Ian's First Climbing Lesson

Some friends here in London invited Ian to do a little climbing. I was wondering how he'd do (he said he didn't want to go at first), but he really took to it. There's a great climbing wall at a rec center near our house (Swiss Cottage), and that's where these pictures were taken.

Peace in Pieces

Philippians 4:4-7

Years ago I broke something of Julie’s that was in way too many pieces for me to fix. I took every bit of it that I could find and put it into a box and stored it on top of one of my bookshelves. Over the next few years I had to move that box a dozen times or so—when we repainted the office, when we moved furniture around, on those rare occasions when I dusted the top of the bookcase. When we got some new bookcases I found the box of pieces and moved it into the closet, up on another shelf where it sat until we packed up to move to London back in 2006.

I don’t know what made me keep that box for so long. The pieces inside were of something that had been precious to Julie, but there wasn’t any hope that I was going to be able to fix it on my own. And so I carried it and moved it from place to place until there was no place left to store it.

4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

On the front of your bulletin you can read the passage from Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit—the nine qualities or characteristics or behaviors that show the way the Spirit transforms us into mature disciples of Jesus Christ. Today we’re going to take a look at what it means to say the Spirit produces ‘peace’ in our lives.

But first, take a look at the passage from Galatians. Notice again that ‘fruit’ is singular here—it’s like that in the original language, too. All nine of these are the fruit of the Spirit—not just any one or two of them. This is not a smorgasbord. We can’t say ‘I’m loving and faithful, but don’t ask me to have any self-control.’ Or ‘I’m quite happy being gentle and good, as long as I don’t have to be patient with people who annoy me.’

The fruit of the Spirit is a package deal, and that’s crucial for our understanding this summer of what the Spirit does in our lives. The fruit of the Spirit is expressed in all nine of these important ways.

That’s important, because it builds on the concepts we’ve been talking about all year.

We started back in February with an extended conversation about the way things were supposed to be. We were made to live in God’s perfect Shalom, a sense of wholeness and completeness. The ‘webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ Remember that?

And when that perfect Shalom was broken—when it was shattered into pieces—God provided a way back to him—a way to put the pieces back together—a way back to wholeness and the way we were meant to live. We’ve been talking about the Atonement as God’s drama in three acts—as God’s invitation to come and live the way he made us to live in the first place. The first two acts were Christ’s death on the cross as God’s response to the problem of sin, and then Christ’s resurrection that demonstrates God’s power over all things, even death.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is the third act in that play, and it brings with it a quality of life that we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—the fruit of the Spirit describe what that Shalom life is supposed to look like. It describes what it can look like when we let the Spirit live in us and work through us.

The city of Philippi was an interesting part of the Roman Empire. It was a retirement community for veterans of the Roman legions, and a very patriotic and nationalistic place. It was also a place where strong women had a long tradition of running things: businesses, private armies, and one source says that women in Philippi regularly negotiated treaties with other cities and states. Paul loved the Philippians—this letter is the most personal of all his writings. We’re going to spend some time in Philippians in the coming year.

Paul writes this letter while he’s in prison awaiting execution. He has no idea when his life might be taken from him, but his confidence in God is so great that in the first section of this letter he makes a bold statement: Whether he lives or dies he trusts that God has a plan for him. ‘For to me,’ Paul says, ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain.’

Paul is clearly operating with a completely different set of values here. Let’s tally it up: He’s in prison for sharing his faith, he’s separated from his friends and home and work, and he’s waiting to see when and how his death sentence is going to be carried out.

By any of our measures Paul is in an awful place, and yet he sees it through the perspective of one who purpose and calling comes from God, and is measured by the values that come from living a life of faithful discipleship. It’s not that Paul doesn’t care about his life. The point is that Paul cares about his life in the context of his devotion to the one who gave him that life in the first place. He’s not being flippant about suffering and dying—I’m sure he would choose not to be a martyr—but he’s being honest about what his own life means within the larger task of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to a hungry world.

In our text Paul directly addresses some people in the church who were having a hard time working together—two women who were leaders in the church in Philippi. That’s in the verses just before our text. Here he is, waiting for his own execution, and he’s concerned about an argument between people he cares about in a church he loves. Amazing.

In our text Paul is still talking about living radical lives marked by the Spirit—notice the other examples of ‘spirit life’ in the text:

There’s joy. ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’ Really? I still have a hard time believing that Paul was rejoicing as he sat in his cell, and yet part of me is envious of Paul—of the strength of his faith. I wonder what it would be like to live that way—to genuinely feel that way.

And there’s another example of the Spirit’s work in this text. ‘Let your gentleness be evident to all.’ Everyone? Seriously. It’s hard enough to be gentle with people we love sometimes, but everyone? In our Spring Bible study here we talked for a long time about how hard it is to show love and patience to people who annoy us or threaten us.

And then the kicker: And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I love this part, because he’s not saying just that God’s peace is so great that we can’t even comprehend it. He’s saying that the peace of the Spirit isn’t always going to make sense to us—it’s not always going to conform to our values.

How does the Spirit show through us in the form of peace?

It’s far too easy to reduce this call to peace as an invitation to ‘inner peace.’ You know what I mean: So much of the talk about spirituality in our culture is offering a sort of detachment from the cares of the world. There’s a Facebook advertisement for a Kabbalah retreat in the Peak District, and the banner at the top says that I can ‘De-Stress and Be Inspired.’

The guy in front of the Scientology office down the street is forever inviting me in for a stress test, as if the reduction of stress is what life is about. That one bugs me especially because I do my best work under stress—why would he want to take that away from me? That’s just mean.

And then we come to the fruit of the Spirit. We read our text and we’re tempted to miss the truly radical gift that’s being offered. Let me say that a different way: to reduce the fruit of the Spirit to a list of nice qualities to have is a complete misreading not only of the text, but of God’s intent for our lives. The fruit of the spirit represent a new way of relating to each other—to our families and friends and even to strangers.

The fruit of the Spirit describe a radically different way of approaching the real concerns of this world. They don’t call us to detach—to find serenity or calmness or our bliss, whatever that means. The fruit of the Spirit are the mark of living life as if God exists—as if the Lord of the Universe actually has something to say and do and transform in the way things work.

Which brings us back to ‘peace’ as evidence that the Spirit is working in our lives.

One of the small benefits of occasional insomnia is that every once in a while I’m up late enough to see the CBS Evening News from the States on Sky. I saw an amazing story last week.

Dan Cherry was an American pilot in the Vietnam War. During his service he was in a famous dogfight with a North Vietnamese pilot—the History Channel even made a documentary about it complete with actual voice recordings and computer imagery.

In the end Dan Cherry shot the other plane out of the sky, but he always wondered what happened to the other pilot. After the release of the documentary he went looking for the pilot he shot down, and ended up being reunited with him on a Vietnamese version of ‘This is Your Life’, a show that brought long lost friends back together.

Now these two warriors weren’t friends, but they became close after meeting each other in person. They’ve traveled together, Cherry wrote a book about his experiences, and in the closing image of the report, the two men are holding each other’s grandchildren, and the narrator said:

‘And just like that, the War went away.’

This doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? I mean, if anyone has a right to hold a grudge, it’s the North Vietnamese pilot who had his plane blown out from under him. And yet, even though it defies logic—even though it ‘transcends all understanding’—these two men found…and made…peace between them.

If these two enemies can experience the gift of peace between them, then there really isn’t much good reason why we can’t be agents of peace in our lives—in this world that cries out for the hope that comes from an authentic life of peace. The truly radical, mysterious and transforming power of peace from the Holy Spirit is that it accomplishes for us what we can’t do on our own.

That leaves us with some questions.

How do we make the war go away?

How do we acknowledge the broken pieces we carry around with us from place to place?

How do we take those pieces out of their hiding places and let God reassemble them?

How do we step aside and let the Holy Spirit work in us and through us to restore the Shalom we were made to enjoy—to produce fruit in our lives—to show himself in qualities that mark us as followers of Jesus?

As with most things that matter, there aren’t easy answers to any of these questions.

But if you take anything away from this message today, I hope it’s that you see peace in all its forms as a central part of what it means to be a Christian person.

Being forgiving, generous, loving agents of peace to our families and friends, and to strangers and even enemies—that’s a part of what it means to have the Holy Spirit living and working in each one of us.

In that sense this isn’t as much something we have to do, as something we’re called to allow the Spirit to do in and through our lives.

The call on each one of us is to live that way even when it goes against the culture, or conventional wisdom, or even just the prevailing winds. The call on each one of us is to be agents of the Prince of Peace, even when it surpasses all our understanding. Amen.

Book Review: A Place at the Table

I got a nice review from Books & Culture in the current issue. Check it out:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/mayjun/presentandnotyet.html

The Bottom Line

Galatians 5:1-6

The roommates I had in seminary were a big part of my experience there. Most of us liked to talk—about everything: from theology to sports to movies to, well, just about anything. We could stretch a conversation about theology deep into the night. Sometimes it was just for fun. I had a housemate for a while who had grown up in the Mennonite tradition—she was a committed pacifist. In the theological discussions it became our goal to aggravate her to the point when she would hit us, just for fun. She had a mean right.

I had a housemate who wasn’t much of a talker. Now that’s an unfortunate personality trait in an institution that was preparing people to talk for a living. In one conversation with the quiet guy I can remember him getting agitated and uncomfortable with how long it was taking us to talk about some topic. When he couldn’t take it anymore he blurted out: “Would you please just ‘bottom line’ this for me?”

‘Just get to the point,’ he meant—what’s the one thing I need to know in order to move on.

In our text this morning we see the apostle Paul get to a similar moment. He’s been making a case for several chapters now, but he’s getting to the point—the bottom line.

1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

‘The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.’ That’s the bottom line. Hold that thought—we’re going to come back to that.

We’ve been talking about the Atonement as a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is something like the final ingredient in God’s plan for the church. He’s called it, redeemed it, demonstrated his power to give it confidence, and now he’s made good on his promise to come and make the community of faith into what it was meant to be—to complete the recipe for his church.

Last week our two youth preachers helped us understand who the Holy Spirit is. Through the summer we’re going to look at how the Spirit works in us and through us—where do we see the evidence for the work of the Spirit in our lives and in our church?

Earlier we heard the passage from this chapter about the fruit of the Spirit. Nine qualities or characteristics or behaviors that show how the Spirit transforms us into mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

Notice that ‘fruit’ is singular here—it’s like that in the original language, too. Now little details like that aren’t always helpful, but in this case it prevents us from picking and choosing from the list. All nine are the fruit of the Spirit. We can’t say ‘I’m loving and faithful, but don’t ask me to have any self-control.’ Or ‘I’m quite happy being gentle and good, as long as I don’t have to be patient with people who annoy me.’

This is a package deal, and that’s crucial for our understanding this summer of what the Spirit does in our lives. Over the next 10 weeks we’ll be looking at each of these qualities—these pieces of evidence that show the Spirit at work. But just because we’re looking at one each Sunday doesn’t mean that they stand alone. The fruit of the Spirit is expressed in all nine of these important ways.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians addresses a specific context, and it’s important for us to understand that context as we begin this study. Paul was writing to a community that was getting conflicting messages about how to make a commitment to Christ. There was a strong group within the church that believed you had to become a Jew first in order to become a Christian. They taught that you had to follow the rules and food restrictions of Judaism in order to join the Christian church. They end up being called Judaizers, because they required Judaism to be a part of Christianity.

Now the whole idea of circumcision as a metaphor can be pretty uncomfortable for us (no preacher really ever wants to talk about it) but it was a key part of the process of following this path into a Jewish form of the Christian faith. In other words, when a new members class was being offered, the prize for finishing was the requirement that you get circumcised before becoming a member of the church. I wonder how many new members we'd get if that was the 'prize.'

Circumcision is an initiation into a specific way of believing and living. Now for a lot of us the idea of initiation conjures up images from movies like ‘A Man Called Horse’ or ‘Animal House’: Kevin Bacon saying “Thank you sir. May I have another.” But it’s a lot more than just that.

The other night I participated in a small part in the Court of Honor of the American School’s Scout Troop. The process of moving through the ranks of Scouting, from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout—all of that begins with an initiation—an induction where you pledge to follow a certain path in a certain direction, and to follow it until completion. In part of that ceremony the Scout Leader says this:

“The more you participate and the more effort you put in, the stronger your flame becomes and more difficult to extinguish. At some point, your flame will become a burning ember deep in your heart that will be impossible to ever put out.”

As Paul uses it, Circumcision is an initiation into a promise to follow a certain path—the path of trying to earn our way back to God strictly by following all of the rules of the Jewish Law. The promise made in circumcision is to follow the Law until completion.

One writer put it this way: Paul ‘knows that circumcision symbolizes something very important—the identification of the Jewish people, the mark of those who live their lives under the jurisdiction of the torah…when a Gentile receives circumcision, he declares his own identity in terms of the torah,’ of the entire Law of Judaism.

It’s important for us to understand here that Paul isn’t accusing the Judaizers of some horrible sin. He’s warning them that by trusting the law for their redemption they’re missing out of the limitless gift of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

Paul’s point, as you can see if you read the whole letter, is that Christ offers us a different path to God—that the Atonement heals our relationships in a new way, a way that begins not with Circumcision, but with baptism.

And it’s in baptism that we experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives individually and as a community of faith. That transforming power shows itself in us as fruit—as product—as visible evidence that something dramatic and profound is happening in us. We see the Holy Spirit at work when we see lives that are defined by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Today our focus is on that ‘bottom line’ statement that Paul makes in our text about ‘faith expressing itself through love.’

Victor Paul Furnish is one of the great scholars of Paul and his writings. He said this about our text:

“…for Paul, faith’s obedience is an obedience in love, an obedience that has the character of love because it is grounded in God’s own love by which the sinner has been claimed and reconciled to God. The Christian is summoned to love in a double sense: to be loved and to be loving. Within Paul’s writings those two are inseparable.”

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

That expression of love by way of faith is a two-way street.

First, we show our faith—and the work of the Spirit in our lives, when we live as people who are confident in God’s love for us. When we live as people who are grateful for the way Christ’s atoning work demonstrates just how fully and completely God loves us. Remember the sentence I gave us to memorize on Easter Sunday?

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

Part of being a loving community—of being people whose faith is expressed through love—is living as if we believe that behind the Easter miracle there is a God who loves us and wants the best for us and who offers to shape us into the people we were meant to be.

Allowing ourselves to be loved is one of the most important ways we grow in our faith and our understanding of who God is.

But that love is meant to be turned outward, too.

‘Faith expressing itself through love’ is really the bottom line when it comes to how we live the Christian faith beyond these walls and beyond ourselves. If it’s true that we’re a community who gathers not because of anything we’ve done, but because we’ve been loved by the God who made us, then that naturally turns us outward to a world that hasn’t yet experienced that gift.

As we close this school year it’s good for us to look back on the way this has happened here. The Soup Kitchen serves this community five days a week right outside these windows. We partnered with Young Life to reach out to kids in our community who didn’t have a Christian group to enjoy. During the winter months we offered hot meals and a place to sleep to a group of homeless people with nowhere else to go.

But even within the church we’re starting to see how important it is that we love each other. This has always been a welcoming kind of church, but our hospitality continues to grow as we welcome visitors and new expats and neighbors to our fellowship.

More significantly, we’re gradually starting to heal some old wounds that keep us from being the church we’re called to be. That process is ongoing, but it’s happening, and it’s a demonstration of the Holy Spirit in this place.

Even as we say goodbye today to some dear friends in this church, we don’t see it as some tragic end to the way we want things. We see it as a transition—in a life that is full of them—for people as they go on to new homes and new communities and new opportunities to serve, and also for us as we wait and see who God brings here next.

We are called to demonstrate God’s love to his world, and it’s a joy to watch and to participate when it happens.

Over the next few months we’re going to spend some time looking at the way the Holy Spirit works in and through each one of us. I want to say again that as we look at the different expressions of the Spirit’s work individually, that we do that knowing that they’re part of a package deal.

God doesn’t love us a la carte—he doesn’t pick and choose which parts of us meet his standard. Because he’s a God of grace—of radical love and generosity—he loves us through and through, without exception and without limits. What he asks in return—not as a precondition but as a grateful response, is that we allow his Spirit to enter in and transform our lives.

As we move through this series over the next few months, remember that it all comes down to this bottom line: What really counts is our faith expressing itself in love to God, to each other, and to the world. Amen.

Let’s remember the source of that love by standing and singing together “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”

A Mini-Reflection on the Atonement

For months now I’ve been thinking about a quote from a book I read this past spring. The book was A Community Called Atonement, by Scot McKnight.

“Atonement is the work of God to create and ready his people for just these things: union with God and communion with others in a place of perfection, with a society of justice and peace and above all worship of the Lamb of God on the throne . . . We need to observe that the biblical language of eternity stokes heated passions to yearn the way Jesus yearned—that God’s kingdom might come ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ Any atonement theory that thinks exclusively of the earth is inadequate, just as any theory that shifts to thinking too much of eternity is also inadequate.” (p.27)

Recent developments among Christian thinkers have pointed to a deeper and more complete understanding of the Atonement as both a doctrine and a source of ethics. Those of us who grew up in or around evangelical traditions can have a limited view: “Christ’s blood cleanses me of my sin and absolves me from the punishment I deserve from an angry, righteous God.”

Now I still believe that, but it’s no longer all I believe about Christ’s atoning work.

I’ve been teaching and preaching for years now that the Kingdom of God is not a realm or a place with limits and boundaries, but rather Christ’s eternal reign—a demonstration of his power over all things, even death. (My American Church in London readers will have that sentence memorized by now.) If that’s the case, then there is much more to Christ’s atoning work than simply my—or anyone’s—personal salvation.

Over the Lenten season I preached a series of messages—indebted to Scot McKnight’s book—on the way the atonement offers healing for our relationship with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. (You can read those messages if you scroll down far enough to find Lent and Easter.) It’s possible that I’ll spend the rest of my conscious days trying to grasp (and experience) what that truly means.

And that’s a good thing.

Because of all the doctrines we have inherited from our Christian parents, none is more important, more dynamic, or more central to the overall message of the Scriptures than the Atonement. The Atonement describes what God has done to reconcile us in every direction. It’s a gift that gives us at the same time everything that we long for and more than we know we need.

Over the next year we’ll revisit this in more depth. My summer reading is packed with books related to the topics of atonement and justification and hope—stay tuned.

I’m Not Disappointed

I’ve been reading the deeply felt responses to Nick Fiedler’s post describing his disappointment with the Emergent movement. The posts run the gamut from those who lament its loss of outsider status to those who resent the idea that some folks are making a living off of their participation in the movement. One post accuses ‘traditionalists’ of glee that the Emergents are struggling. That's particularly untrue and unfair, as you're about to see.

If you’ve been reading these pages recently you’ll know that I don’t exactly fit the Emergent profile. First off, I’m 46 years old, but that’s not the half of it. I’m also an historian of evangelicalism and a PCUSA-ordained minister in a fairly traditional church. I still believe that denominations, as problematic as they can be, will end up playing a crucial role in the partnership to revive and reform the Christian faith. See what I mean? I’m not really the most likely participant/defender of Emergent-ness.

Maybe that puts me in a helpful place to comment on the current state of things.

It might make good sense to feel a letdown after the heady progress Emergents have made over the past few years. Stale models of both doctrine and church have been challenged—mostly effectively—and some real change has come out of that. New people have come to faith and many who had been wounded by the church rediscovered a faith home. Some of us who were still in the center of traditional church life were provoked (in the best sense of the term) to rethink our understanding of what it meant to be Christians. I participated in a small group of 40-somethings that wrestled with Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy for almost a year, and it was enormously valuable for us…even when we disagreed.

All of those represent astounding achievements in an era marked by secularization and faithlessness.

But historians tend to see movements like this in a different light. Most of us have expected some sort of leveling off or decline in the trajectory of the Emergent movement, and many of us have hoped that the maturing of the project wouldn’t become its downfall. The best of the correctives in church history have started as parallel movements that end up realigning with the broader body of Christ. That process of re-merging has given the church its energy and seasoning at various crucial times since the Reformation.

Even if we just focus on a handful of examples from the last century or so, we can see how this has happened. (Now please note that these are quantitative examples, not qualitative ones.) Separatist fundamentalists evolved into the new evangelical intellectual resurgence of the mid-20th century (the source of places like Fuller Seminary). The Pentecostal and charismatic movements—which also saw themselves as being a separate, new way of ‘doing’ church, folded back into the broader church movement and changed, well, just about everything. More recently the Willow Creek experiment, which for a while tried to conform existing churches to its model, ended up becoming more flexible and malleable and usable, resulting in a far more lasting influence on the broader church.

If the Emergent movement as we have seen and experienced it over the past few years doesn’t turn out to change everything, and remake the Christian Way from scratch, it will still be credited with having had an enormous impact on the church. If it folds back into the broader church, while retaining its transformative perspective on the way churches operate, would that really be so bad?

What the Emergent movement has happily avoided is the unchecked, unmanaged expansion and hubris that killed off Promise Keepers (remember them?). For the complaints I’m reading from Emergents about people in the movement making a living at it, money has not become either the driving force or life blood of Emergent ministry. That’s a great thing. That’s a sign of wisdom and prudence and maturity (sorry for the traditionalist litany there) that PK and other flashes in the pan never had.

Mostly what I want to say—from my place on the margins of it all—comes from my own admiration and appreciation for what Emergent thinkers and leaders have given to the broader church.

I’m not disappointed at all.

As I was growing up the concern among younger visionaries was how to escape from the materialism of Boomer Christianity and into a more authentic expression of Jesus-following. We took that into our lives and ministries—traditional and not—to the benefit of the broader church.

The Emergent movement is poised to do the very same thing.

Some will choose to participate in established churches, but will bring new energy and critical change to those bodies. Some will remain outside the mainstream and provide important correctives to the rest of us as we stumble along in churches that may or may not want to grow out of their calcified state. Either way, the influence of the Emergent project—whether in doctrine or ecclesiology or ethics—is here to stay.

As one who has benefitted from Emergent influence (even when I’ve been the target of its critique), I’m far from disappointed with what it has become.

Mostly, I’m just grateful.

Some Burning Coals For Us

The story below put tears in my eyes.

Over the last month I've been engaged in several (at times) heated discussions, covering topics from faith and patriotism to the role of denominations in the ordination of ministers (see the posts below). The point, at least for me, is that those issues can easily represent a great 'missing of the point' for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

Those topics, which generate so much heat in our public and private discussions, miss the point because they rarely lead to any meaningful improvement in the ways we share the faith with people in or out of the church.

That's too bad.

One of the threads that keeps me identified as a 'card-carrying evangelical' is the priority we're supposed to place on drawing new believers into the fold. Isn't that what we're all about? And if that's the case, then isn't any topic/argument/action that doesn't contribute to the accomplishing of that priority an exercise in missing the point?

Now I'm not naive. I know that the story below fits into the 'man-bites-dog' category, which is why it made the news. But there's a twinge in me that wishes that more Christians would behave this way toward their enemies, not for the headlines but so that more people would be drawn to faith in Jesus (see above).

This news item made me revisit Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. The point of that parable wasn't simply that one guy helped another, but rather that a guy who was hated and marginalized by Jesus' audience helped another. Keep that in mind as you read what follows.

In Proverbs we see a strange phrase, one that is quoted later in Paul's Letter to the Romans :

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

The point of this text is that when we respond in a way that goes against people's expectations, with radical generosity, we can make them rethink how they see us and what we believe.

Take a moment to read the story. See it as a dare to act in a radical way to reach out to those we might have a right to avoid or reject. See it as an example of how to behave, courtesy of someone who represents a group that many of us would rather hate or marginalize.

Look out for the hot coals.

I look forward to your comments.


By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. – A rifle-toting convenience store owner said he decided to show mercy on a would-be robber after seeing the man collapse into tears and claim he was only committing the crime to support his starving family.

The Long Island store owner provided the bat-wielding man with $40 and a loaf of bread and made him promise never to rob again.

"This was a grown man, crying like a baby," Mohammad Sohail, owner of the Shirley Express convenience store about 65 miles east of New York City, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

The man dropped the bat, picked up the bread and tucked the $40 into his waistband before fleeing, said Suffolk County police Sgt. John Best.

Sohail, who moved to the United States from Pakistan about 20 years ago, said he was getting ready to close his store shortly after midnight on May 21 when the man in his 40s entered with a bat in his hand. Sohail said he tried to stall for a moment and then grabbed a rifle he keeps behind the counter and ordered the assailant to drop the bat.

The would-be thief dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness, Sohail said.

"He started crying that he was out of work and was trying to feed his hungry family," he said. "I felt bad for him. I mean, this wasn't some kid."

He said he tossed $40 to the man, who then stood up and told Sohail he was inspired by the act of mercy and wanted to become a fellow Muslim. Sohail said he led the man in a profession of Muslim faith and the two ended up shaking hands.

Sohail said he went to the back of the store to get some milk to give to the man, but when he returned the man had fled. He said he called police and reported the attempted robbery, but he doesn't want to press charges if the man is ever caught.

Best said detectives have reviewed a store surveillance video of the attempted holdup, but said it would be difficult for anyone to identify the suspect because he was wearing a mask.

Sohail, who said he had never been the victim of a robbery attempt, said he didn't expect any accolades for what he had done.

"I'm a very little man. I just did a good job," said the married father of one. "I have a good feeling in my heart. I feel very good."

Pentecost: A Brilliant Third Act

(This message was given on Pentecost Sunday at the American Church in London.)

Acts 2:1-13

There are reruns of the TV show 'Everybody Loves Raymond' that still play here in the UK. That show was funny for a lot of reasons—not least because every so often I could catch glimpses of the Italian-American side of my own family. So many of the episodes center around food—Marie, the mother-in-law, cooks amazing food and gets her identity from it, while Debra, the daughter-in-law, can’t cook as well and always feels inferior to Marie.

In one of my favorite episodes Debra begs Marie to teach her how to make meatballs. They spend the day together talking and mixing and cooking, but at the end of the day, when Debra asks Raymond to sample the food, he gags and says there’s something wrong with it. As it turns out, Marie had changed one of the labels on a jar of spice, so that Debra would never get the recipe right. She did it to protect her identity—her role in the family as the maker of food—but in the end she had to apologize.

Now I know most of you think that I spend way too much time talking about food, but something wonderful can happen when all the right components are put together in a meal. Something truly memorable can happen when that final ingredient is added to the mix—the one that makes everything just right—just as it was meant to be.

We’re going to see something like that in our text today.

1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11(both Jews and converts to Judaism Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" 12Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"
13Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine.

What a great picture that is. The disciples and other followers are all together when a storm blows through the place. All of a sudden they can speak languages they didn’t know, and people around them could understand them. I especially love the way the text ends: ‘Amazed and perplexed they asked one another “What does this mean?”’ The people around them had an answer: They thought the Christians were drunk—that they’d partied a little too hard that night.

We spent the last few weeks looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.

We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.

I’ve been describing the Atonement as a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is something like the final ingredient in God’s plan for the church. He’s called it, redeemed it, demonstrated his power to give it confidence, and now he’s made good on his promise to come and make the community of faith into what it was meant to be—to complete the recipe for his church.

We’ve been talking about Jesus ministry and especially the Cross as the first act of the Atonement story. In dramatic terms, The first act is used to establish the main characters, their relationships and the normal world they live in. Early in the first act some incident occurs that confronts the main character, whose attempts to deal with this incident leads to a second and more dramatic situation, known as the first turning point, which signals the end of the first act, ensures life will never be the same again for the protagonist and raises a dramatic question that will be answered in the climax of the film. The dramatic question should be framed in terms of the protagonist's call to action: How will the character respond to this new turn of events?

If we see the resurrection as the second act, listen to how that’s described in dramatic terms. The second act, also referred to as "rising action" (perfect!), typically depicts the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point. They must not only learn new skills but arrive at a higher sense of awareness of who they are and what they are capable of, in order to deal with their predicament. This cannot be achieved alone and they are usually aided and abetted by mentors and co-protagonists.

Finally, the third act features the resolution of the story and its subplots. The climax, also known as the second turning point, is the scene or sequence in which the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are.

Thinking about the Atonement as a three-act drama is helpful here, especially now that we’ve gotten to the final act. In dramatic terms, the gift of the Holy Spirit gives us resolution of the story and its subplots. It ensures that the main dramatic question is answered. And finally, Pentecost leaves the protagonist and other characters—that’s us, by the way—with a new sense of who we really are

When the Holy Spirit enters the picture and becomes the main driver of the church, the church’s story finds its resolution and its purpose. It’s with the gift of the Spirit that we see the whole story at least a little more clearly, and the plots and subplots start to make sense.

The Spirit also answers that main dramatic question: Why did all of this happen? As we grow and learn and serve together we see how the three parts of the Atonement drama accomplish God’s plan of bringing us back to him.

And finally, in keeping with the classic three-act dramatic form, Pentecost leaves us with a new sense of who we are. The gift of the Holy Spirit transforms us into the people we were meant to be all along, both individually and even more profoundly as a community of faith. The gift of the Spirit is more than just the introduction of some strange languages into the mix. It’s the ingredient that gets into us and completes us for the task of being Christ’s disciples and Christ’s church. That’s what we celebrate at Pentecost.

This year the BBC is celebrating English poets and poetry—the slogan for the series is ‘Let Poetry into Your Life.’ As a recovering literature major I was compelled to watch Simon Schama’s amazing journey through the poetry of John Donne. I completed my senior seminar at UCLA on the religious poetry of Donne, and have read him ever since.

At the beginning of the hour, Schama was walking the streets of London and asking people if they knew who Donne was, and it was sad to see how many people said they had never heard of him. The reviewer in the Guardian the next day complained that people had lost the sense ‘that this is the sort of thing we ought to lie about.’

Donne was known for writing some of the truly great carnal poetry in the history of the English language. In his seduction poem ‘The Flea’ he basically says to his partner: Since that flea has bitten us both, our blood is already mixed. (You can see where this is going.) We might as well finish the job. In the poem ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ he’s not above begging. He says: ‘Licence my roving hands, and let them go’ Try some of Donne’s poetry at home—he doesn’t disappoint.

But Donne was a passionate Christian, too. When he became the Dean of St Paul’s here in London he took those hot-blooded images into the sermons and Christian poetry he wrote during the rest of his life. In one of his Holy Sonnets he says to God:

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The BBC has it right this time. We could all stand to let a little poetry into our lives.

I suppose the call to each one of us at Pentecost is to ‘let the Holy Spirit into our lives’. Just as poetry is supposed to get into our hearts and minds in a way that other forms of language can never do, the Holy Spirit calls us and transforms us in a way that nothing else ever could.

Think back on all the claims we made about the Holy Spirit in our creed today.

We confessed our belief that the Holy Spirit,
justifies us by grace through faith,
sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor,
and binds us together with all believers
in the one body of Christ, the church.

That the same Spirit
rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture,
engages us through the Word proclaimed,
claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation,
and calls women and men to all ministries of the church.

We admitted today that we believe the Holy Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.

Maybe if we were to go out and share that message about the Holy Spirit our neighbors would think we were drunk, too.

So what?

What do we care if people misunderstand what our faith is about, at least at first—even when we struggle with it? The point for us at Pentecost is to remember that the Holy Spirit completes the Atonement process perfectly and decisively. That the Holy Spirit functions as that last ingredient that makes the rest of the meal taste exactly as it should.

The Holy Spirit comes and makes all of us, both individually and as a community of faith—the Spirit makes all of us into the people we were meant to be all along. People who share their faith whether they talk about it or not, with every person they meet—at home, in the workplace, on the bus, and in this church.

Listen to how John Donne preached this at St Paul’s on Pentecost Sunday in 1628. I’ve updated the language a little but here’s what he said:

The Holy Spirit is poured into you, if he has made any entry, if he has taken hold of any corrupt affection in your life. But if the Spirit is poured in, he can also be poured out of you. Just as wine is poured into a glass and fills it from top to bottom, the Spirit fills you and covers every part of you.

When we are filled, the Spirit then overflows to the benefit of those around us. Receive, then, the Holy Spirit, so that it can overflow from your example to the edification of others.

That you may go home and say to your children: receive the Spirit in contentment and thankfulness.

You can say to your employees: receive the Spirit with integrity and a sense of duty.

You can say to your neighbors: receive the Holy Spirit in the name of peace and quiet.

To those you owe money to you can say: receive the Spirit with patience and tenderness and compassion.

To those who owe you money: receive the Spirit for your resourcefulness and hard work.

You see, preaching itself is useless if the Holy Spirit is not in the midst of it. And if the Spirit is in the midst of it, we all become like the apostles, called to be fishers of men, people who take part in God’s plan to redeem the world.

We do this by the best preaching there is, Donne said, an exemplary life and holy conversation.

Isn’t that wonderful? Donne pretty much gets the last word here. Not much to add to that, except this: We offer this final hymn today as a prayer that the Holy Spirit might pour out of us in every relationship—every place we live and work and go—to the glory of God alone.

Amen.

Let's stand and sing together: ‘O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing'

A Shot Over the Bow

What follows is a bit of a rant about the relationship between Christian faith and American patriotism. That may seem like old news or a closed topic to some of you, but I'm getting the feeling that it's about to make a comeback. I write this as someone with ties to both camps, as an American and a Christian, and also as an historian of the relationship between the two. Mark Noll introduced one of his books by saying that he was writing as a ‘wounded lover,’ and I think I’m beginning to understand what he meant. With that said, here goes.

I’m proud to be an American.

There, I said it. That may be one of the most unpopular things a guy can say these days, especially when he lives outside the US.

I love the country that gave me birth and provided a place where I could meet Jesus freely and without fear of persecution. I love the ideas that illuminated the Founders and drove them to the truly audacious conclusions that became our Constitution. I love the size and diversity and complexity of the place, and the way that, at its best, it welcomes newcomers eagerly and with the expectation that they will bring some new and necessary ingredient to the table. I'm proud, hopefully in an appropriate way, to be an American. Now that doesn't mean I think the place is perfect or above criticism...far from it. The resources and ingenuity and freedoms of this country mean that we may have even more of a responsibility to be just, generous and humble. It's on these items that we might be judged most harshly; it's in these precise areas that we fail most often.

Being a Christian and an American is a difficult dance sometimes. Some of my friends think it’s impossible to be both, that the exploitive and violent acts in our history mean that the nation’s legacy has to be abandoned along the way to mature discipleship. Others see the same events and practices and arrive at the opposite conclusion. ‘America is God’s chosen and ordained nation,’ they say, ‘the greatest force for good in the history of the world.’ To be an American, they might say, necessarily includes being a Christian.

The ‘America-as-villain’ point of view is easy to find these days, but check this out if you’re not convinced about the ‘America-as-New-Israel’ orientation. There’s a new edition of the Bible that is targeted at American Christians who believe that God has set the USA apart from all other nations in the history of the world. This reframing of the Scriptures, called The American Patriot’s Bible (Thomas Nelson Publishers), is just the latest in a long line of attempts to position American history (which I love) in a narrow understanding of God’s plan for his creation (which I reject). See the perceptive review on the Christianity Today blog, 'Out Of Ur':

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/05/book_review_the.html

So let me get this straight. The choices appear to be to see America as the pinnacle of God’s work among the nations, tied inextricably to his plan for the world, or to dismiss the nation as so bloated and sinful and deviated from holy purposes as to be beyond the pale. Hmmm…

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to disassociate from both of these positions.

Instead I talk a lot to Christians about balancing our responsibilities as citizens with our deeper identities as followers of Jesus. I was raised to be proud of my country, and when I was old enough to choose for myself I found that didn’t change. As a historian I know that there are episodes in our past that erode our image and faithfulness to our values, but unlike stone, that erosion is repaired quickly by the generosity and courage of other Americans. For every injustice there are multiple examples of people who work for fairness and the marginalization of tyranny. For every corrupt politician whose indiscretions dominate the news, there are hundreds of public servants who do the right thing…even if they could earn far more in the private sector.

I suppose the point here is that I have been reminded lately that the idea of America is a living thing—it heals its own wounds and renews its own depleted energies through the commitment and creativity of its citizens. Completely apart from religious belief, there is something unique and special about the inception and development—and even the future prospects—of the United States.

What really matters about America is the network of new ideas that formed its foundation. Bernard Bailyn, one of the great historians of American history, said this about the creators of the American Constitution in a series of lectures that later became the book, To Begin the World Anew (2003).

“We know for certain, what they could only experimentally and prayerfully propose, that formal, written constitutions, upheld by judicial bodies, can effectively constrain the tyrannies of both executive force and populist majorities.

“We know, because they had the imagination to perceive it, that there is a sense, mysterious as it may be, in which human rights can be seen to exist independent of privileges, gifts, and donations of the powerful, and that these rights can somehow be defined and protected by the force of law.

“We casually assume, because they were somehow able to imagine, that the exercise of power is no natural birthright but must be a gift of those who are subject to it.

“And we know, what Jefferson so imaginatively perceived and brilliantly expressed, that religion—religion of any kind, secular or revealed—in the hands of power can be the worst kind of tyranny…”

All of that is great. I loved re-reading it and writing it for you because I believe it and hope to pass it on to my son as he develops his own ideas of what it means to be an American. But the awareness and careful stewardship of my American-ness is has to be balanced—overshadowed, even—by my core identity as a follower of Jesus Christ. I think I should say that in a more declarative way.

My identity as an American resides as a distant second to my standing as a redeemed child of the living God.

Why go into all of that?

Because some of my American Christian friends are starting to sound a bit shrill in their complaints about the direction of their country. They picture themselves as patriot-heroes, but in reality they’re (mostly) middle-aged, middle-class professionals dreaming of a new Revolutionary War. Each new edition of the Drudge Report sends them to new levels of panic and anger. Taxes? Too damned high. Gun control? Some gibberish about their ‘cold, dead fingers.’ Cooperation with other nations? No! Only America’s interests matter!

Uh-oh.

They talk about intrusive government and the gay lobby, and they rail about Communism just like their dads did. I’ve heard some talk about panic in the streets and a brewing revolution in ways that used to be caricatured in films and TV shows about skinheads and other crazy radical groups. Some worry constantly that between homosexuality, Islam and Barack Obama, America is going to hell in a handcart.

What calms me is the reminder from Dr. Bailyn that the idea of America is based on restraint and the rule of law. The idea of America—which is really its core essence—will survive the attempts of the good and the not-so-good to steer it off its path.

What gives me a sense of peace is the more important reminder that my identity as an American resides as a distant second to my standing as a redeemed child of the living God.

What is sad to me, though, is that some of the people most likely to affirm that last statement are also among the most likely to be threatened by what it means.

Because if we’re honest and faithful (in addition to being historically and biblically accurate), then our allegiance to Christ subsumes or even replaces all other allegiances, including the one we used to pledge every morning at school. Throwing our eternal weight on the one who made us, redeemed us and sustains us is a higher, bigger and more important thing than any earthly citizenship. To believe differently is to miss the point not only of the Christian faith, but also of what it means to be American.

Of course there were strong Christian influences on the founding of the United States, but it’s so important to know that the Christianity practiced in those days would be virtually unrecognizable to contemporary evangelicals. Evangelical Christianity as we might know it doesn’t really emerge until 1740 or so, and without any effective mass media it takes almost a century for Christianity to become the dominant cultural influence in America. People toss around the term ‘Deism’ as if it described just another variant of the Christianity they would find at their church. From that faulty foundation too many will build a continuity of faith and practice between then and now which simply does not exist.

Why is that important? Because the result is a misunderstanding not only of what was present at the founding, but also a near complete misreading of what is under threat today. Some of my friends will lament the growing dominance and acceptance of lifestyles which might not align with how we read our Scriptures. But they miss the point when they equate a loss of Christian control or influence over American politics with a decline of Christianity in America.

The two were never—nor were they ever meant to be—one and the same.

The strong link between Christian faith and American political life left us with a generation, oddly enough, of conservative American Christians so dependent on their influence in politics that they ended up (get this) too lazy to compete in their own religious free market. What a shame.

Now they perceive a new president’s liberal vision as being imposed on them from the outside, when the fact is that all partisanship should have been seen that way. As Christians we should hold all political and national loyalties lightly, not least to prevent us from mistaking them for the one loyalty we should hold above all others. The complaints I’m hearing about the threat to Americanism are sadly much louder and heartfelt than any complaints I’ve heard about the nation’s treatment of the poor, or the lack of biblical literacy among many Christian adults and children, or for any unrepentant sinner who hasn’t yet heard a credible expression of the gospel.

For Christ’s sake—seriously—for Christ’s sake! How can any Christian complain, say, about the loss of the freedom to own an assault rifle when people are living lives apart from the good news of Jesus Christ. Just what, exactly, is so evangelical about that?

Bernard Bailyn was right when he talked about religion in the hands of the powerful as “the worst kind of tyranny.” That makes the shrill complaints of today’s frightened American evangelicals even more hollow. It’s not really tyranny that they fear, but rather, in too many cases, the loss of their own leadership role in that tyranny.

It should concern us that in discussions about God’s standards for his American faithful, some evangelicals seem more comfortable quoting John Winthrop’s sermon than the Sermon on the Mount. Winthrop, in a 1630 sermon given to his shipmates on the Arbella, said this:

‘For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken... we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God... We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going.’

That ‘city upon a hill’ line is from another, far more important sermon—a sermon for all people, not just Americans. In its original context Jesus said:

‘You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:13-16)

Oops.

Not much there to support the idea of American or any other kind of national exceptionalism. Not much there to indicate that Jesus was saying: ‘Wait about 1600 years, when my true followers get their country started, and you’ll see how this is really supposed to look.’

Later in the same sermon Jesus clarifies where our true allegiances should be:

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’ (Matthew 6:19-24)

When American evangelical Christians (of whom I count myself one) realize that the faith they have inherited, when joined with the resources they control, could be a force for good and freedom that would exceed even that of the entire nation, then we’ll see a real revolution that matters. But as long as there are those among us who would serve two masters, who would trade the redemption of the world for nationalist glory or financial security, we’re going to continue on as if paralyzed somehow.

Patriotism that isn’t shaped and informed and fully yielded to Jesus Christ and him only is doomed to be the very problem it seeks to remedy. Without that crucial level of submission we won’t get any farther, or accomplish anything greater, than a dog chasing its own tail. What a shame.

Getting Down to Business

Matthew 28:16-20

We’ve had a lot of guests here in the 2 ½ years since we came to London. Our parents have come multiple times, our daughter and her husband have visited, and we’ve had a handful of friends who have stayed with us for days or even weeks. As I talk to people about their experiences if they’ve moved over here from the States as we have, this is a pretty common story.

Julie and Ian and I have settled into a pattern when we know that guests are coming. We try to stock the house with some of our guests’ favorite foods, we charge up our visitor mobile phone, put some money on the spare Oyster card, and then we start cleaning the house. There’s a sense of expectation, even when we’re doing the most menial things, of what it’s going to be like to have some visitors around. The last step is usually making a list of things to go out and do.

Usually, the first thing we do is pick up a 24 bus near our house and ride it all the way to Westminster Abbey and back. You see a lot—Camden, the West End, and Big Ben. You also come back up right in front of the church. Mostly we do that first because it’s cheap, and most of our guests from California fall asleep early on that first day. Bus fare isn’t much to risk.

The work of getting ready for a visit is a part of the hope of seeing someone special again.

16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

As we wrap up this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.

We’ve been looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples and to hundreds of other people in those strange days after his death. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.

We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.

The Atonement is like a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.

We should be very clear on this point: It’s the Atonement—the work God has done to bring us back to him—it’s the Atonement that makes us who we are as Christian individuals and as a community of Christian faith.

I quoted Scot McKnight here last week. Listen to how he describes the link between the Atonement and the church:

‘Atonement, if we let the Bible speak for itself, is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.’

The Atonement is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.

Last week I talked about Peter’s recomissioning—about the role that repentance and forgiveness and restoration play in each of our lives and in the life of this church. The need for repentance is something we’re going to talk about from time to time in the coming year. Your church Council had a very productive and inspiring conversation about it this past week.

All of this matters because we’re just about ready to celebrate Pentecost. Next Sunday we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit—the very presence and power of God, given to prepare us and equip us for the life of faith. Next week we welcome a guest to come and stay with us, and so this week we’re doing a little housecleaning.

In our text this morning the remaining disciples meet Jesus on a mountain. Whether or not this is the same place where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew seems to be using it as a reminder or a closing statement from that sermon.

They gathered there and worshipped, even in the midst of some doubts. That alone is instructive for us—after the traveling and ministry and growth, followed by the traumatic events of the visit to Jerusalem, the disciples were still struggling with what to believe. But that didn’t stop them from answering Christ’s call to come to meet him one last time.

When Jesus begins to teach them, we know from the other Gospel accounts that he’s helping to prepare them for a visitor—for a new arrival—the Holy Spirit. We saw a few weeks ago that Jesus said to the disciples: ‘I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ In other words, stay where you are and get ready for a visit you won’t believe.

In our text this morning Jesus has shifted to talking about what the disciples were going to do together once the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost.

‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,’ Jesus said. That’s a pretty bold claim, but it’s the one that gives the disciples the confidence to believe that Jesus is going to make good on all of his promises.

‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…’ Now we’re getting into it. Now we’re getting down to business. This is the one-line version of the marching orders Christ gives his followers, his church, to all of us here in this room today.

‘Go and make disciples of all the nations.’ For us this morning it’s important to notice that Jesus’ marching orders come with a plan and a promise.

The plan comes in two parts. First, there’s this bit about baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There’s a lot more to that than just dunking or sprinkling water. Think back on the baptism we had here last week. Baptism is a three-part covenant between God, families and communities of faith.

The plan here is to commit ourselves to living and nurturing each other in faithful communities—gatherings where young and old, single and married, mature disciples and new believers can grow together, can worship together, can support each other through times of terrible sadness and reckless joy.

To baptize is to initiate relationships that are anchored in the journey of faith, and that’s where we get to the second part of the plan.

‘Teach the people to live by all that I have shared with you.’ That’s a big part of the plan Christ leaves for all of us. The Christian faith is by nature a shared faith. We’re called to share it with people around us who might be curious. We share it on a daily basis with people we live with and work with and worship with. In this part of the plan Jesus is reminding the disciples that it’s not enough just to know him. The call on each believer is to introduce him to our neighbor.

They must have been thinking: ‘This guy is crazy. He has no idea what we’ve just been through. We should be on a beach somewhere, healing up from all of our hard work.’

Jesus anticipated their response to his plan, and he offers a promise along with it. ‘You don’t have to do all of this alone,’ he said. ‘You won’t be left to figure all of this out by yourselves.’

‘Surely I am with you always,’ Jesus said, ‘even to the very end of the age.’

That’s the promise. That’s the announcement of the visitor who is coming. That’s the call to get the house ready and to start mapping out where you’re going to go.

For us this is a reminder as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week. The Holy Spirit comes and inspires and empowers all of us to lives the lives God calls us to live from the very beginning.

For us this is a reminder of who we are and what we’re called to be as a community of faith—as a church of Jesus Christ in this community.

We say it a lot around here, but this church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ and it’s expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission.

We gather and build relationships together in Fellowship. In Worship we remember who we are and whose we are as we honor God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In Discipleship we learn and pray and grow together as we learn what God calls us and prepares us to do. And in the end, all of this is turned outward as we serve the world in Christ’s name—as we do our part to accomplish the Mission of Christ’s church.

Listen to the text again. Listen for where we see the Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission in Christ’s marching orders.

16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Every visit begins with an invitation. As we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week, let’s make this last song our prayer as we invite the Holy Spirit to be here, in each one of us, and in this church family.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on all of us today and always. Amen.

Coming Clean

(This message was given at The American Church in London on 17 May 2009.)

John 21:15-17

One of the most important components of a Greek tragedy is the fatal flaw. The word used to describe that flaw was the word ‘hamartia.’ Technically, hamartia literally meant ‘to miss the mark’, but in Greek tragedies it came to represent something more. The hamartia was an error in judgment or unwitting mistake in the actions of the hero. For example, the hero might attempt to achieve a certain objective. By making an error in judgment, however, the hero instead achieves the opposite of their objective, usually with disastrous consequences. Keep that in mind this morning.

As we continue this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.

But sometimes that love requires something of us. Sometimes God’s love calls us to live differently, to reconsider things we used to believe. Sometimes God asks us to do something, not to earn his love, but in response to having already received his love.

15When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
16Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
17 The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?"
He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.

We’ve been looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples and to hundreds of other people in those strange days after his death. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.

We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.

The Atonement is like a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the Resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.

We should be very clear on this point: It’s the Atonement—the work God has done to bring us back to him—it’s the Atonement that makes us who we are as Christian individuals and as a community of Christian faith.

I’ve quoted Scot McKnight here before. Listen to how he describes the link between the Atonement and the church:

‘We cannot back down from this. If this is Jesus’ vision then the creation of a community where God’s will is done is inherent to the meaning of atonement…Atonement, if we let the Bible speak for itself, is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.’

This understanding of the community of faith as a place where God’s will is done and lived out is crucial for understanding our text today.

So back to our story of Jesus and Peter. To grasp what happens in our text today we have to go back to the relationship Jesus had with Peter as they worked together over the past three years.
In Matthew 16 Jesus had set Peter aside as the leader of his movement—as part of the foundation for his church. Peter was the first to understand who Jesus really was, and because of that Jesus said to him: ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of John—now you will be called Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’

But just 10 chapters later Peter had denied Jesus when he needed him most. Peter was given three chances to acknowledge that he was a follower of Jesus, and each time he got angry and said he didn’t know him.

And so just before our text today Peter and some of the disciples were going back to work as fishermen. They had a lousy night’s fishing, and as they were coming in Jesus told them to throw their nets in one more time. This time they caught a huge load of fish—so many that they couldn’t lift the net back into the boat.

When they were all ashore they ate some grilled fish together and then Jesus looked at Peter and started to grill him. Do you love me?…Do you truly love me?…Do you love me? Peter says yes all three times, and in the end Jesus moves on as if everything was fine.

There are several reasons why Jesus did what he did with Peter.

We’ve already seen that Jesus had set Peter aside as the leader of his movement, but also that Peter had denied Jesus when he needed him most. Because of that, Peter needed to be restored.

Jesus knew that if he built his church on someone with unresolved, unconfessed, unforgiven sin—if Jesus built his church on someone who hadn’t come clean—the whole thing would crumble. That’s where we come back to the ancient Greek tragedy idea of the fatal flaw.

There’s a lesson for us as we think back on the word hamartia. In the evolution of that word from ancient Greek to marketplace Greek—that’s the Greek used in the NT—in that evolution the word hamartia stopped describing a dramatic fatal flaw, and came to represent the biblical idea of sin.

Some people have seen this passage as Jesus’ way of humiliating or punishing Peter—that’s certainly how Peter saw it. But it’s closer to the truth to say that Jesus was restoring Peter by giving him three chances to say what he should have said in Jerusalem. Jesus was giving Peter a chance to say sorry for his sin, and to get on with his life.

What I like about this is that Jesus doesn’t ask Peter to grovel or define his faith with some complex doctrinal statement. Jesus simply asks him if he loves him, and when he says he does, Jesus recommissions Peter for the job Jesus wanted him to have all along: ‘Feed my lambs,’ Jesus said. ‘Take care of my sheep.’

This story, more than most, gets at the heart of the Christian faith. We are created and called for a purpose, but we get in our own way and have to be restored—recommissioned for the job Jesus wanted us to have all along. But first, and then from time to time along the way, we stop to say sorry for our sins.

That’s an idea that matters for us as individuals, and also as a community of faith—as a community of the Atonement.

As individual disciples part of the discipline of living the life of faith is to come before God in confession every so often. Every person has a past—every person has a past—and it’s in confession—in repentance and forgiveness, that we get cleaned off and made ready to be faithful people again.

But as a church that gets more complicated. Every church has history—some of it great and some of it not so great at all. Every church has a past, and it’s always up to the present congregation and leadership to manage that past and get on with the business of being an effective, caring, creative community of Christian faith.

Even this church has a few dark moments in its past—times when it wounded people by not doing what it should have done. Those dark moments need to be acknowledged and reconciled so that this place can be restored like Peter—restored to accomplish what God has in store for us.

It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this every so often.

When I bought my first house I learned that one of the fees you pay in the States is for something called ‘title insurance.’ Title insurance is protection against claims on the property based on the actions of a previous owner. It covers all kinds of things to make sure that when you buy a house you actually get what you’re paying for.

Why do I bring that up? Because title insurance doesn’t exist in the church.

Apart from repentance and forgiveness and restoration, there isn’t any protection against claims on this community based on the actions of previous owners.

It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this every so often.

But we do, and we will. Not to settle scores or continue battles or to be vindictive, but so that we can be a community that lives as if the atonement really means what Christ said it means. So that we can be a place where God’s will is done and lived out by each of us on our own, and by all of us when we gather as a church.

So back to the Greek tragedies—the goal, desired outcome in a Greek tragedy was something called catharsis.

Catharsis is another Greek word—this one means "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." In different forms it can mean "to purify, or to purge,” or "pure or clean."

In the Christian tradition we call that repentance and forgiveness and restoration. Those are normal, necessary parts of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. When we miss the mark—when we sin—God’s forgiveness is there for anyone and any church who is willing to repent. It’s God’s forgiveness and grace that keep our past actions from becoming fatal flaws.

We need that grace in our own lives, and we need it in this church.

We’re going to revisit this idea from time to time here in the coming year, and your church Council is going to be talking about it, too.

As we travel this road together it’ll be good to remember Peter the disciple—the one who Jesus called, the one who committed a terrible sin, the one who was restored through repentance and forgiveness, and the one who ultimately served the church faithfully and sacrificially.

As with all things, we bring our lives and this church before the throne of God as a reminder that we are his, and that we’ve been purchased with a price.

In the end that’s the only title insurance we can truly have or hope for. Amen.

Because the sinless savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the Just is satisfied,
To look on Him and pardon me.

Let’s sing that together: ‘Before the Throne of God Above.’

A Bad Rap

(The dialogue with Tony Jones is below this post. This message was given on May 10th at the American Church in London.)

John 20:24-31

Few things are harder to take than disillusionment. We see a lot of it around us today in the news, in our economy, maybe even in our own lives. Disillusionment in the church tends to be hardest on the most sincerely faithful—the passionate—the ones most likely to be committed and sacrificial. I’ve said here before that if you peel back the crusty exterior of a cynic, what you’re likely to find is a wounded idealist.

Disillusionment—what the dictionary refers to as ‘to cause to lose faith and trust’—disillusionment is the result of having our faith and trust stretched beyond the breaking point.

Our text this morning tells the story of a disillusioned disciple. It also shows us what God offers to restore our faith.

24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

So we’ve been looking at the events right after the catastrophe of Holy Week. Jesus’ disciples, who had followed him for years, along with the other believers, are trying to figure out what to do next. They’d followed Jesus into Jerusalem hoping that he’d take over, that he’s overthrow Rome and establish his kingdom—they’d hoped for all that, only to see him arrested and beaten and humiliated and killed.

But then there was the empty tomb—the resurrection of Jesus had kept his followers off-balance—even the ones who had seen him with their own eyes. In the passage right before ours, Jesus enters a room where most of the disciples were gathering for a meal, and he showed them his hands and side and ate with them. The reports spread to the people outside the inner circle, and the news eventually made it to Thomas. ‘We have seen the Lord’, his friends told him.

But Thomas wasn’t buying any of it. Thomas had his faith and trust stretched beyond the breaking point, and so he responds to Jesus with a fairly modern question. He asks for evidence—he asks for a sign that what he believes is true—that what he had trusted is real. There’s a little scientific method going on here—Thomas wants to examine the data and see if they all add up.

As we continue this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.

Thomas the disciple had a hard time believing that anything good could come out of the horrible experience of seeing the painful death of his friend and teacher. We’ve come to know him as ‘Doubting Thomas’, which I think is a bit unfair.

It’s unfair because it doesn’t reconcile with the only other story we have of Thomas as a disciple. In John 11:16, after several years of traveling in the countryside, Jesus decides that it’s time to go to Jerusalem. The other disciples tried to convince Jesus not to go—returning to Jerusalem was dangerous—they tried to save themselves, but Thomas said: ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ In other words: In for a penny, in for a pound. Not exactly the behavior of a skeptic.

Identifying Thomas by his doubts at the end of Jesus’ ministry is a bad rap—it’s a charge that might be true on its face, but doesn’t really get the whole story. Thomas was brave when the rest showed cowardice. He was faithful and passionate and strong, when the others waffled and squabbled about who got the best seat next to Jesus in heaven. When it all went sideways, who can blame him for feeling a little disillusioned? He was faithful and passionate and committed and sacrificial—but he was also human. Identifying Thomas simply by his doubts at the end of Jesus’ ministry isn’t fair at all.

Besides, it ignores two main parts of the big picture as we see it now.

First, even Jesus doesn’t curse Thomas for wanting to see—he just says he’d be happier (that’s the meaning of ‘blessed’ here) if he had been able to believe without seeing. That’s not exactly condemnation—it sounds like Jesus is pastoring his friend pretty well here.

Second, when we focus on Thomas’ doubts we forget where we are in this story. We said a few weeks ago that the Atonement is really a drama in three acts: the Cross, the Resurrection and Pentecost, or the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we neglect the way those three work together—how essential each part is to God’s plan for us—we risk misunderstanding the story entirely. Here’s the bottom line: Thomas couldn’t experience Pentecost—he couldn’t enjoy the third act of this great drama—until the Risen Christ had been taken up into heaven.

I can put that another way. Thomas wanted to experience the presence and power of Christ in a real way. What he didn’t know was that that was exactly what Christ was about to offer him.

For understanding this we get some help from an unlikely source. I warned you all a month or so ago that since this is the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, we’ll be checking in with him along the way to see if he offers any help.

Calvin talks about the need for Jesus to leave behind the limitations of being a physical person, so that his Spirit could come to teach and inspire and empower the people of God for the new task ahead.

He wrote: ‘For Christ left us in such a way that his presence might be more useful to us—a presence that had been confined in a humble abode of flesh so long as he sojourned on earth.’

You heard a little about Christ’s return to heaven last week. Here’s Calvin’s take on that event:

‘Carried up into heaven, therefore, he withdrew his bodily presence from our sight, not to cease to be present with believers still on their earthly pilgrimage, but to rule heaven and earth with a more immediate power…by his ascension he fulfilled what he had promised: that he would be with us even to the end of the world.’

In other words, we’re faced with a paradox—something that is counter-intuitive—something that might not make sense on the surface. With the gift of the Holy Spirit we experience more of the fullness of Christ than if he were here in bodily form. It’s sort of like the difference between a performer doing a show with each member of the audience individually, as opposed to broadcasting on TV or radio.

So back to Thomas. It’s important for us to understand that Thomas wasn’t condemned for his doubts. Thomas was scolded a little for missing the point—for under-asking. Jesus was offering a radical, world-changing gift, and Thomas just wanted everything to be like it had been before.

A lot of you know already that I used to work in Christian non-profits as a fund raiser. Every fund raiser has a story about under asking—about meeting someone and cultivating a gift, only to make the mistake of not asking for a gift that matches the commitment of the donor. You know when it happens, because they say ‘yes’ very quickly. Professional development officers call this ‘leaving money on the table.’

In that sense the problem might not exactly add up to an inability to believe. Instead, like Thomas, our doubts might actually be an inability or unwillingness to hope that Christ really is who he said he is—that he’ll really do what he promised to do. Christ was there, ready to offer something amazing in the form of the Holy Spirit, and Thomas left money on the table.

But notice how Jesus responded to Thomas when he said, ‘yeah, I’ll believe it when I can see it—when I can touch it for myself.’ Notice what Jesus did. He said: ‘Peace be with you—my Shalom be with you. See my hands—touch my side. Stop doubting and believe’

Christ makes that same offer to us today. Oh, I don’t think anyone here is going to touch the wounds of Jesus today, but through the work of the Holy Spirit—the third act of God’s Atonement drama—through the Holy Spirit we come to this place, the body of Christ, where we find fellowship and worship and discipleship and a call to mission.

Through the gift of the Holy Spirit we are called to be Christ’s church here, in this time and in this place. To be the very presence of Christ for each other and for the world.

Because what Thomas really wanted was a reminder of Christ’s presence—a sense that Christ cared and loved and could be trusted to do what he said he would do. The gift of the Holy Spirit, as it guides and empowers all people of faith, is exactly what Thomas wanted. It’s exactly what we want from God, and in a few weeks, at Pentecost, we’ll celebrate that the Spirit is God’s response to our demand for a sign.

My prayer for all of us, as we move through these resurrection sightings into the season of Pentecost—my prayer for us is that we’ll reach out and touch Christ as we find him in this community of faith.

That this church will be a tangible sign of God’s love and faithfulness.

That we’ll feel Christ’s presence and be warmed in his Shalom.

That we’ll stop doubting and believe.

That we will, at the very same time, bow before our God and look him in the eye as Thomas did, and say: ‘My Lord and my God.’

For that we’ll need a dose of Christ’s grace—we’ll need new hearts that are repaired and restored and renewed for the journey. Let’s make that our prayer this morning. Let’s stand and sing together: ‘Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God’

My attempt at a collegial rejoinder to Tony Jones

So if you're coming late to this discussion, you can catch up by reading the posts below. Author and Emergent Church leader Tony Jones has made it his mission to convince his readers who are in denominations to abandon the ordination processes which he considers worthless. Tony and I are friends from seminary and, oddly enough, attended each other's ordination services, which provides some interesting context for our discussion.

In many ways I'm an odd choice to defend traditional ordination in a denomination. While I am a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the PCUSA, most of my career has been spent in non-profit management, mostly in the fringes of denominational life. But I do have enormous respect for my brothers and sisters who have served Christ faithfully and effectively within the institutional structures of the Presbyterian Church, and so I am offering an opposing viewpoint to Tony's 'all babies out with the bathwater' argument.

Wherever else this discussion goes, the crux of my argument is this: The choice of denominational ordination is precisely that. It's a choice, made prayerfully and with integrity, to serve Christ and the world in partnership with, and in submission to, agreed upon organizing principles.

That's it. That's the point I'm trying to make for Tony and his readers. I make no claim of superiority for my Presbyterian tradition, and I would never, ever, argue that only large denominations have the authority to define and practice the ordination of ministers.

I simply want my choice of denominational participation, and the similar choices of others, to be respected in partnership with the groundbreaking work of Tony and other Emergent leaders and thinkers. The attacks really do have to stop. The missiles Tony is sending at those of us in denominations misrepresent the experiences of thousands of ministers, hurt the body of Christ, and they distract us from our true calling: To worship and serve in Christ's name, and to model the transforming love of Jesus to a hurting world. The attacks really do have to stop.

Below, in a format I'm borrowing from Tony's last two posts, are my responses to some of Tony's arguments. I hope it's interesting, I hope it's edifying, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that I hope it's a little entertaining. But what I truly hope, what I really want out of this, is for Tony to call a truce in his war on denominational institutions, for him to turn his intellect and spiritual gifting toward the real task at hand.

Here, then, are my responses:

TJ writes: ‘We ordain everyone. If you want to be ordained to perform a wedding, or to be a lawnmower repairman, we'll ordain you to that ministry.’

That’s fine. As was surely clear in my first post, I wasn’t trying to tell anyone else how they should ordain their leaders or ministers. What continues to baffle me is why you would try to do exactly that. There’s simply nothing to be gained by commenting on a process you neither fully understand nor respect, simply to spark a discussion or to score points for your friend. Ordaining the gardener is fine, but as a practical matter let’s at least agree on another term for the biblical task of setting aside some gifted people for ministry leadership in a particular church. Call it ordaining, call it anointing, call it a ‘Half-Nelson’, but call it something so that we don’t have to spend so much time talking about it while there’s work to do.

TJ writes: ‘Both you and others have questioned whether Adam has been entirely forthcoming in his posting about these matters. Maybe, some have implied, there's a back story of disobedience that Adam is hiding from the blogosphere. I can assure you that Adam is being candid about his candidacy.’

In point of fact, Tony, you can’t assure your readers of anything close to that. You know what Adam has told you, but even those facts are in dispute. As this has become part of the issue, I asked colleagues, both close to the situation and not, what they thought. Those close were dumbfounded at the way this has been inaccurately blasted all over the web, and those of us who are not connected to it have a queasy feeling that there must be some reason for a CPM (Committee on Preparation for Ministry) to act as they have.

Some facts to help our understanding: One does not get a ‘new presbytery’ just by showing up at a meeting—even Adam’s own website lists him as under care of the Kendall presbytery and not San Francisco. Further, in order to be ordained (or, in normal circumstances, to move to a new presbytery) one must have a valid call to a church or ministry. If Adam has a call, then where is his calling church in this? Say what you will about monolithic Presbyterianism, but at one level we’re all just congregations trying to get by. If there’s a church out there that has gone through a lengthy search process only to be thwarted by a presbytery, I would expect to hear a mighty outcry indeed (see, for example, any issue of The Layman). All I hear is, well, silence.

The bottom line here is that someone, somewhere, isn’t telling the whole story. That’s OK with me, because the church, the presbyteries involved, and mostly the candidate, deserve to conduct this process with more discretion and seriousness than it’s receiving right now. What I have to challenge categorically is your assertion that he’s being fully candid with you or his readers. That simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

TJ writes: ‘I don't know that everyone would concur with your verdict that the Christian fundamentalism crippled the spreading of the gospel.’

I’m sure you’re right on that, because I haven’t published my book on it yet. Let’s revisit this one in a couple of years. I'm quite sure that the post-WWII years represent the biggest missed opportunity in the Protestant era. My contention, and you’ll hopefully appreciate the nod to logic here, is that whatever might have been accomplished by evangelicals in the years after WWII, it is surely dwarfed by what they could have accomplished if they hadn’t had their guns (time, money, rhetoric, etc.) aimed at each other for most of the century. Once separated from Protestant liberalism, conservative evangelicals spent much of the next seven decades fighting with each other over doctrinal purity, ecclesiological conformity, and (mostly) market share. While you’re certainly right in saying that our beloved Fuller Seminary was born out of ‘chasm between liberalism and fundamentalism,’ it’s important to note that Fuller and its early faculty functioned more as a reaction to fundamentalism than to anything on the left.

Where this fits in with your attacks on denominations (and the people who love or even tolerate them) should now be clear. You continue in your broadsides and ‘ironic’ petitions to belittle a system within which other Christians worship and serve, while I, along with hundreds of readers and commentators, have blown a lot of hours this week trying to challenge or present an alternative view to your thinking. I argue that this is a growing drain on Christian resources (oddly enough, time, money and rhetoric) that could be used to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in meaningful and creative ways. I’m not going to let this one go—I can’t let you be the only voice on this to your readers. On this issue you are mirroring the pattern of mid-20th-century American fundamentalism, and my prayer is that the impact won’t be nearly as damaging. We simply don’t have the resources in the bank to waste anymore.

TJ writes: ‘My dispute with denominationalists is surely not theological. No, my quest is more like that of Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Simons, Wesley, and Wimber. I see a system that has outgrown its usefulness, and I am calling those who run that system to reform it, radically and immediately. And: ‘‘My point, as I wrote yesterday, is to expose the ridiculousness of the systems by which people use denominations to exert their power over other people—like Adam.’

Dude. I have admired your chutzpah for almost 20 years now, but for me this is going a bit too far. I can’t quite place your darts at denominations on the same level as Calvin and the rest! What really gets me, and others like me who are trying hard to sift these things out of your otherwise helpful writings, is your pronouncement that my church ‘has outgrown its usefulness.’ That’s simply false—and more than a little bizarre—on its face, and when joined with the other attacks on Christians who serve in denominations it becomes a body of misinformation for which I think you should apologize. It may be true that blogging is ‘immediate work’ and should be absolved from having to be accurate, but it’s in your published work as well, so I know you’re given it some thought.

Maybe the real irony here is that what I want to say to you is a variation on the Jon Stewart line you quote in The New Christians (p.22): ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting’ those of who serve in denominational churches, and who seek to be your partners—your brothers and sisters on the journey.

An apology along the way

“As iron sharpens iron, so one friend sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)

Over the weekend I entered into a public dialogue with Tony Jones over his treatment of denominations in his blogging and published work. In my post I think I strayed away from addressing Tony’s ideas, and into attacking him personally.

I want to say here that I’m sorry that I did that.

The church of Jesus Christ is made up of broken people who are being pieced back together by a loving God. Obviously—obviously—I’m one of those cracked pots. And so in the only real currency we trade as Christian people, I’m asking for a little grace as I learn some new skills. The discussion Tony and I are having—along with many of you—is a very important one, and I don’t want my indiscretion to get in the way of that.

If you haven’t seen it already, here’s Part One of Tony’s response to my letter.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/tonyjones/2009/05/reconsider-ordination-now.html

I remain a fan of Tony’s thought and work—even when we don't agree, and even more so since he modeled it in his gracious response to my complaint. My hope is to continue this multi-part conversation not just to increase our understanding of the different viewpoints, but more to see how we can work together to accomplish the real task before us:

How do we demonstrate the love of Jesus to a desperate world?

How do we act as the Body of Christ—through teaching, service, proclamation, sacraments, work, play, intellectual life and the arts—how do we work together to be the tangible presence of Christ in a world that rejects him…often because of us? In this discussion of who and how we ordain for ministry, let’s not lose focus on the bigger questions at hand.

In future posts I want to explore how this complex of issues—how churches are organized and managed, how we set aside people for special ministries within the Body, and even how we compensate ministers—how all of that helps/hinders/annoys the community of faith as it lives out its calling.

One last thought: The handling of these topics in a blog format has some inherent dangers to it. In the not-too-distant-past the discussion between myself and Tony would have taken place over a longer period of time, and it also would have benefited from the review and comment of our peers before publishing. Tony rightfully points out that blogging is different, but I wonder if a few self-imposed boundaries might serve all of us better. N.T. Wright thinks so, and Blake Huggins has (of course) blogged about it at the link below.

http://blakehuggins.com/2009/05/11/we-need-a-christian-ethic-of-blogging/

An Emergent Discussion

I've been involved in a discussion on Facebook and Belief.net over the weekend that I want to share with you. Tony Jones is a leader in the Emergent church movement and the author of several books, most significantly 'The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier.' If you've visited my site for any amount of time, you'll notice that I've recommended his book for almost a year now.

Full disclosure: Tony and I have known each other for almost 20 years, as you'll see in my letter below. Our ministry and academic paths have gone in different directions during that time: I'm ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA, and my doctoral work was in history. Tony was ordained in a Congregational church but now participates in a house church called Solomon's Porch. His current doctoral studies are, I believe, in the area of practical theology.

Tony has much to offer the Body of Christ. His work within and among Emergent Christians is, on balance, a net positive for the future of Christianity. He loves Jesus and wants to make the gospel known to those who have rejected him in the past.

But Tony has a serious blind spot when it comes to those of us who serve in Christian denominations. He distrusts institutions, as many of us have come to do, and believes that the bureaucracy of denominations can get in the way of the passionate and effective communcation of the gospel to a hungry world. I don't disagree with any of that. But Tony usually includes in his attacks (inappropriately, in my view) some mention of the health plans and pension provisions offered by some denominations, making the argument that ministers are sucked in to ineffectual ministry by the promise of medical benefits and a comfy retirement.

The problem is that Tony takes that data and reduces it into an equation that looks something like this:

Church+health plan+pension = Evil Enemy of Christ

Not surprisingly, I think Tony is wrong about this, and have told him that personally. But he keeps making that argument, as he has every right to do, and in the process he brings a measure of shame and misinformation on those of us who choose to serve in historic churches.

What historians know but Tony doesn't seem to understand is that he is following precisely the path of the American Fundamentalists of the 1900s. In their zeal to create a purer, more faithful church, they ended up attacking fellow believers and crippling what should have been a golden age of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am calling on Tony and others to stop this destructive behavior now, before it's too late.

I offer the exchange below as an example of how this discussion is going. Tony posted his piece (which I have included here) last Friday at http://blog.beliefnet.com/tonyjones/2009/05/lets-ordain-adam.html, and I posted the response below over the weekend. My hope is not to attack or score rhetorical points, but rather to shift the discussion in a different direction and to focus Tony's enormous potential toward a more positive goal.

Please give these posts a careful read, and let me know what you think.

Let's Ordain Adam
Tony Jones

Friday May 8, 2009

My friend, Adam Walker-Cleaveland, has once again been thwarted in his attempt to be ordained as a "minister of word and sacrament" in the Presbyterian Church (USA). First it was because his presbytery in Idaho objected that he asked his best friend, who happens to be gay, to preach at his ordination service. Now it's because his new presbytery in California says that his M.Div. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary -- a PC(USA) seminary!!! -- isn't good enough.

Few things piss me off as much as the sinful bureaucratic systems of denominational Christianity. When rules and regulations trump common sense, then the shark has officially been jumped.

But what gets to me even more is that bright, competent, and pastorally experienced persons like Adam continue to submit themselves to these sinful systems. They assure me that it's not for the health insurance or the pension. They do it cuz they feel "called." And if I hear another person tell me that they're sticking with their abusive denomination because, "They're my tribe," I'm gonna go postal.

So, it's time for us to do something. It's time for us, the body of Christ, to ordain Adam. To that end, I've started a petition, beseeching Adam to quit the PC(USA) ordination circus and to accept our ordination of him.

------------------------------------------------
May 9th, 2009

Tony,

I’m writing as a guy who loves you and admires your work, as a fellow seminary student from almost 20 years ago, and also as a PCUSA minister. Incidentally, given the context of your posting, I’m also the guy who preached at your own ordination service back in 1997.

It’s through all that history and affection that I need to tell you publicly that you’re wrong.

Not about the injustice surrounding your friend’s ordination. Allowing that you’ve communicated all the relevant facts, it doesn’t seem fair that he couldn’t invite a friend of faith to participate in his ordination service. You attended my ordination five years before yours, and you saw that I had the freedom to include a broad range of people who were significant in my development as a minister. You did the same in yours.

On the other hand, your friend may have erred in being unwilling to demonstrate that he could take direction and counsel from a governing body—something that I believe has a place in the context of the American religious free market. In the PCUSA, the process of becoming ordained is partly an exercise in learning healthy submission to peer authority (I can see the eyes rolling back in your head). Now setting aside the not-nearly-rare-enough instances where the submission required is unhealthy, it’s not a bad lesson to learn. More importantly, once candidates have completed (survived?) that process, we have enormous freedom to live and serve as our own calling leads us. It’s OK with me that we disagree on this point. That’s not the problem.

What gets me is that you have demonstrated a rash and bitter level of dismissiveness to those of us who choose this path. In your anger at the bureaucracy of large denominations and institutions, you’ve lashed out not only at them but also at the men and women of faith and calling who participate freely in the opportunities for ministry that they offer.

You sneer at it as simply being loyal to the tribe, and you rarely pass up a chance to mention the availability of health insurance or pensions. Shame on you for not being able—or worse, willing—to understand another person’s experience. You grew up in a very wealthy family and your financial security has never been a hindrance or worry to you—not through Dartmouth, Fuller, Princeton or beyond. What if there’s nothing wrong with trying to be a good steward of a family’s health, whether physical or financial? What if, for example, serving Christ in a denomination that provides a health plan isn’t a sin or a ‘sell-out’ at all, but rather a prudent way to be a good steward?

If I might paraphrase the sense of Jesus’ teaching about the splinter and the log, I suggest this: Swear off or return everything you’ve received from your family before saying another word about how the rest of us provide for ours.

But setting aside the pension issue, what keeps me, and possibly your friend Adam, in the PCUSA isn’t blind servitude or tribalism or even the paltry retirement plan it offers. What keeps me loyal—and I use that term as a virtue, not a punch line—has little to do with whether I think my tradition is best (I don’t). It’s simply that it was in a Presbyterian church that I met Jesus in a life-changing way. And when I felt Christ’s call to ministry in his church, it was that same congregation who helped train me, who prayed for me, and who gave me the chance to test my call in service. I love those people, and yes, I do feel loyal to them.

Tony, the biggest problem I see is that your hatred of denominations gets in the way of the truly important, truly inspired work that you do. It seems to me that rather than attack the weaknesses of denominations (which, frankly, is too easy a target for a man of your intellect), you should be proposing new agendas (as you do) and helping the rest of us reform existing structures from within. As a minister in a radically secular city with enormous ethnic and religious diversity, I don’t have time to re-invent many wheels. But I have learned from the things you’ve written and taught, once I get past the discordant attack on my choice of employer, and I’ve applied them in my teaching, preaching and leadership.

The truest thing I’ve said in this piece is in the first line. I love you and I honestly admire the work that you do within and among a new generation of Christian disciples. What I’m asking is this: get off my back and the backs of the rest of us who do it differently than you. The real problem in the world isn’t the church—it’s the sin and brokenness and injustice that clouds our chance to get a glimpse of Jesus. Help us—help me—to communicate that message in fresher, more authentic ways. Leave the ‘fixing’ of the denominations to those of us who care about them.

Remembering V-E Day

May 8th is the 64th anniversary of V-E Day, commemorating the end of World War II in Europe. The war in the Pacific would drag on for another four costly months, but on this date in 1945, citizens and leaders of the Allied nations celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany. Part of me wants to write something about this, but it occurs to me that anything I might say will be from an enormous distance of time and experience. I never had to join the military. I never had to put my life on hold or give it up completely, in violent conflict.

But I benefited in some ways from those who did, and so I can't let this day go by.

So I'd like to give the stage to two of the leaders who faced their enemies and made decisions that I can neither fathom nor judge. On May 8th 1945, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman addressed their nations and the listening world to announce the end of the war in Europe. I haven't edited these speeches...they deserve to be heard in their own time and form. Thousands of people...both military and civilian...from America, Britain and Japan...would die after this celebration ended, and both leaders speak with an eye toward the task still at hand.

And yet each is beautiful...and appropriately terrible...in its own way. I invite you to give them a read, and also to heed President Truman's call to prayer. Today is a day for sober reflection and moderate celebration.

Blessings to you this V-E Day.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill
May 8, 1945 London

My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It's a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny. After a while we were left all alone against the most tremendous military power that has been seen. We were all alone for a whole year.

There we stood, alone. Did anyone want to give in? [The crowd shouted "No."] Were we down-hearted? ["No!"] The lights went out and the bombs came down. But every man, woman and child in the country had no thought of quitting the struggle. London can take it. So we came back after long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, while all the world wondered. When shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail? I say that in the long years to come not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done and they will say "do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straightforward and die if need be-unconquered." Now we have emerged from one deadly struggle-a terrible foe has been cast on the ground and awaits our judgment and our mercy.

But there is another foe who occupies large portions of the British Empire, a foe stained with cruelty and greed-the Japanese. I rejoice we can all take a night off today and another day tomorrow. Tomorrow our great Russian allies will also be celebrating victory and after that we must begin the task of rebuilding our hearth and homes, doing our utmost to make this country a land in which all have a chance, in which all have a duty, and we must turn ourselves to fulfill our duty to our own countrymen, and to our gallant allies of the United States who were so foully and treacherously attacked by Japan. We will go hand and hand with them. Even if it is a hard struggle we will not be the ones who will fail.


President Harry S. Truman
May 8, 1945 Washington DC

THIS IS a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly over all Europe.

For this victory, we join in offering our thanks to the Providence which has guided and sustained us through the dark days of adversity.

Our rejoicing is sobered and subdued by a supreme consciousness of the terrible price we have paid to rid the world of Hitler and his evil band. Let us not forget, my fellow Americans, the sorrow and the heartache which today abide in the homes of so many of our neighbors-neighbors whose most priceless possession has been rendered as a sacrifice to redeem our liberty.

We can repay the debt which we owe to our God, to our dead and to our children only by work--by ceaseless devotion to the responsibilities which lie ahead of us. If I could give you a single watchword for the coming months, that word is--work, work, and more work.

We must work to finish the war. Our victory is but half-won. The West is free, but the East is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese. When the last Japanese division has surrendered unconditionally, then only will our fighting job be done.

We must work to bind up the wounds of a suffering world--to build an abiding peace, a peace rooted in justice and in law. We can build such a peace only by hard, toilsome, painstaking work--by understanding and working with our allies in peace as we have in war.

The job ahead is no less important, no less urgent, no less difficult than the task which now happily is done.

I call upon every American to stick to his post until the last battle is won. Until that day, let no man abandon his post or slacken his efforts. And now, I want to read to you my formal proclamation of this occasion:

A Proclamation--The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God's help, have wrung from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men. They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted their children, and murdered their loved ones. Our Armies of Liberation have restored freedom to these suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressors could never enslave.

Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the East. The whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world has been freed. United, the peace-loving nations have demonstrated in the West that their arms are stronger by far than the might of the dictators or the tyranny of military cliques that once called us soft and weak. The power of our peoples to defend themselves against all enemies will be proved in the Pacific war as it has been proved in Europe.

For the triumph of spirit and of arms which we have won, and for its promise to the peoples everywhere who join us in the love of freedom, it is fitting that we, as a nation, give thanks to Almighty God, who has strengthened us and given us the victory.

Now, therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby appoint Sunday, May 13, 1945, to be a day of prayer.

I call upon the people of the United States, whatever their faith, to unite in offering joyful thanks to God for the victory we have won, and to pray that He will support us to the end of our present struggle and guide us into the ways of peace.

I also call upon my countrymen to dedicate this day of prayer to the memory of those who have given their lives to make possible our victory.

Turkey: The Seven Churches and Istanbul

"Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches." (Rev. 1:19-20)

The ministers and spouses of the Association of International Churches in Europe and the Middle East, standing at the gate of the ancient city of Hierapolis.

Those of you who have been following on Facebook will know that Julie and I spent the last week at a conference of pastors and spouses serving international churches in Europe and the Middle East. (See the report from one of the group's leaders at http://jodimullenfondell.blogspot.com/.) The conference was in Turkey, where we toured the sites of the seven churches of John's Revelation and parts of Istanbul.

This was an extraordinary journey through the early history of the Christian church, and also to a place where the Christian faith is now represented by .1% of the 70 million people now living in Turkey. Whatever we may have learned about the church's past, we were more inspired and challenged by the prospects for its future.

Here are some pictures from our trip.

This is the modern city of Izmir, on the site of the ancient Smyrna, near the place where Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was martyred in the 2nd century. When given the chance to recant his Christian faith and save his life, Polycarp said: 'Eighty-six years I have served [Christ], and he never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?' Polycarp was killed immediately.

This is the Temple of Artemis, in what was the city of Sardis.

A floor mosaic in Sardis.

The remains of a building in Sardis.

A pillar where the city of Philadelphia once stood. The site is adjacent to a mosque.

A theatre in the city of Hierapolis.

Hierapolis.

This is a cliff in Hierapolis formed by deposits of travertine. The area has been quarried since Roman times, and is the source of building materials for much of the surrounding area.

We're standing in a pool where the travertine collects.

Remains of the city of Laodicea.

The main street in Laodicea.

At the American Church we just finished our Lent Bible study on Paul's letter to the Colossians. The city has not been excavated yet, but it was powerful to walk on its site with the words of the letter still in my head. I found a piece of decorative pottery there.

Standing on the site of Colossae...note the In-N-Out t-shirt.

St John's Basilica in Selcuk.

The place where St John, author of the Gospel, the letters and Revelation, is said to have been buried.

With Julie in Ephesus.

The public library in Ephesus.

The main street in Ephesus.

A public toilet in Ephesus.

One of the large remaining theatres in Ephesus. We paused for a reading from Revelation, and one of our group sang 'The Lord's Prayer' from the main stage. It was unbelievably moving.

After Ephesus we flew to Istanbul, a city of almost 16 million people. Situated on the Bosphorus, the strait that connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, the city has always been strategically important. But it has also been, whether you call it Byzantium, Constantinople, or Istanbul, the boundary between Eastern and Western civilization.

It's difficult to describe just how captivating Istanbul can be. From the crowds of people in open markets, to the minarets that sprout up on every block, to the mix of traditional dress and modern fashion...all of this is crammed together in a city where every few hours a call to Islamic prayer can be heard, well, everywhere.

We loved being in this city. It was a strange and hypnotic blend of the foreign and familiar, and we were drawn to it from the start.

The Hagia Sophia. When it was built in the 6th century it was the largest Christian church in the world (which it remained until St Peter's in Rome was built). In 1453 it was converted to a mosque, and the Christian art was painted or plastered over. Crosses were defaced and all other traces of the building's Christian origins were erased. It is now a museum to both the Christian and Islamic influences on Turkish culture.

Inside the Hagia Sophia.

Below are two of the Christian mosaics that have been restored.

The Blue Mosque, one of the most sacred Islamic worship spaces in Istanbul.

The ceiling of the Blue Mosque.

With Julie in the Blue Mosque. Women had to keep their heads covered, and all of us had to remove our shoes to enter.

A view of Istanbul from across the Golden Horn.

We visited the Spice Market, and found, well, lots of spices.

There were other shops as well.

I'll write more about this trip as I process all that I learned and saw. Istanbul is a place I want to keep in my prayers...for its people, for the Christians I met there, and for the message of the Gospel to be heard and believed there again.

Normandy

Walking with Ian in the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach.

Last week we had one of the best vacations we've ever had as a family. The morning after Easter we took a train to Dover, a ferry to Calais, and then spent the rest of the week in the Normandy region of France. Now for me, Normandy is synonymous with D-Day, and we saw a lot of the museums and landing sites while we were there. But Normandy is an amazing coastal farming area as well, with some great old cities to visit. We loved everything about it.
We found a nice little cafe in Rouen as we started our trip. The people were great--very patient with our poor attempts at French speaking. Our lunch was fantastic (Duck confit with pasta, below), and when we raved about the apple tart they served for dessert, they brought us more. Nice.

On our first day in Arromanches Ian made a friend. His name was Albain, and while his dad spoke fluent English, he didn't speak a word. It didn't stop them from playing non-stop for two days. Below they're playing on the beach near some of the remnants of the Mulberry harbors from D-Day.
Ian and Albain climbing a pole just outside our restaurant.

These are more of the leftover harbors built in the first few days after the D-Day invasion. They're ingenious things--making possible the delivery of the supplies that made the invasion successful. Below is the beach at Arromanches.

Our inn was one of the highlights of the trip. The hosts were great, even though we had a comically difficult time communicating with them. They were gracious and fun, with easy laughs, and we missed them when we left. Below Ian is with their enormous dog Oslo in the main dining room.

On our first morning there was a light fog that made everything look a little mysterious.

Ian at our front door.

The grounds at the inn, which is a converted 13th century monastery.

Our breakfast spread. The light green eggs are from the ducks at the inn, and they were delicious.

Ian having a pensive moment looking out onto the grounds.

Enjoying another great breakfast.

Sunset from our window.

If you're not familiar with the story of Pointe du Hoc, it's worth looking up. There were some big guns up there that had a clear view of the Omaha and Utah landing sites. They were heavily fortified in concrete bunkers and protected on the ocean side by steep cliffs. They were pounded from the air for weeks before the landings, but couldn't be destroyed. When it was proposed that a unit try to disable the guns on D-Day, the majority of the planners said it couldn't be done. On 6 June group of 225 US Rangers landed on the beach under heavy fire, climbed the cliffs and took the hill. Only 90 survived. As it turned out the guns had been moved, but the Rangers found them later and destroyed them.
The cratered landscape of Pointe du Hoc. Some of the holes are 20 feet deep and even wider across. When the Rangers got to the top, their reconnaissance maps were useless because the terrain had been so radically altered.

Ian and Albain had such a great time playing in the craters and ruins of Pointe du Hoc. They climbed on--and through--everything they could find. Many of the bunkers still had functioning tunnels, and they spent almost as much time under the ground as over it.

At first I was a little queasy about how freely they were playing. So much happened on that site. So much sacrifice...part of me wanted to keep them quiet, respectful, even mournful. But then I thought about the guys who had fought there--the ones who had accomplished what the planners had deemed impossible. I'd like to think they would have approved of our little boys having such a good time there. I'd like to think that that was why they fought in the first place--so that other boys could laugh and run and climb on that very spot. In my own mind that day I saw Ian and his friend honoring the price paid by the Rangers over the first few days of the D-Day invasion. It put tears in my eyes every time I thought about it.

The next visit for us was to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. Nothing really prepares you for being there...for what you see there. We read the inscriptions and walked among the crosses, and then down a beautiful path to Omaha Beach itself. It was a truly unforgettable thing to experience.
A fountain memorial at the Cemetery.

Standing with Julie and Ian on Omaha Beach.

Ian and I took a boat trip out into the Channel to see Omaha Beach as the soldiers on D-Day would have seen it for the first time. If you look closely, the line of white just below the trees are the crosses at the American Cemetery.
On the boat, with Omaha Beach in the background.

We did some sightseeing on the way back to Calais. This is in Trouville.

Our last stop was a beautiful port town called Honfleur.

More Honfleur.

Ian in, you guessed it, Honfleur.

Easter 2009: 'Pre-Flight Instructions'

John 20:1-18

Easter Week brings out all kinds of discussions that don’t happen much during the rest of the year. For one thing, even in this most secular of countries, it’s still called Easter Week. In the States, which claims to have a much higher proportion of people who attend church or profess the Christian faith—even in the States this has been called ‘Spring Break’ for years.

Now it’s true that even though they still call it Easter here, that name tends to mean bunnies and chocolate and daffodils and brightly colored eggs. Ian woke up to a search for chocolate eggs at our house…

But this past week The Times of London ran special sections every day discussing different parts of what Easter means, and how it’s affected the culture.

On Monday we saw a retelling of the Crucifixion story, with detail from the latest historical research. One of the articles talked about the value of the Resurrection story—even for those who reject the Christian faith.

On Tuesday there were a handful of articles about modern pilgrimages—journeys that symbolized the impact of the Easter story in the life of an individual or group.

Wednesday and Thursday covered the visual art and music that has been inspired by the Resurrection, with some discussion of how the arts continue to help our experience of the Easter miracle.

Friday’s collection of articles addressed the most important question we face as we think about Easter: What did it all mean? It’s one thing to believe that a resurrection took place—or not—but it’s another thing altogether to talk about why it happened…what was accomplished?

Now we’re going to talk about a handful of things in the next few minutes. We’ll hear one of the Easter accounts from the Scriptures, I’ll try to dazzle you with some illustrations that will help us understand and connect with what we’re celebrating, and I’m going to invite you to wrestle with what God might be trying to communicate to you on this one specific morning.

But before we get to any of that let me just state for the record why we’re here today.

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

Now that’s a lot to swallow. If it helps you, this story was just as dramatic and confusing in the 1st century—1700 years before the rise of the modern scientific method—as it is for us today. This is not an easy story. The pastel colors and bunnies and chocolate are all part of our way to get distracted from the shocking, absolutely radical, life-changing story of the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.

So back to the series of articles in The Times. In the midst of all those special Easter reports, and without recognizing the connection between the two, The Times ran a special section on Thursday about surprise endings in movies. Now I love watching movies—sometimes I even get snooty enough about to call them ‘films.’ I don’t like spoiling the twists in movies, but my rule is that if it’s been out more than five years, it’s fair game.

The article in The Times mentioned 'The Sixth Sense', with Bruce Willis, where it takes him the entire length of the movie to realize that he’s dead.

'Fight Club', which isn’t for the squeamish, has a shock at the end when Edward Norton realizes that he’s Brad Pitt. That may be a dream for a lot of us…

My favorite, though, is 'The Usual Suspects'. The entire film is really one character telling an enormous lie to deflect suspicion from the fact that he’s in control of everything. When you find out at the end who Kaiser Soze is, it takes your breath away.

I suppose the mark of a great surprise ending is when you want to go back and see the movie again.

With that in mind, here’s another familiar story with a surprise twist at the end.

1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
10Then the disciples went back to their homes, 11but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"
"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
15"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."
16Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).
17Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "
18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.

What a great telling of the resurrection story. Mary Magdalene and a few of the disciples go to the place where Jesus had been buried, and they panic when they can’t find him. They assume the body has been stolen. The disciples go back to their house, but Mary stays there, weeping, devastated by the events of the last week. Jesus came into Jerusalem with such promise, but she watched him arrested, beaten, crucified and buried. And now to top it off, someone has stolen the body.

Mary’s so distraught that even when the risen Jesus comes to comfort her, she mistakes him for the gardener. When she sees who he is, she runs back to the disciples with the good news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’

Over the past six weeks we’ve been talking about how the Atonement—what Jesus the Messiah accomplished in his death and resurrection—how the Atonement heals the relationships God made for us to enjoy. How God calls us back to him through Christ to wholeness and contentment and peace and love—what the Bible calls ‘Shalom.’

The resurrection of Jesus is the high point of that story. It’s where we see God not only pay a price for us, but also where he shows that he has power over the thing we fear most. The resurrection shows that God has power even over death.

Now it should be clear by now that this is one of the Sundays in the year where we don’t try to make everything rational or logical—we don’t try to explain the science behind the resurrection of Jesus. This is a 100% miracle—a miracle that defines and gives shape to our faith and our hope. From top to bottom it is the work of God, interfering with history—interfering with processes we think we understand and try to control. On this one Sunday of the year—we’re here to talk about and to celebrate a miracle.

Most people wouldn’t recognize the name Witold Pilecki. I had no idea who he was until I read an article about him last month. Pilecki was a resistance fighter in Poland during the Second World War. In order to get evidence of what was happening in the concentration camps, he changed his identity and made himself Jewish, so he would be arrested. Can you imagine? He ended up in Auschwitz, and wrote a full report of what he saw there. He escaped and smuggled the report to London, where it was passed along to the Allied leadership.

Who would do such a thing? Who would willingly take on another identity—a dangerous identity—in order to help others who were doomed to death?

Let’s review again why we’re here today.

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

But so much of the world seems to be going crazy these days. Between the economy and earthquakes and pirates on the high seas and the tragedies that touch all of our lives… So much of the world seems as though it hasn’t been touched at all by the Resurrection of Jesus.

Tomorrow morning, Julie, Ian and I are going to Normandy for the first time. I’ve been an avid reader of WWII history since I was a kid, and I’m excited about seeing the landing sites in person. It’s hard to grasp how huge the invasion really was.

On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. That’s on the first day alone.

On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 individual flights

By the end of 11 June (D + 5), 326,547 troops, 54,186 vehicles and more than 100,000 tons of supplies had been landed on the beaches.

The D-Day invasion was an amazing achievement—the Allies were desperate to open a second front against Nazi Germany, but in order to do that you had to get an army onto land in Europe—an army that was ready to fight and win.

Of course we know that WWII didn’t end in June of 1944, but in was clear that the tide of the war had turned when the Normandy landings were successful. There was still an enormous amount of fighting to do—the Battle of the Bulge, the failed invasion of Holland, the street fighting in Berlin—all of these came after D-Day. But once the Allies were able to put an army in France, the outcome of the war was assured.

Easter is the D-Day moment in the Bible. The tide of the war has turned—the Messiah that God promised has come.

He loved and taught and modeled for us what God is like.

He healed and comforted and showed us how God made us to live.

He suffered and died to cover the worst of how we reject God’s love.

He rose again to show that even death couldn’t separate us from the God who made us and loves us.

But none of that means the job is completed. There’s still some work yet to do.

There is still suffering to care for and to prevent.

There is still injustice and oppression to stand up against in God’s name.

There is still an earth to protect and tend so that all of God’s people can enjoy its fruit.

There are still people who haven’t seen or heard a credible version of the Gospel.

There is still plenty of work to do. Most of the world still hasn’t experienced the blessing of the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. D-Day may have already happened—the decisive battle may have already been won, but there is still plenty of work to do.

And on top of that, the resurrection is still a hard concept for us to grasp. It can be an overwhelming challenge for us to think of God intervening in history—interfering in the way we understand how the world works. It’s hard sometimes to say that we believe—that we have faith in something that other people struggle with or completely reject.

Remember the book, ‘All I ever needed to know I learned in Kindergarten’? The author tried to sum up the really important lessons of life using the things he learned in school when he was five years old.

When it comes to having faith in the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus, I think that most of what we need to know we learn from the pre-flight instructions we hear every time we get on a plane. After pointing out the emergency exits, the attendant will say: ‘In the unlikely event of a drop in cabin pressure, a mask will drop down in front of you. Give it a tug to begin the flow of oxygen. Place your own mask on first before helping those around you.’

On this Easter Day let me invite you to take hold of the resurrection miracle for yourself. There’ll be time to worry about whether or not your neighbor—or the rest of the world—believes it along with you. Take a hold of this story and let it begin to give you life—to change your life.

Because that’s the point of the Easter miracle. It changes everything. Listen to how Tom Wright describes it in his book, Simply Christian.

‘When Jesus emerged from the tomb, justice, spirituality, relationships and beauty rose with him. Something has happened in and through Jesus as a result of which the world is a different place, a place where heaven and earth have been joined forever. God’s future has arrived in the present. Instead of mere echoes, we hear the voice of God itself: a voice which speaks of rescue from evil and death. A voice that speaks of new creation.’

We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.

That may end up being the biggest surprise twist ending of them all. The one who came and served and suffered and died—the one we call Jesus was raised from the dead. And nothing, nothing will ever be the same again.

How great—how amazing—how deep the Father’s love for us. Amen.

Life the Way it Was Meant to Be

(This is the final message in our Lenten series 'Together Again: The Meaning of the Atonement.')

John 12:12-19

Today we complete our Lent series of messages. These past five weeks may have opened up more questions than they answered, but that’s probably a good thing. The sacrifice of Christ is too big to ever really understand completely, and if we’re growing in our faith journeys it’s something we think about all through the year. But taking six weeks to wrestle with what the Atonement means for our lives is an important part of our church year, and I hope this has been a blessing for you.

Our text this morning is John 12:12-19

12The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the King of Israel!”

14Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written,

15”Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion;
see, your king is coming,
seated on a donkey's colt.”

16At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. 17Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. 19So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

We started this series of messages more than a month ago with a retelling of the story of Humpty Dumpty. We were reminded that there’s a sad story at the core of this little poem. Whoever or whatever Humpty Dumpty represents, clearly he’s taken a serious fall and is suffering because of it. The sad part is that there seems to be nothing anyone can do to help. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.’

That’s a very sad ending, I think.

The point of this series as we reflect and prepare for Easter is that Christ’s sacrifice offers us healing for our broken relationships—restoration for the relationships we were meant to have with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth.

The Bible describes how our relationships are supposed to be with the word Shalom. We were created to live in a constant, blissful state of perfect Shalom. One writer defined Shalom as ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ That Shalom describes a network of connections that define what life is all about—what life was meant to be.

One of my former pastors preached a sermon on the Trinity a few years back. Rather than try to explain rationally what it meant for God to be three persons at the same time, he said this. ‘At the center of the universe, there is a relationship.’

That’s important for us because we’re made in God’s image—that means something for us.

God made us for relationships. That’s a central teaching of the Scriptures. God made us for relationships because we’re made in his image and he exists in a perfect sort of relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We were made to live in a range of relationships at a range of levels.
But we’ve taken a serious fall—our ability to live and love and thrive in relationships has been damaged—and no one seems to know how to put it all back together again. I want to make this point as clear as possible as we begin this final countdown to remembering Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the miracle of Easter.

Jesus the Messiah came and loved, served, taught, ministered, suffered, died, and rose again in order to put our relationships back together—to restore the Shalom God made for us to enjoy from the beginning of time.

That’s it. For all the thinking and writing and philosophizing and wondering about the meaning of life, it really comes down to this one single statement.

Jesus the Messiah came and loved, served, taught, ministered, suffered, died, and rose again in order to put our relationships back together—to restore the Shalom God made for us to enjoy from the beginning of time.

In our text this morning, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a challenge to the world of broken Shalom—the world where the relationships God intended for us were twisted and distorted and shattered. Jesus entry into Jerusalem, and the events that followed, were a massive counterattack against anything that tried to prevent God’s perfect Shalom from taking its rightful place. That process didn’t end on Palm Sunday, or even on Good Friday or Easter, but from the moment Jesus rode into Jerusalem the writing was on the wall.

The sad part was that virtually no one recognized it.

Jesus has been traveling around the countryside and small towns, teaching and healing and training his disciples to carry his message. Along the way he’s been confronted by Romans, by demons, and by the religious leaders of the day. All along he knew that eventually he was going to have to enter Jerusalem—the home of the Jewish faith and the place where the Romans ruled over the region.

When he arrived the people waved palm branches and offered worship to him. They said “Hosanna, hosanna. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the King of Israel.” All of that language was tied to the Jewish expectation for a Messiah—the centuries of waiting, now focused on their present situation. They wanted a king—the new King of Israel—and they put their hopes on this healer-teacher they’d been hearing about.

OK, well, now that ‘King of Israel’ part is a problem. Jesus is about to make just about everyone in town angry at him, they just don’t know it yet.

Israel already had a king, and his name was Herod. He was the hereditary ruler who was allowed to keep his throne as long as he didn’t get in Rome’s way. Rome was the real power, and they didn’t like to talk about anyone ruling the world who wasn’t Caesar.

But the real problem was going to come from the people. After being led by their own corrupt king, and taxed and governed by Rome, what the people really wanted was someone to come and overthrow everyone so they could determine their own fate. These folks are not going to be happy with the plan Jesus has to restore relationships and rebuild Shalom.

They’re yelling Hosanna now, but remember that these are the same people who will be shouting “crucify him!” in just a few short days.

The story of Palm Sunday is a story of one great colossal missed opportunity. Christ came to offer something truly amazing—truly life-changing—and the people who should have known better were prepared to settle for a simple political revolution. The would have been happy to conquer the Romans and run things for themselves, even if it meant losing out on the restoration of God’s
Shalom.

As you might imagine, there’s a lesson here for us, especially as we reflect on the cross and prepare for the celebration of Easter.

Why is the Cross so important? Why does the Atonement matter?

First, the Atonement matters because it teaches us what the church can be—what the church can do. Scot McKnight, a theologian from North Park Seminary in Chicago, wrote this:

“The mission of Jesus—his vision of the Kingdom—is about restoring the blind, giving limber legs to the lame, wiping the skin of the lepers clean, filling the ears of the deaf with music and sounds, bringing back dead people from the grave, and making sure the poor are taken care of…We cannot back down from this. If this is Jesus’ vision…then the creation of a community where God’s will is done is inherent to the meaning of atonement.”

That community is us. The church. The Body of Christ. The atonement, more than any Book of Order or set of by-laws or collection of creeds—the Cross of Jesus Christ tells us who and how we’re supposed to be.

Second, the Cross matters because in Christ’s atoning work to restore our relationships, we get a glimpse of what heaven will be like.

McKnight adds this: “Eternity is the society created by God around Jesus Christ wherein people enjoy union with God and communion with one another, in a place where everything works as it did in Eden.”

Most importantly, though, the Atonement matters because it is good news for the relationships we have with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth.

Here’s another way we can think about it. It’s in the miracle of Christ’s sacrifice that we see Christian realism at its best. It’s easy to think that we have to suspend most of our reason or our intellect to grasp these matters of faith. It’s easy to think that our beliefs don’t have anything to say about the real world—the place where we spend the other 167 hours of the week.

If broken relationships—the breaking of the Shalom we were meant for—if brokenness is the source of our wounds, from personal sin to corporate corruption to the systemic problems that keep millions of people in this world poor and hungry and captive. If sin is the source of the problems we read about in the news every day, then the remedy for that sin isn’t so detached after all.

The Christian message—the cross as God’s redemptive power—isn’t somehow detached from reality, it names the world’s problems as being relational down to their core, and offers a solution. Here’s that solution, one more time:

Jesus the Messiah came and loved, served, taught, ministered, suffered, died, and rose again in order to put our relationships back together—to restore the Shalom God made for us to enjoy from the beginning of time.

In the end, what the Cross represents is God’s work to give us life the way it was meant to be. The Cross reminds us that there is an offer of healing for the relationships we have with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth.

This is not a false unity, or even simply the absence of conflict, but rather the deep, rich Shalom that God made us to enjoy. The ‘webbing together of God, humans and creation, in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

As we come to the Table this morning, I invite you to take a few moments of silence to think about what the Cross means to you. Even if you’ve never considered it before, or if you’re not sure if it means anything to you. Take a silent moment to ask if that gift of Shalom is something you want to experience.

Amen.

A Fool’s Errand

(This message was given last night at the closing worship service for the Camden Cold Weather Shelter.)

1Corinthians 1:18-25

18For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

This morning when I woke up my son, I told him that I’d gotten a note from his school saying he had to wear a swimsuit and a t-shirt because they would be playing outside all day. He blinked and looked at me and said: ‘Really?’ I waited a moment and then said: ‘April Fools!’

This is a strange day—a day of pranks and jokes and hoaxes. There are literally hundreds of examples of great April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Here are some of my favorites:

In 1957 we had The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest. The BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper crop of spaghetti. In the story there was footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

Then there was The Taco Liberty Bell. In 1996 The Taco Bell Corporation announced it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the museum in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke.

In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a “Left-Handed Whopper” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. At the same time, according to the press release, “many others requested their own 'right handed' version.”

In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 am on the first of April a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church talks about a different kind of foolishness.

This part of Paul’s letter addresses something he faced a lot in his work in the first century. People who were educated and worldly and sophisticated often had a hard time grasping the core of the gospel message—that we are broken people in need of a savior, and that once saved we’re called to give sacrificially to help others.

People in Paul’s culture would have considered the Christian gospel to be the height of foolishness.

And yet Paul makes the case that the work of God through Jesus Christ was so dramatic, so decisive, so perfect, that the most brilliant thoughts humans could muster would seem foolish by comparison.

‘But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles.’

Paul’s response to that was to say that ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than all of our wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than all of our strength.’

There’s an American basketball coach named Bobby Knight, who has a reputation for reacting badly to questions he doesn’t like or comments he thinks are less-than-informed. I remember a few years back, after a sports reporter confronted him on a coaching decision, hearing Knight shouted at the man: ‘I’ve forgotten more about basketball than you’ll ever know!’

Paul might be holding his temper here, but that’s the point he’s trying to make. God’s work on our behalf in the ministry of Jesus Christ was so complete that it makes our attempts to understand it look foolish by comparison.

Paul knew that the message of the Cross didn’t reconcile very well with the culture of the first century. The world was a fractured place, forced together by the military power of Rome, leaving people to scramble after their own interests in order to survive and prosper.

Some people resisted Rome, and most of them were crushed. Some collaborated, like the tax collectors we see in the Scriptures, and they were shunned by their friends and families. Some hid in the margins and never really found a place to fit.

What they didn’t do much was give of themselves. The most common response to the challenges of the first century was a sense of self-preservation—of taking care of yourself and your family, without much concern for the needy outside your walls.

That may sound familiar. In our culture—especially in these dangerous economic times—the first thing to go is charitable giving. Registered charities in the UK and the US are reporting dramatic cuts in giving and investment in all kinds of causes.

People who used to offer support are trying to be wise about how they spend and give their money.

I think that’s what makes this past four months of the Cold Weather Shelter so amazing. All around us we were hearing the awful news about the economy. Jobs lost, money supplies tightening up, companies and banks failing. It would have been very easy for people to pull back—to cut off support—to hold on to their giving budgets. That may have even been the wise thing to do.

But in the midst of all that bad news, churches with tight budgets offered generous support to the work of the Shelter. People whose own jobs might not have been secure gave of their time and talent to make a temporary home for some needy people in this community.

We have acted foolishly this year, and that’s a holy thing.

The churches and volunteers and staff of the Cold Weather Shelter have demonstrated the holiness of being foolish in Christ’s name. No jokes, no pranks, no hoaxes.

Paul wrote in our passage that ‘the message of the cross is foolishness to those who don’t believe, but to us it is the very power of God.’

I don’t know how powerful you felt during your time working in the Shelter this year, but it was an incredibly powerful act. The crazy thing is, no matter how foolish the world might think we were for giving of our time or resources or talents or prayers. No matter how foolish that might seem to the culture, by helping our guests we were exercising the very power of God.

As this season of working in the Shelter comes to a close, I’m encouraged by the skill of the Shelter staff, the loving hospitality of the churches, the love and kindness of the volunteers, the generosity of the donors, and the dignity and graciousness of the guests.

What a blessing this has been. What a great time of service and unity and divine power. The work of the Shelter this year has been an exercise in the best kind of foolishness, and I can’t wait to start again next year.

Let’s pray together.

This Land is Your Land

(This is the fifth message in our Lenten series 'Together Again: The Meaning of the Atonement.')

Genesis 1:26-31 and Romans 8:18-23

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

At our house in California we had the only swimming pool in the family, and so summers became a long string of barbecues and swim parties for the kids. It started before Memorial Day in May, and lasted until after school started. In the summer, maybe 3 or 4 times a week our extended family would come over, swim, eat and tell stories together. It was great.

There was always a point in the summer when the bees in our neighborhood would breed and go out looking for food to take back to the hive. Nothing makes a person move more quickly or in a funnier way than the sight of a bee—you know what I’m talking about.

But bees play a crucial role in our lives. It’s not just honey, though I’ll bet you didn’t know that a 16-ounce bottle of honey represents the work of tens of thousands of bees who flew a total of 112,000 miles to gather nectar from 4.5 million flowers. That’s for 16 ounces of honey.

Do you know how bees make honey? The gathering bees take their loads back to receiver bees, who eat it and expel it 200 times, which kills any dangerous microbes it may have. The whole time they do this they fan it with their wings—more than 25,000 times each. When it’s done another wax specialist bee comes along and seals it in the comb.

That’s how every ounce of honey that exists in the world is made.

Even if you don’t like honey, there’s one essential truth about bees that you can’t escape: without bees there would be no flowers of any kind. Now you might be thinking that you might be able to get along just fine without flowers—they’re just there for decoration anyway, right?

Think about this: About a third of the world’s food supply is dependent on the pollinating services of honeybees.

The point of this series as we reflect and prepare for Easter is that Christ’s sacrifice offers us healing for our relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth.

The Bible describes how our relationships are supposed to be with the word Shalom. We were created to live in a constant, blissful state of perfect Shalom. One writer define Shalom as ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

Today we’re looking at what Christ’s redeeming work means for our relationship to the earth. You’ve heard a part of the creation story already. Here’s the second text for us today.

18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

That’s one of those typically complicated passages of Paul’s in his letter to the Romans. The point is that Christ’s sacrifice sets into motion a reshaping of the world into what God designed it to be in the first place. ‘Creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.’

And then there’s the groaning of creation, followed by this statement. ‘We wait eagerly for the redemption of our bodies.’ The word that translates to ‘bodies’ there is Soma, and it can also translate to ‘existence.’ We are eagerly waiting, the text tells us, for the groaning to stop—for the redemption of all existence.

Christ’s sacrifice sets that redemption in motion—not just for our personal forgiveness or salvation—but for the restoration of everything—including the earth—back to the Shalom God created.

James Watt was the Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan back in the early 80s. He was known for saying some fairly uninformed things. He once banned the Beach Boys from playing a concert in Washington DC because they attracted an ‘undesirable element.’ Who? Middle-aged surfers? Those are the happiest, most harmless people I know.

Watt was in favor of opening up just about every acre of public land for drilling, mining and other industrial use. In a lot of ways he was the worst nightmare of the environmentalist movement.

To be fair, though, he never said the one thing that most people will remember about his environmental views. He never said that since Jesus might return tomorrow, we might as well use everything up. When that was pointed out, a handful of prominent journalists—including Bill Moyers—ended up apologizing to him.

What Watt actually said was this: “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”

Now even that might make some of you uncomfortable, but we have to agree that it’s not nearly as crazy sounding as how it was reported. As much as it pains me to say it, that statement is at the moderate core of Christian teaching about the earth and how we should manage it.

James Watt makes a pretty easy target. He represents a certain kind of fundamentalism that didn’t offer much in the way of help in understanding what God wants from us—what Christ on the Cross made possible for us—in our relationship to the earth. Watt’s easy, but he’s not alone.

Lately, on the other side of the issue, there is another fundamentalism that seems to be dominating the discussion about the environment—one that may actually drive more people away from healthy discussion about the environment than James Watt ever did.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s a sort of Green Fundamentalism—The ‘gotcha’ mentality that has people looking over their neighbors’ walls to measure their carbon footprint. It’s an attitude that spends more time trying to catch people doing it wrong than it spends teaching people how to do it better.

The point here—what we’ve seen in our two texts of Scripture this morning—is this: God made the world as an integral part of his Shalom—of the web of relationships we were meant to thrive in and enjoy. Seeing our relationship to the earth as separate from the relationships we have with God, with ourselves and with each other—seeing our link to the earth separately from the rest is a part of the brokenness Christ died to restore.

That brokenness shows up in different ways. On the one side you have people who use and waste resources in a way that disregards the most basic principles of management for the long haul. The Industrial Revolution in Britain and America is a prime example of this—from mowing down old forests to strip mining to the way we use energy sources. As other countries try to develop they all seem to pass through this phase of abusive use and waste.

But on the other side some have come to worship nature to the point of forgetting why it’s here. Dennis Prager, the commentator and author that I’ve mentioned before, used to pose this question to his radio listeners: “If you saw a dog and a person drowning, and you could only rescue one of them, which would you choose?” The question cut closer to home when he asked it this way: “If the dog was your dog, and the person was a stranger, then which would you choose?”

I happen to think there’s only one right answer to these questions, but that might get us sidetracked.

Worshipping creation—putting it in a place that is out-of-kilter with the rest of our relationships—is just as much a sign of brokenness as the abuse of nature. Both miss the point about the Shalom that God created for us.

In the Genesis passage we heard about ruling over ‘the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ God creates this amazing planet, filled with all kinds of plants and creatures, and gives it to his human creation to use and to take care of. That’s what rule means. We’re so trained to think of ‘ruling’ as a bad thing, that we forget that at its heart it represents the responsibility to make Shalom possible for everyone and everything.

In some older translations we see it differently—it talks about having ‘dominion over the earth.’ Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound any better than ruling over everything. But the point is that we were given the earth and all that is in so that we could thrive in it, take care of it, be nourished by it, share it together, and pass it on to our kids and grandkids.

Clearly that’s not the way it’s working out. Climate change, pollution of land and air and water, even the impact of our Western diet on the environment. All of these are in crisis. That’s not to mention the political problems we’ve managed to create through our dependence on oil—the partnerships we never would have entertained if they didn’t help feed our thirst for fossil fuels.

How do we solve this? It’s crucial for us to see the earth in terms of the Shalom we’ve been talking about over the last month. . Biblical Shalom is ‘The webbing together of God, humans, and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

What does that mean for us to treat the world with Justice? Justice describes a situation where people get what they’re entitled to. You’ve heard me say before that I don’t believe God made a single person without providing what they need to live and thrive on. Our problem isn’t production—it’s distribution. Paying attention to justice is being an agent of Shalom in the world.

What about Fulfillment? The dictionary defines this word as, “to put into effect—to measure up to—to convert into reality.” To take good care of the earth is to convert God’s promise of Shalom into reality—literally to make it real for ourselves and our neighbors.

And that leaves Delight. This might be the easiest one to forget, and the hardest one to define. In our rush to earn and spend and acquire and consume—do we take enough time to delight in God’s creation? Do we take the time to help others to see God’s hand in the world around us. Do we remember, often enough, to enjoy the pleasures of the nature God left for us?

But what can we do? This is where the culture is helping to lead us in the small things. There are all kinds of books and pamphlets describing what we can do to save the earth. If you haven’t already, get one—use it—try some of the things in there.

Don’t feel pressured to do it all, but let me make this part clear: Feel pressured to do something. Feel challenged to take some time this Easter to think about how Christ’s redemptive work adds to what you understand about your relationship to the earth. Do something—that’s plenty.

We’re not supposed to hear this and just go back to nature—that’s not what we were meant to do. There’s a reason the Bible begins in a Garden and ends in a holy city—we were created to participate in the shaping of the culture of this world. As people who manage God’s creation on his behalf, part of our lives as called, loved, forgiven and redeemed people—our lives make the most sense when we pay attention to our relationship to the earth. When we take responsibility for what we make and what we use—what we share and even what we waste.

We don’t need another fundamentalism to force us to count our carbons and drive electric cars and even to separate our trash. Those are all great tactics for accomplishing the strategy of taking better care of the earth. But they’re not the point.

The point is that we were made to have contented, joy-filled lives of wholeness and contentment—in healthy relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other and also with the earth. Connecting with the earth in a healthy way is a part of connecting with God and each other in healthy ways.

The big picture is, well, frankly a lot bigger than we give it credit for sometimes. That groaning we hear is the earth telling us that it’s ready for its share of Christ’s redeeming work. As God’s representatives it’s our job to extend the Shalom God made for the world—to extend that Shalom to the whole world and everything in it.

Understanding how honeybees help sustain our food supplies is a start—taking the time to understand more is how we begin the long process of restoring balance to how God made the world to work.

That’s a part of the gift we receive through Christ’s sacrifice, and sharing it is a part of the Easter miracle.

Amen.

Pink Floyd Got It Wrong

(This is the fourth message in our Lenten series 'Together Again: The Meaning of the Atonement.')

Ephesians 2:14-22

Over the more than two years that we’ve lived here I’ve noticed some milestones along the way—little things that represent our becoming Londoners. How to negotiate bus routes, how to order coffee, the difference between a roll and a bap (usually about £1)—all of those things that seem a little mysterious in the beginning are becoming second nature. I knew London had become my home when I could walk through our house in the dark without hitting anything. I knew all the twists and turns—the place had become familiar enough that I knew where all the walls were.

It’s hard to imagine life without the walls we need. They provide safety, warmth, protection from the elements and from danger. They allow us to build places to live and also to hang pictures of loved ones. They allow for privacy and also for quiet and peace in a noisy world. Walls can be so good to us.

But there are walls that are designed to separate—whether they’re physical or symbolic—there are walls that exist to divide people from each other. We’ve seen some of those walls come down during our lifetimes…but we’ve also seen some go up. In our own lives we have relationships that are broken or wounded for one reason or another—we have walls that keep us from reconnecting with some of the people in our lives.

The point of this series as we reflect and prepare for Easter is that Christ’s sacrifice offers us healing for our relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth.

It’s worth reviewing for a moment what those relationships were supposed to look like. The Bible describes it with the word Shalom. We were created to live in a constant, blissful state of perfect Shalom. Shalom appears more than 250 times in the Old Testament—it’s clearly important to God that we understand it. Shalom describes a state of perfect completion and wholeness. One writer called it ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

So let’s keep this part set firmly in our minds: We were designed to live healthy, content, happy lives filled with wholeness and peace, all in the presence of God. ‘The webbing together of God, humans, and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

Today we look at how Christ offers healing for our relationships with each other.

14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

We’re back in Ephesians. Paul didn’t start this church in what is now Turkey, but he provided them with pastoral care in the form of these letters. The main theme of this letter describes what it means to be united with each other through the ministry of Jesus Christ. This letter says more about the church as a community than any other letter Paul wrote, and it also talks about relationships with each other—what they communicate to the world about the work of God in our lives.

Our text starts boldly—‘For Christ himself is our peace, who has made the two one.’ He has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. He preached peace to people far and near, and because of his great gift we find ourselves in one great big occasionally happy family.

All of this—every bit of it, according to the text, comes as a result of Christ’s great sacrificial act. ‘His purpose’, Paul says, ‘was to create in himself one person out of the two, thus creating peace, and in this one body to reconcile both to God through the Cross.’

There it is. There’s the point of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He came and loved and served and died and rose for this reason: To bring people together with each other and with God. To tear down the walls that separate us from the Shalom we were made to enjoy.

I said before that there are good, necessary walls in our lives. But those aren’t the walls Paul is talking about in our text. ‘The Dividing Wall of Hostility’ sounds like a made up name. It sounds like one of the place names in Monty Python or the Princess Bride: Remember the ‘cliffs of insanity’ or the ‘fire swamp’ or the ‘pit of despair’? The ‘dividing wall of hostility’ sounds like Paul was making a joke, but it was actually a real place.

Jerusalem in the 1st century was occupied by Roman forces. They governed the region, levied taxes and provided public services. But within that structure they allowed Judaism to be practiced and the leaders were permitted to enforce Jewish law as long as it didn’t conflict with Roman law. Mostly it was the purity laws that Jews back then were allowed to enforce, and many of those centered around the holiest place in all of Judaism: The Temple.

This was the place where Jews went to offer prayers and sacrifices. It was where the priests lived and worked. It was the heart of Jewish faith and hopes for a different kind of future. It was also a place with a strict set of rules designed to protect its religious purity.

It’s in the Temple that we find the Dividing Wall. It was the barrier that limited where Gentiles—non-Jews—could go within the Temple. There was an inscription on the Wall—here’s what it said:

“No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”

Well. It doesn’t get too much more hostile than that. Don’t come near this place, and if you do, it’s your own dumb fault when we kill you.

The dividing wall of hostility has become a symbol for anything that separates people or groups. For us it represents the divisions that still exist among people Christ died to bring together.

It’s been about 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. For those of us who remember living during the Cold War that still sounds amazing. There’s a piece of the wall at the Imperial War Museum that I take visitors to see. I have pictures of at least a dozen friends and family members standing in front of that chunk of the wall.

It’s hard to imagine it now, but in the years right after the Berlin Wall came down, there were moves on both sides to put it back up. People from East and West had gotten so used to being separated from each other—so accustomed to the division between them—that they didn’t want to reunite.

The story of the Berlin Wall teaches us something important about these reconciling revolutions: It’s one thing to tear down a wall, but until we cross over the line where the wall stood, it’s as if it still exists, dividing and separating and disconnecting. Once the wall comes down, we have to cross the rubble and finish the job.

What about divisions among family or friends? What about the places where we’re all in need of reconciliation and forgiveness and healing—in need of a few walls to be torn down?

We’ve heard the saying: ‘Strong fences make good neighbors.’ It’s from a poem by Robert Frost, but using it as a principle for life is actually a corruption of Frost’s point. In the poem, ‘Mending Wall’, Frost helps his neighbor fix the wall that separates them, but he secretly wishes that the wall wasn’t necessary—that they could pass freely in and out of each other’s property and lives.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

What do we wall in or wall out? What about the places where we need to experience reconciliation with another person?

The message of our passage this morning is that Christ’s sacrifice for us extends to the broken relationships in our lives—the ones that need some healing or mending. ‘For he himself is our peace…he has destroyed the barrier—the dividing wall of hostility…we are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.’ The message of our passage this morning is that Christ came to rebuild Shalom in our relationships—the kind of Shalom that was meant to be there in the first place. But usually that means we have to cross over the line where the wall used to be.

The Cross of Jesus Christ offers reconciliation for the relationships we have that are broken somehow, but that’s just part of the story. The walls have been destroyed, but we have to cross over where they were, if we’re ever going to experience the full measure of Christ’s gift to us.

This is where Pink Floyd got it wrong. Pink Floyd is a rock band, for those of you who aren’t recognizing the name. Those of us of a certain age will remember a year or so when you couldn’t get away from Pink Floyd’s double-album called ‘The Wall.’ There was a major live show with a huge wall on the band’s tour, and it was even made into a movie with a young Bob Geldof playing the lead. In my quest to introduce Ian to the classics, I played the entire album during dinner one night last week.

In ‘The Wall,’ the central character loses his father to war, has an overbearing mother, is abused by teachers at school, and is abandoned by his wife. He responds to these painful relationships by building a wall around himself—to separate himself from those who hurt or threatened him somehow. Each relationship is ‘just another brick in the wall.’

The good news for us as we reflect on Christ’s ministry and prepare for Easter—the good news for us is that the wall—the dividing wall of hostility—has been destroyed. There is a remedy on offer for the impact of sin on our relationships with each other. That remedy is the Shalom that God created for us—the Shalom we can have now through the work of Christ on the Cross.

The real question for us is this:

Will we accept the offer?

Will we step over the lines where the wall used to be and accept the gift of reconciliation on the other side?

This year, are we willing to go beyond just celebrating Easter? This year, are we brave enough not just to celebrate but also to experience what Easter really offers?

In our first reading today we heard that if we’re one with Christ, then we’re a new creation and we’re given a ministry of reconciliation as Christ’s ambassadors. That’s good news for all of our relationships—it’s not easy, but it’s healing and it’s good.

On the section of the Berlin Wall at the Imperial War Museum, there’s some graffiti on it that says this: ‘Change Your Life.’ I’ve always loved the way that looks—what it means, especially on a piece of that wall.

The invitation this season is to change your life. The call to all of us is to accept this gift of reconciliation—to change our lives in a way that allows us to live in Shalom with each other. There’s still a long way to go, but the Easter miracle is coming, and it changes everything.

Amen.

Life Unbound

(This is the third message in our Lenten series 'Together Again: The Meaning of the Atonement.')

Ephesians 2:1-10

There was a letter to the Times advice column this week from a young woman who was struggling with a very particular kind of problem. Here’s what she wrote:

‘I’m 18 and in my first year of university but I can’t help thinking that I’m sinning somehow. I didn’t grow up in a religious family, didn’t go to a religious school, or have God-fearing friends. I just seem to have developed this strong belief that I’m not good enough…’

The response from the person answering the letter went like this:

‘Your transition to university has triggered a state of acute anxiety and paranoia that has left you with thoughts that are irrational, but feel real…These thoughts are sometimes called cognitive distortions…Having a mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. You should treat this as you would a chest infection or a broken leg…’

I want to say, respectfully, that I think the advice person from the Times got this one wrong. Now it may be the case that this young woman has deeper problems that just her sudden awareness of being somehow affected by sin. But I want to say very clearly, especially as we continue our time of reflecting and preparing to remember Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross—I want to suggest that the young woman in our story just might have been given a gift.

The point of this series as we reflect and prepare for Easter is that Christ’s sacrifice offers us healing for our relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth.

It’s worth reviewing for a moment what those relationships were supposed to look like. The Bible describes it with the word Shalom. We were created to live in a constant, blissful state of perfect Shalom. Shalom appears more than 250 times in the Old Testament—it’s clearly important to God that we understand it.

Shalom describes a state of perfect completion and wholeness. One writer called it ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ In the famous blessing from the Book of Numbers, we hear this: ‘The LORD bless you and keep you. The LORD make is face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you Shalom.’

So let’s keep this part set firmly in our minds: We were designed to live healthy, content, happy lives filled with wholeness and peace, all in the presence of God. ‘The webbing together of God, humans, and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

Today we look at how Christ heals what might be the most difficult of all our relationships: the one we have with ourselves.

1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

We’ve been in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians before. Ephesus was in modern day Turkey, one of a handful of Christian churches that grew during the first century. It’s not one of the churches that he had helped to start, but now that they were growing he wrote them this letter to support and teach them. Paul wrote this from his prison cell, and it’s a reminder to hold on to faith no matter what might challenge you.

In our passage Paul talks about being dead in sins. It’s important for us to wrestle with what the Bible says about sin. The story of Jesus life and ministry and sacrifice doesn’t make much sense without including the sin that makes it all necessary. I suppose the key here is to think of sin not as a list of wrong things that we do, even though that might be important for us to try sometime. Sin here is anything that gets in the way of having an ongoing, life-giving, Shalom-filled relationship with God.

By the end of our passage Paul makes it clear that Christ has offered every person a way back to the way things were supposed to be all along. ‘For it is by grace you have been saved through faith…’

And why did this happen?

‘For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’

Paul makes it clear that we can’t earn God’s grace by doing good works—that would amount to an impossible payment plan that none of us could ever manage. But on the other hand, once we’ve received that grace we’re freed to do the good works that God had planned for us all along. Not a bad deal.

But all of this begins with our need to recognize that our sense of self has taken a beating—that it’s wounded and broken and distorted from what it was meant to be.

How is our relationship with our selves distorted? I can think of three ways at least.

First, the effect of sin is that it cuts us off from who we were created to be. It breaks that circuit we talked about last week—it disconnects us from the true source of life and power. Because of that we can be blinded to the role sin plays in our lives, and we then fall into a cycle of suffering the consequences of sin without seeing the link between the two. In the end that blind sport makes us unwilling or unable to be forgiven—it keeps us from allowing the atonement to atone.

This year those of us who have been tainted by seminary training are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. Whatever you might have picked up from the caricatures of Calvin and Calvinism, the truth is that he was a brilliant theologian and deeply caring person. At a time when the Christian world could have gone completely mad, Calvin set out a vision for living the Christian faith in a community that still has power today.

Given Calvin’s reputation it’s a surprise to most people that the first line of his massive two-volume theology is this: ‘Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.’

To me that’s always sounded so contemporary. ‘If you want to know God, then get to know yourself.’ It’s sounds so ‘60s.

But on the next page Calvin turns the tables and adds: ‘Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.’ That’s more like it. Seeing ourselves clearly teaches us something important about ourselves, and about God.

I was thinking of Calvin’s statement when I read the letter from the young woman, and the Times’ response to her. What if she’s not crazy or troubled at all? What if she’s not a victim of ‘cognitive distortion’, but instead is seeing her own life honestly for the very first time?

What if her self-awareness is just a preamble to a discovery of what Christ can do and be in her life?

That leaves us with still more important questions:

What part of the Shalom is broken in our relationship to ourselves?

How do we relate to ourselves in a healthy way?

What do we do when we realize that the distance we feel between us and God has more to do with us than him?

For our time during Lent, it’s important to ask this critical question: What happens in the work of Christ that makes things right in our relationships to ourselves?

Some of the answers to that are in our text:

God in his grace makes us alive; He raises us in Christ’s resurrection; He sets us free to do good works.

All of that can be broken down into three statements: In Christ’s atonement for us, he reminds us of our sin and brokenness. But Christ also forgives and restores us—he helps us from feeling annihilated as we look at our own lives honestly. And then, just as he has done with his people from the very beginning, God releases us to be who he made us to be in the first place.

But that’s not easy.

C.S. Lewis describes this restoration in one of the Chronicles of Narnia. I hadn’t read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader for more than 25 years, but a section of it has always stuck in my mind. A boy named Eustace is seduced by greed and is transformed into a dragon. When he wants to change back—when he is aware of his sin and wants to repent—he tries to peel the dragon skin off of himself, but he can’t do it.

Aslan comes to him and says: ‘You will have to let me do that.’

Eustace describes the process like this: ‘The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything.

After he was done he said: And there I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch, and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me…and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain and gone…and then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.’

In this story we see the full outline of what it means to come to faith—what it means to experience healing in our relationship to God and also to ourselves. We see repentance, restoration, and release to life the way it was meant to be. There’s even a baptism.

As we each move through our journeys of faith, it’s important to remember that the relationship we have with ourselves is inseparable from the relationship we have with God. To know one is to grow in knowledge and understanding of the other, and back again. The girl who wrote to the Times wasn't crazy. She was feeling disconnected from who she was supposed to be, and from how she was supposed to be.

Don't we feel the same sometimes?

In our text this morning God promises that he is ‘rich in mercy’, and that the gift of his son comes out of his great love and kindness toward us.

My prayer for all of us is that as we prepare for the amazing events of Holy Week, we’ll allow God to give us the gift of Shalom in our own lives—the gift of being webbed together with God, others, and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.

Amen

In This Together

(This is the second message in our Lenten series 'Together Again: The Meaning of the Atonement'.)

John 17:20-26

Some of you know that I worked as an electrician when I was younger. That job came about in a strange way: My cousins Joe and Jerry had a company that installed fire alarm systems in old buildings. One day Joe got locked in a dark stairwell and couldn’t get out for the better part of a day. It shook him up a bit, and so he decided that he needed a helper. I came home from work one day (making sandwiches for $1.75 per hour) to find Joe negotiating with my dad for me to come and work with him. I was hired on the spot and went to work for Signal Systems Inc. I made $2 per hour. That was 1978 and I was 15. I worked for them during my summer holidays and other non-school days for the next 11 years—through high school, university and about halfway through my time in seminary.

I learned a lot during that time, and some of it was even about electricity. My cousins were both Navy veterans from the Vietnam era, and I was a fairly sheltered kid from the suburbs. A lot of what I learned from them I have to discipline myself to forget…every single day.

But I learned some basic electrical principles, too. The most important concept to know in electronics is the idea of the circuit. Here are some dictionary definitions.

An electronic circuit is a closed path formed by the interconnection of electronic components through which an electric current can flow.

That means that in order for electricity to flow and power electrical things, it has to move in an unbroken circle—a circuit.

There are two main types of circuits: series and parallel. A string of Christmas lights is a good example of a series circuit: if one goes out, they all do. In a parallel circuit, each bulb is connected to the power source separately, so if one goes out the rest still remain shining.

That means that how a circuit is designed will determine how fragile it is—how it responds to challenges and breakage.

Isn’t that interesting?

The Bible says a lot about how God designed us. It has a word for how we were made to function—how we were made to live: Shalom. We were created to live in a constant, blissful state of perfect Shalom. That word appears more than 250 times in the Old Testament—it’s clearly important to God that we understand it. We usually translate it as ‘peace’, but as I said last week, that doesn’t do it justice.

Just to review. In the Old Testament Shalom has a broad range of meanings. It can refer to the communal well-being of the nation, or physical health. A sense of contentedness or happiness in relationships. It often describes a state of completion and wholeness. One writer called it ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ In the famous blessing from the Book of Numbers, we hear this: ‘The LORD bless you and keep you. The LORD make is face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you Shalom.’

One thing that is always true in the way the Bible describes Shalom: It can only be found in the presence of God.

So let’s keep this part set firmly in our minds: We were designed to live healthy, content, happy lives filled with wholeness and peace, all in the presence of God. ‘The webbing together of God, humans, and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’

The main point here is that our relationships depend on our ability to be interconnected—on the free flow of Shalom—between us and God, within our own lives, between us and each other, and between us and the earth.

The focus of this series as we move through Lent builds on everything we’ve talked about here since September. The Lord’s Prayer, the season of Advent and the celebration of Christmas, and our look at what it means to be a contagious church. The theme during Lent is an important one. We can sum it up in a single sentence: The work of Christ on the Cross restores our broken circuitry. It offers healing for our relationships at all levels—with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with nature. That’s the outline for what we’ll be doing over these next 4 weeks.

20"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 25"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

Our text today comes at the end of a long section that begins back in chapter 13. Jesus had gathered his disciples together for a Passover meal, a tradition that reminded Jews of the way God had spared them and saved them from slavery in Egypt. But this wasn’t like any Passover any of them had seen before.

Just as the food was coming out, Jesus took off his robe and left himself dressed as a slave would be, and then he washed the disciples’ feet…one at a time. Three years of following him—three years of listening to him explain who he was—three years of coming to believe that Jesus was the Messiah God had promised to ransom captive Israel. And now he was washing their feet.

He went on to explain to them what was about to happen, and then he comforted them—this is the part of the Bible where we hear the words: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled—do not be afraid.’ Jesus tells them a parable, promises them the gift of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, and then promises them that everything would be made whole again someday.

It’s hard to imagine what the disciples would have been thinking right then. The Messiah had washed their feet, predicted some fairly amazing events, and promised something called the Holy Spirit—all before the dessert course.

Then Jesus began to pray. He prays first for himself, and then he prays for the disciples. He ends his prayer with the verses we just read—a prayer for all believers in all times—a prayer for complete unity among the faithful, and between the faithful and God himself.

In this prayer Jesus is asking for God’s Shalom to be restored to his people, even though he knew that restoration would require his own sacrifice. Almost immediately after finishing his prayer, Jesus was arrested and put on trial and sentenced to die. During this season we remember that all of this was done to heal our broken Shalom—the connections we were made to enjoy.

I mentioned last week that one of my former pastors described the Trinity in an important way. Rather than try to explain rationally what it meant for God to be three persons in one, he said this: ‘At the center of the universe, there is a relationship.’

If it’s true that God lives in a constant, state of relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and if the Scriptures teach that we’re somehow made in the image of this relational God, then what does that mean? The idea of being made in the image of a relational God means at least one thing: We were made to live as relational people— interconnected people whose relationships mirror the redemptive work of Christ in his life, death and resurrection. The breaking of that interconnected, relational way of living, breaks the circuit that gives us life, and cuts us off from our true source of life and power.

So we come to this week’s reflection on how Christ reconciles us to God. That’s what Jesus is praying for in our text this morning. He was praying that his ministry would bring people closer to each other and closer to God—closer in the Shalom sense of being webbed together with him in justice, fulfillment and delight. He was praying that his ministry and sacrifice would repair the broken circuit that cuts us off from the power that frees us to live as we were made to live.

Maybe it will help again to put this talk about electrical circuits into relational terms. Think of the word ‘estranged.’ Literally it means to be made strange to someone else—to become a stranger to someone who was once known. That’s what happens when sin breaks the perfect Shalom God created for us. We are made strange—even strangers—to God. At that point we cease to function as a healthy, whole circuit.

But we were made to live in that state of Shalom—to have whole and holy, fulfilling, connected relationships with God. When that relationship is broken—when our life-giving power is cut off—it can be as frightening as being locked in a stairway alone…in the dark…separated from the one who lives in a state of eternal relationship, and made us to live that way, too.

In his prayer Jesus says to his Father: ‘I pray also for those will believe in me, that all of them be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’

It’s crucial to understand just exactly we have been restored to do. You’ve heard me say many times that God’s blessings come to us with the understanding that they’re to be shared. Jesus prays passionately for Christians to sense the closeness—the oneness—with God. To experience the intimacy with God that we were meant to know. But in the same breath he reveals that there’s a purpose in that closeness—that relationship. ‘May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’

God’s perfect Shalom—‘The webbing together of God, humans, and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’—is something that is made to be shared. The perfect circuit of God’s relationship to his creation is meant to draw all of creation into that relationship.

But that still doesn’t describe what it means to be close to God—to have our relationship to God restored to its original condition. How do we do that? There’s no easy answer, but some have found a way to talk about that relationship in helpful ways.

Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite monk in France for almost 60 years. He spent most of that time washing dishes and repairing the sandals of the other people in the community. He wrote a series of letters toward the end of his life that became a little book called ‘Practicing the Presence of God.’ In it he wrote:

‘When we are faithful to keep ourselves in His holy presence, and set Him always before us, this hinders our offending Him and doing anything that may displease Him. It also begets in us a holy freedom, and, if I may so speak, a familiarity with God, where, when we ask, He supplies the grace we need. Over time, by often repeating these acts, they become habitual, and the presence of God becomes quite natural to us.’

Praying and studying and thinking about God isn’t something we do just because we’re told to. It’s not just a set of habits we develop because they make us look like holy people. They’re certainly not just a set of rules that make us feel guilty when we don’t do them enough.

Christian spiritual disciplines are something we practice so that we can have a glimpse into the mind and heart of God. It’s a way of reconnecting and recharging our experience of the relationship God made us to have in the first place. Practicing God’s presence through prayer and study and meditation is a way of enjoying life more deeply and completely than we could ever imagine.

Brother Lawrence reminds us that this doesn’t have to be complicated.

‘My most usual method is this simple attention: an affectionate regard for God to whom I find myself often attached with greater sweetness and delight than that of an infant at the mother's breast. To choose an expression, I would call this state the bosom of God for the inexpressible sweetness which I taste and experience there. If, at any time, my thoughts wander from this state from necessity or infirmity, I am presently recalled by inward emotions so charming and delicious that I cannot find words to describe them.’

‘...an affectionate regard for God…’ Can you imagine that? Does that sound appealing to you? Does it sound possible?

As we move through this season of Lent—this time of reflection and preparation for the celebration of Resurrection Day—focusing on our relationship with God should move to the center stage. Jesus prayed for us on the night he was betrayed—he prayed that his ministry and sacrifice would put an end to betrayal and brokenness once and for all.

As we move through this season of Lent, I invite you to set aside the time and energy it takes to practice the gift of God’s presence in your life—to find that inexpressible sweetness Christ makes possible through the healing of God’s Shalom. Amen?

Super Glue

(This is the first message in our Lenten series 'Together Again: The Meaning of the Atonement'.)

Colossians 1:15-20

It’s one of the first nursery rhymes we learn. There are drawings and cartoons of it. Kids all over the English-speaking world can recite it at the drop of a hat. Usually he’s portrayed as an egg.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

According to the East Anglia Tourist Board, Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon used in the Siege of Colchester during the English Civil War. It was mounted on top of the ‘St Mary's at the Wall’ Church in Colchester defending the city against siege in the summer of 1648. The church tower was hit by enemy cannon fire and the top of the tower was blown off, sending "Humpty" tumbling to the ground. Naturally all the king's horses and all the king's men (the cavalry and infantry, respectively) tried to fix it, but it didn’t work.

The poem also shows up in popular music from time to time

Billy Joel had it in one of his tunes:
All the king's men and all the king's horses
Can't put you together the way you used to be

Dolly Parton used it in a song about a divorce:
And all the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put mommy and daddy back together again

Genesis used it, too:
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could never put a smile on that face

These songs remind us that there’s a sad story at the core of this little poem. Whoever or whatever Humpty Dumpty represents, clearly he’s taken a serious fall and is suffering because of it. The sad part is that there seems to be nothing anyone can do to help. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.’

That’s a very sad ending, I think.

We hear a lot these days about how fragmented our culture is. We hear about the distance—the broken relationships between men and women, black and white, young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural—the list is long. Our text this morning is a reminder that there is someone who holds things together—even if we can’t see him, someone who loves completely and acts decisively to put things back together again.

15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

We talked about the background to Paul’s letter to the Colossians a few weeks ago. The city was a small trading center, and was home to a handful of different religions. The problem Paul is addressing with the Colossian church was that it had allowed too much influence from other religions in its practice of the Christian faith. When you added that to the constant danger of persecution from Rome, Paul’s letter was an attempt to get them back on a straight path. There are some great hymns in this letter—songs that explain important theological truths. The central theme of the letter is pretty basic: Christ is the glue that holds the universe together, even in an uncertain world.

It’s important for us to build our faith on a firm foundation of who God reveals himself to be in the pages of Scripture. We can also get a better understanding of who we are and who we’re made to be.

One of my former pastors preached a sermon on the Trinity a few years back. Rather than try to explain rationally what it meant for God to be three persons at the same time, he said this. ‘At the center of the universe, there is a relationship.’

If the Scriptures teach that we’re somehow made in the image of this relational God, then what does that mean? If it’s true that God lives in a constant state of relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then it means that we’re made to live that way, too. We’re made to live in a range of relationships at a handful of different levels.

But we’ve taken a serious fall—our ability to live and love and thrive in relationships has been damaged—and no one seems to know how to put it all back together again. That shouldn’t sound like a radical statement if you read the newspapers—or even if you just step out of your house. If you drive a car in Central London you know that there is something seriously broken about the way we relate to each other.

The focus of this series as we move through Lent builds on everything we’ve talked about here since September. The Lord’s Prayer, the celebration of Christmas, and our look at what it means to be a contagious church. The theme during Lent is an important one. We can sum it up in a single sentence: The work of Christ on the Cross offers healing for our relationships at all levels—with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with nature. That’s the outline for what we’ll be doing over the next 4 weeks.

But what was it supposed to be like before things got broken? The Bible has a word for how we were made to live: Shalom

We were created to live in a constant, blissful state of Shalom. That word appears more than 250 times in the Bible—it’s clearly important to God that we understand it. We usually translate it as ‘peace’, but that doesn’t do it justice.

In the Old Testament, Shalom has a broad range of meanings. It can refer to the communal well-being of the nation, or physical health. A sense of contentedness or happiness in relationships. It often describes a state of completion and wholeness. One writer called it ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ In the famous blessing from Numbers 6, we hear this: ‘The LORD bless you and keep you. The LORD make is face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you Shalom.’

One thing that is always true in the way the Bible describes Shalom: It can only be found in the presence of God.

So let’s get this part set in our minds: We were designed to live healthy, content, happy lives filled with wholeness and peace, all in the presence of God. ‘The webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ We can’t really talk about what’s broken in our world—or even in our lives—without understanding this idea of Shalom.

Sin is the breaking—the shattering into pieces—of the shalom God created for all of us It’s what happens to us when we have our great big serious fall. One writer said that if Shalom is God’s design for creation and redemption, then ‘sin is the blamable human vandalism of these great qualities, and therefore an insult to their architect and builder.’

Now sin is an unpopular topic for discussion for a handful of reasons. No one wants to seem judgmental. No one wants to appear intolerant. Mostly none of us wants to define anything we might be doing ourselves as sin—as blamable human vandalism of God’s Shalom.

But here’s the truth. We can’t begin to comprehend the saving, healing, reconciling ministry of Jesus Christ, if we’re not willing to acknowledge the presence and impact of sin in our lives.

Maybe it will help to put it into relational terms. Think of the word ‘estranged.’ Literally it means to be made strange to someone else—to become a stranger to someone that was once known. That’s what happens when sin breaks the perfect Shalom God created for us. We are made strange—even strangers—to God.

But we were made to live in that state of Shalom—to have healthy, fulfilling, connected relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth. Remember that line from the definition: Shalom is ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ Those are the relationships that are broken by sin, and those are the relationships healed by Christ’s work on the Cross.

In our text we learn a couple of important things about who Christ is and what he does. He was before all things—present at the creation of the world—and he holds everything together, like some cosmic Super Glue. We also learn that gave himself as a sacrifice to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth, when it was clear that we couldn’t manage that job ourselves.

So back to Humpty Dumpty. In the nursery rhyme I started with, the bad news in the poem is that no power can heal something once it’s broken. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ keep trying, but that bad news is that they can’t solve the problem.

The good news for us this season, as we take this time during Lent to focus on Christ’s sacrifice for us—the good news is that Christ can put everything back together again. The gift of the Cross—the amazing thing Christ accomplishes in the Atonement—is the rebuilding of the Shalom we threw away in the Garden—the reconciling of the relationships that are somehow broken. The Atonement—the work of Christ on the Cross—offers us the chance to restore our relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth.

During this season of Lent—of reflection on our need for Christ and his sacrifice for us—during Lent our focus will be on the way God made us as relational beings—people who are hard-wired for connection and community. We’ll see the different ways that Shalom has been broken, and what God has done to restore it for his people.

As we come to the Table this morning we celebrate the gift of communion—the gift of connection and relationship with Christians in all times and in all places, and with Jesus Christ himself. It’s the glue that holds us all together in faith. Wherever you are on that journey, if you’re seeking to have a relationship with God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, come and join in this holy feast.

A Good Goodbye

(Last week our old church in California said goodbye to Rev. Craig Hall and his wife Ann after three years of service. The letter below was read at Craig’s retirement luncheon.)

Dear Glendale Presbyterian Church,

I want to share a few things as you say goodbye to Craig and Ann Hall. It’s natural to think back through our memories of their time with us, and that’s a great thing—especially since they’ve given us so much to remember.

How many of you were at Craig’s first congregational meeting? He’d been there just a few weeks and he’d put us at ease with his strong sermons and easy laughter. The feel of the church was changing, and it was great. Craig stood up in front of the congregation at that meeting and said this: “I know you all like me. I hear things. I know you all like me right now. In about six months, though, it won’t be like that—some of you will still feel the same way, and others of you will grumble and decide that you don’t care much for me after all. I want to say right now, while you all still like me, that I don’t care. I was called here to do a job, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

It occurred to me then that if you could put the smell of fresh air into words, that’s exactly what it would sound like. It released all of the usual tension around churches that centers on whether or not the minister is happy—or whether enough people are happy with the minister. Craig stepped into that moment and said that it didn’t matter. What mattered was helping us get back on track as a church, and that’s exactly what he did.

Everyone has a story, and mine is just one of them. But as Craig and Ann leave GPC I want to say how grateful I am for their help in mentoring Julie and me as we tried to discern God’s call back into pastoral ministry. Craig didn’t know me very well when I showed up in his office and started asking him questions, but he took the time to encourage and challenge me, and God used him to help prepare me to say ‘yes’ when the London church called us. Ann spent time with Julie to help prepare her for the difficult role she was stepping into. We’ve been here more than two years now, and Julie still quotes Ann every now and again.

I believe it’s a crucial part of a pastor’s role to equip people to do the ministry God called them to do, whatever it is. Craig and Ann didn’t back away from that responsibility with us—from investing time and energy into us—and I want to thank them for that.

I have another treasured memory from Craig’s first few months at GPC. There were about 30 of us crammed into Henry Artime’s basement theater to commemorate D-Day by watching clips from movies and a few episodes of Band of Brothers. In the episode I remember, Easy Company was floundering because it had an inexperienced combat leader. In the middle of a battle that was turning into a disaster, a senior officer sent Lt. Spears to take over and press the attack. He ran right through the fighting—right past some very surprised Germans—and rescued a squad that was trapped in the wrong place. Then he ran back through the battle and took charge of Easy Company, leading them with skill and courage.

What I remember from that night was looking over at Bill Myers, who looked over at Henry, who made eye contact with another guy, and so on. In that moment I knew that just about everyone in that room was thinking the same thing. GPC was going through some challenging times, but in the middle of it all this guy strolled right through the tension and took charge, and in the process helped us find a way out. We trusted Craig, even after such a short period of time, and it was an amazing feeling. On the screen one of the sergeants in Band of Brothers turned to a buddy of his and said: “Looks like Easy Company found itself a new leader.”

We felt exactly the same way.

Craig led GPC over these past 3 years with skill and courage and toughness and good humor. Through it all he never lost sight of the fact that this wasn’t about him—that it was really about GPC remembering how to be a church again, and maybe even that it had been a church all along. What a gift he gave to all of us—what a generous, out-of-the-blue extravagant gift he gave to each person in this community of faith.

Craig and I have talked a lot over the past few years about healthy departures. How someone leaves a community is often more important than how that person arrived. The health of a church can be measured by how it says goodbye to someone it loved, and you’re all experiencing that right now. Even now, that’s something that Craig is giving to this church. Even now, as he leaves, his goodbye to you is a sign that this church is on its way back to health and strength and service.

To Craig and Ann I want to say thank you for your faithful service, for your mentoring and for your friendship. We’re just one family from GPC, but God changed our lives through your ministry here.

To my friends and family at Glendale Presbyterian Church, I want to say just one last thing: You have been well led and well loved by Craig and Ann Hall. Never, ever, settle for anything less.

With Blessings,

John D’Elia

R. Ian McCallum, 1920-2009

I learned a lot today about an old friend.

Ian McCallum was born into a privileged family in 1920, and spent the rest of his life serving people who weren’t as fortunate as he had been. He was a physician and worked in wards that served victims of Blitz during WWII, and because of his work he contracted tuberculosis. As a result he spent his career in occupational medicine, researching the illnesses of the lungs that strike working people, while developing preventions and cures for keeping them from getting sick in the first place. He wrote some of the seminal literature on lead poisoning and the 'bends', saving the lives of countless workers in the industries of Northern England. Several of his textbooks are still in use. Along the way he was a husband and father, a church elder and a teacher of Scottish country dancing. He was an expert gardener, maintaining a patch of rare and beautiful flowers at his house in the Canongate section of Edinburgh’s city center. He was (quietly) proud of the fact that he had published a peer-reviewed journal article in every single year after his retirement (there are active professors who can’t touch that publishing pace). He was known as an expert in the history of alchemy, and compiled a catalogue of Scottish silver hallmarking…simply because it interested him.

Ian McCallum was one of those people I feel lucky just to have met. That he was my friend is one of the true blessings in my life.

I went up to Edinburgh to attend Ian’s funeral this week. Some of you will know that I served as an assistant minister at St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh back in 1992-93. I lived in a church-owned flat in the Royal Mile—it’s still one of the great formative experiences of my life. After I’d been there a few weeks, a couple came up to me in church and invited me over for lunch. Ian and Jean McCallum, I later learned, had made a habit of taking the visiting assistant ministers under their wing, and on that Sunday it was my turn. They pretty much adopted me while I lived in Edinburgh, having me over for meals, helping with laundry, introducing me to their friends, and even taking me away to their country house a few times. I remember going with him to Pitlochry, near their vacation home, to buy the morning papers, which we read together and chatted about between breakfast and lunch each day. When I had my kilt made it was Ian who insisted that I could not leave Scotland unless I walked the Royal Mile in my Scottish gear. So he came with me, dressed in his own Highland kit, and we walked together up and down the main street in town.

We stayed friends over the years. Ian and Jean came to visit in California not too long after Julie and I got married, and they clearly enjoyed getting to know her. When I started the Ph.D. program at the University of Stirling in Scotland, visits to Ian and Jean became annual events. They were such a funny, loving couple. If they disagreed about something Ian would look at Jean and call her a ‘dreadful woman,’ and she would immediately respond by calling him a ‘horrible old man.’ Then they would giggle, and somewhere in the laughter they would forget what they had been arguing about and move on to something else.

One of my favorite visits to their home was one that I made by myself. Julie was pregnant and didn’t want to travel, and so I dropped in on the McCallums, armed with a sonogram image of our not-yet-born son. I remember handing the picture to Ian and saying: “Ian, meet Ian.” He was genuinely moved, and over the next few years he was so gracious to our Ian—reading him stories and walking him around the amazing garden he tended in the middle of Edinburgh. That’s a picture of them together above, in Ian and Jean’s home in Edinburgh. Only the Parkinson’s disease that was diagnosed in the last few years kept him from doing all the things he wanted to accomplish. It was from Parkinson’s related complications that he died last week.

So this week I was back in Edinburgh, back in St. Giles’ and back in Ian and Jean’s home. Edinburgh, for all its rich history and architecture and beauty, is a little emptier now. But as I head back to my home in London it occurs to me that so much of what I know about hospitality and generosity, I learned in the McCallum home. In that simple way, Ian lives on with us as Julie and I reach out to other people and invite them in for a meal.

In the afterglow of Ian’s funeral today, I’m reminded of just how fortunate I was to know him. I’m thankful for that right now. What a blessing he was…and still is.

---------------------

For more on Ian's life, see: http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/features/Welltravelled-professor-Ian-McCallum-was.4990684.jp

Evangelicals and Politics in America

(I was invited to speak this week at a meeting of The All-Party Parliamentary Methodist Fellowship. This is a gathering of Methodist Christians in the Houses of Commons and Lords who meet monthly to discuss issues of faith and politics, and I was asked to give some historical and theological background to the election of Barack Obama. What follows is an edited version of my remarks.)

I’ve noticed that the topic for today is ‘Barack Obama: A New Vision for America?’ I’m going to take that title as sufficiently broad enough to speak on the history of evangelicals and evangelicalism in America, and in particular the evangelical engagement with the broader culture in the US. As a Christian who is also an American, and also a minister and an historian of evangelicalism, I make no pretense of neutrality on this topic. It matters to me very deeply—you can let me know if you think it has overly colored my analysis of events.

You’re going to hear me talk a lot about evangelicals today. One reason for that is that the history of political engagement among evangelicals is frankly more interesting than that of other Christian traditions. But to be fair, the real reason is that evangelicalism is what I know—less sometimes as a participant than as an observer, but I do reside theologically within the boundaries of evangelical Christianity.

Listen to this quote from the news last week: ‘I believe restoring religious faith to its rightful place, as the guide to our world and its future, is itself of the essence. The 21st Century will be poorer in spirit, meaner in ambition, less disciplined in conscience, if it is not under the guardianship of faith in God.’

That was no American politician shilling for evangelical votes. It was Tony Blair, who won the race to become the first foreign leader to visit Barack Obama in Washington. It struck me that one critical difference between British and American public life is that while Blair had to wait until he was out of office to speak openly about his faith, the US won’t elect a president unless he or she makes some claim to personal faith as a candidate.

The relationship between American Christianity and American politics is an enormous topic—one that would take far longer than any of us has today—but it is an important one in light of the recent US election. My goal today is to start with some background on the history of Christianity in America, and introduce some themes that relate to the election of Barack Obama. The basic point is this: Evangelicals as a voting bloc have broadened the range of issues that matter to them, and this diversification provided a part of the crossover that swayed the election Obama's way. The background to this shift will be the focus of my presentation.

Some quotes that point us in the right direction:

John Winthrop: (Led the group of Puritans who founded the Mass. Bay Colony in 1629) ‘For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.’

Alexis De Tocqueville: (French historian and political philosopher) ‘The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditional faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.’

America is a religious nation, and for much of the first 150 years the dominant religion was Christianity. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of Christian thought and biblical teaching on American culture—in some ways that influence continues today and is visible in people who long ago abandoned any personal links with Christianity. But it’s more accurate to say that America was and is a religiously free nation. From the beginning, several of the colonies were founded with the expressed purpose of providing religious freedom to their citizens. The Quakers of Pennsylvania protected Roman Catholics escaping from England, and Rhode Island was known for separating church and state completely. Most Jewish Americans and more than a few Muslim Americans will freely admit that America is the freest and safest place for them to live and thrive.

Still, that overwhelmingly Christian influence has led to a sort of shared myth of America as an explicitly Christian nation, especially among evangelicals. The idea of ‘American exceptionalism’, or the belief that America has some unique and divinely inspired historical destiny, sets most non-Americans’ teeth on edge. For many American evangelicals, however, it remains a deeply held belief.

Christianity in America, while certainly present at the founding of the nation, reached its greatest level of influence in the 19th and not the 18th century. Church attendance in the colonial and revolutionary periods was far lower than it would be after the Second Great Awakening and beyond. In fact, the spread of Christianity in America follows a pattern that directly challenges the standard evangelical narrative.

Most American evangelicals believe that the nation started with a strong and influential Christian consensus, which has eroded over the last two centuries through moral and theological decay. It is crucial for the understanding of contemporary events—including the election of Barack Obama—to accept that the opposite is actually true. In 1776 only 17% of Americans attended church—not exactly a strong and influential consensus. By 1850, in the midst of the Second Great Awakening, that number had doubled to 34%. By the turn of the 20th century, 50% of Americans attended church, and by 1982 that number had risen to 62%. (Source: Finke and Starke, The Churching of America: Rutgers, 1992.)

The only conclusion supported by the actual data is this: While Christianity was certainly present at the founding of the United States, it only achieved its cultural dominance in the late-19th and 20th centuries. That matters, partly because it’s always better to have an accurate picture than an inaccurate one, but mostly because it helps us understand the events in the early 20th century that led to the rise (and eventual fall) of the Religious Right as a political force.

First, though, a word about the role of evangelicalism in 19th-century America. It will surprise many to know that evangelicals were at the forefront of the major social movements of the day: women’s rights, rescue missions and other relief work among the poor, and most importantly, the abolition movement. In the 19th century there was no division between the meeting of physical and spiritual needs—in fact, to it would have seemed strange to an evangelical in the 19th century to separate the two. But that all started to change near the turn of the 20th century. Historians generally attribute the marginalization of evangelicals and the origins of the fundamentalist/modernist controversies to a handful of factors.

Certainly immigration was a factor. Huge numbers of Roman Catholics and Jews were coming from Europe, diluting the American self-image of a largely Protestant Christian nation.

Science and the rise of evolutionary theory also played a major role. This is the age of the modern university, built on a foundation of neutral inquiry and secular thought. The educational institutions of America, even those with Christian origins, began to marginalize Christian faith and practice not only in the curriculum, but also in student life.

The rise of modern Biblical criticism was the most important factor. The use of historical and literary methodologies to examine the Bible and challenge traditional faith was the last straw. It was during this period, in the early decades of the 20th century, that two businessmen provided financial backing for the publication of a series of pamphlets defending traditional Christian doctrines. These were called The Fundamentals, which gave us the term fundamentalist. The articles were written by some of the most prominent British and American scholars of the day, and more importantly, were distributed free of charge to ministers and laypersons alike.

As strange as it may sound, Fundamentalism was not originally a militant movement. But after the Scopes Monkey Trials in 1925, where conservative Christianity was savaged in the press, fundamentalists began to separate from denominations, academic institutions and other areas of public life. They built a thriving subculture of parallel institutions including churches, Bible colleges and missionary agencies. At their best they cooperated on projects and campaigns, while at their worst they separated not only from the secular culture, but also from each other.

The division between fundamentalist and modernist Protestant traditions in America can be compared to a divorce. These were, after all, Christian people of mostly Anglo-European origins, who had simply found living together impossible. In the divorce, each group got something in the settlement.

The left wing of the church, which was suspicious of enthusiastic preaching and revivalism, took custody of social action—work with the poor, international relief work, and progressive political action. This more liberal wing of the church was much more open to revisions of inherited doctrines, and embraced a broader definition of the Christian faith.

The conservative or evangelical wing of the church took primary responsibility for evangelistic efforts—for soul-winning and other spiritual work. This group also emphasized the defense of traditional doctrines and practices, using a fairly narrow conception of Christian truth.

It’s this division, which has only recently started to weaken, that defined Christian political life in America for almost a century. For our topic today it’s important to note that the fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant side of this split spent an enormous amount of time and energy defining who was and who was not a true Christian. George Marsden, a prominent historian of American Christianity, has argued that without a Pope or other voice of final authority, conservative American Protestantism tended to employ boundary issues to define who was in and who was out. Originally these were traditional issues of doctrine: Deity of Christ, Trinity, Authority of Scripture, Atonement, and Eschatology.

These boundaries were defended with such vigor and militancy at times, that even groups who agreed on virtually everything could separate from each other. Separatism became, for the conservative wing of Protestant America, the functional equivalent of excommunication. The best example of that is the case of Billy Graham in 1957. Graham, who was (and for most would continue to be) the star of modern revivalism, had led enormous evangelistic rallies in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major cities. He set his sights on New York, as most evangelists did, and built a coalition of local church leaders to help him organize his Manhattan Crusade. Trouble arose, though, when word got out that there would be leaders from mainline Protestant churches joining Graham on the platform. The form of separatism practiced by conservative evangelicals at that time prohibited any cooperation between individuals or groups that didn’t share the narrowest understanding of Christian doctrine. Graham was criticized for including non-evangelical leaders in his crusade, and a major segment of the evangelical movement separated from him before the event—most of that group of evangelicals has remained functionally separate from Graham and his ministry for the half-century since the New York campaign.

Think about that for a moment. An influential group of conservative evangelicals split from Graham because he was too ‘liberal’, and they managed to stay separated as Graham led hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to faith in Jesus Christ. Our contemporary understanding of the difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals, whether we know it or not, is rooted in the 1957 conflict over Billy Graham.

The important thing to recognize is that for good or ill, evangelicalism came to be seen as obsessed with determining who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out’. Some of this was utterly fruitless and destructive, as with the divisions over the sequence of the End Times or the fight over Billy Graham. Some of it was helpful discernment of theological differences—the sort that matter for evangelism and church ministry. But even in that area evangelicals could go a bit over the top. Walter Martin’s Kingdom of the Cults was published in 1965, and defined the conservative evangelical outlook on other religions for a generation, especially in regards to Mormonism. Martin, who had misrepresented his educational credentials for decades, earned millions on revision after revision of his guide to non-Christian religions. To be fair, he was often more moderate than his readers, as in the case of his positive assessment of the Seventh-Day Adventists, but he created an atmosphere that, ironically, made it more difficult to conduct meaningful evangelism among Mormons.

Martin’s book, I would argue, represented just one of many overreactions to the marginalization of conservative Christianity that had begun in the early part of the 20th century. We should remember, though, that this marginalization did not slow the steady growth of church attendance in America, but it did erode the self-perception among evangelicals of their cultural power in wider society.

A key shift happened with the rise of the Moral Majority in the late 70s. This organization represented a dramatic shift in the way evangelicals would engage American culture, moving from agreement or separation over doctrinal issues to cooperation on political action on a narrow range of issues. The most striking thing about this group was that it assembled, just as Walter Martin’s book was exploding in popularity, a coalition of evangelical Christians, Roman Catholics, traditional Jews, and Mormons.

The key here is that these groups, who previously would have had nothing to do with each, suddenly banded together over abortion, homosexuality, school prayer, and the fate of the modern state of Israel. This shift away from doctrinal issues and onto social/political engagement has defined conservative Christian political participation for more than a quarter century. The rise of the Christian Right, which encompassed fundamentalism and much (though not all) of evangelicalism, has been a dominant political force in the Republican party. That was true until the run up to the election of Barack Obama.

Why the change? Before addressing that question, it’s important to note that the breakdown of the conservative evangelical political coalition does not represent a breakdown of unity on those issues. Christianity Today, an evangelical publication, is conducting a survey of Christian leaders to determine their level of concern over moral issues in the new administration.

There are two explanations that will be important to historians of this period someday.

First, we have seen a happy erosion of the boundary-setting mentality of past generations. More thoughtful leaders are reflecting on, and in some cases repenting of, the tendency to pronounce final judgments on other Christians and even non-Christian people. That role, in any consistent theology, is God’s alone. As an American Christian I think this change allows for a more gracious and complete expression of a Christian worldview in political life.

More importantly, there was a broadening of the list of issues that influenced the voting patterns of evangelicals. There is more to define the Christian encounter with the broader culture than simply being against abortion or homosexual practice. Deeper Christian reflection on issues of peace, poverty, social justice and the environment emerged as having a strong influence over the voting decisions of many young evangelicals. That came as an unwelcome shock to leaders of the Christian Right, but it was welcomed by many as a sign of maturity and depth among evangelicals as they developed new ways to engage the culture.

But again, why the change?

Partly it represents a new way of understanding the idea of truth, or maybe a better word to use there is ‘certainty’. There is a greater level of sensitivity toward other faiths or political views among evangelicals than existed before.

Certainly the public identification of President Bush to the evangelical movement, alongside the perception of injustice and failure in the Iraq War, pushed many younger evangelicals out of the Republican camp.

Some of it simply comes down to good solid leadership. There have been influential evangelical thinkers who have been communicating this broadening of evangelicalism over the last 10 years or so, and that influence seems to have caught on in a big way. On the left, Jim Wallis has been a champion of social justice among evangelicals for decades, but his book God’s Politics forced many people to see their engagement to the culture in new ways. On the more conservative side, Rick Warren has joined the evangelistic emphases of the conservative camp with a vigorous commitment to social action as well as anyone since the 19th century. Institutions such as Fuller Theological Seminary, the National Association of Evangelicals, and Evangelicals for Social Action have developed an intellectually and theologically sound set of arguments for the broadening of political engagement among evangelical Christians.

This transformation hasn’t been easy—some early leaders lost their jobs and ministries in the process—but in the end it has made room for a more vibrant and effective witness for evangelicals in the broader political world, and it had a direct impact on the election of Barack Obama as the American president.

The next step will be to see if these progressive evangelicals—the ones who broke ranks with the Right and helped to elect Obama—if they will be welcomed into the expanded progressive movement, or if they will be alienated and return to the entrenched, boundary-making politics of the past.

If You Choose to Accept It

(This is the last in a series titled, 'The Contagious Church'.)

Romans 1:8-17

In offices and board rooms around the world, people are reviewing their mission statements. A ‘mission statement’ is a brief explanation for why a company or other organization exists. Organizations use them to set direction and create a shared vision for what they’re trying to accomplish. You can bet that a lot of financial institutions are reviewing or revising their mission statements during this time of crisis.

It got me thinking about the mission statements of places I’ve worked before.

Union Rescue Mission: We embrace the urban poor with the compassion of Christ, giving hope and healing for a changed life, helping them to find their way home.

Fuller Theological Seminary: embracing the School of Theology, School of Psychology, and School of Intercultural Studies, is an evangelical, multidenominational, international, and multiethnic community dedicated to the equipping of men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his Church.

The Presbyterian Foundation: A vital part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Foundation cultivates, attracts, and manages financial resources of individuals and institutions to serve Christ's mission.

The church I grew up in had a simple statement: ‘To know Christ and to make him known.’

Today we finish our series on what it means to be a church that is alive and contagious. The sentence I’ve been saying over these past few weeks is in the form of a definition, but as I looked at it again this week it occurred to me that it functions in some ways as a mission statement.

A contagious church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ, and expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission.

Each one of those qualities or practices helps to shape us into the people that God calls us to be, and each one helps us share that life in a generous and contagious way with other people. The sentence as a whole describes how and why the church exists. Today we end with a look at the last of the four expressions of the church: Mission, the part of our Christian life that draws us outward into service—it’s the way we become the hands and feet of the Body of Christ.

8First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
11I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. 13I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
14I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.
16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

There isn’t much for me to say about Rome as a city and an empire that you don’t already know. It was a the single most influential place on earth at the time, and the Apostle Paul’s desire was always to preach the gospel there.

Paul begins with an expression of his love for the Roman Christians—he tells them how thankful he is for their brave faith in the face of horrible persecution. But what he really wants is to be with them—to share his insight to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to use his gifts to bring more people into the faith.

The letter to the Romans is Paul’s most complete statement of Christian theology and world view. This is the advanced letter, meant for the experienced believers, and not really aimed at beginners. It’s a sign of Paul’s confidence in the maturity of the Roman community that he addresses so many issues in such depth.

The reason that it’s the first of Paul’s letters to appear in the New Testament is simply that it’s the biggest of them all. Paul’s letters, like the prophetic books in the Old Testament, are arranged in order of size, instead of content or when they were written.

Paul ends this passage by reminding his readers that the gospel’s power is realized when people believe it and live by it. It is ‘a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.’ But just before that Paul makes one of his classic bold statements: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.’

It’s important to look at that claim before we move on. When Paul talks about not being ashamed of the gospel, he isn’t talking about feeling guilty or disgraced by what it says. When Paul uses that word he’s saying that he hasn’t been disappointed by the gospel—that his confidence in its truth hasn’t been shaken or threatened.

What Paul is saying is that his faith has remained strong in the face of all kinds of challenges, and that he is pressing on with his mission of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone who will listen.

What does that mean for us?

To be unashamed of the gospel is to accept the full meaning and implications of Jesus’ life and ministry—his sacrifice and his promises.

So back to the discussion about mission statements: How are they created?

One of the best guides to creating a mission statement teaches us to ask three important questions as we begin:

1. What are the opportunities or needs that we exist to address?
2. What are we doing to address these needs?
3. What principles or beliefs guide our work?

We’re going to come back to that in a moment.

One of my favorite old TV shows was ‘Mission Impossible.’ It was the grandfather of shows like ‘Alias’ or ‘24’, where there’s always some impossible task to be completed in a limited amount of time. The leader would get an envelope and a tape saying what needed to be done. The recording would always end with: ‘Your mission, if you choose to accept it’ followed by a description of the task.

What is our mission here? What are the full meaning and implications of Jesus’ life and ministry—his sacrifice and his promises? Hopefully we’re exploring parts of that every week in our worship and study and prayer and reflection. But at its core, Jesus Christ calls us to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the world. We feed and clothe and comfort people in need, without ever forgetting that our message and motivation is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. We will not be ashamed of that message here in this church.

In my denominational tradition we talk about the Great Ends of the Church:

The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;
The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;
The maintenance of divine worship;
The preservation of the truth;
The promotion of social righteousness; and,
The exhibition of the Kingdom of God to the world.

Do we accept that? That’s a pretty important question. It takes the challenge of having faith in our contemporary world—all of the tension between science and theology and national interest and just plain doubt. It takes all of that challenge and joins it together to the challenge of acting on our faith—of behaving and working and loving and spending differently, because of what we believe.

Do we accept that? In our passage Paul makes the bold claim that he’s not ashamed of the gospel. Can we honestly say the same thing?

Well, what do we do now? One of the great joys of sharing this message at this point in our church’s life is that I get to say that we’re moving in the right direction on a handful of mission fronts. Our children’s ministries and partnership with Young Life are helping young people meet Jesus in meaningful ways. The Cold Weather Shelter and Soup Kitchen are demonstrating our love tangibly for the community around us. Our support for the International Justice Mission and local evangelistic work are keeping us connected to the world beyond these doors. All of these represent the healthy blend of meeting physical needs and also the need to meet Jesus in faith. This church has made a bold commitment to serve others in Christ’s name, and we’re only getting started.

The call to each individual here, and to all of us as a community of faith, is to draw on the blessings we receive through fellowship, worship and discipleship, and to turn those outward for the benefit of family and friends and strangers alike. From the very beginning of God’s relationship with his human creation, and all the way to the present day, the covenant we share with God is this: The blessings we receive are given so that we will be a blessing to all people.

In that sense we are a church—a community—with a mission. Meeting physical and spiritual needs isn’t an option, it’s a command from God himself. It’s the mission we’ve been given and empowered to accomplish. It’s a mission that we take seriously here, and one that we plan to grow.

In this place we believe we have important responses to those three critical questions that lead to an effective mission statement:

1. What are the opportunities or needs that we exist to address? The world is filled with spiritual and physical needs that we have the means to address.

2. What are we doing to address these needs? We’re working to provide tangible help, while sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with love and creativity.

3. What principles or beliefs guide our work? We believe that the God who made us and redeemed us offers something unique to the world in the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to work together to continue to accomplish the Great Ends of the Church, to build this community on a foundation of Jesus Christ, and to share it through fellowship, worship, discipleship, and mission.

As we end this series of messages, let’s stand and say that sentence together:

A contagious church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ, and expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission.