the flesh. We can sincerely try to serve God by alleviating human suffering, but end up in the clutches of the slippery god Mammon nonetheless. This is all too apparent in looking at charitable giving and in the government’s attempts to create a Great Society.
Our basic problem is that we are a fallen race. We have a sin nature and we have an inborn propensity to turn away from the True Master of the Universe and to put our Selves on the throne of our lives. We are inherently prone to doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons – and even in doing the right things with the wrong motive. This is part of the human condition. It cannot be improved or eradicated. Any program of human improvement must take into account this sin nature and the sometimes paradoxical effects that result from attempting to “Do Good”.
In his book, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, Robert, Lupton, PH.D., rethinks 35 years of ministry to the poor and concludes that much if not most Christian attempts to minister to the poor actually fail because they inadvertently put the donor or giver of resources in Control over the receiver, demeaning the recipient and condemning them to the permanent, prideless role of receipient. (pg. 22).
In the process, says Lupton, the sin nature rears its ugly head and Mammon receives his due. You may have seen in the news that the Cridlin Food pantry ran low on funds and that a young man had the idea to have a pancake breakfast at First Presbyterian to raise money. Cindy and I went and were talking with a woman at the table about how the service works through the Information and Referral service located at the Cabell County Library. Like virtually all other free clothing and food pantries, Cridlin must impose rules to prevent their clients from greedily grabbing up every loose item, leaving nothing for others in need. There is a limit to how much you may receive and how often.
It’s great to offer relief to people who are in desperate throes, but there is a paradoxical effect at work here. Programs that seek to lift people from poverty unwittingly create dependency and destroy family structures, resulting in a permanent, bitter underclass. Noble attempts to alleviate suffering end up leaving both the giver and the receiver with a sour feeling in the gut. “A subtle, unintentional message slips through: “You have nothing of worth that I desire in return.” Lupton painfully observes, ”Perhaps the deepest poverty of all is to have nothing of value to offer in exchange.”
We’ve all the heard the aphorism, “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in the boat and drink beer all day.”—OldFox
But seriously… “Ancient Hebrew wisdom”, reports Lupton, “describes four levels of charity. The highest is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it. The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided. The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need. The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a poor person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor.” (pg. 26 in CJCL).
Do not most of our attempts at Christian Charity fall into the latter category?
Yesterday, around noon, Cindy excitedly informed me that there was a yard sale/ hotdog sale being held at the projects near my home. The residents had banded together to raise money for some upcoming activities they wanted to do for their children. In good resourceful fashion, they had taken it upon themselves to work and make some money the old fashioned way. In sixteen years of living in my neighborhood, I had never seen anything like this. So I went with my young friend Eric to the sale, and we happily snarfed some hotdogs and bought some miscellaneous items.
I was happy to participate in the sale, because the exchange of fair value, freely agreed upon by the traders is inherently ennobling and empowering to both parties. It recognizes reciprocity between the parties and can even create friendship amongst equals. Unrighteous Mammon, honestly pursued can be a means of gain in human relationships.
Illustrating this, we got acquainted with the ladies who organized the sale, learning at the same time that they participated in a Resident’s Council, the Fairfield West Improvement Council, and the local Crime and Safety Committee. We also learned that there is a long-term plan to raze the current crop of old housing units and replace them with new single family dwellings that can be purchased for a discount, thus creating real ownership and a basis for self-help, self-respect and self-governance.
These are examples of people banding together to help themselves –even though they are also receiving assistance with their housing. It appears that in the City of Huntington, there is the beginning of awareness that people must be involved in their own improvement. There must be reciprocity in helping, not just one-way giving. We must not only teach people to fish, we must help them to take ownership of the pond and learn to restock the pond in the process. We can combat Mammon by taking into account the very sin nature whose effects we try to eradicate and use worldly resources to help people help themselves, also coming to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, without whom, all the stuff in the world is mere trifle.
I believe that buying Hope House has put us in a unique position to participate in the restoration and preservation of a neighborhood. Though it has “not yet appeared what we shall be”, I think God has given us an opportunity to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into a needy neighborhood by becoming good neighbors who act in community friendly ways and who participate in developing the spiritual and financial resources of the community we seek to impact. As we get to know the people of our area better, we can help them come to know the Master of the Universe. We can also assist them to put things in their right place – not as Mammon to be worshipped, but as useful tools that assist people to live better lives.
May God help us to be faithful to the call to make friends for ourselves by the use of Mammon – for the sake of the Gospel. AMEN.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Practicing the Presence of Jesus
A Sermon delivered to the Company of Jesus at the September 15, 2007 Profession Service, Chattanooga Vineyard, Chattanooga, TN. It is based on
John 20:19-31
v. 19: And Jesus came and stood in their midst.
In 1977, I was going to school at Marshall University and played the electric bass in the jazz orchestra. That year, Stan Kenton brought his band to Marshall to do a master class for us and to play a concert. We were rehearsing for our own part of the concert when suddenly; the side door opened and in came the Stan Kenton band into our rehearsal. Each band member walked over and took his place by his counterpart in our band. The band came and stood in our midst!
It was an unnerving sense of a Presence flowing into the room. The band members didn’t say “Peace” when they walked in. We were somewhat rattled at first, but then we relaxed as the band members chatted with us. The Presence of the Band entered our rehearsal and super-charged the atmosphere.
So too, the Presence of Jesus coming into the room with the disciples was the Eternal (Kairos) of God breaking into the temporal Chronos of the disciples. The scripture tells us that they were afraid of the Jews and were huddled together behind closed doors. But can you imagine the disciples attitudes when Jesus came and stood in their midst? They must have jumped out of their skins!
So Jesus Greets them with “Peace be with you.”, comforting them and immediately commissioning them to their task of going out into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit and Making Christ Known to the world.Truly this is the task of every disciple of Christ…
That being so, what is this strange activity that we’re involved in today? Why has this motley group of people come here to dress up in odd clothes and profess to a way of life that is so…anachronistic, so medieval?
David Stendal-Rast OSB, in his book “Music of Silence”, says, “The monastic venture is commonly misunderstood as an effort to be super-pious, to be more holy than other people. But the rationale for monasticism could be most succinctly described as an effort to live in the NOW”
“To live in the NOW” sounds like such a truism, so good and …innocuous. But as humans we are terrified of NOW. As a counselor, I am constantly working with people who are either preoccupied with the wounds, grief and regrets of the past – or the fear of terrible imagined events in the future, things that have not happened yet. A sense of foreboding grips us when we are not Somewhere Else mentally.
Because of this, cloistered monasteries are places where everything is arranged in such a way as to make it easy to be present in the NOW – to be available to the One who lives in the NOW. Sometimes this is referred to as the Contemplative Life. But this doesn’t mean that one spends the entire time in meditation. According to Stendal-Rast, contemplation literally means a ‘continuous putting together according to some measure.”
What is being put together? The two realms of Chronos and Kairos. We are ‘continuously measuring what we are doing in Time against the Now that doesn’t’ pass away,” says Stendal-Rast. Contemplative Life is putting together of Vision and Action. Vision alone is not true Contemplation. We must put Vision into Action. Not just cloistered monks, but all of us as Christians are called to contemplation in this sense.
So this is another aspect of the Third Order life that attracts those of us called to it – the desire to bring together Vison and Action, the Sacred into the Secular; the desire to find a Sacred way of living daily life. This means being intentional about the way we order our days – spending time in focused prayer – both the offices of the day, and our own private reading and study, or “Lectio”, all of which helps us to progress toward the goal of being Christ like.
St. Benedict’s desire was to create a ‘School for God’s service”. This was not to be a school in the usual sense we know it, but one of gathering together a group of people for a specific work or purpose. So the Company of Jesus is a ‘school’ in much the same way we could speak of the “Hudson River” school of American artists for instance – a group of like-minded people, kindred spirits who associate for the purpose of encouraging and stimulating one another to love and good works; in a word, to be Christlike.
Monasticism usually entails leaving or renouncing the world in its classical sense. But those in the COJ are not called to leave, but to stay in the world, living out the ideals of our patrons Francis and Benedict in the context of family and everyday work.
Joan Chittister refers to what she calls “A barefooted soul” – awake, alert, aware and only partially at home. This is a poetic way of understanding the Third Order profession – a magnetic, irresistible tug in our hearts to live life in a more intentional and conscious fashion; a pull to bring together the Sacred and the Secular; a desire to practice the Presence of Jesus at all times.
Of course, there is also the draw of personality in which the personal style of our patron appeals deeply to us – Benedict with his ordered, disciplined, balanced approach to life; Francis in his abandonment to God’s moment-by-moment provision and immanent Lordship in all things,, most famously summed up in his relationship with the animals and in becoming a living Icon of the suffering Christ.
In each case there is a beauty that draws us up and out of our American mainstream pursuit of the ‘good life’ and challenges us to live life in a more deeply human fashion, one in which the Presence of Christ in our midst is tangible, almost palpable.
Being an order with two patron saints, I suppose we could call ourselves BENEFRISCANS or FRANCIDICTINES to reflect the influence of both charisms. Whatever we call ourselves, we are called to live in the NOW, to realize that there really is no separation between Sacred and Secular, but that all of life is OPUS DEI, or ‘work of God”. We are called to practice the Presence of Jesus standing in our midst and then to go into the world and serve as he did, sacrificially and whole-heartedly.
To quote Francis, “Wherever you go, preach the Gospel, if necessary use words.” Jesus sends us into the world, just as He Himself was sent – to love and serve the world. May God bless you on the way, brothers and sisters. And may people wherever you go recognize that Jesus is standing in their midst. AMEN.
John 20:19-31
v. 19: And Jesus came and stood in their midst.
In 1977, I was going to school at Marshall University and played the electric bass in the jazz orchestra. That year, Stan Kenton brought his band to Marshall to do a master class for us and to play a concert. We were rehearsing for our own part of the concert when suddenly; the side door opened and in came the Stan Kenton band into our rehearsal. Each band member walked over and took his place by his counterpart in our band. The band came and stood in our midst!
It was an unnerving sense of a Presence flowing into the room. The band members didn’t say “Peace” when they walked in. We were somewhat rattled at first, but then we relaxed as the band members chatted with us. The Presence of the Band entered our rehearsal and super-charged the atmosphere.
So too, the Presence of Jesus coming into the room with the disciples was the Eternal (Kairos) of God breaking into the temporal Chronos of the disciples. The scripture tells us that they were afraid of the Jews and were huddled together behind closed doors. But can you imagine the disciples attitudes when Jesus came and stood in their midst? They must have jumped out of their skins!
So Jesus Greets them with “Peace be with you.”, comforting them and immediately commissioning them to their task of going out into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit and Making Christ Known to the world.Truly this is the task of every disciple of Christ…
That being so, what is this strange activity that we’re involved in today? Why has this motley group of people come here to dress up in odd clothes and profess to a way of life that is so…anachronistic, so medieval?
David Stendal-Rast OSB, in his book “Music of Silence”, says, “The monastic venture is commonly misunderstood as an effort to be super-pious, to be more holy than other people. But the rationale for monasticism could be most succinctly described as an effort to live in the NOW”
“To live in the NOW” sounds like such a truism, so good and …innocuous. But as humans we are terrified of NOW. As a counselor, I am constantly working with people who are either preoccupied with the wounds, grief and regrets of the past – or the fear of terrible imagined events in the future, things that have not happened yet. A sense of foreboding grips us when we are not Somewhere Else mentally.
Because of this, cloistered monasteries are places where everything is arranged in such a way as to make it easy to be present in the NOW – to be available to the One who lives in the NOW. Sometimes this is referred to as the Contemplative Life. But this doesn’t mean that one spends the entire time in meditation. According to Stendal-Rast, contemplation literally means a ‘continuous putting together according to some measure.”
What is being put together? The two realms of Chronos and Kairos. We are ‘continuously measuring what we are doing in Time against the Now that doesn’t’ pass away,” says Stendal-Rast. Contemplative Life is putting together of Vision and Action. Vision alone is not true Contemplation. We must put Vision into Action. Not just cloistered monks, but all of us as Christians are called to contemplation in this sense.
So this is another aspect of the Third Order life that attracts those of us called to it – the desire to bring together Vison and Action, the Sacred into the Secular; the desire to find a Sacred way of living daily life. This means being intentional about the way we order our days – spending time in focused prayer – both the offices of the day, and our own private reading and study, or “Lectio”, all of which helps us to progress toward the goal of being Christ like.
St. Benedict’s desire was to create a ‘School for God’s service”. This was not to be a school in the usual sense we know it, but one of gathering together a group of people for a specific work or purpose. So the Company of Jesus is a ‘school’ in much the same way we could speak of the “Hudson River” school of American artists for instance – a group of like-minded people, kindred spirits who associate for the purpose of encouraging and stimulating one another to love and good works; in a word, to be Christlike.
Monasticism usually entails leaving or renouncing the world in its classical sense. But those in the COJ are not called to leave, but to stay in the world, living out the ideals of our patrons Francis and Benedict in the context of family and everyday work.
Joan Chittister refers to what she calls “A barefooted soul” – awake, alert, aware and only partially at home. This is a poetic way of understanding the Third Order profession – a magnetic, irresistible tug in our hearts to live life in a more intentional and conscious fashion; a pull to bring together the Sacred and the Secular; a desire to practice the Presence of Jesus at all times.
Of course, there is also the draw of personality in which the personal style of our patron appeals deeply to us – Benedict with his ordered, disciplined, balanced approach to life; Francis in his abandonment to God’s moment-by-moment provision and immanent Lordship in all things,, most famously summed up in his relationship with the animals and in becoming a living Icon of the suffering Christ.
In each case there is a beauty that draws us up and out of our American mainstream pursuit of the ‘good life’ and challenges us to live life in a more deeply human fashion, one in which the Presence of Christ in our midst is tangible, almost palpable.
Being an order with two patron saints, I suppose we could call ourselves BENEFRISCANS or FRANCIDICTINES to reflect the influence of both charisms. Whatever we call ourselves, we are called to live in the NOW, to realize that there really is no separation between Sacred and Secular, but that all of life is OPUS DEI, or ‘work of God”. We are called to practice the Presence of Jesus standing in our midst and then to go into the world and serve as he did, sacrificially and whole-heartedly.
To quote Francis, “Wherever you go, preach the Gospel, if necessary use words.” Jesus sends us into the world, just as He Himself was sent – to love and serve the world. May God bless you on the way, brothers and sisters. And may people wherever you go recognize that Jesus is standing in their midst. AMEN.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Up from Slavery
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church, based on the book of Philemon,
September 9, 2007
Intro and Background
On April 4, 1864, in a letter to Albert Hodges, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “If Slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Today this seems obvious to us, but as Thomas Sowell points out in his essay, ‘The Real History of Slavery’ (in Black Rednecks and White Liberals), “…for thousands of years, slavery was simply not an issue, even among the great religious thinkers or moral philosophers of civilization around the world.” (pg. 116).
Slavery has been common throughout the world and actually gets its English name from the Slavs of Eastern Europe, who were so often taken as servants to the rest of the world that their very name became synonymous with servitude. While we typically think of white traders taking Africans to America to be sold, it must also be remembered that between 1500 and 1800 “At least a million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates.” In India, the original Thugs kidnapped children for the purposes of enslavement, and “the Ottoman Empire regularly enslaved a percentage of the young boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam and assigned them to various duties in the civil or military establishments. (Sowell, pg. 112).
And down to today, there are Christians in Sudan being kidnapped and sold into slavery, often sexual slavery, to their Muslim neighbors.
We will remember of course, that the Hebrews were slaves of the Egyptians for 400 years. The Bible even contains various regulations concerning the ownership of slaves. And both the Greeks and the Romans kept slaves without scruple. It is within this context that Paul writes to Philemon, the owner of a runaway slave.
It seems that a young slave named Onesimus had stolen some money from his owner, Philemon, and run from Colossae to Rome. Some four or five years later, he met up with Paul, who was in prison awaiting trial before Caesar. Onesimus becomes a Christian and makes himself useful to Paul, learning from him all the while.
Paul’s Appeal to Philemon
Now Philemon was an intimate friend of Paul’s. He was a well-to-do man and had a house big enough to hold church meetings – a common practice in the early church. In fact, the Roman basilica style church is based on the early Roman homes. Paul shows the depth of his relationship with Philemon in verse 7, “I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.”
He thanks God ‘always when he remembers Philemon in his prayers, because he has heard of Philemons’ love and of the faith that he has toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints, and he prays that the sharing of Philemon’s faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing…for the sake of Christ” (v.4,5).
Paul’s object in writing to Philemon is to intercede on behalf of Onesimus urging him to accept the runaway as a new brother in Christ. The tone of the letter is full of deference, courtesy, tact and humility.
Notice he appeals, he does not demand Philemon to comply. He could command obedience but he prefers to appeal on behalf of his child in the faith,Onesimus.
I think that Paul knew he was skating on delicate ice in dealing with this runaway slave. Against the background of our own American slavery, we can easily imagine what might have awaited Onesimus as a returned runaway. Therefore, he approaches Philemon gently –not in a heavy handed manner, but with love and remonstrations.
Paul appeals to the common bond in Jesus Christ to bring these two men together. We can imagine Paul saying, as he did to the Galatians: There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus…(Gal.3:28). He says to Philemon that Onesimus was dead and useless to him, but through the Lord, there has come to be a unity between the two men that transcends the bounds of the secular law. The challenge to Philemon is to look to the higher law and recognize the claims of the Brotherhood in Christ – a brotherhood which supercedes the dead requirement of the law. And there is the reminder in the word ‘forever’, that the Kingdom of God is eternal, that our relationships with our Christian brothers and sisters go on without end.
Paul then offers to pay any debt that Onesimus has incurred with Philemon, but the implied message is that Philemon owes Paul big time, and Paul is now calling in his favors from Philemon. “You owe me your own self, and I want some benefit from you in the Lord…so refresh my heart,” he says. “ And by the way, prepare me a place, because I’m going to come visit you soon…
The Christian Response
This very short letter, with its gracious spirit, was read throughout the world for 18 centuries before circumstances allowed for the formulation of a document asserting that, “All men are created Equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Only in America and England did these ideas gain a substantial foothold, causing the end of the slave trade within 100 years of that first declaration.
In this country, we alone fought a bloody civil war to decide this issue. The English eventually paid the slave owners for their ‘property’ much in the same way the government would reimburse a land holder for taking his property to build a bridge or road.
The English then used their worldwide hegemony to force the abandonment of the slave trade in places as far flung as Brazil and Zanzibar. The Gospel imperative, pushed by conservative Christians, forced the end of the slave trade all over the world.
The Contemporary Challenge
The excellent movie, Amazing Grace portrayed the 40- year struggle by William Wilberforce and others to end this vicious trade. Wilberforce stood as a prophet crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!
We too are called to stand as prophets crying in the wilderness. We are called to stand against the apostasy of those church leaders who use their positions of authority to tear down the church and promote other religions.
We are called to advocate for the weak and the defenseless, the unborn who face the butcher’s knife, and those who, even today are being forcibly taken into slavery. We are called to help people find freedom from other forms of slavery such as legalism and addictions of all sorts.
And, as Paul demonstrates, we are challenged to do all these things in a spirit of love and grace towards those we seek to change. I love the words of St. Francis, “Wherever you go preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words.”
Friends, this week, let us seek the Lord and ask him how we may serve Him in winning the lost to Christ and also in winning Christians to a higher standard of faith and behavior. AMEN.
September 9, 2007
Intro and Background
On April 4, 1864, in a letter to Albert Hodges, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “If Slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Today this seems obvious to us, but as Thomas Sowell points out in his essay, ‘The Real History of Slavery’ (in Black Rednecks and White Liberals), “…for thousands of years, slavery was simply not an issue, even among the great religious thinkers or moral philosophers of civilization around the world.” (pg. 116).
Slavery has been common throughout the world and actually gets its English name from the Slavs of Eastern Europe, who were so often taken as servants to the rest of the world that their very name became synonymous with servitude. While we typically think of white traders taking Africans to America to be sold, it must also be remembered that between 1500 and 1800 “At least a million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates.” In India, the original Thugs kidnapped children for the purposes of enslavement, and “the Ottoman Empire regularly enslaved a percentage of the young boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam and assigned them to various duties in the civil or military establishments. (Sowell, pg. 112).
And down to today, there are Christians in Sudan being kidnapped and sold into slavery, often sexual slavery, to their Muslim neighbors.
We will remember of course, that the Hebrews were slaves of the Egyptians for 400 years. The Bible even contains various regulations concerning the ownership of slaves. And both the Greeks and the Romans kept slaves without scruple. It is within this context that Paul writes to Philemon, the owner of a runaway slave.
It seems that a young slave named Onesimus had stolen some money from his owner, Philemon, and run from Colossae to Rome. Some four or five years later, he met up with Paul, who was in prison awaiting trial before Caesar. Onesimus becomes a Christian and makes himself useful to Paul, learning from him all the while.
Paul’s Appeal to Philemon
Now Philemon was an intimate friend of Paul’s. He was a well-to-do man and had a house big enough to hold church meetings – a common practice in the early church. In fact, the Roman basilica style church is based on the early Roman homes. Paul shows the depth of his relationship with Philemon in verse 7, “I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.”
He thanks God ‘always when he remembers Philemon in his prayers, because he has heard of Philemons’ love and of the faith that he has toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints, and he prays that the sharing of Philemon’s faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing…for the sake of Christ” (v.4,5).
Paul’s object in writing to Philemon is to intercede on behalf of Onesimus urging him to accept the runaway as a new brother in Christ. The tone of the letter is full of deference, courtesy, tact and humility.
Notice he appeals, he does not demand Philemon to comply. He could command obedience but he prefers to appeal on behalf of his child in the faith,Onesimus.
I think that Paul knew he was skating on delicate ice in dealing with this runaway slave. Against the background of our own American slavery, we can easily imagine what might have awaited Onesimus as a returned runaway. Therefore, he approaches Philemon gently –not in a heavy handed manner, but with love and remonstrations.
Paul appeals to the common bond in Jesus Christ to bring these two men together. We can imagine Paul saying, as he did to the Galatians: There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus…(Gal.3:28). He says to Philemon that Onesimus was dead and useless to him, but through the Lord, there has come to be a unity between the two men that transcends the bounds of the secular law. The challenge to Philemon is to look to the higher law and recognize the claims of the Brotherhood in Christ – a brotherhood which supercedes the dead requirement of the law. And there is the reminder in the word ‘forever’, that the Kingdom of God is eternal, that our relationships with our Christian brothers and sisters go on without end.
Paul then offers to pay any debt that Onesimus has incurred with Philemon, but the implied message is that Philemon owes Paul big time, and Paul is now calling in his favors from Philemon. “You owe me your own self, and I want some benefit from you in the Lord…so refresh my heart,” he says. “ And by the way, prepare me a place, because I’m going to come visit you soon…
The Christian Response
This very short letter, with its gracious spirit, was read throughout the world for 18 centuries before circumstances allowed for the formulation of a document asserting that, “All men are created Equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Only in America and England did these ideas gain a substantial foothold, causing the end of the slave trade within 100 years of that first declaration.
In this country, we alone fought a bloody civil war to decide this issue. The English eventually paid the slave owners for their ‘property’ much in the same way the government would reimburse a land holder for taking his property to build a bridge or road.
The English then used their worldwide hegemony to force the abandonment of the slave trade in places as far flung as Brazil and Zanzibar. The Gospel imperative, pushed by conservative Christians, forced the end of the slave trade all over the world.
The Contemporary Challenge
The excellent movie, Amazing Grace portrayed the 40- year struggle by William Wilberforce and others to end this vicious trade. Wilberforce stood as a prophet crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!
We too are called to stand as prophets crying in the wilderness. We are called to stand against the apostasy of those church leaders who use their positions of authority to tear down the church and promote other religions.
We are called to advocate for the weak and the defenseless, the unborn who face the butcher’s knife, and those who, even today are being forcibly taken into slavery. We are called to help people find freedom from other forms of slavery such as legalism and addictions of all sorts.
And, as Paul demonstrates, we are challenged to do all these things in a spirit of love and grace towards those we seek to change. I love the words of St. Francis, “Wherever you go preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words.”
Friends, this week, let us seek the Lord and ask him how we may serve Him in winning the lost to Christ and also in winning Christians to a higher standard of faith and behavior. AMEN.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Hospitality
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on September 2, 2007, based on Hebrews 13:1-3
A preacher from Kansas relates the following story in his blog: “One time… a man came by the church needing some clothes and a meal. We had a clothes ministry and gave him clothes and I went down and got him some KFC and visited for a while. We had a wonderful visit. My wife was church secretary at the time and I was youth minister and were between ministers. He gave me and my wife encouragement that we really needed to hear at the time. After a long visit and done with his warm meal; he said he had to be on his way. I always gave Bibles away to those who came by the church so I went to my office to give him a Bible for his journey. When I returned he was gone. No cars had been in the parking lot to pick him up, a field of wheat was the only thing for a quite a while. He was there and then gone. (Blogger Preacherman @ blogger.com).
Such stories of fairly typical of belivevers who may have ‘entertained angels unawares’. A person appears at your door, seeming not unusual. He does something unusual and then disappears without a trace. Such experiences are fairly common in the Bible. In Genesis 18, we read the story of how Abraham was sitting in his tent in the heat of the day and suddenly he saw three men standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, “O, Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brougth and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.” So they stay and wait while Abraham prepares a meal for them. They deliver the prophesy about Sarah having a son, Isaac, and then they lead Abraham to a vantage point overlooking Sodom, where Abraham bargains with them over sparing the city.
But there is some curious language in this passage. Verse 1 of chapter 18 says, “ And the Lord appeared to him…” Then in verse two, it says, “three men were standing in front of him.” Throughout the rest of the passage there is an alternation between the phrases, “The Lord said…” and the phrase, “the men”. As Abraham bargains, he says, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord (vv. 27, 31). Finally the story concludes and ‘the Lord went his way’ (v.33).
Here then, is a very interesting illustration of entertaining angels. In it, we learn that ‘the men’ or the angles, are sometimes not just angels, or messengers, but they may be the Lord Himself! In Abraham’s case, it appears he may have been entertaining the Trinity itself!
Beginning in the 1980’s sometime, there began to be a surge of interest in Angel stories. I have several books from Guideposts describing inspiring encounters with angels. Often these encounters have to do with bringing a message of encouragement to the person visited. Sometimes the stories recount amazing rescues from danger, or warnings to avoid danger. In all the instances in these books, the stories deal with what appears to be ‘mere angels’ - not the Lord himself, but a messenger sent to deliver a message or give protection of some sort.
While these stories are wonderful in and of themselves – and we should indeed be mindful of the possibility that an angel may one day come to us, I’d like us to think about an even more profound thought – that we may sometime entertain the Lord Jesus himself – just like Abraham did. More, that we do indeed encounter Jesus Christ every time we meet another human being!
Talk about a disturbing thought! If you really start meditating on this and think about how to apply it, you will be deeply changed as a person yourself. Mother Teresa used to talk about ministering to Jesus ‘in distressing disguise”. This captures the paradox of welcoming Jesus in others. In their book, “Radical Hospitality, Benedict’s Way of Love”, Fr. Daniel Holman, OSB, and Lonnie Pratt delve into this paradox in depth. “The stranger at next door, and at our door, is particularly frightening,” they say (pg. xxii).
After 911, we learned that the apparently innocuous foreigner can be a terrorist bent on mass destruction. “When we speak of the depth of hospitality, we are proposing something scary and radical,” say Homan and Pratt. But they go on to challenge us to take the risk. “Unless we find a way to open ourselves to others, we will grow even more isolated and frightened. If we do not find and practice ways of hospitality we will grow increasingly hostile. Hospitality is the answer to hostility. Jesus said to lover your neighbor; hospitality is how.” (pg. xxii).
The other evening my young friend Eric and I went down to Pullman Sqaure and were sitting outside enjoying a cold bottle of water and talking about our lives together. Suddenly, a cartoonish figure in a wheelchair appears at my right hand and asks me for money for breakfast.
My first response was to shudder and think, “Ugh. Go away leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m trying to live my life here?!” But then my Benedictine (read ‘Christian’) training took over and I remembered to welcome this person AS CHRIST… “for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”(RB 53:1).
I began to talk to “Speedy” about his life and I quickly learned that he had been living down by the river for 11 YEARS! Speedy obviously had an alcohol problem, and he was apparently violent at times. He told me that he had tried to live in various housing situations in the past, but he had gotten into fights and had been kicked out. In the recent clean sweep of the river-front by city officials, Speedy was either overlooked or purposefully slipped under the radar, maintaining his open-air way of life, and even trying to provide some manner of comfort to others who joined him there on the river bank.
I asked him about the condition of his soul, and he grudgingly told me that he had at one time been ‘saved’ but that he wasn’t going to church much these days.
Speedy smelled bad and he looked like a shriveled, balding troll. He had a white beard and was blind in one eye – a sort of film visibly clouding his right eye. And he was known by the security guards. No sooner had Speedy engaged me for a few moments, than the guard came and stood over him, telling him to move on. Speedy was clearly a nuisance to people like myself and Eric who were not looking to be accosted by Jesus in disguise, but merely wanted to enjoy a pleasant evening together.
With the guard standing over us, I quickly gave Speedy the last two bucks in my wallet and watched him speedily roll off back to the river front. I wondered if I had welcomed him ‘as Christ’ or not. I had tried to engage him in conversation – to begin to know him as a person. I had opened my wallet to him,but I wasn’t sure that I had actually opened my heart to him, for this is what we are challenged to do as Christians. Homan and Pratt again: [we are to]‘offer an open heart, a stance of availability, and to look for God lurking in every single person who comes through the door.” To fail to do this is to close ourselves off to the Divine.
But we are faced with an ‘existential dilemma’: We are essentially alone in this life and because of our sin nature, we tend to draw back from others. We fear connecting with others, but we desperately need to do so at the same time. This dilemma becomes particularly acute when we encounter the stranger – the different ‘other’.
Speedy was definitely ‘different’ and ‘other’ than me. He made me as an easy mark for money, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t interested in my life at all. But in a very real way, Speedy is me! For a brief moment, he was my guest. “We are all guests,” say Fr. Daniel and Lonnie, “we are all travelers, we are all a little lost, and we are all looking for a place to rest a while.” In life, “God is the host, but God also becomes the guest we receive in others. (Radical Hospitality, pg. xxxvi).
Benedict tells his monks to “Never give a hollow greeting of peace, or turn away when someone needs your love… Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly, Christ is received… (RB. 53:15)
To receive Christ in every person is to live counter-culturally and to open oneself wide to the transforming power of love. Indeed, if you want to be whole, you have to let others into your heart. We are told in Hebrews 13:2 to ‘show hospitality to strangers”. And while this doesn’t necessarily mean bringing Speedy home to live with, it does mean letting Speedy connect with us, to stir us and to share his humanity with us.
Showing hospitality means acknowledging the Image of God in the other person and accepting that Image however it may be disguised.
A number of years ago, my wife and I read a book entitled, “Open Heart, Open Home: The way to make others feel welcome and wanted” by Karen Burton Mains. I profoundly influenced us to open our home to our neighbors and actively minister to them. We’ve also been deeply influenced by Francis and Edith Shaeffer, who opened their homes to an entire generation of seekers drifting through the Swiss Alps, looking for Truth.
In the process of trying to emulate the Shaeffers and Mains, we have extended ourselves and our home to some rough and very needy characters. It has always been a challenge and an effort to welcome the disguised Jesus. Often, we have grown weary with the extreme needs that have come to the door. But we have also been warmed and enriched by welcoming strangers into our hearts – strangers like Sue Buzbee – who was someone we met while living in Illinois - someone who was unattractive in every possible way, but who managed to work her way into our hearts and our family for many years – someone who was Jesus in Distressing disguise, but who brought more love to us than we gave out to her, someone who taught us what it is to be truly hospitable – even when we didn’t want to!
Friends, the world needs Christians Innkeepers – people who have room for Jesus, in whatever guise he presents himself. I challenge us all to dig down deep and practice hospitality to a world desperately in need of shelter and acceptance. As we practice welcoming each person as Christ, we fulfill both commands to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We may in fact entertain angels unawares and be delighted with their support and help, but we might just also fulfill the Great Commission and change our world! AMEN.
A preacher from Kansas relates the following story in his blog: “One time… a man came by the church needing some clothes and a meal. We had a clothes ministry and gave him clothes and I went down and got him some KFC and visited for a while. We had a wonderful visit. My wife was church secretary at the time and I was youth minister and were between ministers. He gave me and my wife encouragement that we really needed to hear at the time. After a long visit and done with his warm meal; he said he had to be on his way. I always gave Bibles away to those who came by the church so I went to my office to give him a Bible for his journey. When I returned he was gone. No cars had been in the parking lot to pick him up, a field of wheat was the only thing for a quite a while. He was there and then gone. (Blogger Preacherman @ blogger.com).
Such stories of fairly typical of belivevers who may have ‘entertained angels unawares’. A person appears at your door, seeming not unusual. He does something unusual and then disappears without a trace. Such experiences are fairly common in the Bible. In Genesis 18, we read the story of how Abraham was sitting in his tent in the heat of the day and suddenly he saw three men standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, “O, Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brougth and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.” So they stay and wait while Abraham prepares a meal for them. They deliver the prophesy about Sarah having a son, Isaac, and then they lead Abraham to a vantage point overlooking Sodom, where Abraham bargains with them over sparing the city.
But there is some curious language in this passage. Verse 1 of chapter 18 says, “ And the Lord appeared to him…” Then in verse two, it says, “three men were standing in front of him.” Throughout the rest of the passage there is an alternation between the phrases, “The Lord said…” and the phrase, “the men”. As Abraham bargains, he says, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord (vv. 27, 31). Finally the story concludes and ‘the Lord went his way’ (v.33).
Here then, is a very interesting illustration of entertaining angels. In it, we learn that ‘the men’ or the angles, are sometimes not just angels, or messengers, but they may be the Lord Himself! In Abraham’s case, it appears he may have been entertaining the Trinity itself!
Beginning in the 1980’s sometime, there began to be a surge of interest in Angel stories. I have several books from Guideposts describing inspiring encounters with angels. Often these encounters have to do with bringing a message of encouragement to the person visited. Sometimes the stories recount amazing rescues from danger, or warnings to avoid danger. In all the instances in these books, the stories deal with what appears to be ‘mere angels’ - not the Lord himself, but a messenger sent to deliver a message or give protection of some sort.
While these stories are wonderful in and of themselves – and we should indeed be mindful of the possibility that an angel may one day come to us, I’d like us to think about an even more profound thought – that we may sometime entertain the Lord Jesus himself – just like Abraham did. More, that we do indeed encounter Jesus Christ every time we meet another human being!
Talk about a disturbing thought! If you really start meditating on this and think about how to apply it, you will be deeply changed as a person yourself. Mother Teresa used to talk about ministering to Jesus ‘in distressing disguise”. This captures the paradox of welcoming Jesus in others. In their book, “Radical Hospitality, Benedict’s Way of Love”, Fr. Daniel Holman, OSB, and Lonnie Pratt delve into this paradox in depth. “The stranger at next door, and at our door, is particularly frightening,” they say (pg. xxii).
After 911, we learned that the apparently innocuous foreigner can be a terrorist bent on mass destruction. “When we speak of the depth of hospitality, we are proposing something scary and radical,” say Homan and Pratt. But they go on to challenge us to take the risk. “Unless we find a way to open ourselves to others, we will grow even more isolated and frightened. If we do not find and practice ways of hospitality we will grow increasingly hostile. Hospitality is the answer to hostility. Jesus said to lover your neighbor; hospitality is how.” (pg. xxii).
The other evening my young friend Eric and I went down to Pullman Sqaure and were sitting outside enjoying a cold bottle of water and talking about our lives together. Suddenly, a cartoonish figure in a wheelchair appears at my right hand and asks me for money for breakfast.
My first response was to shudder and think, “Ugh. Go away leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m trying to live my life here?!” But then my Benedictine (read ‘Christian’) training took over and I remembered to welcome this person AS CHRIST… “for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”(RB 53:1).
I began to talk to “Speedy” about his life and I quickly learned that he had been living down by the river for 11 YEARS! Speedy obviously had an alcohol problem, and he was apparently violent at times. He told me that he had tried to live in various housing situations in the past, but he had gotten into fights and had been kicked out. In the recent clean sweep of the river-front by city officials, Speedy was either overlooked or purposefully slipped under the radar, maintaining his open-air way of life, and even trying to provide some manner of comfort to others who joined him there on the river bank.
I asked him about the condition of his soul, and he grudgingly told me that he had at one time been ‘saved’ but that he wasn’t going to church much these days.
Speedy smelled bad and he looked like a shriveled, balding troll. He had a white beard and was blind in one eye – a sort of film visibly clouding his right eye. And he was known by the security guards. No sooner had Speedy engaged me for a few moments, than the guard came and stood over him, telling him to move on. Speedy was clearly a nuisance to people like myself and Eric who were not looking to be accosted by Jesus in disguise, but merely wanted to enjoy a pleasant evening together.
With the guard standing over us, I quickly gave Speedy the last two bucks in my wallet and watched him speedily roll off back to the river front. I wondered if I had welcomed him ‘as Christ’ or not. I had tried to engage him in conversation – to begin to know him as a person. I had opened my wallet to him,but I wasn’t sure that I had actually opened my heart to him, for this is what we are challenged to do as Christians. Homan and Pratt again: [we are to]‘offer an open heart, a stance of availability, and to look for God lurking in every single person who comes through the door.” To fail to do this is to close ourselves off to the Divine.
But we are faced with an ‘existential dilemma’: We are essentially alone in this life and because of our sin nature, we tend to draw back from others. We fear connecting with others, but we desperately need to do so at the same time. This dilemma becomes particularly acute when we encounter the stranger – the different ‘other’.
Speedy was definitely ‘different’ and ‘other’ than me. He made me as an easy mark for money, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t interested in my life at all. But in a very real way, Speedy is me! For a brief moment, he was my guest. “We are all guests,” say Fr. Daniel and Lonnie, “we are all travelers, we are all a little lost, and we are all looking for a place to rest a while.” In life, “God is the host, but God also becomes the guest we receive in others. (Radical Hospitality, pg. xxxvi).
Benedict tells his monks to “Never give a hollow greeting of peace, or turn away when someone needs your love… Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly, Christ is received… (RB. 53:15)
To receive Christ in every person is to live counter-culturally and to open oneself wide to the transforming power of love. Indeed, if you want to be whole, you have to let others into your heart. We are told in Hebrews 13:2 to ‘show hospitality to strangers”. And while this doesn’t necessarily mean bringing Speedy home to live with, it does mean letting Speedy connect with us, to stir us and to share his humanity with us.
Showing hospitality means acknowledging the Image of God in the other person and accepting that Image however it may be disguised.
A number of years ago, my wife and I read a book entitled, “Open Heart, Open Home: The way to make others feel welcome and wanted” by Karen Burton Mains. I profoundly influenced us to open our home to our neighbors and actively minister to them. We’ve also been deeply influenced by Francis and Edith Shaeffer, who opened their homes to an entire generation of seekers drifting through the Swiss Alps, looking for Truth.
In the process of trying to emulate the Shaeffers and Mains, we have extended ourselves and our home to some rough and very needy characters. It has always been a challenge and an effort to welcome the disguised Jesus. Often, we have grown weary with the extreme needs that have come to the door. But we have also been warmed and enriched by welcoming strangers into our hearts – strangers like Sue Buzbee – who was someone we met while living in Illinois - someone who was unattractive in every possible way, but who managed to work her way into our hearts and our family for many years – someone who was Jesus in Distressing disguise, but who brought more love to us than we gave out to her, someone who taught us what it is to be truly hospitable – even when we didn’t want to!
Friends, the world needs Christians Innkeepers – people who have room for Jesus, in whatever guise he presents himself. I challenge us all to dig down deep and practice hospitality to a world desperately in need of shelter and acceptance. As we practice welcoming each person as Christ, we fulfill both commands to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We may in fact entertain angels unawares and be delighted with their support and help, but we might just also fulfill the Great Commission and change our world! AMEN.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
By Faith
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church August 12, 2007 based on Hebrews 11:1-16
The Unfortunate Hiker
There was once a young man who decided to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail. He started out and all was going well until one day he met up with a hungry bear. The bear chased the unfortunate hiker, who ran to the edge of a hidden cliff. He was going too fast to stop himself and he toppled over the edge. On his way down, he called out “O God, help me!” Suddenly a bushy tree appeared and he was able to grab a branch and cling to safety. But as he was hanging there, he began to lose his grip and he called out again, “O God, help me!” At that very moment, a deep voice said, “Let go”. The hiker thought about it a moment, then cried out, “Is there anyone else up there I can talk to?!”
Needless to say, the young hiker was having a faith problem.
Now he started out well. He called out to God – and Heb. 11:6 tells us that whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. So far, so good. But now comes the difficult part – faith. Without Faith it is impossible to please God. So by calling out to someone else, the hiker was clearly showing that he lacked Faith. He lacked personal knowledge of the God he was calling out to, so he had no assurance that he could trust the directives he received. He had no conviction that the unseen voice could was trustworthy.
And here is the rub of our problem with Faith. In order for faith to be valid we must either have excellent references that the object of our faith is trustworthy, or we must have some personal experience with the object of our faith. Without one of these qualifications, our faith is Blind; faith in faith itself. Thankfully as Christians, our faith is not just based on some idea or wish, but on Someone. And this Someone has revealed Himself that we may know Him and in knowing Him, we may receive Salvation. (Jn. 20:31).
As Christians, our faith is based on Revelation. God has revealed himself to us both through the written Word, and the Living Word, Jesus. The written Word provides us key knowledge about our Creator God – His attributes, His likes and dislikes, etc. It also gives us a record of God’s interaction with his people through the centuries, thus providing us the references we need. The great Hall of Faith we read about in Hebrews Eleven also give us eloquent testimony to how key people have trusted God through the ages. There is Revelation, content to my faith; it’s not just wishful thinking or Blind Trust.
This faith is based on Jesus and upon a reward in another, heavenly country. As a result I have a basis for deferring or denying some gratifications in this life – even to the point of giving up this life because I believe that there is a firmer reality out ahead, that all the apparent charms of this life are worthless compared to the matchless value of knowing Christ and Him crucified.
That unseen, hidden reality is so much more real than the stuff of this life that I am even willing to forfeit this life for the sake of that hoped-for life.
Spiritual Positioning System
This past Thursday, I went to a conference on Fatherhood, sponsored by KISRA, the Kanawha Institute for Social Research and Action, which is the faith-based and community-serving initiative of Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church. I attended a session with Pastor Emmanuel Heyliger, who was talking about Faith and the Family. During his talk, he made refered to Faith as our SPS – Spiritual Positioning System.
Our SPS tells us where we start from and where we’re going. It also helps orient us so that we don’t’ get lost along the Way. The only caveat is that we have to heed its directions; we have to listen to the Voice when it tells us what to do, and not ask for some other direction when we encounter difficulty.
Types of Faith
Our SPS contains a couple of types of faith. Small ‘f’ faith can help us accomplish earthly goals: complete a report by a certain time, accomplish some short term goal. We may rightly speak of a certain faith in ourselves or in our dreams. Confidence might be a synonym. Julie Andrews playing Maria in the Sound of Music, sings a song about having ‘Confidence in me” as she makes her way from the convent to the Von Trapp residence. This type of confidence or faith is based largely on knowledge of ourselves and our abilities. Maria had confidence that she could play guitar and sing. She had enthusiasm and talent in music. She also thinks she can take the Captain’s children in hand and be a good governess to them. But in the movie, when she finally reaches her destination and takes a look at the imposing Von Trapp estate, the wind suddenly goes out of sails. Suddenly she is not so confident that she can meet the challenge of being a governess on her own. To her credit, she musters up her courage and goes to face the challenge head on.
Underneath her outward confidence, however, is something that the movie only hints at: Maria has a Big “F” faith based on her knowledge and experience of God. Her Spiritual Positioning System was based on knowledge of a Who not just a vague hope. As a result, Maria was able to launch out in obedience to her Mother Superior without complete understanding of what she was being asked to do. Paul tells us in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Our confidence is based on Someone bigger than me, outside of myself, who has demonstrated that He is powerful and trustworthy. Our SPS is powered by God!
Therefore, the saints of God have been willing to do all manner of apparently foolish things –leave their homes and go off to other countries, offer their sons in sacrifice to God, knowing that He is able to raise the dead, build ridiculously huge boats in the middle of a waterless plain, - even conceive children in advanced old age. They believed in a greater Reality out there who created all things, is over all things, and who upholds all things by the word of His power. They also believed that this same personal God loved them personally and particularly.
The Love Connection
This is where Faith goes hand in hand with Love. The knowledge of the God puts us in touch with the experience of His love – and this love is so compelling that I am willing to forego everything earthly to get it. My faith ties me to an other-worldly, but certain love, and that selfsame Love returns me to the things and people of earth and gives a mission to love other people in a New Way. Just as God so Loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son (Jn. 3:16) for the life of the world (Jn 6:51) so too, we as Believers have been given a mission to love and serve the world for Christ’s sake.
Our first priority in mission is to help people come to know Christ personally. But a funny thing happens along the way. Here let me return to Rev. Heyliger for an illustration. When he started his ministry at Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church in Dunbar 26 years ago, he began with services on Sundays and prayer meetings on Wednesdays, Sunday School and Vacation Bible Schools in the summer for the kids, etc. But in tying to teach the Bible to children and adults, he noticed that many of them couldn’t read – so he started a literacy program. Then he noticed that some of them were hungry and didn’t have adequate clothing – so he started a food bank and a thrift store. Then he noticed that some of his flock didn’t have jobs – so he started a job training program. Some didn’t have housing – so he started a program to help people buy houses, and another program to help them manage their money – and then finally another program to encourage responsible parenting. All these things came about as a result of a Faith in God that caused him and his church to reach out with the Love of God.
Our Mission
Like Emmanuel Heyliger and the folks at Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church, we at All Saints Anglican Church has been called to reach out to our world in Love. A big part of that mission right now revolves around Hope House. God has shown us a vision of how to reach out to a very broken part of our community and has given us many convincing proofs of His leadership and provision. We are certainly called as a body to accomplish this goal, even though we don’t know exactly how we are going to get there. Even now, there are many things happening behind the scenes to bring many people together to accomplish the goal, in ways none of could ever begin to imagine.
For instance, last night, I went out to at Camp Rocky Ledge in Milton to speak to a group of 100 squirming middle-school aged Girl Scouts about the tragedy of four teens dying because they got caught up in the world of drugs and violence. Believe me, greater love hath no man than he try to hold the attention of a bunch of bouncy girls… It was an unusual invitation, but an important connection was made with a group of young people who in many cases don’t have much contact with the world of church. Talking to the leaders of the troops I learned that there are 300 Girl Scouts in Huntington who need community service projects to complete. Many of them will now come to Hope House to do these projects! Amazing how our obedient faith results amazing actions.
As Christians, we have faith and love that the world does not and cannot know, but which it is attracted to and yearning to know. Our task then is to emulate, to be like these heroes of the faith who were so heavenly minded that they saved the world from itself. This is what we are called to – to live out our faith so as to become saints – heroes of the Faith.
We place our faith in God the Father and His son Jesus Christ. We walk by faith in his trustworthiness not by what we can see. And so we walk in love and we are able to give ourselves to the world – not for the sake of worldly gain, but fro the sake of God and because in His live, He wants to reach out to everyone in this sorry orb. Thus we have our Marching Orders. We believe in God for the sake of our soul’s salvation and we give out the love we receive on His behalf and for His sake. Amen.
The Unfortunate Hiker
There was once a young man who decided to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail. He started out and all was going well until one day he met up with a hungry bear. The bear chased the unfortunate hiker, who ran to the edge of a hidden cliff. He was going too fast to stop himself and he toppled over the edge. On his way down, he called out “O God, help me!” Suddenly a bushy tree appeared and he was able to grab a branch and cling to safety. But as he was hanging there, he began to lose his grip and he called out again, “O God, help me!” At that very moment, a deep voice said, “Let go”. The hiker thought about it a moment, then cried out, “Is there anyone else up there I can talk to?!”
Needless to say, the young hiker was having a faith problem.
Now he started out well. He called out to God – and Heb. 11:6 tells us that whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. So far, so good. But now comes the difficult part – faith. Without Faith it is impossible to please God. So by calling out to someone else, the hiker was clearly showing that he lacked Faith. He lacked personal knowledge of the God he was calling out to, so he had no assurance that he could trust the directives he received. He had no conviction that the unseen voice could was trustworthy.
And here is the rub of our problem with Faith. In order for faith to be valid we must either have excellent references that the object of our faith is trustworthy, or we must have some personal experience with the object of our faith. Without one of these qualifications, our faith is Blind; faith in faith itself. Thankfully as Christians, our faith is not just based on some idea or wish, but on Someone. And this Someone has revealed Himself that we may know Him and in knowing Him, we may receive Salvation. (Jn. 20:31).
As Christians, our faith is based on Revelation. God has revealed himself to us both through the written Word, and the Living Word, Jesus. The written Word provides us key knowledge about our Creator God – His attributes, His likes and dislikes, etc. It also gives us a record of God’s interaction with his people through the centuries, thus providing us the references we need. The great Hall of Faith we read about in Hebrews Eleven also give us eloquent testimony to how key people have trusted God through the ages. There is Revelation, content to my faith; it’s not just wishful thinking or Blind Trust.
This faith is based on Jesus and upon a reward in another, heavenly country. As a result I have a basis for deferring or denying some gratifications in this life – even to the point of giving up this life because I believe that there is a firmer reality out ahead, that all the apparent charms of this life are worthless compared to the matchless value of knowing Christ and Him crucified.
That unseen, hidden reality is so much more real than the stuff of this life that I am even willing to forfeit this life for the sake of that hoped-for life.
Spiritual Positioning System
This past Thursday, I went to a conference on Fatherhood, sponsored by KISRA, the Kanawha Institute for Social Research and Action, which is the faith-based and community-serving initiative of Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church. I attended a session with Pastor Emmanuel Heyliger, who was talking about Faith and the Family. During his talk, he made refered to Faith as our SPS – Spiritual Positioning System.
Our SPS tells us where we start from and where we’re going. It also helps orient us so that we don’t’ get lost along the Way. The only caveat is that we have to heed its directions; we have to listen to the Voice when it tells us what to do, and not ask for some other direction when we encounter difficulty.
Types of Faith
Our SPS contains a couple of types of faith. Small ‘f’ faith can help us accomplish earthly goals: complete a report by a certain time, accomplish some short term goal. We may rightly speak of a certain faith in ourselves or in our dreams. Confidence might be a synonym. Julie Andrews playing Maria in the Sound of Music, sings a song about having ‘Confidence in me” as she makes her way from the convent to the Von Trapp residence. This type of confidence or faith is based largely on knowledge of ourselves and our abilities. Maria had confidence that she could play guitar and sing. She had enthusiasm and talent in music. She also thinks she can take the Captain’s children in hand and be a good governess to them. But in the movie, when she finally reaches her destination and takes a look at the imposing Von Trapp estate, the wind suddenly goes out of sails. Suddenly she is not so confident that she can meet the challenge of being a governess on her own. To her credit, she musters up her courage and goes to face the challenge head on.
Underneath her outward confidence, however, is something that the movie only hints at: Maria has a Big “F” faith based on her knowledge and experience of God. Her Spiritual Positioning System was based on knowledge of a Who not just a vague hope. As a result, Maria was able to launch out in obedience to her Mother Superior without complete understanding of what she was being asked to do. Paul tells us in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Our confidence is based on Someone bigger than me, outside of myself, who has demonstrated that He is powerful and trustworthy. Our SPS is powered by God!
Therefore, the saints of God have been willing to do all manner of apparently foolish things –leave their homes and go off to other countries, offer their sons in sacrifice to God, knowing that He is able to raise the dead, build ridiculously huge boats in the middle of a waterless plain, - even conceive children in advanced old age. They believed in a greater Reality out there who created all things, is over all things, and who upholds all things by the word of His power. They also believed that this same personal God loved them personally and particularly.
The Love Connection
This is where Faith goes hand in hand with Love. The knowledge of the God puts us in touch with the experience of His love – and this love is so compelling that I am willing to forego everything earthly to get it. My faith ties me to an other-worldly, but certain love, and that selfsame Love returns me to the things and people of earth and gives a mission to love other people in a New Way. Just as God so Loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son (Jn. 3:16) for the life of the world (Jn 6:51) so too, we as Believers have been given a mission to love and serve the world for Christ’s sake.
Our first priority in mission is to help people come to know Christ personally. But a funny thing happens along the way. Here let me return to Rev. Heyliger for an illustration. When he started his ministry at Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church in Dunbar 26 years ago, he began with services on Sundays and prayer meetings on Wednesdays, Sunday School and Vacation Bible Schools in the summer for the kids, etc. But in tying to teach the Bible to children and adults, he noticed that many of them couldn’t read – so he started a literacy program. Then he noticed that some of them were hungry and didn’t have adequate clothing – so he started a food bank and a thrift store. Then he noticed that some of his flock didn’t have jobs – so he started a job training program. Some didn’t have housing – so he started a program to help people buy houses, and another program to help them manage their money – and then finally another program to encourage responsible parenting. All these things came about as a result of a Faith in God that caused him and his church to reach out with the Love of God.
Our Mission
Like Emmanuel Heyliger and the folks at Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church, we at All Saints Anglican Church has been called to reach out to our world in Love. A big part of that mission right now revolves around Hope House. God has shown us a vision of how to reach out to a very broken part of our community and has given us many convincing proofs of His leadership and provision. We are certainly called as a body to accomplish this goal, even though we don’t know exactly how we are going to get there. Even now, there are many things happening behind the scenes to bring many people together to accomplish the goal, in ways none of could ever begin to imagine.
For instance, last night, I went out to at Camp Rocky Ledge in Milton to speak to a group of 100 squirming middle-school aged Girl Scouts about the tragedy of four teens dying because they got caught up in the world of drugs and violence. Believe me, greater love hath no man than he try to hold the attention of a bunch of bouncy girls… It was an unusual invitation, but an important connection was made with a group of young people who in many cases don’t have much contact with the world of church. Talking to the leaders of the troops I learned that there are 300 Girl Scouts in Huntington who need community service projects to complete. Many of them will now come to Hope House to do these projects! Amazing how our obedient faith results amazing actions.
As Christians, we have faith and love that the world does not and cannot know, but which it is attracted to and yearning to know. Our task then is to emulate, to be like these heroes of the faith who were so heavenly minded that they saved the world from itself. This is what we are called to – to live out our faith so as to become saints – heroes of the Faith.
We place our faith in God the Father and His son Jesus Christ. We walk by faith in his trustworthiness not by what we can see. And so we walk in love and we are able to give ourselves to the world – not for the sake of worldly gain, but fro the sake of God and because in His live, He wants to reach out to everyone in this sorry orb. Thus we have our Marching Orders. We believe in God for the sake of our soul’s salvation and we give out the love we receive on His behalf and for His sake. Amen.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Sowing and Reaping
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on July 8, 2007, based on Galatians 6: 1-18 and Luke 10:1-12,16-20
Like many of you, my relatives were farmers. I remember spending time with my grandparents on their farm out on Mulberry ridge in Spencer. They raised cattle mostly, and baled hay for feed. And they always planted a big garden. I can recall several times ‘helping’ my grandfather plant beans and corn by dropping the seed into a handheld planter – a contraption that looked a little like a long bellows with handles you could push in and pull out, a place to drop in the seeds, and then a metal tip that you poked down into the ground to deposit the seed.
As a child of about six or seven, the process of planting fascinated me, but I couldn’t quite get a handle on what happened next. Grandpa and I spent a lot of time putting seeds in the earth and all we had to show for it was a barren piece of earth with little lumps in it. I had to come back several times during the summer to see the progress of the plants in order to realize that when you planted something it would grow and you would eventually have something good to eat.
You drop the little seeds (hold up Cheerios) in the ground and eventually you harvest a crop (hold up a Krispy Kreme donut). When you pick these babies off the plant and they’re fresh…mmm, mmm, there’s nothin’ better!
Farmers call this sowing and reaping. In our lesson today, we see this concept applied to our lives.
The Law of Sowing and Reaping
Now there is a Law of Sowing and Reaping, of cause and effect. There are rewards or consequences attached to our actions. “Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap,” says Paul in Gal. 6:6. There is no escape from this Law. And it is impersonal – like gravity. It is no respecter of persons and it is immutable, unchangeable. Our actions will always bring us a consequence, affecting us in every way.
But let’s quickly make a distinction: Sowing and Reaping is not the same thing as Karma. In Karma, the law of cause and effect is understood to impact the destiny of the next incarnation. If you do well, you may indeed come back as a higher, better person, and you may be able to continue the long, long upward climb through countless reincarnations of your soul, waiting for the time when you might, through your good efforts, achieve Nirvana. Thus, one escapes the endless cycle of suffering, death and reincarnation. Too much bad Karma, however, and you might actually go backwards – you might come back as a Frog!
Sowing and Reaping differs, then, from Karma. The writer of Hebrews tells us that, “It is appointed once for a person to die, then comes the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). We as Christians are going to Heaven, not into the vast impersonal cosmic consciousness.
Flesh and Spirit
According to the Apostle Paul, we either sow to the Spirit or to the Flesh. Sowing to the Spirit basically means giving of your self for the welfare and benefit of others: building relationships, making converts to the faith, building up one another in the faith, giving to the poor and needy, doing unselfish acts of kindness. These are some of the things that sow into the Spirit. They are things that contribute to building the Kingdom of God. They are done without the hope of reward per se.
By contrast, to sow to the flesh means that you do things from selfish motives, always asking, in effect, “What’s in it for me?!”. To act with this motive is to demand a short- term reward; it must make me immediately happy, distracted or amused. To sow with fleshly motives means to reap fleshly results: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies…and we might also throw in Pride, arrogance and using others for our own gratification (cf. Gal. 5:19-21). These are the results of sowing to the flesh, - in a word, Corruption. If we do things from selfish motives, we receive the sinful reward immediately; we do not reap a heavenly reward.
To sow to the Spirit results in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control – the very marks of Humility (Gal. 5:22-23). These are the fruits of Jesus, who although he existed in the form of god did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled himself, taking upon himself the form a man, and became obedient even to death on the cross (Phil. 2:5-8). As a result he reaped eternal Joy, and the undying praise of every living creature. When we sow to the Spirit, we receive the spiritual reward plus the righteous physical reward.
Just as the farmer sows in anticipation of reaping a crop, there is an expectation of reaping a good reward from our actions. We can legitimately expect that as we follow the Lord in our lives, making him Lord of all, that He will bless us as we seek to put Him first. To some extent this is merely the result of practicing a good stable work ethic. They say that 80% of life is just showing up on time. If you plug along doing your work in a stable, workmanlike manner, you will indeed reap a benefit in time. Again, it’s the universal law at work. Consistent action will bring a reward in itself.
Caveats
But in the kingdom of God it’s not quite so simple. Sometimes we as Christians sow in faith that others may benefit. Indeed, even on a secular level, we can see from the history of our country that often the families who pioneered the westward frontier did not reap nearly as great reward as those who followed in their footsteps. This can perhaps be summed up in the old saying, “Nothing worth doing can be done in one life-time.” Big works inspired by big visions take big amounts of time to bring to fruition. . The cathedral at Canterbury, England took 300 years to build!
In regard to saving souls, there is also a team effort involved. One sows a seed, another waters, and another harvests. Sometimes, we only do part of the total effort needed to see a soul come into the Kingdom. Our vision must be long-term.
Just because we pioneer a new church, does not mean that we will experience all the benefits of attending a mature, fully functioning Church body within our lifetimes. Right now, we are sowing into God’s kingdom, so that we ourselves may enjoy the benefits of an orthodox and spiritually safe Anglican Church. But in many ways, we are building for the next generation of young Anglicans. Just as with the farmer, we don’t harvest first, we sow first, then we water, and tend, and then we reap. It’s the natural cycle of Sowing and Reaping.
This is where we look to the Lord to provide us the reward for our sowing. As Christians, we all look ahead to the time when we stand before God and he says to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master” (Mt. 25:21). But that’s up ahead in the future. How can we avoid becoming weary in well doing and eventually giving up? Paul tells us that in due season we will reap if we do not give up (Gal. 6:9). The reward will indeed come to us in if we continue to press on. We will see our prayers answered if we do not give up.
For the past 8 and one half months, we have sown into building a faith community. While we don’t enjoy great stability yet or have a beautiful building, we do enjoy the blessings of being able to worship in spirit and in truth, not having to contend with heretical leadership - with Bishops who are enemies of the Faith. That’s a Blessing! It’s a reward to be able to worship with people who actually believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord!
Let’s look at some other specific rewards that are coming to us through our faithful actions. You will, I’m sure remember when we did the reverse offering – in which each person took a $1.00 bill out of the basket and combined it with some other dollars. We held up those dollars in faith believing that we were sowing a seed into God’s Kingdom. What happened? We got a crummy, cursed, run-down building out of it! Seriously folks, we took an initial seed offering of $235 and turned it into the purchase of a $10,000 building. But apart from that crude way of measuring reward, as we have sown into the families of the murdered teens, we have seen healing and reconciliation take place. As we have worked with the Mayor of Huntington and other ministers, we have we have been blessed to begin to see some early fruit from our labors -cooperation among the churches and a partial healing of the City of Huntington in regard to these murders.
No “Giving Back”
Now, another quick clarification: Christians don’t “Give back” to the community or the world, as this is understood popularly. Our giving is “as unto the Lord” (Col. 3:23), knowing that we will receive an inheritance as our reward. . We return thanks to Him from His abundance. We don’t give because we have become successful in our endeavors and now we ‘owe’ something back to the community – like some sort of unwritten civil code of conduct. We give as a regular part of our faith walk to demonstrate our dependence on God as our Creator and to acknowledge his Lordship over all of our lives.
The standard is that everything we have and all that we are belongs to the Lord by right. He has bought us with the Blood of Jesus Christ and now God owns us lock, stock and barrel. Whether or not we acknowledge being owned by God is, of course, another matter.
Overall, the general pattern in this life for being a disciple of Christ is found in Psalm 1. The first part of the pattern is Blessedness for things we do not do: ‘follow not the counsel of the wicked, nor linger in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scorners…”
Rather, we “delight in the Law of the Lord and ponder His Word day and night.” (vv1,2). Then comes the temporal reward: “He shall be like a tree that is planted, beside the flowing waters, that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves will never fade, And all that he does shall prosper…”
As we focus our lives on the stability that results from being a disciple of Jesus, we naturally prosper. John Wesley actually found this to be a problem. When people turned from a life of dissipation to the stability and productive life centered on Christ, financial stability followed – indeed was almost inevitable – even to the point that Wesley lamented that Christians’ newfound prosperity would pull them away from the Gospel.
This is where our financial giving comes in. We give 10% of our income to keep us aware that God is the source of all provision. Our giving goes to God, not to a church or para church ministry per se. Your checks are made out to All Saints Anglican Church, but God is the Recipient. As a church, we will do everything we can do to be financially responsible and to sow into other ministries as well. But again, it’s important to recognize that the recipient of our giving is God not the church, and that the money you give is not yours, but the Lord’s.
We are currently seeking to find an actual sanctuary to worship in.
We have a couple of prospects, but it appears that renting a church will cost more than the $75.00 per week we’ve been paying here for St. Hampton’s. One option would cost $125.00 per week. Are we up to the challenge of sowing more money into a meeting place so that we can perhaps attract more disenfranchised Anglicans? I think we are.
I’d like to challenge you to increase your financial sowing, by encouraging you to give in multiples of $125.00 if possible, thinking of it as sowing into God’s Kingdom one or two or twelve weeks of worship that the Lord is helping you to provide for your brothers and sisters. This sowing is an opportunity for faith building. If you sow generously, we will reap abundantly.
What we’re looking for is found in Psalm 3: The earth has yielded its fruit, for God, our God blesses us. May God still give us His blessing, till the ends of the earth revere Him. Amen.
Like many of you, my relatives were farmers. I remember spending time with my grandparents on their farm out on Mulberry ridge in Spencer. They raised cattle mostly, and baled hay for feed. And they always planted a big garden. I can recall several times ‘helping’ my grandfather plant beans and corn by dropping the seed into a handheld planter – a contraption that looked a little like a long bellows with handles you could push in and pull out, a place to drop in the seeds, and then a metal tip that you poked down into the ground to deposit the seed.
As a child of about six or seven, the process of planting fascinated me, but I couldn’t quite get a handle on what happened next. Grandpa and I spent a lot of time putting seeds in the earth and all we had to show for it was a barren piece of earth with little lumps in it. I had to come back several times during the summer to see the progress of the plants in order to realize that when you planted something it would grow and you would eventually have something good to eat.
You drop the little seeds (hold up Cheerios) in the ground and eventually you harvest a crop (hold up a Krispy Kreme donut). When you pick these babies off the plant and they’re fresh…mmm, mmm, there’s nothin’ better!
Farmers call this sowing and reaping. In our lesson today, we see this concept applied to our lives.
The Law of Sowing and Reaping
Now there is a Law of Sowing and Reaping, of cause and effect. There are rewards or consequences attached to our actions. “Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap,” says Paul in Gal. 6:6. There is no escape from this Law. And it is impersonal – like gravity. It is no respecter of persons and it is immutable, unchangeable. Our actions will always bring us a consequence, affecting us in every way.
But let’s quickly make a distinction: Sowing and Reaping is not the same thing as Karma. In Karma, the law of cause and effect is understood to impact the destiny of the next incarnation. If you do well, you may indeed come back as a higher, better person, and you may be able to continue the long, long upward climb through countless reincarnations of your soul, waiting for the time when you might, through your good efforts, achieve Nirvana. Thus, one escapes the endless cycle of suffering, death and reincarnation. Too much bad Karma, however, and you might actually go backwards – you might come back as a Frog!
Sowing and Reaping differs, then, from Karma. The writer of Hebrews tells us that, “It is appointed once for a person to die, then comes the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). We as Christians are going to Heaven, not into the vast impersonal cosmic consciousness.
Flesh and Spirit
According to the Apostle Paul, we either sow to the Spirit or to the Flesh. Sowing to the Spirit basically means giving of your self for the welfare and benefit of others: building relationships, making converts to the faith, building up one another in the faith, giving to the poor and needy, doing unselfish acts of kindness. These are some of the things that sow into the Spirit. They are things that contribute to building the Kingdom of God. They are done without the hope of reward per se.
By contrast, to sow to the flesh means that you do things from selfish motives, always asking, in effect, “What’s in it for me?!”. To act with this motive is to demand a short- term reward; it must make me immediately happy, distracted or amused. To sow with fleshly motives means to reap fleshly results: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies…and we might also throw in Pride, arrogance and using others for our own gratification (cf. Gal. 5:19-21). These are the results of sowing to the flesh, - in a word, Corruption. If we do things from selfish motives, we receive the sinful reward immediately; we do not reap a heavenly reward.
To sow to the Spirit results in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control – the very marks of Humility (Gal. 5:22-23). These are the fruits of Jesus, who although he existed in the form of god did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled himself, taking upon himself the form a man, and became obedient even to death on the cross (Phil. 2:5-8). As a result he reaped eternal Joy, and the undying praise of every living creature. When we sow to the Spirit, we receive the spiritual reward plus the righteous physical reward.
Just as the farmer sows in anticipation of reaping a crop, there is an expectation of reaping a good reward from our actions. We can legitimately expect that as we follow the Lord in our lives, making him Lord of all, that He will bless us as we seek to put Him first. To some extent this is merely the result of practicing a good stable work ethic. They say that 80% of life is just showing up on time. If you plug along doing your work in a stable, workmanlike manner, you will indeed reap a benefit in time. Again, it’s the universal law at work. Consistent action will bring a reward in itself.
Caveats
But in the kingdom of God it’s not quite so simple. Sometimes we as Christians sow in faith that others may benefit. Indeed, even on a secular level, we can see from the history of our country that often the families who pioneered the westward frontier did not reap nearly as great reward as those who followed in their footsteps. This can perhaps be summed up in the old saying, “Nothing worth doing can be done in one life-time.” Big works inspired by big visions take big amounts of time to bring to fruition. . The cathedral at Canterbury, England took 300 years to build!
In regard to saving souls, there is also a team effort involved. One sows a seed, another waters, and another harvests. Sometimes, we only do part of the total effort needed to see a soul come into the Kingdom. Our vision must be long-term.
Just because we pioneer a new church, does not mean that we will experience all the benefits of attending a mature, fully functioning Church body within our lifetimes. Right now, we are sowing into God’s kingdom, so that we ourselves may enjoy the benefits of an orthodox and spiritually safe Anglican Church. But in many ways, we are building for the next generation of young Anglicans. Just as with the farmer, we don’t harvest first, we sow first, then we water, and tend, and then we reap. It’s the natural cycle of Sowing and Reaping.
This is where we look to the Lord to provide us the reward for our sowing. As Christians, we all look ahead to the time when we stand before God and he says to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master” (Mt. 25:21). But that’s up ahead in the future. How can we avoid becoming weary in well doing and eventually giving up? Paul tells us that in due season we will reap if we do not give up (Gal. 6:9). The reward will indeed come to us in if we continue to press on. We will see our prayers answered if we do not give up.
For the past 8 and one half months, we have sown into building a faith community. While we don’t enjoy great stability yet or have a beautiful building, we do enjoy the blessings of being able to worship in spirit and in truth, not having to contend with heretical leadership - with Bishops who are enemies of the Faith. That’s a Blessing! It’s a reward to be able to worship with people who actually believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord!
Let’s look at some other specific rewards that are coming to us through our faithful actions. You will, I’m sure remember when we did the reverse offering – in which each person took a $1.00 bill out of the basket and combined it with some other dollars. We held up those dollars in faith believing that we were sowing a seed into God’s Kingdom. What happened? We got a crummy, cursed, run-down building out of it! Seriously folks, we took an initial seed offering of $235 and turned it into the purchase of a $10,000 building. But apart from that crude way of measuring reward, as we have sown into the families of the murdered teens, we have seen healing and reconciliation take place. As we have worked with the Mayor of Huntington and other ministers, we have we have been blessed to begin to see some early fruit from our labors -cooperation among the churches and a partial healing of the City of Huntington in regard to these murders.
No “Giving Back”
Now, another quick clarification: Christians don’t “Give back” to the community or the world, as this is understood popularly. Our giving is “as unto the Lord” (Col. 3:23), knowing that we will receive an inheritance as our reward. . We return thanks to Him from His abundance. We don’t give because we have become successful in our endeavors and now we ‘owe’ something back to the community – like some sort of unwritten civil code of conduct. We give as a regular part of our faith walk to demonstrate our dependence on God as our Creator and to acknowledge his Lordship over all of our lives.
The standard is that everything we have and all that we are belongs to the Lord by right. He has bought us with the Blood of Jesus Christ and now God owns us lock, stock and barrel. Whether or not we acknowledge being owned by God is, of course, another matter.
Overall, the general pattern in this life for being a disciple of Christ is found in Psalm 1. The first part of the pattern is Blessedness for things we do not do: ‘follow not the counsel of the wicked, nor linger in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scorners…”
Rather, we “delight in the Law of the Lord and ponder His Word day and night.” (vv1,2). Then comes the temporal reward: “He shall be like a tree that is planted, beside the flowing waters, that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves will never fade, And all that he does shall prosper…”
As we focus our lives on the stability that results from being a disciple of Jesus, we naturally prosper. John Wesley actually found this to be a problem. When people turned from a life of dissipation to the stability and productive life centered on Christ, financial stability followed – indeed was almost inevitable – even to the point that Wesley lamented that Christians’ newfound prosperity would pull them away from the Gospel.
This is where our financial giving comes in. We give 10% of our income to keep us aware that God is the source of all provision. Our giving goes to God, not to a church or para church ministry per se. Your checks are made out to All Saints Anglican Church, but God is the Recipient. As a church, we will do everything we can do to be financially responsible and to sow into other ministries as well. But again, it’s important to recognize that the recipient of our giving is God not the church, and that the money you give is not yours, but the Lord’s.
We are currently seeking to find an actual sanctuary to worship in.
We have a couple of prospects, but it appears that renting a church will cost more than the $75.00 per week we’ve been paying here for St. Hampton’s. One option would cost $125.00 per week. Are we up to the challenge of sowing more money into a meeting place so that we can perhaps attract more disenfranchised Anglicans? I think we are.
I’d like to challenge you to increase your financial sowing, by encouraging you to give in multiples of $125.00 if possible, thinking of it as sowing into God’s Kingdom one or two or twelve weeks of worship that the Lord is helping you to provide for your brothers and sisters. This sowing is an opportunity for faith building. If you sow generously, we will reap abundantly.
What we’re looking for is found in Psalm 3: The earth has yielded its fruit, for God, our God blesses us. May God still give us His blessing, till the ends of the earth revere Him. Amen.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Saving and Losing
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on June 24, 2007 during our outdoor worship service, Barboursville City Park, Barboursville, WV, based on Luke 9:18-24
In 2006, the movie, End of the Spear, told the story of a group of missionaries who attempted to reach out to the Auca indians in Ecuador. Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Peter Fleming, and their pilot, Nate Saint made contact with the violent tribe and were initially encouraged by a friendly response. But on January 8, 1956, during an attempt to reach the tribe, a group of 10 Aucas killed the four men.
Elliot and his friends became instantly known worldwide as martyrs, and Life Magazine published a ten-page article on their mission and death. While I was attending Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, we went to church with one of my professors, Walter Liefeld. His wife, Olive was the widow of Peter Fleming. On several occasions, we heard her tell about the events of that tragic day.
These families are credited with sparking an interest in Christian missions among the youth of their time and are still considered an encouragement to Christian missionaries working throughout the world. After her husband's death, Elisabeth Elliot and other missionaries began working among the Auca (Huaorani) Indians, where they had a profound impact and won many converts. She later published two books, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot and Through Gates of Splendor, which describe the life and death of her husband. In 2005, a documentary based on the story was released entitled Beyond the Gates of Splendor
Jim Elliot was a very single-minded individual. He was the kind of person who went to Wheaton College to prepare for the mission field, but didn’t do well in his studies because he thought that studying philosophy and other subjects took away from studying the Bible. His commitment to sharing the Gospel with the world was absolute – even more important than his own life. In his journal for October 28, 1949, he wrote the following sentence,
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Jim Elliot was someone who lived out Jesus’ words that “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” Luke 9: 24.
Today, I’d like us to ask ourselves the question, “What am I saving and what am I losing?”
Paul writes in his second letter to Timothy, “…”in the last days, there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).
He is describing people who are trying to ‘save’ their lives – trying to ‘go for all the gusto’ trying to die with the most toys. What they are actually doing, according to Jesus and Paul is simply dying. They are dead to God because they are practicing the presence of their own selves. They have no spiritual life because their only interest is themselves. As a result, they aren’t just content to eventually go to hell; they are actively creating it here on earth.
You probably know people like this. They’re no fun to be around. Their selfishness is like a black hole, sucking up everything that comes near it. The most graphic current example I can think of is – brace yourselves – Paris Hilton. Her life, as portrayed in the media is the icon of the self-seeking person, who becomes a pathetic embarrassment and a reproach to all associated with her.
Contrast her life of wanton pleasure-seeking with that of Jesus, who came into this world, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mt. 20:28). Although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant…humbling himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:6-8).
Paul uses the word ‘kenosis’ to describe how Jesus ‘emptied’ himself of his divine prerogatives in order to serve The Father in redeeming humanity. The result of this losing of his life was that “God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11).
Jesus lost his earthly life for us that He might inherit eternal glory.
…“for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
This is the epitome of losing in order to save. This is what we should be emulating in our lives. If then, we wish to follow Christ, how can we do likewise?
Martyrdom:
Here’s a quote from an Orthodox website:
“The idea of martyrdom had a central place in the spiritual outlook of the early Christians. They saw their Church as founded upon blood - not only the blood of Christ but the blood of those 'other Christs', the martyrs. In later centuries when the Church became 'established' and no longer suffered persecution, the idea of martyrdom did not disappear, but it took other forms: the monastic life, for example, is often regarded by Greek writers as an equivalent to martyrdom. The same approach is found also in the west: take, for instance, a Celtic text - an Irish homily of the seventh century - which likens the ascetic life to the way of the martyr”:”Now there are three kinds of martyrdom which are accounted as a Cross to a man, white martyrdom, green martyrdom, and red martyrdom. White martyrdom consists in a man's abandoning everything he loves for God's sake ... (Green martyrdom consists in this, that by means of fasting and labour he frees himself from his evil desires, or suffers toil in penance and repentance. Red martyrdom consists in the endurance of a Cross or death for Christ's sake.'”
(Orthodox Christian Information website: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/history1.aspx#The%20First%20Persecutions%20and%20Martyrs )
The Celts, whom we remember in our liturgy today were very keen to exercise this kind of martyrdom. Many “left behind the comforts and pleasures of ordinary human society to live hermits' lives on mountaintops or lonely islands. … There they studied Scripture and communed with God after the example of the anchorites in the Egyptian desert. Ireland could not duplicate the barren terrain of the Egyptian desert; thus, this green martyrdom gave way to the more social life of monasticism.
St. Columba became an example of a “White Martyr”. “Born in 521, a prince with a title to kingship, he chose to become a monk. By age 41 he had founded 41 monasteries. Because Columba was held responsible for the Battle of Cuil Dremmed in which 3,000 men died, he became an exile. As penance he set out to save the same number of people as died in the battle. Columba, with 12 relatives, founded a monastery on Iona off the coast of Scotland that became famous throughout Europe. Monks from Iona in turn set out for what they called a white martyrdom: "[H]enceforth all who followed Columcille's lead were called to the white martyrdom, they who sailed into the white sky of morning, into the unknown, never to return." (Wikipedia: “Martyrdom”).
All of which is fine and inspiring, but what about us today? How do we take up our cross and follow Jesus daily?
For many of us, the most compelling example is family life. As parents, we are constantly called upon to give up our own desires and put the needs of our children ahead of ours. I clearly remember the contrast between being able to go somewhere with Cindy and spend four or five carefree hours – and having to think of the needs of a newborn when we went somewhere. A simple trip to the mall to shop for clothes became an all-day bivouac requiring the mind of a military quarter-master to manage all the stuff we had to take with us! And then when more children came along …well, you know what I mean. Successful parenting demands that we deny ourselves and put others ahead of ourselves.
Then too, marriage requires the giving of oneself to the other person in order to be successful. I sometimes say, only half-jokingly – that “Marriage is God’s divinely ordained institution for Cross-bearing!” And let me quickly add that your spouse is not your cross! No! Rather, we encounter our own selfishness as we interact with our spouses, and we must constantly fight back the demand to have things the way that we want it when we want it. Again, it’s the contrast between being Christ-like - giving ourselves for the sake of the other - and grasping for self-fulfillment. One leads to life and the other death.
Very few of us are called to actually give up our lives in Red Martyrdom like Jim Elliot and his companions, but we are all called to live a life of self-denial, of white and green martyrdom – of giving up our own fondest desires – even when they are good, in order to serve our Lord more perfectly.
This is a basic pattern of the Christian life, and indeed in nature itself. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it cannot bear much fruit. (Jn. 12:24; I Cor 15:36). Unless you learn to die to your own selfish desires, you cannot please God. And pleasing Him is what it’s all about. It’s like a client of mine says, “If I miss Heaven, I miss everything”.
Friends, the way to follow Christ is to lay down your life for his sake. It’s a huge challenge to all who have dedicated our lives to Him. He demands everything of us but desires to give everything to us. If he demands death to ourselves, it’s only to replace it with His life, so that we may have that abundance that Jesus promises – good measure, tamped down and overflowing. (Jn. 10:10).
And if you’re out their trying to find a way to live a full life without Christ, I can only tell you that your efforts are in vain. Just as the Preacher says in Ecclesiates, “Vanity of Vanity, all is vanity.” (Eccl. 1:2). You can get all the toys you ever wanted and travel the world to your heart’s desire, but if you die without Christ, you’re just a dead person who left behind a passport and bunch of toys.
I invite you today to ‘cease striving”, to follow Jesus, to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and to make Christ the Lord of your life. If you do this you will live eternally and experience the joy of being reconciled with God.
Pray with me: “Jesus, I believe that you are the Messiah of God. I have tried to save my life and I’m losing it every day. Father, please forgive me my sins and save me from myself. Help me to give myself to you and to take up my cross and follow you daily. Make my life pleasing to you and give me the abundant life Jesus promised, for his sake, Amen.
In 2006, the movie, End of the Spear, told the story of a group of missionaries who attempted to reach out to the Auca indians in Ecuador. Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Peter Fleming, and their pilot, Nate Saint made contact with the violent tribe and were initially encouraged by a friendly response. But on January 8, 1956, during an attempt to reach the tribe, a group of 10 Aucas killed the four men.
Elliot and his friends became instantly known worldwide as martyrs, and Life Magazine published a ten-page article on their mission and death. While I was attending Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, we went to church with one of my professors, Walter Liefeld. His wife, Olive was the widow of Peter Fleming. On several occasions, we heard her tell about the events of that tragic day.
These families are credited with sparking an interest in Christian missions among the youth of their time and are still considered an encouragement to Christian missionaries working throughout the world. After her husband's death, Elisabeth Elliot and other missionaries began working among the Auca (Huaorani) Indians, where they had a profound impact and won many converts. She later published two books, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot and Through Gates of Splendor, which describe the life and death of her husband. In 2005, a documentary based on the story was released entitled Beyond the Gates of Splendor
Jim Elliot was a very single-minded individual. He was the kind of person who went to Wheaton College to prepare for the mission field, but didn’t do well in his studies because he thought that studying philosophy and other subjects took away from studying the Bible. His commitment to sharing the Gospel with the world was absolute – even more important than his own life. In his journal for October 28, 1949, he wrote the following sentence,
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Jim Elliot was someone who lived out Jesus’ words that “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” Luke 9: 24.
Today, I’d like us to ask ourselves the question, “What am I saving and what am I losing?”
Paul writes in his second letter to Timothy, “…”in the last days, there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).
He is describing people who are trying to ‘save’ their lives – trying to ‘go for all the gusto’ trying to die with the most toys. What they are actually doing, according to Jesus and Paul is simply dying. They are dead to God because they are practicing the presence of their own selves. They have no spiritual life because their only interest is themselves. As a result, they aren’t just content to eventually go to hell; they are actively creating it here on earth.
You probably know people like this. They’re no fun to be around. Their selfishness is like a black hole, sucking up everything that comes near it. The most graphic current example I can think of is – brace yourselves – Paris Hilton. Her life, as portrayed in the media is the icon of the self-seeking person, who becomes a pathetic embarrassment and a reproach to all associated with her.
Contrast her life of wanton pleasure-seeking with that of Jesus, who came into this world, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mt. 20:28). Although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant…humbling himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:6-8).
Paul uses the word ‘kenosis’ to describe how Jesus ‘emptied’ himself of his divine prerogatives in order to serve The Father in redeeming humanity. The result of this losing of his life was that “God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11).
Jesus lost his earthly life for us that He might inherit eternal glory.
…“for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
This is the epitome of losing in order to save. This is what we should be emulating in our lives. If then, we wish to follow Christ, how can we do likewise?
Martyrdom:
Here’s a quote from an Orthodox website:
“The idea of martyrdom had a central place in the spiritual outlook of the early Christians. They saw their Church as founded upon blood - not only the blood of Christ but the blood of those 'other Christs', the martyrs. In later centuries when the Church became 'established' and no longer suffered persecution, the idea of martyrdom did not disappear, but it took other forms: the monastic life, for example, is often regarded by Greek writers as an equivalent to martyrdom. The same approach is found also in the west: take, for instance, a Celtic text - an Irish homily of the seventh century - which likens the ascetic life to the way of the martyr”:”Now there are three kinds of martyrdom which are accounted as a Cross to a man, white martyrdom, green martyrdom, and red martyrdom. White martyrdom consists in a man's abandoning everything he loves for God's sake ... (Green martyrdom consists in this, that by means of fasting and labour he frees himself from his evil desires, or suffers toil in penance and repentance. Red martyrdom consists in the endurance of a Cross or death for Christ's sake.'”
(Orthodox Christian Information website: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/history1.aspx#The%20First%20Persecutions%20and%20Martyrs )
The Celts, whom we remember in our liturgy today were very keen to exercise this kind of martyrdom. Many “left behind the comforts and pleasures of ordinary human society to live hermits' lives on mountaintops or lonely islands. … There they studied Scripture and communed with God after the example of the anchorites in the Egyptian desert. Ireland could not duplicate the barren terrain of the Egyptian desert; thus, this green martyrdom gave way to the more social life of monasticism.
St. Columba became an example of a “White Martyr”. “Born in 521, a prince with a title to kingship, he chose to become a monk. By age 41 he had founded 41 monasteries. Because Columba was held responsible for the Battle of Cuil Dremmed in which 3,000 men died, he became an exile. As penance he set out to save the same number of people as died in the battle. Columba, with 12 relatives, founded a monastery on Iona off the coast of Scotland that became famous throughout Europe. Monks from Iona in turn set out for what they called a white martyrdom: "[H]enceforth all who followed Columcille's lead were called to the white martyrdom, they who sailed into the white sky of morning, into the unknown, never to return." (Wikipedia: “Martyrdom”).
All of which is fine and inspiring, but what about us today? How do we take up our cross and follow Jesus daily?
For many of us, the most compelling example is family life. As parents, we are constantly called upon to give up our own desires and put the needs of our children ahead of ours. I clearly remember the contrast between being able to go somewhere with Cindy and spend four or five carefree hours – and having to think of the needs of a newborn when we went somewhere. A simple trip to the mall to shop for clothes became an all-day bivouac requiring the mind of a military quarter-master to manage all the stuff we had to take with us! And then when more children came along …well, you know what I mean. Successful parenting demands that we deny ourselves and put others ahead of ourselves.
Then too, marriage requires the giving of oneself to the other person in order to be successful. I sometimes say, only half-jokingly – that “Marriage is God’s divinely ordained institution for Cross-bearing!” And let me quickly add that your spouse is not your cross! No! Rather, we encounter our own selfishness as we interact with our spouses, and we must constantly fight back the demand to have things the way that we want it when we want it. Again, it’s the contrast between being Christ-like - giving ourselves for the sake of the other - and grasping for self-fulfillment. One leads to life and the other death.
Very few of us are called to actually give up our lives in Red Martyrdom like Jim Elliot and his companions, but we are all called to live a life of self-denial, of white and green martyrdom – of giving up our own fondest desires – even when they are good, in order to serve our Lord more perfectly.
This is a basic pattern of the Christian life, and indeed in nature itself. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it cannot bear much fruit. (Jn. 12:24; I Cor 15:36). Unless you learn to die to your own selfish desires, you cannot please God. And pleasing Him is what it’s all about. It’s like a client of mine says, “If I miss Heaven, I miss everything”.
Friends, the way to follow Christ is to lay down your life for his sake. It’s a huge challenge to all who have dedicated our lives to Him. He demands everything of us but desires to give everything to us. If he demands death to ourselves, it’s only to replace it with His life, so that we may have that abundance that Jesus promises – good measure, tamped down and overflowing. (Jn. 10:10).
And if you’re out their trying to find a way to live a full life without Christ, I can only tell you that your efforts are in vain. Just as the Preacher says in Ecclesiates, “Vanity of Vanity, all is vanity.” (Eccl. 1:2). You can get all the toys you ever wanted and travel the world to your heart’s desire, but if you die without Christ, you’re just a dead person who left behind a passport and bunch of toys.
I invite you today to ‘cease striving”, to follow Jesus, to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and to make Christ the Lord of your life. If you do this you will live eternally and experience the joy of being reconciled with God.
Pray with me: “Jesus, I believe that you are the Messiah of God. I have tried to save my life and I’m losing it every day. Father, please forgive me my sins and save me from myself. Help me to give myself to you and to take up my cross and follow you daily. Make my life pleasing to you and give me the abundant life Jesus promised, for his sake, Amen.
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