Little to Much

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Esther 4:1-17

October 29/30, 2011 (All Saints) • Portage First UMC

VIDEO: THE LION KING

When you watch that clip from the beginning of “The Lion King,” there is something powerful about what happens there. I love the look on Simba’s face when he’s held up in front of everyone, this sort of confused, overwhelmed, maybe even fearful look. But in the midst of all of that there is this sense that, in that moment, Simba is being prepared for greatness. From that moment on, he has a purpose in his life. This is a defining moment for the young lion cub and it shapes everything else that happens to him.

There are experiences and moments that come into our lives that define us for every other moment. Turn one way and you become this person. Turn the other way and you become someone else. The choice we make in that moment makes a world of difference in every moment that comes after. You’ve known that feeling. You’re in school and you didn’t study very well for the exam. So do you cheat or do you live with the consequences of possibly failing the class? When I was in college, I remember being in a prayer meeting and one of the persons there asked for prayer for a big test that was coming up. And the leader of the group prayed, “Lord, help him to achieve on the test up to the level he has prepared.” I think the one asking for prayer wanted a different result—like that God would give him all the right answers! But our choices shape our future. When our taxes are due—do we fill out the forms honestly or do we lie in order to get more money back? The choice to be honest—to our spouse, to our employer, to the person on the next block—it defines who we are. Where we go to school, where we live, what occupation we choose, whom we marry—defining moments, all of them. In fact, “there is probably no larger a defining moment than when we decide how we will spend our lives and with whom” (Jobes, NIV Application Commentary: Esther, pg. 142). Sometimes we talk of destiny, but the reality is we make choices that determine our future; God has given us that ability. 

Our story this evening/morning is about choices. The book of Esther, while filled with faith from beginning to end, never mentions the name of God. It’s the only book in the Bible like that. It’s a story that takes place in the kingdom of Persia, after the Jews, God’s people, have been forcibly taken from their homeland. The story begins with a beauty pageant. Queen Vashti dares to defy her husband the king when he demands her presence and she is banished from the kingdom. Well, then, the king decides he wants a new queen, and so he has all the eligible young women brought in to the palace, and he spends a night with each of them to determine which will be his new queen. Ultimately, he chooses a young woman named Esther. Her real name is Hadassah. Esther is the name she had chosen to blend in with the Persians because she is a Jew. And when she is chosen to be queen, she hides her true identity.

Esther has a relative who had been taking care of her named Mordecai. Mordecai has an enemy named Haman, who, unfortunately, is a high official in the king’s court. We don’t have time to sort through the details of their feud right now, but you can read about it in the first three chapters of the book of Esther. Suffice it to say, it got so bad that Haman made plans to kill Mordecai, and not just Mordecai, but his entire race. Haman gets the king to sign a decree that orders the death of every Jew in the nation of Persia. And that’s where we come into the story in Esther 4. Mordecai learns of Haman’s plot and he is not going to go quietly. He puts on sackcloth—a very rough sort of clothing—and ashes, which were meant to indicate mourning. Ashes meant you were identifying with the dead, and along sackcloth they were a sign of grief (Walton, Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, pg. 488). Mordecai adds to that by wailing loudly in the streets, and setting up camp at the king’s gate. The King’s gate was the place you went if you felt you were the victim of an injustice. You waited there, and hopefully you would be noticed and your injustice would be addressed (Walton 488).

Well, Mordecai is noticed and word reaches Esther of his distress. She tries to get him to calm down, but he won’t have it. Conversation goes on back and forth between them through Esther’s attendance, and Mordecai urges Esther to use her royal influence to get the king to change his mind. But Esther has not been summoned to see the king in a month. And even the queen could not just walk in to the king’s court. There were only seven men known as the King’s Friends who were given unlimited access to the king (Jobes 132). Now, protocol said Esther could send a letter requesting an audience with the king. However, since Haman, it seems, was one of the King’s Friends, her request and the reason for it would have to go through him. She couldn’t very well say she’d like to see the king because of a plot against the Jews; Haman would never let that get to the king (Walton 488). So Esther tells Mordecai she can’t go see the king; to do so uninvited would be to risk her own death. And Mordecai responds with what have become some very famous words. I want you to hear his reply again: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (4:13-14). For such a time as this! Esther—this is your defining moment. Mordecai, at least, believes that this is why Esther was born. This is her purpose. This is her mission. This is her calling—for such a time as this.

Mordecai’s well-chosen words strike a chord with Esther. She asks him to gather the Jewish community for a three-day period of fasting, and she promises to do the same. Then she will approach the king. “And if I perish, I perish,” she says (4:16). The rest of Esther’s story is a fantastic tale of court intrigue and plot twists that results in the Jewish people being spared and Haman losing his life in the very place he planned to kill Mordecai. And so that’s a nice, interesting historical tale. What in the world does it have to do with us, today, in 21st century Portage, Indiana? I want to very quickly point out three characteristics of Esther that I believe are relevant for us today, and then begin to help us see how Esther’s life can be a model for our own. And finally, then, I want to suggest something for us to do in the next week as we face a defining moment of our own.

So what makes Esther stand out in this story? Well, first of all, Esther, after a bit of convincing, seized the moment. She sensed in Mordecai’s words that everything hinged on what she did next—and she was right. In her story, people would literally either live or die because of what she did next. In our own lives, perhaps the consequences aren’t as drastic, or perhaps they are. The decisions we make with how we spend our time, how we treat each other, the words we use, the way we spend our time and our resources—those things define us. We either seize the moment or waste what we have. What if Michelangelo had said, “I don’t do ceilings”? Or if John Wesley had said, “I don’t preach in fields”? What if Noah had said, “I don’t do arks and animals”? Or if Moses had said, “I don’t do pharaohs” or Mary had said, “I don’t do virgin births”? What if Jesus had said, “I don’t do crosses” (Moore, How God Takes Our Little & Makes It Much, pgs. 26-27)? And what if, when your moment comes, you say, “I don’t want to get involved”? Esther seized the moment. So must we.

Second, Esther expressed sacrificial love. Her statement there at the end (“If I perish, I perish”) is not fatalism or doomsday thought. It represents a willingness to do whatever it takes, even if it means she has to give up her own life, to follow God’s call in saving others. No matter what, Esther is willing to go through with whatever she can do to save her people. History is full of men and women so consumed with a mission, a vision of how life could be, that they’re willing to give their all to see it happen. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the night before he was killed, told a gathered crowd of his dream of an end to racism, and hauntingly said he might not get there with them. We think of the students who stood up for freedom in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989, staring down a tank, or more recently, the ones who stood up for freedom in what has been called the “Arab Spring” that extended into the summer and fall this year—people consumed by a vision of living in a land free from dictators, free from terror, or just free. They weren’t the first. A pastor named Laszlo Tokes stood up against a dictator named Nicolae Ceausescu in the nation of Romania back in 1989, and for his boldness he was persecuted, beaten and arrested. At Christmas, Tokes’ arrest sparked a revolution as people took to the streets and lit candles in protest. One young man, Daniel Gavra, found himself in the middle of it and paid for his part in it by losing his left leg. When he pastor came to express sympathy, Daniel said, “I don’t mind so much the loss of my leg. After all, it was I who lit the first candle” (Colson, Being the Body, pgs. 393-403).

For us, demonstrating sacrificial love may not be so dramatic. It might involve being willing to put aside that project to spend some time with your kids or grandkids. Husbands, it might be watching that movie she wants to watch this time. It might mean, next week, being a gracious loser if your side doesn’t win in the city election rather than complaining about the results on Facebook—because someone’s going to lose. Sacrificial love might look like welcoming those who are not like us. It might be extending a helping hand to that person we don’t agree with or like very much. Or it might mean putting an end to our excuses as to why we can’t serve God, why we can’t work on that project at the church. Esther was willing to love sacrificially, no matter what it cost her.

And then third thing I want you to notice about Esther is that she framed everything she did with prayer. What she does is grounded in her faith. Now, as I said earlier, this is the only book in the Bible where the name of God is not mentioned at all, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t present. The story of Esther is the story of God’s providence—of God’s ongoing care behind the scenes. Even when we’re not particularly aware of it, God is working, caring for his people. Besides, this is the story of the Jewish nation, a people whose very identity is found in being chosen of God. And so it’s natural, when Mordecai is in grief, for him to fast. When Esther is worried, she calls for a fast. She goes without food for a time in order to focus on prayer. She denies her bodily needs so she can better attend to her spiritual needs. Her action reflects what the prophet Joel had described earlier. When the people were facing judgment, God told them through Joel, “Return to me with all  your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning” (2:12). And Joel himself had gone on to say, “Who knows? [God] may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing” (2:14). So Esther fasts, and in that time of spiritual focus, she finds her spirit and her body strengthened in order to do what needs to be done, to save her people.

So Esther faces her defining moment by seizing the moment, offering sacrificial love, and framing the time with prayer. She did this because she was absolutely convinced of her mission, of her calling from God. She came to the conclusion that she had, in fact, been raised up for such a time as this. And one of the reasons I love her story is because I believe that’s true of us as well. I believe God is calling United Methodists to stand up for such a time as this. And I believe God is calling Portage First to take our mission seriously for such a time as this. We are people who believe our calling is not just to save people’s souls and get them ready for heaven—that’s part of it. We are people who believe our calling is not just to do nice things and make an impact on our world—that’s part of it. We are people who believe that when Jesus enters a life, it changes not just the individual but families and cities and nations. That’s why our mission here is “becoming a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ” because we believe that encounter alone can change lives, can change communities, and ultimately can change the world. I believe we are in this place for such a time as this, but it’s going to take a church full of people who are sold out to that mission to be able to fulfill it. It’s going to take people who are willing to seize the moment, willing to offer sacrificial love, and willing to devote themselves to prayer if we’re going to see the realization of this defining moment. Esther offered what she had—herself. She offered her little and God made it much. We may not feel like we have much to offer, but if we give ourselves wholeheartedly to what God is doing and wants to do, God will take whatever we offer and make much more of it than we ever could have ourselves. Esther offered herself and saved an entire race. What might God do in our lives and in the life of our church if we, like Esther, offered ourselves to his mission?

I want to share something we learned out at Leadership Institute this year. It’s a tool used in a lot of businesses, though it originally comes from the world of mathematics. It’s called the sigmoid curve, and the name isn’t as important as what it teaches us about life cycles of organizations. The curve looks like this, and it shows several stages that an organization—a church, in our case—goes through. First is the initial push, the beginning, and in that time there is a lot of excitement and a lot of energy expended with little return. There is a dip that indicates how, at first, you’re putting more out than you’re taking in—whether that’s money or people or whatever. Soon, things begin to take off and there is great success, great energy, and in the case of a church, people are coming to know Christ, lives are being changed, and the community is noticing an impact because of the work of the church. Now, left unchanged, the natural life cycle follows the curve and those in the church get comfortable with the status quo. We say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but status quo leads only to a turning inward, to a lack of interest in new people being involved, and that in turn leads to closing off from the rest of the world, which leads to decline and death. Sounds encouraging, doesn’t it? Well, according to this life cycle, what has to happen is that an organization or a business or a church has to reinvent itself from time to time in order to survive, and that starts off a new curve, then. Now, this church has been around for 176 years. That doesn’t happen without a significant amount of redefining. That doesn’t happen without those saints we’ve celebrated today and many generations before them facing defining moments in the history of the church and making decisions that turn the church outward again. But the lesson from the sigmoid curve is that we can never become content. In fact, even though a lot of churches wait until the decline starts to try to reinvent themselves, what actually needs to happen is that just when things are going really, really well a new curve starts, something new happens, and things change. But do you know what it takes to start that new curve? It takes people who are sold out to the mission, who are willing to seize the moment, to offer sacrificial love, and to frame it all in faith and prayer. So I’m going to ask you: is Portage First that kind of church? Are we that kind of people? Are we willing to do what it takes to make sure this church is here for the next generation?

Last spring, we launched what I think is a new curve when we started PF Hope. And yes, it’s taken a lot of resources. And yes, there is not a huge return we can see yet, though I’d argue that the lives being changed in that place is, in fact, a huge return, but in the numbers and assets area, we’re in the lower level of the curve. And that’s okay. You know, another thing I learned at Leadership Institute is that Willowcreek Community Church, sort of the grandfather of the modern megachurch movement, struggled to make a go of it for the first two years. It took at least two years before they began to see some hope and some progress. So, I believe, we are on the beginning of a new curve, of a new start, but to continue on that path will take people of vision, people of hope, people who are willing to do whatever it takes to become the church God intends for us to be. Are we willing to do whatever it takes to become a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ? As you think about that question, I’d like for you to hear from one of our own members about her family’s journey with giving their lives over to God and how that has impacted their lives in terms of generosity.

VIDEO: Robin Wilkening

All right, so here’s the bottom line: next Sunday is Generosity Sunday. This is the time of year when we’ll ask you to make a commitment to the life of the church for 2012, and that commitment will be in several areas: prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. And I’m not bashful about asking for your involvement in any of those areas. I’ve been told before we should just be able to give our time and that should be enough, but the world doesn’t work that way anymore. We like lights, heat, all that stuff and it all costs money. So next Sunday, we’ll be asking all of us to take seriously our call to God’s mission here at Portage First and to answer the question: what is our part going to be in that mission? I’ll have more to say about that next weekend. But for now, I want to ask every one of us to so something very specific this week as we consider our commitment to God through this church. We’re going to take a cue from Esther this evening/morning and I’m asking each of us to fast once during this week. I want to encourage you to follow the Methodist pattern for fasting set out by John Wesley in our earliest days. Wesley’s pattern was to fast from after dinner Thursday evening until mid-afternoon on Friday. He would end the fast mid-afternoon because, in England, that’s when tea was served and you didn’t miss tea for anything. Now, it’s doesn’t have to be those specific days. It could be any day after dinner until mid-afternoon the next day, and the purpose is not to lose weight or to fill our time with other activities. The purpose is to use the time we would normally spend focused on food to pray, to ask God what he would have us do in the coming year as part of this church. Now, Wesley’s pattern was to stay away from food but continue to take in liquids; I realize for some of you there are medical conditions that won’t let you fast from food. And so I’d suggest you choose something else that takes up time you could otherwise spend in prayer, and follow the same pattern. Maybe you’d fast from the television or from the internet for that time period. I had a friend who loved to talk all the time and so he chose a fast from speaking and said it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done! But, like Esther, we want to frame this Generosity Sunday, this focus on our mission, in prayer by fasting once during the coming week.

I want to close this evening/morning by all of us hearing again Mordecai’s challenge to Esther, and as we hear these words again, think about your own situation in life. Think about the people you influence, the people whose lives you touch. Think about where God has led you in your life, to this very moment. Mordecai told Esther: “If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance…will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” Who knows—who knows but that you have come to this position, to this place, this point in your life for such a time as this? Will we be people who seize the moment and allow God to do amazing things in and through us in the coming year? Let’s pray.

Ask for the Mountain

Mark 8:34-38; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Numbers 13:26-33

October 22/23, 2011 • Portage First UMC

INTRO VIDEO

Several years ago, I led a mission group out to Sun Valley, Arizona. If you’ve not been there, you might think it’s a resort town. Sun Valley. Arizona in February. Sounds nice, huh? And it was when we landed in Phoenix. Sunny, warm, over 80 degrees, absolutely beautiful! However, Phoenix was not our destination, and Sun Valley lay on the other side of the mountains about four hours north of Phoenix. So we climbed into the vans provided by the mission school and began our journey. As we headed into the mountains, it quickly became evident that the weather in Phoenix was no indicator of the weather in the mountains. 80 degrees in Phoenix, and as we headed farther up into the mountains, it began to snow. And then it snowed harder. And harder. One of our drivers asked the other about taking a different route, and we learned that the other road had already become impassable and was closed. So we went farther into the mountains, and the van got very quiet. We could barely see in front of us, and our van creeped along as we sought to stay on the road. As we topped the summit and began to head down the other side, the snow began to let up and eventually we all relaxed, knowing we were safe. We were going to make it. Now why, you might ask, did we even attempt to go over the mountain? Well, aside from the fact that there was nowhere for us to stop, we all knew that what we had been called to do for the week lay on the other side of the mountain. If we were going to become and do all that God had called us to be and do, we were going to have to go over the mountain. And because we were certain of our call, it was worth tackling the mountain in order to get to what God had for us on the other side.

This evening/morning, as we finish up our series on “The Me I Want to Be,” I have a very simple message for you. I want to challenge you to ask for your own mountain. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about what it’s going to take to become the person God dreamed for us to be when he thought us up. And so we’ve talked about seeing ourselves honestly, about renewing our minds, redeeming our time, and last week Pastor Deb challenged us to deepen our relationships, to connect deeper with God so we can connect deeper with each other. But there’s one more piece to becoming the me we want to be, and that’s to do what we’re called to do, to transform our experiences from the daily grind into something that honors God. And that will take courage and boldness to do.

There’s a story tucked into the 13th chapter of the Old Testament book of Numbers—not a book we read very often. Numbers is part of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that tell the story of the beginning of the Jewish people, of the descendants of Abraham, and how they ended up in slavery in Egypt, and how a man named Moses was sent by God to rescue them from Egypt and bring them back to what we know today as the land of Israel. It was called Canaan in those days, but God had promised the people that the land was theirs. All they had to do was drive out the people who lived there, and God even promised he would help them with that. So in the beginning of Numbers 13, God tells Moses to send some spies into the land, to check things out. Now, is that because God didn’t know what was there? No, of course not. But God always partners with human beings, and God wanted the people of Israel to take ownership of what was about to happen. “Check out the land, see if it’s everything I have promised you, and learn to rely on me for everything that happens after this” (cf. Goldingay, Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone, pg. 36).

And so Moses sends twelve men to spy out the land. They spend forty days doing that, and then they come back and give their report. “It’s a beautiful land,” they say. “It flows with milk and honey!” (13:27). The modern nation of Israel still uses that same image to promote tourism, and I’ve been there twice. I’ve yet to see milk or honey flowing too much, though there are parts of the land, particularly around the Sea of Galilee, that are beautiful. Much of it is a desert, but there are certain things that grow there well, like figs. So when they say “honey,” they’re not referring to bees’ honey like we think of; the word refers to a syrup made of figs, and that syrup is still the main source of sweetness in the Middle East (Goldingay 36). But the land is beautiful, the spies say first. And they even bring back some of the fruit they found there—perhaps some figs.

But…there’s always a “but,” isn’t there? Just when things seem to be all rosy, someone speaks up. “But…the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large” (13:28). The cities are inaccessible (probably mostly built on the tops of hills, for the sake of defense) and impregnable (how could we break those thick walls by ourselves?). This is too much for us. It’s beyond our reach. We can’t do it. It’s too big a task (Allen, “Numbers,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 2, pg. 811).

Have you ever been told that? Have you ever been told that the task was just too large, that it couldn’t be done? There were some who said that when this church purchased Crossroads. It was too much, it was too big, we’d never be able to pay for it. And yet, in six years, the land was ours, paid in full. Now, I sometimes hear people say our vision’s too big. We can’t build there. We can’t possibly raise the money. We should just sit tight, or maybe even get rid of the land. The vision laid out several years ago is just too big. We can’t do it, they say. We heard that with the launch of PF Hope last spring. As pieces of that began to come together, I was repeatedly asked, “What if it fails?” That’s just another way of saying it’s too big. We can’t do it. My response was, “What if it doesn’t? What if it succeeds?” We look for failure first rather than success. The problem in the book of Numbers is the same problem we have today. It isn’t that the task is too big; it’s that our faith is too small. God had already promised to go with the Israelites and help them conquer the land. He’d already told them that. Their belief that the cities were impossible to defeat, that the people were too big and too strong shows that their faith was in themselves, and not in God. Do we have the same problem? Was author J. B. Phillips talking to us when he wrote a book called Your God is Too Small? Because if all we’re relying on to do the really big things in life is ourselves, we will fail. We can’t do it. That’s why our faith must be in the one who said, “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27).

Just because it’s the majority opinion doesn’t make it right. In Number, two men come forward with a minority report. Joshua is one, but in this passage, in the midst of the hubbub that is caused by this frightening report, Caleb steps up and tells them all, literally, to shut up and listen. He has something he wants to say. Now, Caleb’s family were not native Israelites. Though his family has become part of the tribe of Judah, they were sort of grafted in somewhere along the way (cf. Goldingay 36). They’re not biologically Hebrews. And the irony of that is, of course, that this one who is not physically one of the Chosen People can see God’s promises better than those who are. In the face of all the evidence the others have presented, Caleb says, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it” (13:30). Though he doesn’t say it outright, underlying his bold assertion is the belief that since God said they could it, they could. Caleb remembered all the things they had seen up to this point, how God had brought them out of slavery, how God had provided for their every need. If God could do all that, why couldn’t God also defeat their enemies, no matter how big they are? But the ten prevailed. That didn’t make them right; it just means they were louder. They reminded the people how hard it was going to be. The inhabitants of the land were bigger, stronger, bolder, faster, better looking and taller. The Canaanites could not have better P.R. than what was coming from the mouth of the spies. No one was arguing that conquering the land was going to be hard. It was going to take work. It was going to take sacrifice. But what they ten said is, “We just can’t do it.” And the people bought it. And do you remember what happened because of this? In Numbers 14, the people continue to grumble, and so Moses goes to God and prays about the situation. And God tells Moses to turn the people around. Because they refused to believe in God’s ability to keep his promises, they will wander in the desert for forty years—one year for every day the spies were in the land—and none of the people standing there that day would ever enter the promised land except for Joshua and Caleb. Every one of them would die in the wilderness before they get to experience the promise given to them when they left slavery in Egypt. If it’s too hard for you, God says, then I will grow a people like Caleb who won’t be afraid to take on the mountain. God tells Moses, “Because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it” (14:24).

Centuries later, a bold prophet of God came upon the scene. Though his beginnings were in an obscure little town, it wasn’t long after he began preaching that he gained quite a following. His name was Jesus, his hometown was Nazareth, and his message was all about the kingdom of God. People loved to hear that message. They wanted to know about all the blessings and the promises of God. It had been too long since they had had a genuine prophet, a preacher who told good stories and gave sage advice. And you can trace through the Gospels as Jesus gets more and more popular. You can also trace when he begins to lose popularity, and it begins really when his preaching takes a turn, when he starts talking about suffering and death. In fact, in today’s Gospel passage, it’s one of those times. Mark 8 is really a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. It begins with him feeding 4,000 people on a hillside. Then he speaks out against the leadership; everyone likes that. Then he heals a blind man. And then he takes his disciples away on a retreat, and everything changes. Peter, on behalf of the rest of the disciples, says he believes Jesus to the savior of the world, but when Peter says that, he’s picturing a kingdom here on earth. He’s picturing a life of power, wealth and prestige. Instead, Jesus begins talking about death, about suffering, and that’s not what Peter wants to hear. The savior was not supposed to suffer, and certainly not die. When they come back from the retreat, Jesus is just as up front with the crowds who have been following him, the ones who are looking for the nice feelings, the wealth and the prosperity. “Whoever wants to be my disciple,” Jesus says, “must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (8:34).

Now, a lot of times we’ll take that verse and talk about some minor difficulty as being “a cross we have to bear.” You know, these aches and pains are just a cross I have to bear. Or this financial setback is just a cross I have to bear. Or these relatives are just a cross I have to bear. Nothing could be further from what those first century followers would have understood Jesus to mean. Bearing a cross meant you were on your way to death. No one escaped a cross. Once it was put on your back and you began walking toward the place of execution, you were doomed to die painfully. Jesus is calling his followers to die to themselves and begin living the way he wants us to live. “Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk” (Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 112). And that’s scary! That’s a huge challenge. To give up the me I prefer to be or the me I have always been and become the me God wants me to be, to become God’s best version of who I am—that’s going to be hard. That might require suffering. That might require pain. That looks like a mountain. All these things we’ve talking about—renewing our mind, redeeming the time, deepening our relationships—it all leads to becoming the person God wants us to be. But taking on that challenge, picking up that cross, taking on that mountain will be hard and painful and maybe even dangerous. But what waits for us on the other side is exactly what God wants for us, exactly what he dreamed for us when he thought us up. Take up your cross, Jesus says. Ask for the mountain.

That means, first, we ask God for what author John Ortberg calls a “glorious burden.” Glorious burden—we don’t like that. We long for a problem-free life, but Ortberg says that’s really just death by boredom. Our culture tells us to despise problems, but in reality problems are an invitation from the Spirit of God to grow, to become more the person we were meant to be. I can look back in my life and see that my greatest times of personal and spiritual growth come out of struggle. A butterfly does not get its wings easily; it has to struggle out of the cocoon. If you open the cocoon for the butterfly, it will never develop the strength to fly. It will fail to flourish. So, Ortberg says, “ask for a task that will keep you yearning and growing and uncomfortable and hungry” (247).

But we don’t like that. We don’t want to face the hard things. Recently, a lot has been made in the news of a TV preacher’s answer to a question from a viewer about a man whose wife had come down with Alzheimer’s. The man wanted to know if it would be okay to divorce his wife and marry someone he was in love with, since his wife was no longer really “there” because of the disease. To everyone’s surprise, the TV preacher agreed it would be okay, since Alzheimer’s, he said, is a “kind of death.” Later, he tried to backtrack, but the damage was done. Such a statement is a denial of the marriage vows (“for better or for worse, in sickness and in health”) and it denies God’s design for husband and wife. Contrast that with Robertson McQuilkin, whose wife Muriel was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after they had been married 42 years. McQuilkin was president of a Bible College at the time, and for a while, he tried to provide care for his wife and keep his schedule, but it became evident he could not do both. And so at the height of his career, Robertson McQuilkin resigned and went home to care for his wife full-time. Of his resignation, he said, “It was only fair. She had after all, cared for me for almost four decades with marvelous devotion; now it was my turn…If I took care of her for 40 years, I would never be out of her debt.” When asked once if she knew him anymore, he said, “No, but I know her.” Caring for his wife was not something he would have planned on doing, but it became his glorious burden and his way of becoming more the “me” God dreamed for him to be. Ask for a glorious burden.

Then, Ortberg says, we need to face our challenge with faith in God. Where is the place in the world you really want to make a difference? And how will you deal with the challenges of that passion? Are you like the ten spies, who come up with a hundred reasons why the challenge couldn’t be met? Or are you like Caleb, who faces it saying, “We can do it”? A study was done a few years ago which found that people who are most optimistic and most faith-filled—the Calebs in the world—live longer. In fact, in the group that was studied, 90 percent of them were still alive at age 85. Of the ones in the group who were negative and pessimistic, only 34 percent of them lived to the age of 85. In another study, faith-filled and optimistic people were found to have better health habits, lower blood pressure and stronger immune systems and tended to live a decade longer than pessimistic people (Ortberg 248). When faced with an adventure, Caleb chose faith; so can we.

So, ask God for a glorious burden, face your challenge, and then do something. In fact, do something difficult. Life, surprisingly, is not about our comfort, though we live today like it is. Some filmmakers a few years back speculated on what life would be like if everything were done for us, and here is what they came up with.

VIDEO: Wall-E

Life is not about our comfort. Life is about making a difference, about working with God in redeeming this world. Life is about doing what God has planned for you. The Bible teaches that God has given each and every one us certain gifts and abilities, and he expects us to use those gifts in ministry to others. We are the body of Christ, Paul says (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:27), and when he says that, he’s emphasizing how much we need each other. Each of us have different gifts, different talents, and together—together!—we can make a real difference, bigger, broader and better than any of us can do alone. Life is not about comfort. Life is about becoming the me God wants us to be and serving the world around us.

This morning, out in the Fellowship Hall, we are having a Ministry Fair. This is not just a chance for you to walk around and admire the wonderful displays and feel proud of all the things that are going on around this church. I mean, I hope you’ll do that, but the Ministry Fair is more about you finding your challenge and jumping in to do your part—even if or maybe especially if it’s difficult. I urge you to go have this prayer constantly on your heart: “Lord, what are you calling me to do for you and with you at this time in my life?” You know, sometimes, we get the idea that we’ve done our part. We’ve served our time. It’s time for someone else to step up—and we may be right in a certain area of the church. Maybe you’ve taught that class long enough. Maybe you’ve done those work projects long enough. And if that’s the case, I believe God has something more for you to do. I believe God yet has another challenge for you, another ministry for you. Billy Graham often pointed out that the idea of retirement is nowhere in the Bible, and he would still be out there preaching, I’m convinced, had it not been for the Parkinson’s that took him out of active ministry. My dad retired several years ago, and my brother and I always joked that in retirement Dad wouldn’t be able to sit still, and that he’d get a job as a Wal-Mart greeter just to stay busy. Well, we were right, he couldn’t sit still, and so in his retirement, he has gotten involved with Habitat for Humanity, and when my folks are in Florida for the winter, rather than playing golf or cards or sitting by the lake, Dad is out building houses for people in need. I hope I have half his energy when I’m in my seventies. But Dad knows that retirement, for him, is just another opportunity to serve. Every stage of life offers us unique opportunities to serve God and serve others. What is God calling you to do at this point in your life to serve him and serve others? Maybe you do have health challenges, and maybe you can’t get out there and be terribly active, no matter what your age is. In my last appointment, I had a lady who was 99 years old when she died, and Pauline once lamented to me that she wasn’t able to be out and about anymore, wasn’t able to help at the church like she used to. So I asked her, “Can you still pray?” Well, yes, she could. Then, I told her, you pray for us, and you’ll be doing some of the most important work there is. And she prayed for us, until the day she died. Another gentleman I knew was facing a series of health challenges in his own life, and he wasn’t that old, maybe in his 50’s or so. Then he heard I was having heart surgery, so he told me he would pray for me. And he did. He prayed for me on the day of my surgery as an act of love, and almost as soon as he said “amen,” Ron had a heart attack and died. The last thing on earth he did was serve someone else (me, in this case) in spite of his own challenges. I will never forget Ron’s selfless spirit. What is God calling you to do at this point in your life to serve his kingdom?

I love Caleb’s story. After the land was conquered, it would have been easy for him to sit down and rest and let everyone else take care of things. But that was not Caleb’s nature. When he was eighty-five years old, Caleb came to Joshua as the land was being divided up, and he said this: “I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me on that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said” (Joshua 14:11-12). Eighty-five years old. The flat land would be much easier to occupy, but Caleb asks for the hill country, for a place where there were fortified cities to conquer. Eighty-five years old. Don’t you love his spirit? I want to be Caleb. I want to be the me God has dreamed for me to be, and I want, in every stage of my life, to be asking for the mountain because “life is not about comfort. It is about saying, ‘God, give me another mountain’” (Ortberg 251). That’s the life God has dreamed for us, and it’s time we start living it to the full. Ask for the mountain! Amen!

Soul Satisfaction

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 3:16-21; Ephesians 5:1-17; Psalm 90:1-12

October 8/9, 2011 • Portage First UMC

I have a friend who is living with a time bomb in his head. Several months ago, he entered the hospital with some disorientation and a headache that wouldn’t go away, only to discover he had a brain tumor. No other symptoms, no idea he was as sick as he was. He was rushed that night into emergency surgery, where, as he put it, they opened his head like a can opener and removed the tumor. After the surgery, he felt better than he had in a month, but when the pathology report came back, it was sobering. Cancer. Grade 4 Gioblastoma, and while they had removed as much of it as they could, the surgeon could not get all of it. My friend felt great, but he was told he only had months to live, that he would feel great and one day, the time bomb would go off and his life here on earth would be over. Five weeks after the surgery, he wrote in his blog that what he has learned above everything else is that life is a gift, and that the biggest gift he has been given is to be able to tell his family and those close to him how much he loves them. Life is a gift. My friend is a pastor, and rather than retiring and doing nothing, he went back to work as soon as he was able, and continues to preach the Gospel because, for him, there is nothing more important than sharing the good news about Jesus. He lives life more intentionally than ever because he knows every day could be “the day.” In reality, though, he’s only living out what’s really true for all of us. None of us are promised tomorrow, and that’s why the writer of Psalm 90 made this his prayer: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (90:12). My friend has learned what it means to, as Paul wrote, make the most of every opportunity (cf. Ephesians 5:16).

As I’ve followed his story over the last few months, it’s made me think about how much time we waste doing things that don’t make a bit of difference, or even how much time we waste doing things that are not God-honoring. There are times in the evening when I sit down in front of the computer and just start surfing Facebook or other parts of the internet, and I’m clicking away and all of a sudden I wonder, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” There isn’t anything there I need to spend so much time reading or looking at, and often I’m not even all that interested in what I looking at. It’s almost compulsive clicking, just because it fills the time. Over the past couple of years, Americans have increased their use of the internet 43%, particularly in the use of social networking services like Facebook. On a daily basis, that means we’ve added nearly another hour in the last two years to our time online. Add to that the time we spend in front of the television, which according to 2010 data amounts to 2.7 hours per day. In contrast, the second-most common leisure activity was visiting with friends, which we allot 45 minutes per day for. Nearly three hours each day watching television; less than an hour each day interacting with other people. We waste a lot of time. Now, I’m hopeful we pushed that average up for interacting with others this past week as you got out and talked to your neighbors about Stepping Out and Stopping Hunger. It’s been great to see the grocery bags come into this evening/morning. I’m afraid, however, that this next week, we’ll just go back to the old patterns and habits. If life is a gift, as my friend has discovered, the question is what do we do with that gift? Because the more time we waste in areas of our life that are not God-honoring, the easier it is to get hooked into things that look good, that promise life but instead bring death. The psalmist asks God for the ability to number his days and gain wisdom, to see life from God’s perspective, to stay away from things that are tempting, to waste his life. His prayer ought to be ours as well.

We’re continuing our series this evening/morning on “The Me I Want To Be,” and the last two weeks we’ve taken the first steps toward becoming the person God wants us to be, the person God designed us to be from the very beginning. Two weeks ago, we took a look at what sort of “me” we are right now. Are we simply living to please others? Are there areas of our life where we’ve believed lies about who God is and what God expects? Are we flourishing or failing? And then last week, we talked about renewing our minds, putting good stuff into our minds and our lives that will steer us on the path toward honoring God, toward becoming the me God wants us to be. This week, we want to focus on redeeming our time, because the choice of how to respond to God’s call for us, God’s dream for us, is always ours. We can choose to walk God’s path, or we can choose to follow a path that looks inviting but leads away from the me God wants us to be. When I was in seminary, we lived in Wilmore, where Asbury is located, but we worshipped and worked at a church in Harrodsburg, about 30 minutes south on highway 68. If you could have driven a straight line, you probably could have gotten to Harrodsburg in about 10 minutes, but as with all roads in Kentucky, there was no straight path. Highway 68 weaved down the side of the mountain, crossed the Kentucky River, and then went back up the other side; it didn’t really straighten out until we got to Shakertown. I rather enjoyed driving that road, especially when someone would come and visit us, because I knew it well and I could make pretty good time along it. So I would drive like I always did and wait for the other person to say, “Uh, maybe you should slow down a bit?” That was always fun! Because of the way the road was built, there really weren’t a lot of options. You would drive this two-lane road without many chances to turn off until you got past the river. There was one road, just south of the river crossing, that went off to the left. And every time I passed that road, I wondered what was down there. Where would I end up if I went down that road? I never found out, because I knew for sure I wouldn’t end up in Harrodsburg if I took that road. So I stayed on the road I knew, the road that led to my desired destination. That to me is a parable of the choices we have every day. We can stay on the road that leads us to the me I want to be, or we can choose a different direction. It’s always our choice. We can waste time or we can redeem the time we have been given.

In the middle of the night, after it was well dark and most people were inside, a man comes through the shadows to visit Jesus. His name was Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, which means he was a layperson who was concerned about holiness, about people living God’s way. Pharisees were especially concerned that people follow all of God’s laws, and generally they focused on the tiniest details. Jesus one time described them as people who put heavy burdens on others but won’t help them carry it (cf. Matthew 23:4). In fact, most of Jesus’ conflicts were with the Pharisees. He didn’t argue with what they believed, but with the way they lived it out. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He was a also a “member of the Jewish ruling council” (3:2), which means he was one of seventy members of the Jewish supreme court. Their powers were limited by the Romans Empire in Jesus’ day, but they still retained religious authority over every Jew in the world. One of their duties was to investigate false prophets, preachers who may have gone astray (Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 1, pg. 123). Scholars debate, then, whether Nicodemus came to Jesus in an official capacity or whether he was just curious for himself. Why did he come at night? Perhaps because that was the time when Jewish leaders studied, or perhaps it was a time he knew he wouldn’t be seen (Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 269). Whatever the reason, he and Jesus spend the evening in theological conversation centering around what it means to be born again. In essence, Jesus says it means to start a new life by trusting in him. Jesus says, “Everyone who believes may have eternal life” in Jesus (3:15).

Then what follows, in the passage we read today, is the author’s reflection on the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus (Card, The Parable of Joy, pg. 44). In earlier Bibles, you might find these verses in red, as if they are the words of Jesus, but scholars today are pretty much agreed that these words are John’s sermon, if you will, on the meaning of what Jesus just said. And John begins with what have become some of the most well-known words in the whole New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). He goes on to remind the reader that Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it, to bring hope and healing and restoration to this broken world. For John, the world is a simple contrast between light and darkness. Those who are “in Jesus,” those who follow him, are in the light. They can see the world clearly. They see how things were meant to be. They are closer to becoming the me they were meant to be, and they live by the truth. Those who are in darkness cannot see clearly, and their deeds are evil. “Not believing means remaining in the darkness” (Wright 34).

Now, a lot of people today don’t like that kind of language. We don’t like the word “sin” anymore, and we tend not to use it. We’ve redefined “sin” as “mistake” or “my own preference” or “psychological illness.” In the New Testament, the word for “sin” is hamartia, which literally means “missing the mark.” It’s an archery word, and it describes every time I took aim in archery at Boy Scout camp. I don’t think I ever hit the target. I would pull back on the bow with the arrow, let it fly and I would hamartia. I’d miss the mark. Now, contrary to the way we usually think of such things, Jesus never gives a list of sins. He doesn’t have a rank order of what it means to miss the mark. What he does in the Gospels is show us what happens when we sin, when we miss the mark. He shows how it affects our relationship with God, and with each other. Had he given us a list of sins, we might be free to come up with our own and claim it’s just as good a list as his. Instead, he describes what it’s like when we break a relationship with someone, when we do things that are cruel toward that other person or when we harm or devalue them in some way. The image is that God has set up this mark, the way the world works best, and for us to blatantly miss it, to disregard it even, is, in fact, to devalue God, to tell God he doesn’t matter. When we try to define our own target, we’re slapping God in the face and we hurt other people. When we reject the way God calls us to live, we might even be putting our own lives in danger. Consider it this way: suppose you come across a jug of tannish liquid in the refrigerator and on the container is a sign that says, “Don’t drink.” You have two choices at that point, right? To drink or not to drink. If you drink and the liquid turns out to be tea, you’ve still rejected what someone else has asked you to do, you’ve devalued them. If you drink and the liquid turns out to be gasoline, which for some reason is in the refrigerator, you could potentially die (cf. Everts, The Smell of Sin, pgs. 22-28). Choosing to miss the mark, choosing to reject someone else, has consequences, and in the Christian tradition, we call that sin. We waste time in our lives dallying with things we don’t need to be in the midst of, and if we’re going to redeem the time, if we’re going to move from darkness to light, we have to deal with these things long before we shoot the arrow or drink from the container. We have to deal with what’s called temptation, the desires that either lead us toward sin or could, if we firmly deal with it, lead us more toward the me I want to be.

It’s important to remember that the temptation is not the sin. Sin is when we choose to deal with temptation in a way that is not healthy for our soul, a way that breaks our relationship with God or with someone else. So when faced with temptation, the first thing we need to remember is that isolation makes it more powerful. Isolation makes temptation harder to resist. Paul reminds us, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God is always with us, but we also need to stay connected to a community, to folks who love us and will help us stay on God’s path. One of the many things I love about the film Courageous is its focus on a group of guys who challenge each other and help each other in the midst of a difficult time. We need others. We don’t just say you can’t live this faith on your own in order to boost church attendance. We were made for community, especially when temptation comes along. Twelve-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous know this better than the church does, because one of their practices is that you can call your sponsor any time, day or night, when the temptation to drink comes. We cannot live in isolation.

Once we have a community, when temptation comes, we need to ask a simple question: where will this lead? If I choose to go down this road, will it lead me to become more the me I want to be or less? Like I was talking about a few moments ago, will the road you’re on get you to where you want to go? That’s why we began two weeks ago by first talking about what sort of person, what sort of me, we want to be. As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do. But if we know where we’re going, in any area of life but especially in our spiritual life, then when a temptation comes along, we can ask where it will lead and know whether or not that choice will lead us toward God or away from God. If it will lead us toward God, then it’s worth the time it takes to invest in it. If it will lead us away from God, we’re not numbering our days well.

Sometimes the choice is difficult and much more subtle than we imagine it to be. A little over a week ago, there was a group of us who went to Leadership Institute at Church of the Resurrection, and Pastor Adam Hamilton shared about a time in his life where things were very crazy. His youngest daughter was getting ready to move away for school, halfway across the country, and he wanted to spend time with her, but he also had many obligations in ministry. He felt like he couldn’t say no to any of them, so he was keeping an incredibly busy schedule, running here and there and trying to keep everyone happy, to do what he thought God had called him to do. The last project he was involved in was a trip to the Holy Land to film videos for an Advent series, one we’re going to use this year, and after finishing that project, he got on a plane to come back to the United States, and he started feeling sick. He had a fever, was shaking, and even had to run to the restroom to throw up. On his way back to his seat, he passed out in the aisle, and when he came to, they got him back to his seat and covered him up. And he said he sat there in that seat praying, and he heard God speaking to him very clearly. God said, “Adam, you’re an idiot. You’re doing all these things while your daughter just needs to have her dad.” Sometimes even things that look like they’re good things can be a temptation to walk away from the me I want to be. Where will this lead? It’s a critical question.

So surround yourself with a community and ask yourself where this temptation might lead. Then monitor your soul satisfaction. John Ortberg says, “We become vulnerable to temptation when we are dissatisfied with our lives. The deeper our dissatisfaction, the deeper our vulnerability, because we were made for soul satisfaction. We cannot live without it. If we do not find soul satisfaction in God, we will look for it somewhere else, because we will look for it” (The Me I Want To Be, pg. 141). And our world wants us to be dissatisfied. Many of you know I’m a gadgetaholic, and every couple of months or so, the world tells me I should spend my money on the latest and greatest. Apple announced a new iPhone and immediately the temptation to upgrade enters my life. I have to pray about my own satisfaction level, because if I spend all my money on things like that, I have less to give to God’s work, and besides that, I’ll just be dissatisfied in another couple of months. It may not be gadgets for you, but the world sends all sorts of messages about satisfaction. Tired of your old marriage? Get a new one. Tired of your old job? Quit. Tired of your old house? Buy a new and bigger one; it doesn’t matter if you can afford it or not. Get it now, pay later—and yet every time we try to satisfy our soul with anything other than God, we end up empty after a very short time. St. Augustine said our souls are restless until they find their rest in Christ.

Nicodemus was, I think, a man with a restlessness in his soul, a longing for something more than just keeping the rules. I think that’s why he came to Jesus, because he sensed in him something more, something different, a closer connection to the God Nicodemus longed to serve with everything that he was. And I think that because, at the end of the Gospel, Nicodemus is one who helps bury Jesus (19:39). By that point, he’s become a follower of this teacher who showed the way to God. And I wonder if, when he saw Jesus crucified, he remembered this conversation on a dark Jerusalem night? Jesus told him, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (3:14-15). Now, that’s a strange thing to say, but Nicodemus would have caught the reference to Numbers 21, where the camp of the Israelites is overrun with poisonous snakes, and God instructs Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. If you were bitten, all you had to do was look at the snake on the pole and you would be healed (Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, pg. 32). Jesus uses that same image of himself. When he is lifted up, when he is on the cross, that’s when healing from our sin, from our brokenness, from our temptations is available. John says all we have to do is believe, look at Jesus. He alone is our healer. He alone is the one who can satisfy our soul.

One young man found that out. He had been looking for a solution to his restlessness for some time, and when he went to church, he generally agreed with what the preacher said, but he found nothing in the worship to truly change his life. One day, he was headed to an appointment when a snowstorm stopped him and made him turn into a small Methodist church. The storm had kept most of the regular parishioners away, including the preacher, so a layperson stood up to give the morning message to a rather meager audience. He read the text for the day, Isaiah 45:22, which said, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” The speaker bumbled through the message, rambled, and finally turned toward the young man and simply said, “Young man, you look very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!” That simple message broke through to the heart of Charles Spurgeon, who did “look to Jesus” that day and went on to become one of the most powerful preachers of the 19th century, preaching over 1900 sermons and leading untold numbers of people toward looking to Jesus. Soul satisfaction can only be found by looking toward the one on the cross, the one who gave his life for us. In Jesus is found salvation and hope. In Jesus is found the way to redeeming our time because fixing our eyes on him gives our life focus and meaning and strength against temptation.

Then, one final word: when you fall, don’t stay down. We have this idea in American Christianity that once someone gives in to some sort of temptation, they are done. They are beyond forgiveness. They are beyond redemption. If that is true, then Jesus only came to forgive some of our sins. The belief that what we have done is so bad that we’re now beyond hope usually comes from other people, from modern-day Pharisees, and from the father of lies himself, the devil (cf. John 8:44). The Spirit of God works in just the opposite way (Ortberg 142), and even when we fall, he moves us toward forgiveness, toward redemption and healing, even when others try to hold us back. His name is redeemer, and there is nothing we can do he can’t redeem. There is no place we can go where we can’t come back. Temptation does not have to be the last word, so when you fall, get back up and allow the Spirit of God to resume his work of making you the me you want to be.

You know, we all should live like my friend who knows he is dying, because we’re all terminal. We really have no time, no matter how long our lives are, to waste on unimportant things. I want to live knowing every day is a gift, and I don’t want to waste time on whatever distracts me from the mission God has given me. I like the way my friend summed it up in his blog: “I’m planning to live a bit longer in this body, but someday it will fail me. I’m OK with that. I am not defined by my body. I am a child of God, made in His image, a spirit, and my journey is ultimately going to end up in His presence where ultimate healing occurs! I’m in no hurry to get there, but I have a hope that will last forever! So either way, I win!” As we continue to become the me we want to be, let’s do everything we can to redeem the time. There is evil all around us, but even closer to us than that is the Spirit of God who will enable to face and overcome every temptation as we move toward true soul satisfaction. Let’s pray.

O Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Help us make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil.

What's In The Crawl Space?

The sermon study guide is here.

Philippians 4:4-9; Romans 12:1-3; Matthew 13:44-46

October 1/2, 2011 • Portage First UMC

INTRO VIDEO

John Ortberg tells about a Saturday night where his home was overcome by a smell so powerful and noxious it forced them to evacuate. Thinking it was a gas leak, they called the fire department, only to discover that the smell was actually a skunk that had gotten very close to the home. Ortberg says he tried to call some exterminators, but no one wanted anything to do with a skunk, so they put up with the smell until it went away. Actually, he says, they just got used to it and were only reminded of it when someone would stop by and say, “It smells like a skunk around here!” Wouldn’t you love to have that said about your house? Well, a week or so later, Ortberg got a call from his family saying the skunk had struck again. So he made some more calls, and finally found a specialist in skunk removal, a “skunk whisperer.” When the specialist arrived, he did a quick investigation and found not one, but two live skunks living in the crawl space under their house. What’s more, he also found they had a dead skunk in the crawl space. Now, if you’ve got three skunks occupying your crawl space, what do you do? Leave them there, right? I mean, eventually they’ll move on, hopefully, maybe. No! Of course not! Ortberg says he paid a great deal to get the skunks removed, but it was worth it. “You cannot,” he says, “get rid of the skunk odor without getting rid of the skunk” (The Me I Want To Be, pg. 89). Well, that’s an obvious truth, right? I mean, we know that to be true without even having to go through the experience of having a skunk living under our house. So if we recognize that to be true in the physical world, why don’t we believe that the same thing is true in the spiritual life?

This evening/morning, we’re continuing our series of messages on “The Me I Want To Be,” and we began last week by talking about how there are all these different sorts of “me’s” we live out, such as the me others think I should be, or the me that fails to be. But there’s also a “me” we want to be, and that’s the “me” God made us to be. God has put within you certain talents, passions, abilities so that you will become everything he dreamed of you being. And so last week I asked you to consider what it is that stands in the way of you becoming that person. What’s your “great wealth” that holds you back? That “thing” might be a sin or a way of life that is not pleasing to God. It might be something that “stinks up” our life like the skunk stunk up the house. It might even be something we’ve rationalized and made ourselves believe is okay. Whatever it is, maybe we think it will just go away. Or we can ignore it. But you can’t get rid of the smell without getting rid of the skunk. So this evening/morning, I want to ask a very simple question: in your spiritual house, what’s in the crawl space? What’s the thing you need removed in order to better become the person God has made you to be?

In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul spends quite a bit of time in the first several chapters outlining what it looks like when a person wanders away from God, when they let the skunks stick around. In the very first chapter, Paul says creation itself gives witness to God’s existence, that you can’t look at creation and not sense there is someone behind it all. You’ve experienced that, though you may not have said it that way. Why do we gaze at the beauty of a sunset? Why do we marvel at the majesty of the mountains? Every once in a while, I will turn off the lights in our kitchen and go out on the deck at night. And I’ll just sit there and stare up at the stars. Our subdivision is not so overrun with street lights that we can’t see the stars. And when I look out at those points of light, and I think about how long that light has travelled to get to me, how far away those stars are, how long they’ve been burning…it never fails to move me. I can’t look at creation and deny that there is a creator. The psalmist put it this way: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them” (Psalm 8:3-4)? Paul says we are “without excuse” because creation reveals God’s character, God’s nature. But then he recognizes what happens when we turn our hearts and minds away from God: “Although [humankind] claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts” (1:22-24). That’s what happens, Paul says, when we let the skunks live in the crawl space. It stinks up everything. It stinks up our lives. That’s the result of a worldly mind. And you can read, in the first eleven chapters of Romans, how Paul sees that all working out.

But then we come to our passage for this evening/morning, which is a call to a different way of life. “Do not conform,” Paul says, “to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2). Bible translator J. B. Phillips put that verse this way: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold” (qtd. in Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X, pg. 705). I like that. Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. We have a choice, Paul says, between being conformed and being transformed, between having a mind that is shaped by the world (the sort of thing he’s described in the last eleven chapters) and having a mind that is shaped by God, and he says the end result of a transformed mind is this: “You will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (12:2). A conformed mind is like having skunks live in your crawl space. A renewed mind is in tune with God, enough to sense and know what God is calling that person to do and to be. A renewed mind represents a person that is becoming who God intended them to be from the very beginning because what we think—what hangs out in our mind—inevitably produces the way we live. So don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.

Now, Paul is not saying that the whole world is evil, that everything in the world should be rejected and kept at arm’s length, though some Christians have chosen such a lifestyle. I’ve been reading the book Amish Grace, and while it’s primarily about their practice of forgiveness, I’ve learned how their lifestyle and their choice to live apart from the world is done so they can better follow Jesus. It’s their belief that all the stuff of the world is a big distraction, and to some extent they’re right. But that doesn’t make everything bad. There are ways to redeem what’s in the world, which is what a church in Georgia has been trying to do over the last few years by making movies. Their latest effort, Courageous, released this weekend. A renewed mind, like Paul is describing, is a mind that is decisively counter-cultural. We evaluate what’s going on and recognize when the world is trying to lead us away from God’s path. An unrenewed mind just accepts everything as it is; it hopes the skunk smell will just go away. A renewed mind can see an event or a lifestyle and say, “No, Jesus calls us to live this way, not that way” (Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part Two, pg. 69). A renewed mind doesn’t reject everything in the world, but evaluates it against the higher standard Jesus has called us to. Paul put it this way: “The mind governed by the flesh [or world] is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). A renewed mind seeks a way of life that is life-giving rather than hurt-bringing.

This takes effort and commitment, which is why in the very first verse of this chapter, Paul urges us to offer our body [which represents our life] as a “living sacrifice” (12:1). Now, a sacrifice, by its very definition, is something precious and valued that is offered to a god as a sign of commitment. In some ancient cultures, human sacrifice was practiced, but never in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And yet, here, Paul uses that imagery to talk about the sort of commitment we should be giving to God if we’re going to become the person God wants us to be. We give our very lives. We give up our wants, our preferences in order to become who God wants us to be. That’s the image of a living sacrifice. Give your life, everything you are, to the God who wants to use you, to shape you, to mold you into the person he dreamed you would become when he thought you up. Our “true and proper worship” (12:1) is giving ourselves to God so we can be transformed rather than conformed.

So how do we “renew” our mind? How do get rid of the skunks in the crawl space? Well, you know the old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out”? It’s much like that. Our minds are reflective of what we choose to put into our lives. Sometimes people say, “I can’t control my thoughts. I can’t determine what goes through my mind!” If that’s true, then we’re no different from the animals. The Bible says God has given the capacity to “set” our minds on certain things. In the letter to Philippians, Paul reminds us we can choose to focus on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable (4:8). We choose to focus on what is excellent or praiseworthy. But to do that, we have to first take the bad stuff out. If we want to get rid of the skunk smell, we have to first get rid of the skunk. And perhaps the biggest “skunk” in our world today is fear and worry. We live in a world that feeds on fear. We are surrounded by a culture that wants us to worry. The nightly news blares all the things we should be afraid of: the stock market went down, someone was murdered again in the next city over, the politicians who are on the opposite side of you might get elected, you might not have enough money to get by, the storms of life just might overwhelm you. The list of things that our minds worry about could go on and on. Trust me, I know. I’m a worrier by nature. I lay in bed, sometimes in the middle of the night, and listen to my own voice in my head telling me what I need to fear. Did I pay that bill? How am I going to have enough money to send my kids to college? What if this situation doesn’t work out the way I think it should? What if, what if, what if? You know what? We never ever have a picture in the Gospels of Jesus sitting around and worrying. Into the storm, Jesus says, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39, KJV). To a group of frightened disciples, on a Sunday morning when they had discovered Jesus’ body was missing, he suddenly appears among them and says, “Peace be with you.” (Luke 24:36). Jesus brings peace, not worry or fear. Now, that doesn’t mean we’re always going to be in easy situations. Jesus’ life was not easy, nor was Paul’s. Paul faced shipwreck, arrest, imprisonment, and was nearly killed several times. “God rarely sends people into situations where their comfort level is high. Rather He promises to be with them in their fear” (Ortberg 116). Peace doesn’t come from an absence of storms in our lives. Peace comes when we allow Jesus to walk with us through the storms. The Bible says, “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). And who is it that brings perfect love? It’s Jesus. The first step in renewing our minds is to set our minds away from the bad stuff, from the worry and fear in our lives.

But we have to not only remove the bad stuff, we need to start putting in good stuff. The “good stuff” is the choices we make of what to focus on, to do particular things that will open our lives to God, that will allow God to work in such a way that we begin to become more the me we were meant to be. I want to suggest three things this evening/morning that we can put in our minds and our lives that will lead us along that path, and the first thing is to renew our minds with study. And, as you might guess, the “study” I’m talking about in particular is study of the Scriptures. Today, “Scripture has never been easier to obtain, and Scripture has never been more difficult to absorb” (Ortberg 105). On the “easy to obtain” end, you can find gobs of translations nearly anywhere, even at Wal-Mart! But you need a translation that makes sense to you, one you can understand, in modern language. I love the poetic language of the classic translations like the King James, but I don’t speak 17th century English and I need to be able to understand what I read. Here in worship, we use the New International Version, and if you don’t have a Bible and you don’t have the resources for getting one, let me know. We’ll make sure you get one. Or if you have a smartphone, there are apps that let you download the Bible for free. Some of them, like the one I have on my iPhone, even have a plan for reading through the Bible. Every day, it gives you passages to read. But the best way to study the Scriptures is in a small group. We continue to have a dream and a goal here of every person being involved in a small group of some sort. Maybe the groups that currently meet don’t fit your time frame. Well, then, start one. Get a few friends together. Pastor Deb and I are available and willing to help you find resources. Study a book, study a topic, study the stories of the Gospels. Read, ask questions, memorize passages so they’re in your heart, and come with an attitude of expectancy, believing the Bible has something to say to you. We replace the bad stuff like worry by inserting good stuff like the words of Jesus.

But once we’ve read and studied, it’s time to respond, and so a second way we renew our minds is by putting our bodies into action. We serve. And this next week, we have a fantastic way to do that. Jesus says one of the ways his followers are distinguished from the rest of the world is that they feed those who are hungry, and that by doing so we are feeding or serving him (cf. Matthew 25:35). This evening/morning, we’re launching another push of “Stepping Out, Stopping Hunger,” which is a week-long emphasis where we take grocery bags out into our neighborhoods and invite people to contribute food that will then be collected next weekend and taken to the Food Pantry. Well, I think this video explains it better than I can. Let’s watch.

VIDEO: Stepping Out, Stopping Hunger

So we renew our mind by getting our body in gear and serving Jesus by serving others. It’s a response to our reading of the Scriptures, of what Jesus calls us to do. I hope you’ll participate, and you can pick up your grocery bags at the end of the service today.

But there’s one other way I want to suggest that we can renew our minds, and that is through worship. I’ve shared this before, but in the darkest times in my own life, worship has been what has redirected my mind toward greater things, toward a greater God who knows what I’m going through and who, I’m always reminded, is walking with me through it. The writer of the psalms felt that way in Psalm 73, and agonized over all the things going wrong. He spent much time worrying over why those who were against God seemed to be getting away with it, and why the righteous, those who want to follow God, seem to be struggling. He writes, “When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny” (73:16-17). Worship changes our perspective. Worship enables us to begin to see the world the way God sees it. Worship renews our mind, and maybe at no other time more than when we come to the communion table. This bread and this cup remind us how Jesus came and turned the world’s thinking on its head. I mean, seriously, who in our world believes that suffering can be redeemed, that a cross can provide salvation, that the Son of God can take away our sins? It’s only found in this faith, represented by the bread and the cup. Worship and communion change us, they renew our mind by giving us God’s perspective. When I go a week without worship or a month without communion, I find that I shrivel up inside. I find that it’s easy to let my mind slip back into old patterns. It’s easy to let the skunk live and die in my crawl space. Worship renews the mind and transforms the worshipper.

In the gospel reading this morning (Matthew 13), there are two short parables, stories with a point, Jesus tells about the value of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. In the first one, a man finds a treasure buried in a field, and in order to obtain the treasure, he’s willing to give everything he has to buy the field. In the second parable, there’s a merchant who is scouring the earth to find a valuable pearl, and when he comes across it, perhaps in a side-street market, he sells everything he has to obtain it. The point of both parables is the same: being part of the kingdom is worth giving everything we have. It’s worthy doing whatever we need to do in order to renew our minds, to remove the skunks from the crawl space. The kingdom of God is worth everything. Jesus came and gave everything. He gave his life so we could be saved from our sins and enter the kingdom. He literally gave everything. So, therefore, “in view of God’s mercy,” I urge you to do whatever it takes to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:1-2). Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. Instead, as we receive communion today, make a new commitment to doing whatever it takes to become the me you want to be. Let’s prepare our hearts for holy communion.