Molded

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Romans 8:28-30; Colossians 1:24-29; Matthew 5:43-48

August 10, 2014 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO: Julie & Julia

You know what I love about food? Eating it! I didn’t become a Methodist pastor by mistake. I became a Methodist pastor for the potlucks and the church dinners, because we always have the best cooks, am I right? But she is right in the video: it is comforting to know that no matter what else might be going wrong, you can mix this ingredient with that ingredient and get a desired result. Finding and using the right ingredients always results in the dish you want to make. And what is true in the kitchen is also true in the spiritual life, so last week we began looking at eight ingredients for the making of a Christian, eight essential things that have to happen if we are going to live faithfully in this “brave new world” called the twenty-first century. Last week we began with nonconformity and balance, mixing them together here in our Christian kitchen. And this week we are going to focus on two additional ingredients: Christlikeness and maturity.

The movie that clip comes from is called Julie and Julia, and it’s the true story of a young woman named Julie Powell who came to a point where she was finding very little satisfaction in her work or her life. Then she discovered a mentor in the famous cook Julia Child. Powell decides she’s going to cook every recipe in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it. She came to the conclusion, as many have, that if you want to be like someone, you have to walk in their footsteps. You have to do the things they did, even if that means cooking all the way through a cookbook. It’s an interesting notion, and was a year-long experiment for Powell because if you want to become like the master of anything, you have to spend time with that master, even if that time is only through their writings.

That’s not a new idea. It was said in the ancient times that the students of any teacher, especially religious teachers, were supposed to follow so closely to the teacher, or rabbi, that they would be covered by the dust he kicked up as he walked. Students, or disciples, were to be always walking in the dust of their rabbi. And the reason for that is obvious: they didn’t want to miss anything the rabbi might say or do. They had left homes and jobs and everything else in order to study with this teacher, so they had to stay close if they were going to catch everything he said and watch everything he did. Because the goal of a disciple or a student is to become like the teacher. The goal of a disciple is to model the life of his or her rabbi. And so it’s no surprise that, in the New Testament, one of the defining characteristics for a Christian is Christlikeness. In fact, the word “Christian” is actually only used three times in the New Testament. The word more often used to describe the kind of people we strive to be is “follower” or “disciple”—in fact, the word “disciple” is used over 250 times in the New Testament. The Scriptures do not call us to adhere to a religion but rather to become like Jesus, to be Christlike, and so the third ingredient for a Christian is Christlikeness (cf. Stott, The Radical Disciple, pgs. 13-14; Vander Laan, In the Dust of the Rabbi, pgs. 11, 17).

We heard a fairly well-known passage from the letter to the Romans this morning, one that is often taken out of context and twisted to say that if you become a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, everything will be just great and will always work out. Come to Jesus, some say, and he will solve all your problems and get you out of every difficult situation. And I do believe that, as we often say around here, “the worst thing is never the last thing,” but at the same time, I don’t believe the Bible promises a life of bliss and ease just because you follow Jesus. In fact, some of God’s most faithful disciples, both in the days of the Bible and throughout history since, have found that life is often very, very hard. Mother Teresa once put it this way: “I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much.” Ever feel like that? So why, then, does Paul say what he does to the Romans: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (8:28)? What is Paul really saying there?

Let’s be clear: Paul says God will work all things for good for those who are called. “Call” here is a technical term that describes people who have responded to the good news, someone who has come to faith in Jesus, someone whose heart has been filled with the love of Jesus (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans: Part One, pgs. 156-157). The Bible says all are called to faith; 1 Timothy says, “God…wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2:3-4). However, not everyone responds. So this promise is to those who are “called,” those who respond by faith to the Gospel. Those people have a purpose, Paul says. In fact, if you have come to faith, God has already decided what your future should be. He has, Paul says, “predestined” you. Not “predestined” in terms of planning every little detail of your life. But God has “predestined” you “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (8:29). If you have responded to the call of Jesus, if you have become a disciple by placing your trust in him, then God wants to mold you into a different image: one that looks like Jesus. Not physically, of course, but spiritually, morally, ethically. He wants to restore in you what he intended from the beginning. Do you remember the story from Genesis 1? God created humanity in his own image (Genesis 1:26) and then we messed that up by going our own way. Jesus has come to set all that right, to press the “reset button,” and when we become his disciples, his followers, we are to be molded back into that image of righteousness, holiness, love, kindness and all the rest. We are to be made like Jesus: Christlike.

If you’re a parent, or a grandparent, you get this. You’ve already had a glimpse into the heart of God, and you know it’s not a mistake that God is often called “Father,” because as parents, we want our children to pick up the best of our character. We want them to hold to our morality, our faith, our practices—at least the good ones! Last weekend, we had a baby staying at our house, and I was reminded again how early that imitation begins. You make a face and they try to match it. You make a sound they sometimes imitate it. You smile, they smile, and so on. And that doesn’t stop when our babies become teenagers—or even adults. You’re never not a parent, and you never stop wanting the best for your kids. Even as Christopher heads off to college this fall, we find ourselves still trying to pour the very best into him, until he says, “Mom, Dad, I got this.” But we never quit hoping the best for our kids. Of course, what happens often instead? We see the worst of our habits magnified in our kids, right? They seem to more easily pick up our bad habits. The word that slipped out at the wrong moment is the one they choose to repeat at the most inopportune time. That temper seems to show up in them just like it does in us. And on it goes.

The good news is that, unlike us, Jesus doesn’t have “bad habits” that he hopes we won’t see. Jesus’ way was the way of love, the way of reconciliation, the way of peace. And when we allow ourselves to be “conformed” to his image (instead of to the world’s image, as we talked about last week), we will find more and more of those “good,” Christlike ways being formed in our lives. However, and here’s the point Paul wants to make: it’s not always going to be easy. Jesus himself said it would look like this: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Taking up a cross is not putting a pretty necklace around your neck. Taking up a cross is not enduring a pesky summer cold. Taking up a cross is not even about caring for an elderly relative. Taking up a cross, in Jesus’ world, meant one thing: death. A violent, ugly death. And more than that, it meant that you were no longer a citizen of the empire, you were condemned of a crime, and you were basically no longer a person. Taking up a cross meant there was no hope for you. That does not sound like an easy, blissful life, which is why we know that the way many often interpret Paul here can’t be right. If we’re going to be made like Jesus, conformed or molded to his image, it’s not going to be a simple, easy, straight path. It’s going to be tough. Being a disciple is going to ask difficult things of us. It’s going to require us to give up our own priorities and allow his dreams and aspirations to become our own. Becoming Christlike is not easy, but it’s good. As God shapes and molds us, we are made good. Of this I am sure: there is nothing difficult in our lives that God won’t ultimately use for something good. We may not be made wealthy or fully healthy or extremely wise, but we will be made like Jesus. And that’s the hope and confidence that caused Paul to say, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11). Christlikeness is essential to the making of a Christian, so let’s pause and ask: are you more like Jesus than you were, say, a year ago? Are you more loving, more kind, more forgiving than you were last week? And if not, can we really say that we are becoming more like Jesus?

Christlikeness, then, leads us to the fourth ingredient, which is “maturity.” Pastor John Stott, when he traveled, would always ask people how they would summarize the state of the Christian church today, and while he received a variety of answers, his most frequent observations led him to three words: “growth without depth” (Stott 38). In many parts of the world today, the church is growing by leaps and bounds. In fact, America is one of the few places in the world where the church isn’t growing overall. Methodism in Africa is exploding. More people today worship God in China than in all of the churches of Western Europe put together. And, of course, there are large churches here in this country, though overall the percentage of Christians in our culture remains stable or even declines from year to year. But we look at places where numerical growth is happening and we think, “Look, that’s great, that’s God’s blessing.” We equate numerical growth with spiritual depth. But is that true? Willow Creek Community Church, the pioneer of the “seeker-sensitive model” and one of the largest churches in America (not to mention right in our backyard), released a self-study a few years ago where they found that the faith of the folks in their church was, in short, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” The essence of what they learned was this: simply showing up for church events does not deepen your faith. Even simply showing up for worship doesn’t do that. Nor does becoming a leader in the church. In fact, I still remember one of my seminary professors telling us that when you become a pastor, or really any other leader in the church, you cut your chances of going to heaven in half! Now, he was obviously exaggerating—I hope!—but the point is this: simply being in the building does not equate spiritual growth. Simply having been a Christian for a long time is not the same as being mature. So what does a mature disciple look like, and how do we get there?

Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, uses a startling and somewhat frightening word to describe our goal. At the end of chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says this: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48). Perfect? Great, last week we were told we had to be holy because God is holy, and now this week we have to be perfect, too? I’m almost afraid to see what next week holds! But wait a minute! “Perfect” here doesn’t mean “making no mistakes.” It doesn’t refer to straight “A+’s” like we’ve become accustomed to thinking of it. The word for “perfect” is used throughout the New Testament as a contrast to immature, childish, childlike, infant. It never refers to perfect behavior. It really means “fully mature.” That’s the way it is translated in Colossians 1:28, where Paul says that Jesus “is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” In the Sermon on the Mount, back in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a sense of what it means to “be perfect” in the verses just before this, which are all about whom we love and whom we hate.

Jesus has spent this first part of his Sermon on the Mount contrasting what these people have always heard with what is really true, and in this last little section, he reminds them that they have grown up knowing and hearing that you’re supposed to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Well, that makes sense to us, too, doesn’t it? That’s also what we’ve grown up knowing. And those in Jesus’ time believed that was part of sacred Scripture. Except it wasn’t. And isn’t. Well, part of it is. The “love your neighbor” thing goes back to Leviticus, to the writings of Moses, where God tells the people, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). But the “hate your enemy” part was added somewhere along the way. Someone, somewhere decided that such a statement was the logical outcome of the first statement. I mean, if you love your neighbors, you must hate your enemies. The problem is, in of Jesus’ time, that had been raised to a legal requirement. You had to hate your enemies if you were going to really be one of God’s people. But Jesus reminds the people that it’s not a Biblical requirement. Quite the opposite. “I tell you, love your enemies,” Jesus says, “and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (5:44-45). In other words, being God’s people is not just a matter of loving those who are like you or those who like you. The true test is whether or not we can love those who are not like us or who don’t like us, who may even hate us, who speak evil against and about us. That, Jesus says, is what it means to be mature, to be “perfect.”

After all, loving the enemy is what Jesus did. We were his enemies. We rebelled against him. We nailed him to the cross. When all he did was speak of love, kindness, hope, salvation and forgiveness, we killed him. And those who did that thought they were doing God’s will. They thought Jesus was a liar, a cheat, a blasphemer, and by getting rid of him, they were doing God a favor. And those same people heard Jesus, on the cross, in excruciating pain, say these words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Jesus reminds us that those who need forgiveness the most deserve it the least (Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 59). Now it may be easy for us to look at “those people” and say, “Yes, they are the ones who nailed Jesus to the cross.” But, theologically, Biblically, it was our sin that put him there, our refusal to live in the way he calls us to. When he was filming the movie The Passion of the Christ, director Mel Gibson wanted to portray that in a very personal way. The arm you see holding the hammer that puts the first nail in Jesus’ wrist is Gibson’s arm. He wanted to remember that it was his sin that put Jesus there. And it’s ours as well. We, along with those who were actually there that day, are the ones Jesus was forgiving. And he calls us to love those who hate us, to the love the enemy, to grow up and become mature.

Now, sometimes we want to know exactly what Christian maturity looks like. It’s actually something that’s hard to define. Paul calls it being “in Christ,” when we are personally connected to Jesus. John Wesley called it “Christian perfection,” following the language of Matthew 5, and he described it as having our heart set fully on loving God and loving others. But, just like with our kids, it’s hard to nail down exactly when it happens. You know, we’ve watched our kids grow up day by day and somewhere along the way they stopped being kids and became youth and then young adults and then…they become adults. Christopher came across a recording the other day of Rachel, made when she was quite young, and it’s funny to hear her voice as it was then, because it changed bit by bit without us realizing it as she matured. I’ve tried to think back as to when I felt like an adult, and I think it on my thirtieth birthday. Up to that point, I still felt like a teenager (maybe) playing in the adult world. But the day I turned thirty we moved into the Brushwood parsonage, and I was suddenly a real grown-up pastor, all on my own. Up to that point, I had been in school, and then I had been a junior associate pastor at High Street. Now, I had to do this thing on my own—and I had to preach every Sunday! I asked you on Facebook this week when you felt grown up, and while some of you said you haven’t grown up yet, several others of you responded with moments like having your first child and knowing you were responsible for another life, or when you got your driver’s license. For others, it was the death of a parent or both of your parents, or when you found yourself caring for parents or other relatives who were seriously ill. Some said they had to grow up fast when they joined the military, or when you made your first mortgage payment, or started making your own decisions. One person said it was when they saw their father’s face staring back in the mirror, and I remember the moment when I said something my Dad always used to say (and something I swore I would never say!) and it kind of stopped me in my tracks. Lots of different moments and experiences, but I found it interesting that no one said, “When I turned age such-and-such.” Christopher, of course, is eighteen, and we’ve told him when he is paying his own bills we’ll call him an adult; several of you said similar things. It’s not really about the age; it’s about certain responsibilities or life changes. For most of us, there comes a moment.

So we may be able to identify a time when we “feel” grown up, but for our faith, it’s a hard target to pin down. What we can identify instead are things that help us, practices that lead us to mature Christian faith. If our goal is to become like Christ, then the main thing we need to do to become mature in our faith is to get a clear vision of who Jesus is (Stott 42). A lot of times we think we know who he is and what he’s like, but honestly most of our ideas are often taken from movies, storybooks or our own assumptions of what he ought to be like. If we’re really going to know who Jesus is, we have to engage in a disciplined study of Scripture, in the book that gives us Jesus’ very own words and life and guidance. It’s not enough to know about the Bible, nor is it enough to rely solely on what you hear on Sunday mornings. Jerome, one of the early church fathers, put it quite bluntly: “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ” (qtd. in Stott 45). In our world today, only half of U.S. adults can name one of the four Gospels and fewer than half can identify Genesis as the Bible's first book. And those are just trivial examples. If we want to know Christ, if we want to become mature, we need to engage in disciplined study of the Bible.

And we try to provide opportunities for that here, through groups like Disciple. But I know that some folks either feel like they’re not ready for Disciple or can’t make the long-term commitment that Disciple requires. Maybe a good starting place for you would be Alpha, a group that looks at critical questions in the faith and encourages you to ask hard questions. That will start September 3 and is a ten week commitment. Or maybe you’re ready for something a bit deeper, so you might want to check out the Journey 101 classes, which begins with “Knowing God.” That small group is six weeks long and will start this Wednesday; there’s still room for you. What I love the most about small groups like that is the way you get to meet and interact with others in the church that you might not meet any other way. The Bible talks about iron sharpening iron, and when you rub up against each other, you help each other grow and come to know Jesus better. You get a clearer vision. And then, along that same line, there’s something new we’re going to try this fall, and it’s called “Triads.” As the name implies, these are going to be groups of three Christians who come together for spiritual growth, mutual accountability and to learn to love Jesus better. These sorts of groups are very much part of our Methodist DNA; in John Wesley’s day, such groups were called “select societies,” and they consisted of Christians who were not afraid to ask each other hard questions. That’s similar to what our triads are going to do, and if you might be interested in learning more about that, or becoming part of it, you can talk to me after worship today. Growing in maturity means we have to be intentional in our study of Scripture so that we can get a better vision of what Jesus is like.

But, folks, it’s not enough to just cloister and study. If that’s all we ever do, we’ll become what some have called “Fat Christians,” full of information but benefiting no one. Jesus calls us to also know him by serving him in our world. Now, there are lots of ways to do that, but for the sake of time this morning, I want to highlight just a couple of opportunities that are available right now or very soon. You’ve been hearing (I hope) about our prison ministry team that is now running an Alpha course at Westville Correctional Facility. They’ve been going every Wednesday evening for about a month now, and…well, let me just let Steve Massow tell you about his call to this ministry and a bit about what they do.

VIDEO: Steve Massow, Prison Ministry

Jesus called us to care for prisoners. The author of Hebrews said to remember those in prison as if you were there with them (13:3). Can you catch a glimpse of Jesus in prison? Then there’s one other area I want to highlight quickly and that’s a ministry that maybe a lot of you don’t even know happens. We launched Congregational Care last year as a sort of replacement for Stephen Ministry, our caregiving ministry, and we have currently twenty-seven CCMs (or Congregational Care Ministers) serving in four different areas. Some of them are involved in prayer ministry. Others show up to see you when you’re in the hospital. Still others come alongside you when your family is going through grief, and they provide materials to help with that grief. And another group is faithfully visiting with our older adults and shut-ins. It is tremendous ministry that makes a huge difference one life at a time. And the reports I’m hearing back from our CCMs is that they are every bit as blessed if not more so than the people they care for. Do you believe you could see Jesus by serving in a caring capacity? The next training event for CCM will be in late September; be prayerful in signing up, taking the training and making a difference in the lives of those who are going through difficult times.

Because as we intentionally study Scripture, we can’t help but hear Jesus calling us beyond ourselves. And as we study and serve, we get a clearer vision of who Jesus is and we find ourselves becoming more like him. Christlikeness and maturity are absolute essential ingredients for being a follower of Jesus in the twenty-first century. I’ve watched my folks re-learn that in their current season of life. They retired somewhat early—maybe not chronologically, but certainly in terms of their health and ability. They are in their seventies (don’t tell Mom I told you that!), but still have much to give. Dad has had a bout with cancer and yet many days I say he can run circles around me. But rather than retire and sit on their porch sipping iced tea every day, they have found places to serve. They have always had a strong faith, so when they retired they chose to see it as a “refocusing” time rather than a “quitting” time. Mom volunteers with kids and Dad works with Habitat for Humanity and both of them are involved in a Bible study at their church, because their vision of Jesus calls them to continue to study and continue to serve, to make a difference. I want to be like them when I grow up. And more than that, I want to be like the Christ they love and serve, allowing God to work for the good in my life and molding me into a “perfect” follower. What about you? How will you open yourself to being molded by Jesus today and in the days to come? Let’s pray.