"Me" Church?

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Mark 3:13-19; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

May 19/20, 2012 • Portage First UMC

Twenty-three years ago tomorrow/today, I said what Andrew Peterson describes as “the two most famous last words”—“I do.” Twenty-three years ago, Cathy and I stood before God, her pastor and our friends and family and said those words that bound us together “till death do us part.” In that moment, our lives changed, and I quickly learned (and so did she) that we had to learn new ways to live, new ways to do things. No longer could either of us be completely selfish, because our lives were not our own anymore. Again, to borrow from Andrew Peterson when he describes marriage: “To lose your life for another I’ve heard is a good place to begin, ’cause the only way to find your life is to lay your own life down and I believe it’s an easy price for the life that we have found” (“Dancing in the Minefields”). Those of you who have been married for any length of time know it’s a constant give and take, a dance of cooperation and accountability, of encouragement and challenge. And it’s not easy. Perhaps that’s why Paul most often compares the Christian life, our relationship with Jesus, to a marriage. There’s a reason the church is called the bride of Christ, because our relationship with him is also one of cooperation and accountability, of encouragement and challenge. And, I believe, that’s also why we’re told we’re not supposed to do it alone. We need each other. We need the church if we’re going to grow in our relationship to Jesus.

From the earliest time, that has been true. The church, the followers of Jesus, have always been found in a community—on our best days, we are a good and beautiful community. And so we’ve been considering several of the ways the Bible describes that community over these past few weeks. We’ve talked about how the church is a peculiar community, a hopeful community, a serving community, a Christ-centered community and a reconciling community. But the church is also brought together, just like in a marriage, so that we can be an encouraging community.

In the Gospel reading this evening/morning, Mark tells us of the very beginning of Christian community as Jesus calls the first apostles. Now, according to Mark, Jesus has been doing some teaching and healing and traveling up to this point. He’s gathered many who think of themselves as disciples, followers, and they’ve followed him very well. Even when he tries to get away from the crowds, they always find him. Without phones, without internet, without Facebook—the crowds are always able to find Jesus. I mean, who wouldn’t want to chase down a miracle worker? That’s really what they’re after. They want to see the show. They want to hear the gifted speaker who makes them laugh and causes them to think. Jesus is the hottest celebrity in Galilee, and so folks chase him around the lake to see what he will do next.

Right in the middle of chapter 3, Jesus goes up on a mountain. Now, in our culture, we think of a mountain as a peaceful place to walk, or to take a retreat, or to just get away. But in Jesus’ culture, and still in many ways in Middle Eastern culture today, mountains have a different purpose. Where is it today the authorities look for terrorists, or those who are plotting evil things? It’s in the mountain caves, right? Mountains and hills were and are places where people go to plot revolution, far away from the prying eyes of the authorities. And so Jesus goes to the mountains, to the hills around Galilee, and he does one of his most revolutionary things—he brings to himself those he wanted, men whom he would train to carry on his mission even after he was gone. He calls twelve men, one to represent each tribe of Israel, and there’s no mistaking the message he’s sending here: I’m starting over. Just as God brought together twelve tribes to be his people, now I’m starting over with twelve men who will turn the world upside down. Most of the people would have misunderstood that message, because they thought he meant this band of merry men to bring violent, armed revolution. But Jesus was doing something different here, yet just as revolutionary. He was creating an encouraging community, one where love would conquer all (cf. Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 34).

Jesus brings to himself those he “wanted,” Mark says. The word literally means “to take pleasure in, to have in mind.” Jesus calls twelve men who were open to his message, who could represent him when he was gone. These were not the cream of the crop. They were ordinary men. As I’ve mentioned before, these are men who were turned down by other rabbis, and only were pursuing other trades because they couldn’t be a disciple. But Jesus wanted them because of their ordinariness. They are not stained-glass saints. Four of them were fishermen—laborers who worked nights mostly. One was a Zealot, passionate about whatever cause he attached himself to. This was probably a nickname, though later, after A.D. 70, the Zealots were among those who favored violent revolt against Rome. Another was a tax collector. He cooperated with Rome and, most people would call him a traitor to his own people. The other six we know virtually nothing about except their names. Two of them had the nickname, “Sons of Thunder,” which probably means they had hot tempers. But here’s the point: none of them are preachers. There is not a single Bible teacher or scholar among the twelve. They come from various places and many different walks of life. These are the ones Jesus wanted (Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 643; Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pgs. 57-58). The spreading of the Christian faith began in a diverse community of those Jesus wanted.

And they are given a very specific mission. Jesus called them, Mark says, “that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons” (3:14-15). Their first calling was to community, to spend time with Jesus, to live with him, travel with him, listen to him, learn from him. And as they lived and worked together, they would shape each other as well. Some of the rough edges would be smoothed down. Some of the dull edges would be sharpened up. Their first calling, though, was to be with Jesus. Then, when the time was right, he would send them out. In fact, from this point on in Mark’s Gospel, they are not just disciples. They are called the Twelve or “Apostles,” which means “sent ones” (Card 57). From this moment on, they are on a mission, a two-fold mission: to preach and to drive out demons. Preaching simply refers to the sharing of the Good News, the message Jesus came to bring that hope, healing and salvation are available through him. It’s not necessarily “preaching” like I do, although the Twelve certainly did their share of that. It’s what every ordinary Christian is called to do through word and deed—share the faith, live out the hope you have. So they were sent to preach, and to cast out demons. Now, whatever else is meant by that phrase, at a very basic level, it means they were sent to push back the evil that is in our world, to work against injustice and hate and cruelty and all the broken things in our world that represent the kingdom of Satan. Evil does not win because Jesus gives his community “authority” over it. Preaching the good news and pushing back evil—that’s what this first community was called and sent to do. They came to Jesus because he wanted them. He saw in them hearts he could use, even in spite of all their differences, inadequacies and failures. He called them together to be an encouraging community that would change the world.

How very different from the ways we create community today! Today, the dominant and false narrative that directs everything we do, including what church community to be a part of, is consumerism. Our culture’s story goes something like this: the community exists to serve me. I am entitled to have all my needs met. The community is all about me. And so we have developed, for the first time in human history, the phenomenon of “church shopping.” Just like we might go to the mall or to Wal-Mart and choose a brand of jeans that fit us, that make us look good, that give us a certain image, we go to churches and try to find one that will make me feel good, make me feel comfortable, do what I think it should, and so on. “Church shopping” is part of our consumer culture, and we only stay in a faith community as long as it meets “my” needs, because “I” am what it’s all about. I had a friend who planted a new church, and he was very good at bringing people to know Jesus. But then they would leave his church because they wanted a place that had programs that served them. He half-jokingly described his church as the feeder church for every other church in town. It’s very easy to think the church exists to serve “my” needs, and if I don’t like something, I’ll just go shopping. That’s what we do with deodorant, toothpaste, soup mix…and churches. Don’t like it, just get a new one. James Bryan Smith tells about a pastor who asked his congregation to make a commitment to read the Bible an hour a week. Not all at once, maybe 10 minutes and 20 minutes there, but read for an hour at some point during the week. After several Sundays of mentioning this challenge, one woman met him at the door on her way out. “I’m leaving the church, pastor,” she said. When he asked why, she said, “Because when I joined this church, reading the Bible was not in the contract” (Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, pg. 128). She was apparently looking for the First Church of Me. When she didn’t find it in the place she was, she moved on. Our culture’s narrative says the community exists to serve my needs, and because we’ve bought into that, we have become spoiled.

Think about those twelve men Jesus “wanted.” What if, when he called them, they had asked what was in it for them. Certainly there were times where they were concerned more about their own situation, or about what they might get out of following Jesus. Judas, we might say, took that to an extreme, but of the other eleven, tradition holds that ten of them died as martyrs, killed because of their faith. If they had been in for what they could get out of it, they wouldn’t have lasted that long. When we talk about the church being an encouraging community, we’re not talking about having all of our needs met just so we can feel good. Rather, Jesus’ narrative, as it always does, challenges our “normal” way of doing things. The Biblical story is this: “The community exists to shape and guide my soul. The community has a right to expect certain behavior from me, and can provide the encouragement and accountability I need” (Smith 129). Far from being about me, being part of the church is about becoming less like me and more like Jesus. It’s about having our rough edges smoothed out and our dull edges sharpened up. Through corporate worship, baptism, communion, studying Scripture together, fasting and holding each other accountable we find ourselves transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus, and the community is there to encourage us as we make that journey.

Paul gets at this in a lot of his writings, and I’ve chosen just one place today to focus: part of a letter he wrote to the church at Thessalonica. Among his final instructions to the church are these words that describe four tasks of the encouraging community: “We urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone” (5:14). Four words I want to look quickly at this evening/morning, and the first is “warn.” “Warn those who are idle and disruptive.” The encouraging community has a responsibility to warn those who are living outside God’s design for our life; stated in a better way, we might say the community has high expectations of its members. For Paul, that meant being faithful in doing what a disciple does: being with Jesus, serving Jesus in a variety of ways. As Billy Graham has famously said, retirement from the kingdom of God is not a concept the Bible knows. No matter our age, we’re called to be engaged in growing our faith, serving Christ, and when we see someone who isn’t, when someone is wasting the gift God has given them, we have a responsibility to “warn” them, to call them to be who God created them to be. Paul pairs “being idle” with “being disruptive.” People who just want to cause trouble are to be warned as well. Some people just like to stir up trouble, and Paul says to warn such folks. The church has a right to expect certain behavior from its members, to have expectations that a follower of Jesus will live in a certain way. When they do not, Paul says we have a duty to “warn,” not in an unkind or cruel way, but with the love of Christ. The author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it this way: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (10:24). We focus not on the problem, but on how we can better serve Jesus.

“Warn the idle and disruptive.” Then he says, “encourage the disheartened.” The word “encourage” means to console, to calm. This involves speaking words of hope and peace and encouragement into stormy or difficult situations. Honestly, we don’t do very well at this. We think we do. We offer words of comfort during times when people have lost loved ones or times when they are going through a health battle or something like that. We’ll offer a few words, but generally, people quit offering those words after a couple of weeks pass. And we really don’t know how to offer encouraging words when we’re dealing with a long-term struggle like depression or chronic illness. We don’t know what to say when someone expresses discouragement, but you know what? Sometimes the encouraging community doesn’t need words at all. Sometimes we just need to be people who show up. Many of you know of our need at PF Hope, and how discouraged the team there has become because of a perceived lack of support from the home church. They’ve asked several times for folks who will show up once a month for about an hour to help set up or tear down or teach a prepared lesson to the children, and by and large they’re still waiting for an encouraging response from here. If not you, then who? Will we be the encouraging community to a mission we launched with great fanfare and pride about a year ago? Or what about that widow who is alone on holidays? She sits just down the row from you every week and her kids all live out of town. What about that shy teenager who doesn’t know if they have a place to fit in here or not, who is afraid they’ll be told to be quiet just one more time? Or that person who is desperately lonely because all we see is his gift, his ability, and what he can do for me. We never take the time to get to know who he is, and he sits alone in the seats every week. Will we find words and deeds to “encourage the disheartened,” for the long term?

Warn the idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, and “help the weak.” “The weak” refers to those who struggle. The word probably often referred to those who were physically weak or sick, but Paul uses it in other contexts to describe those who are weak in the faith. And he always defers to them. In a long discussion about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols, Paul tells the church that if it’s going to cause someone else in the body of Christ to stumble, to doubt, to question their faith, then you shouldn’t do it, even if you know that the idol means nothing. His point is that the encouraging community is always aware of the needs of its weakest members (1 Corinthians 8; Romans 14). And here, he tells us to “help” the weak. The word there means to hold onto tightly. I have this picture of the way you hold onto a small child when they are near a dangerous place, perhaps walking on an unknown city street or near a dangerous edge. You hold onto that child, keep them close, make sure they don’t fall or get away. And while we don’t physically do that with those who have weak faith, Paul does tell the Romans how we do, in fact, do it: “Stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister” (14:13). The encouraging community is one who helps those who are weak. In fact, as has often been said, the true test of any civilization, nation or group is found in how it treats its weakest members. How do we, the church, treat the children? The elderly? The sick? The broken? The poor? The doubting? The lost? If the community is all about “me,” then those folks, who have nothing to offer me, don’t matter. But in an encouraging community, all are welcome, all are loved, all are wanted. Warn, encourage, help.

And be patient. Paul says, “Be patient with everyone.” Literally, he tells the Thessalonians to be “suffer long” with others. If the encouraging community expects certain behaviors from its members, how do we respond to those who don’t, we might say, “measure up”? We continue to provide love and support along with accountability. That’s not a popular word today. Politicians want to be able to act independently, as do business leaders and even religious leaders. Accountability sounds so legalistic, harsh, like we’re being held to a standard. And we are. The standard is Jesus and his life. We’re being called to holy living, to ordering our lives in the way the Bible instructs. We’re not perfect, but we are called to continue to strive toward holy and godly lives. So we offer guidance to one another; this is the real strength of being part of a small group where members get to know each other so well they can safely challenge each other. I’m in a small group, a covenant group, with three other pastors. We’re required to do that, but it’s something we had done before the requirement came along. We’ve met and prayed and shared over the years to the point where we can challenge each other and we can help each other. Part of that is because we know we’re not going anywhere; we’re committed to “suffering long” with each other. We’re in this for the long haul. It’s not about “me,” it’s about Jesus, and his call on all our lives. They’re able to see things in me that I can’t see myself and help me get back on the right road when I stumble. You see, that’s real love. Love isn’t the sappy “never having to say you’re sorry” thing we get through our consumerist theology. Love is caring enough for someone to warn them, encourage them, care for them, and practice patient accountability. Paul calls this “speaking the truth in love,” which will lead us, he says, to “grow up in Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

Folks, this is our heritage. In the eighteenth century, a man named John Wesley took seriously this call to be together in community, not just for the sake of worship or study or a potluck, but for the sake of accountability. He gathered the early Methodists, all those who responded to his preaching and who wanted to have a deeper life with Jesus, in small groups and there they asked each other the hard questions. In fact, Wesley was convinced that if people responded to the Gospel but weren’t brought together in a small group of encouragement and accountability, they would end up worse off than before. Small groups were absolutely key to the early Methodist revival. They asked each other several questions each week, including these: What known sins have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Through warning, encouragement, help and patient accountability, the early Methodists grew in their faith and turned England and America upside down.

What if it could happen again? What if the body of Christ took seriously its call to be an encouraging community and lived that way? What if we, like those first disciples, bound ourselves first to Jesus and then to each other in such a way that nothing can tear us apart? Might we turn the world upside down just like they did? Our Soul Training exercise, then, for this week is to find an accountability friend, a group if possible but at least one other person to whom you agree to be accountable. If you’re already in a small group, you’re way ahead on this one. If not, you can ask a good friend, someone you feel safe with. It can be your spouse, but it’s not necessarily recommended as some of your struggle may involve them and you may need a different listening ear before talking together. So here’s what you are being asked to do once you identify and ask such a person: have them ask you three questions on a regular basis. Maybe it becomes the basis for a weekly breakfast conversation. The questions are printed on your sermon study guide this morning. How is your soul? In what ways do you need to be encouraged right now? And what, if anything, is holding you back from living more fully for God (Smith 143-144)? These are tough questions, and you should only share what you feel comfortable sharing, but the idea is that as your accountability friend listens to you without judgment and with encouragement, sharing will become easier as time passes. You will find your soul grow as you become more like Jesus and you become more deeply ingrained in the encouraging community.

[8:30 & 11:30] Now, this morning is Confirmation Sunday. For the last several months, these three young men have been learning what it means to be part of the church. They have been learning about community as they studied and worked and learned and journeyed together. They’re going to come in just a few minutes to take their membership vows, but this is more than a mere ritual or some sort of rite of passage. As they stand here this morning, they are symbolically turning their back on “me church” and becoming willing to be held accountable, to be encouraging and to be encouraged, to be warned and to be helped. Becoming part of a church is more than just putting your name on the rolls. It’s about growing more and more to be like Jesus; that’s the whole point of this community. It’s about becoming an apostle—a sent one, whose first calling is to be with Jesus and whose second calling is to share the good news while pushing back the darkness. A huge calling like that needs a community to constantly surround and love you. So as the confirmands take their vows today, we as an encouraging community are also taking vows to help them grow toward Jesus. We all have a role to play this morning because together, we are the good and beautiful encouraging community. Amen.

Settling Accounts

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Genesis 33:1-9; Matthew 18:23-34

May 12/13, 2012 • Portage First UMC

He’s been running for years. Ever since that day he stole his older brother’s inheritance. He took what was not supposed to be his, and he did it even before their father was dead. His brother found out, and vowed to kill him, so he took off. He ran as far as he could, and while some say he had a sort of religious conversion on the way, he never really gave up his conniving and deceitful ways. So he’s been gone from home for more than fifteen years, but his brother has never forgotten. The memory of that day, so long ago, is seared into his mind, and when he gets word that his cheating, lying, no-good brother is headed for home, he gathers up a group of friends to go meet him. It’s time for a reckoning. Esau is coming to meet his brother, Jacob.

And, we should note, as the story is told in Genesis, Jacob is only headed home because he cheated his father-in-law. He was no longer welcome in the place he’s been living and working all these years, in the place where he made his fortune. So he loads up his two wives and all their children and heads back to the only other place he knows. But when he gets word that Esau, the brother he cheated, is coming to meet him, he immediately turns to prayer. “Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau” (32:11). Don’t we often pray like that? “God, I’m in trouble, and I know we haven’t talked much lately, but I’d really appreciate it if you could help me out now!” That’s in essence Jacob’s prayer. Save me now, God, because Esau has every right to be angry with me, to hold a grudge against me, to kill me. And so the day arrives. The time has come for settling accounts between these two brothers. Esau is on the horizon. There’s nowhere for Jacob to run. His past has come full circle, and there are really only two options at this point: revenge or reconciliation.

Maybe our lives don’t contain such dramatic scenes (I hope not!), but into each of our lives come moments when we have the same choice as Esau and Jacob did there in the desert. Something happened, a relationship was broken, someone hurt someone else, maybe both persons hurt each other, and damage was done. And we have the same choice: revenge or reconciliation. Which will we choose? For the last several weeks, we’ve been exploring these various Biblical images of the church and who we are. We’ve talked about how we’re peculiar, and hopeful, and service-oriented. And last week, we talked about being Christ-centered, how we learn to love even those we disagree with. And that, then, leads us to the next image of the good and beautiful community. When we are fully Christ-centered, we must then be a reconciling community, a people rooted in forgiving one another.

Jesus once told a dramatic parable in response to a question Peter asked. We should really be thankful for all the times Peter puts his foot in his mouth and says things no one else will say, because it’s often in those moments we get very profound teaching from Jesus. This is one of those moments. In Matthew 18, Peter wants to know how often he should forgive someone. Seven times? he asks. Peter’s being generous here. The rabbis taught God would forgive someone three times and on the fourth time they commit the same sin, God would send punishment. Since human beings could not be expected to forgive more often than God, forgiveness was to be limited to three times. Peter doubles the expectation and adds one. Seven is incredibly generous when it comes to forgiveness. And yet, Jesus turns that teaching upside down. “I tell you,” he says, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (18:22). In other words, if you’re counting the number of times you’ve forgiven someone, you’ve missed the point and you’re not really forgiving them (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, pg. 193; Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 40).

To illustrate this, to really drive home his point, Jesus tells this story. There was a servant who owed his king a huge amount of money. Ten thousand bags of gold; the text literally says “ten thousand talents.” Now, a “talent” was the equivalent of the wages of an average worker who worked steadily for twenty years. So each year, they earned 1/20th of a talent. The debt of the servant is the equivalent of 200,000 years’ worth of salary. It’s an unimaginable amount. But the king has decided to settle accounts, and so he calls this man before him and commands him to repay his debt. But there’s no way this man could ever repay that amount. He owes more than the king has. He has no means for paying it back, and so the king orders he and his family to be sold. Now, a really valuable slave in those days might bring 1 talent; usually, they got about 10% of that amount. So the king, even if he sells the whole family, isn’t going to come anywhere close to getting back what is owed him (Carson, “Matthew,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 406). It’s impossible. So when the servant begs him to have patience, the king relents. He doesn’t give him more time, he gives him his life back. He cancels the entire debt and lets him go. Can you imagine the relief that would have flooded that man’s heart at that moment? To be forgiven such an enormous amount! It would change your life, wouldn’t it?

Well, it should have, but Jesus goes on with the story as he follows the servant who, outside of the palace, runs into a fellow slave who owes him some money—“a few hundred silver coins,” or literally, “a hundred denarii.” A denarius was the normal daily wage for a laborer, so he owed this fellow servant less than a year’s paycheck. It’s an amount you could carry in your pocket, and it’s a tiny amount compared to what the first man had just been forgiven—500,000 times less, actually (Augsburger, Communicator’s Commentary: Matthew, pg. 224). And so how does the first servant treat his equal? He grabs him by the neck and demands, “Pay back what you owe me!” (18:28). And when the second servant begs for patience, using the same words the first servant used when he was before the king, the first servant refuses. He throws him in jail—and in fact, the word used there means more than just sitting in a cell. He turned his fellow servant over to those who would torture him until he paid back the debt (18:30; Carson 407). The end of the story is that the king finds out what happens, calls the forgiven servant back in and says, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” (18:33). Of course he should have, so the king hands him over to the torturers “until he should pay back all he owed,” which we know is not possible (18:34). His failure to forgive, to reconcile, results in a horrible end.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are intertwined, and they are not easy things to practice. We talked about this during Lent when we considered Jesus’ word from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus was busy forgiving those who nailed him to the cross, those who did the most harm to him. It’s hard to follow in his footsteps, especially because we often believe a false narrative about forgiveness and reconciliation, and by doing so, we make it harder on ourselves. The false narrative sounds something like this: only when we forgive will we be forgiven and healed. Now, see, it’s tricky, because that sounds right. It sounds like a lot of pop psychology we hear on daytime television and even some Christian programs and books. But the false assumption under all it is that somehow, by an act of our will, we should be able to summon up the strength on our own to forgive. Therefore, if we forgive, we will find forgiveness and healing, all on our own. The false narrative says forgiveness is something we must do. And therefore, if we buy into this, if and when we do forgive, we get the credit for succeeding. So the American Christian mindset it this: just grit your teeth and try to feel forgiveness toward someone who has harmed you, or act like you forgive them even if you don’t. Because the problem is we can’t do it in our own strength (Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, pg. 109-110).

That’s why the New Testament story, the story of Jesus, is about a different narrative. The first servant in Jesus’ story didn’t ask to be forgiven. He begged for more time, a chance to work off the debt or pay it back, to do it on his own. Maybe he hoped to hit the lottery or get an inheritance somehow. Logically, he knew there was no way he could ever really repay it. But the beauty of Jesus’ story is that the king offered forgiveness even when it wasn’t asked for. And that act should have changed the servant’s heart. The narrative of the New Testament is this: “Only when we know we have been forgiven will we find healing and become able to forgive” (Smith 111). Only when we know we have been forgiven—when the truth, that on the cross Jesus did everything we needed to have forgiveness, gets from our head to our hearts, when we know we have been forgiven—then we can forgive others. At that moment, God stopped counting our sins against us and offered forgiveness to all who would accept it. He’s not keeping track every time you mess up. He doesn’t have a ledger. He’s constantly offering you forgiveness—not because of anything you’ve done or earned. We owe God a debt we could never repay. We’ve sinned against him. We’ve broken his law. We’ve done what we should not—and sometimes we keep doing it. And still, God the king offers forgiveness. It’s a gift; we have only to receive it. And when we do, it should change our hearts. Only when we know we have been forgiven will we find healing and become able to forgive.

Do you see the difference between the two stories? Trying to summon up forgiveness on our own will never work; we’ll be like the first servant in Jesus’ parable. We simply do not have the resources on our own to produce forgiveness and so, even though we are offered forgiveness, reconciliation with others is difficult if not impossible. It’s easier to grab them by the collar and demand they pay back what they owe us. We’ll never be able to practice preemptive forgiveness as Jesus did on the cross on our own because our tendency is to always keep track. And so we fake forgiveness and we fake reconciliation. But what if we really believe we are forgiven people? Then Jesus’ parable would end with the second servant being forgiven as well and the two being reconciled because hearts rather than mere outward actions have been changed. When we know we have been forgiven, how can we help but forgive others? It becomes a response of gratitude for all that God has forgiven us. James Bryan Smith puts it this way: “As Christ forgave us, so we also forgive. It is not something we do—it is something we participate in” (117). Or listen to Tom Wright’s challenge: “It is highly presumptuous to refuse to forgive one whom Christ has already forgiven” (qtd. in Smith 117).

Now, by saying that, I don’t mean forgiveness is an instant response or an easy thing to do, like flipping a switch in our brains. In fact, forgiveness often takes a long time, maybe years, to work out. What I am talking about is a commitment on our part to refuse to demonize the other person, to seek always to treat them as someone for whom Jesus died, as in need of forgiveness as I am. Certainly, there are times, such as when an adult takes advantage of a child, or an aggressor harms another person, when one person is horribly in the wrong. But in most day-to-day situations, we’re not completely innocent and the other person is not completely guilty. Several years ago, I received an e-mail one afternoon that said, “I need to meet with you. I have a grievance against you.” Normally I don’t get e-mails with such formal language, but I responded that I could meet as soon as she was able, and so we sat down together in the church office the next morning, and she proceeded to lay out all the ways I had, unknowingly, hurt her. My first inclination was to explain those things away, tell her she had misinterpreted what I did or said, and I did some of that. I think we all want to justify ourselves. But somewhere in that conversation, I was reminded that this woman was someone Jesus died for, just like me. And despite our differences, I had a choice. I could treat her with justice, and demand she see things my way, or mercy, and offer forgiveness along with an apology. Now, we never did see eye-to-eye, but something within me changed as I was able to see her, at least on a small scale, the way Jesus saw her. I could not have worked toward reconciliation on my own strength, because my tendency is to always justify myself. But knowing I have been forgiven—really knowing that—changed that morning for me.

This story Jesus tells is really about the absurdity of our accepting God’s forgiveness for our countless sins and yet refusing to forgive one or two or even a hundred sins against us (Smith 116). We love being forgiven; we’re not always crazy about being forgiving. But in the parable, freedom comes by virtue of the king’s forgiveness, not because of anything the servant did (cf. Carson 407). It’s all a gift, and if we want to find true freedom, forgiveness is the path we have to walk. Tom Wright says, “Forgiveness is more like the air in your lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one” (39-40). You know, you can suffocate even with your lungs full because after our body takes out of the air what it needs, what is left is toxic. If we refuse to take in what we need and hold onto what we already have, we can die. The same is true in our spiritual life. If we hold onto unforgiveness, if we fail to allow that truth of our forgiveness to transform us from the inside out, we will die spiritually. We will be, so to speak, “tortured” because we’ve failed to allow God’s goodness to affect everything else in our lives.

So the church, the good and beautiful community, is called to be in the business of reconciliation, of forgiveness. “A community who has been forgiven must become a community who forgives” (Smith 116). Just as we discussed during Lent, Jesus is our pattern for this, not only as individuals, but as a community. He who prayed for his murderers says we can do no less. And we pray the way he taught us when we use the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The church is a reconciling community, calling people to forgiveness so that relationships, marriages, families, communities can be put back together, can be made whole. Underlying the dissolution of many marriages and families today, especially among Christian people, is a lack of forgiveness. Whether the presenting issue is finances or infidelity or communication, there is very often an issue or issues that one or both simply could not or would not forgive. The church has to be a reconciling community, one which has at its heart the model of Jesus who forgave so that we could forgive.

So I’m sure you’re not surprised at this point to find that our Soul Training exercise—our homework—is to experience reconciliation. I don’t know of a practice that more lives out the life of Jesus in our own lives than this one. So how do we forgive? How do we pursue reconciliation? Well, first of all, we have to know we are forgiven, that what Jesus did on the cross provides forgiveness to us for everything we’ve ever done. We can be forgiven ourselves. Do you know that truth? And I don’t mean just do you know it in your head? Do you know it with your heart? Are you living as a forgiven person? Have you allowed Jesus into your life so that he can forgive you? I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was about ten years old, a long time ago, and in that moment, I believed and I knew in my heart he had forgiven me. But that doesn’t mean the nearly 35 years since then have been easy. Not at all. I have to continue to remember that I am forgiven, continue to come back to him and allow him to remind me again that what he did on the cross was enough to cover whatever I do. I have to remember that wonderful passage in the Psalms: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (103:12). And I remember the promise from the prophet Micah: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (7:18-19). And my own addition? He hurls our sins into the sea and puts up a “No Fishing” sign.

The first movement we make, then, is to know we have been forgiven, to remember who we are in Christ, what our identity is. One way to remember that is to recall a Bible passage that reminds you of God’s great love for you. If you follow the weekly readings, there are several stories and passages that will hopefully help you with that this week. You might even consider memorizing something like 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” That’s a great reminder of who we are—the old has gone, the new is here. Identity is the first step.

Then, perspective. Pray for that person you are trying to forgive. It is hard to hate someone you are praying for. Not impossible, just hard. This person I mentioned earlier who had “a grievance” against me—I made that a matter of prayer for some time. And I began asking God to help me see this person the way he sees them, to end the hurting that was on both sides. You see, hurt people hurt others. We all react badly out of our own hurt. But as I prayed for that person, God slowly took away the desire I had to lash back, to hurt them as much as they had hurt me. I believe that was one of God’s ways of helping me see them through his eyes. Now, I’m not trying to say I’m perfect. There are other situations in my own life right now where I’m still having to pray for that.

In fact, you may be there, too. You may not be ready to even work toward forgiving that other person who has hurt you. Maybe there’s an ex-spouse or an abuser or an employer who used your talents and then fired you. Maybe there’s a person who has caused such deep hurt you don’t even know how to give words to it. You may need someone to come alongside and hold you up, walk through this process with you. There are numerous examples of this in the Scriptures. When the people of Israel were fighting a battle for their survival, Moses stood over them and held his hands up. The Bible says as long as he held his hands up, Israel was winning. But Moses got tired, and his arms drooped, and then Israel began losing. That’s when Moses’ brother Aaron and Hur, a friend, came alongside and held his arms up “steady till sunset” (Exodus 17). They held Moses up. When a man needed to see Jesus, to see if he could be healed of his paralysis, his friends carried him to the crowded house, and when they couldn’t get close to Jesus, they went up on the flat roof, dug a hole and let the man down through the roof to see Jesus. His friends made healing possible (Luke 5). They held him up. And Paul, the great apostle and shaper of the Christian faith, often traveled with friends, and in his darkest hour, near the end of his life, he asked his young friend, Timothy, to come and see him, be with him (2 Timothy 4:9), to hold him up. We need people who will come alongside us, even in this area of forgiveness, and walk with us, who will help us remember and feel and sense our own forgiveness so that we can find healing and hope. Maybe that’s a close friend, maybe a Stephen Minister, maybe a counselor, maybe a family member. If you can’t forgive, ask someone to pray with you for the willingness to take steps in that direction. Have them pray with and for you often.

Now, having said that, I also want to give a warning of sorts. There are a lot of things forgiveness is. It is choosing not to actively remember, choosing not to live out of the hurt that was caused. It is refusing to allow that hurt to define you. Someone described it as evicting the other person who, otherwise, lives rent-free in your head. But one thing forgiveness does not entail is putting yourself back in a situation where you can be hurt again. This is especially true if the act you’re working to forgive is abuse or rape or other sorts of serious injury. You can forgive without putting yourself back in a situation where you can be abused—physically, verbally, or any other way—or harmed by someone again and again. You can forgive out because you know you have been forgiven. To put yourself back in a harmful situation does not demonstrate forgiveness; it demonstrates a serious lack of judgment (Smith 119). And so, in situations like that, it’s especially important to have folks who will give you perspective, who will pray with you and for you, and walk with you as you forgive. No matter what the situation is, though, Tom Wright puts it this way: “One should never, ever give up making forgiveness and reconciliation one’s goal. If confrontation has to happen, as it often does, it must always be with forgiveness in mind, never revenge” (Wright 39).

So Jacob watches the horizon, and he can see the dust of Esau’s caravan approaching. He had spent the night before alone on the shores of the Jabbok River. Actually, he wasn’t alone; he just wasn’t with his family. Them he had sent ahead, and all night long, we are told, he wrestled with God there near the river. All night long, they struggled, until finally God put Jacob’s hip out of joint and blessed him. From that moment on, Jacob walked with a limp, but out of that struggling with God he got a new name (Israel) and a new perspective. When he finally does see Esau, he is much more humble than when he left, and he and Esau are able to find common ground. They aren’t able to settle together, but they can live peaceably with each other. And while I have no doubt about the truth of the story of Jacob wrestling by the river, I also see in that a powerful parable of our lives. The deepest change, the most significant forward movement in our spiritual lives comes as we wrestle—honestly, deeply wrestle—with what God is calling us to do. The things that bring us the most growth—like forgiveness—are hard. They involve struggle. Jacob didn’t want to confront Esau any more than we want to forgive those who have hurt us. But Jacob learned that the way forward, the way to healing was not to revert to the old, conniving ways of the past, but to let God touch him, change him, heal him. Oddly enough, Jacob’s healing was represented by a limp, because it wasn’t physical healing he was after. It was spiritual. He needed to learn to be a reconciler. In that same spirit, Jesus calls us to be people who struggle with God, who know we have been forgiven much, and who therefore, out of gratitude, offer forgiveness to others. Jesus calls us to be a reconciling community, for forgiveness is the only way our accounts can be settled for good. In what good and beautiful ways will you begin (or continue) the hard work of reconciliation this week? Let’s pray.

Give Me Your Hand

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 17:20-26; Colossians 3:8-17

May 6, 2012 • Portage First UMC

For about six years, I was privileged to be part of a unique pastor’s prayer group that included all sorts of pastors. Every theological position, men and women, conservative and liberal and in between. Methodist, Presbyterian, Independent Christian, Disciples of Christ, Southern Baptist, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Nazarene, Mennonite and even, occasionally, Catholic. You would think that when a group like that got together, we would end up fighting. And we did have vigorous debates. And sometimes, we’d have to remind each other that these issues had been going on for 2,000 years; it was unlikely we were going to solve them in a couple of hours. We would meet every Tuesday morning, rain or shine, drink coffee, pray and share what was on our hearts. And we would plan for community ministry. There were even times when this crazy bunch got together for dinner or a cookout. We were written about in a national magazine as an example of brothers and sisters in Christ being able to get along. It was a unique time, and I don’t know that I expect to ever experience anything quite like that again, because most of the time, Christians find more reason to separate than we do to unite. While we sometimes sing, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” most of the world knows us more by what we argue over and what we differ about than by our love for each other. There are some 30,000 recognized Protestant denominations in the United States alone, most of them started when this person disagreed with that person, and rather than finding a way to get along, they started a new church. Sunday morning is still the most segregated time in America (Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, pg. 86), and we’re not just segregated based on race. Class, denomination and doctrine all divide the church today. The church Jesus died for is shattered in thousands of pieces, and I believe that has, in turn, shattered his heart in just as many pieces.

We’ve been exploring Biblical images of the church, the good and beautiful community, over these past few weeks, and we’re not just talking about our church, but about the church as a whole, the entire Body of Christ. On his last night before his crucifixion, the church was very much on Jesus’ mind. Earlier, he had promised that the church would be built on Peter’s witness (Matthew 16:18), and now, on this night, knowing that in the next few hours, all of the disciples would run away, Jesus prays for these men. “My prayer,” he says, “is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (17:15). And then, looking down the hallways of history, Jesus prays for us. He prays for “all those who will believe in [him] through their message” (17:20), and he has one desire for us: “that all of them may be one” (17:21). On his last night, Jesus prays that all who believe in him would be unified. He prays that we would be one.

In the Apostle’s Creed, we say we believe in “one holy catholic church.” Now, that phrase confuses some people, but it doesn’t mean we believe in the Roman Catholic Church. “Catholic” is a word that means “universal,” so when we say that phrase in the creed, we’re actually declaring our belief in what Jesus prayed for: that the church would be or should be one around the world (cf. Wright, John for Everyone, Part Two, pgs. 98-99). We’re declaring our belief that every person who claims the name of Jesus is our sister or brother in the faith. We are “one” with that person. And yet, to look at the church, you wouldn’t know it. This is one of Jesus’ prayers that has gone unanswered for two thousand years. Instead, we’ve embraced the false belief that if we disagree, we must separate. And so the church continues to argue and divide. And what do we argue about? Well, we disagree about worship styles—traditional or contemporary or something in between. We disagree about what instruments are allowed in worship. In Methodist circles, using the organ in worship dates back only to the mid-twentieth century. Before that, many believed the organ to be an instrument of Satan because it was used in the movie houses. And yet, now it’s assumed the organ is Biblical. I had one man say he wouldn’t go to a church that didn’t have an organ. Some Christian denominations forbid any instruments in worship, because the New Testament doesn’t mention them. So we disagree about music, and we disagree about who can lead and who can pastor. Can women be pastors? Some Christians says yes and some say no. We disagree over which Bible translation to use. Should you only use the King James? Or the NIV? Or the Message? Or whatever! Baptism, speaking in tongues, racial issues (including slavery), whether to pay rent for your seat at church or not—these are all issues that have divided the church. When we disagree, we think we have to separate. Even within denominations this happens. Witness our General Conference that took place over the last two weeks in Tampa. If you read some of the news reports or followed some of the legislation on Facebook or Twitter, it would be easy to convince you that we should change our name from “United” Methodists to “Untied” Methodists. And I can’t remember a time in my own ministry when there weren’t conversations happening among various groups in our own church about separating.

Underlying the talk of separation is often fear, fear that we might believe incorrect doctrine or do something wrong, and behind that is a desire for control. We want to control what’s right and what’s wrong. Make things black and white. And so we draw up rules and regulations and we target others, even brothers and sisters in Christ, as enemies (Smith 88). This past week, I had stopped between visits at Starbucks and was working on some things when I couldn’t help but overhear a rather loud conversation behind me. Two men were talking about why their church was right and everyone else was wrong, and in particular what was wrong with other churches. It boiled down to a long conversation meant to reinforce their belief that they are right, and above everyone else. It’s easy to slip from being proud of being part of this or any church into a “we’re right, everyone else is wrong” mindset. That’s not what Jesus wanted when he prayed for us.

Jesus prayed that we would be one. Here’s the reality: none of us are one hundred percent correct. We’re all a mix of orthodoxy and heresy. And it’s crazy to think we will ever all agree on everything, on every little point. We’re going to have differences, and while we can acknowledge that, the question is, does Jesus give us grounds for division because of our differences? Let’s listen to Jesus’ prayer again: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (17:20-21). The model for our unity, Jesus says, is the unity he shares with God the Father (Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 2, pg. 217). It’s not a model of administrative unity, or a sense that we’re all one big happy family just because we enter the same building every Sunday. The unity of the Father and the Son is an unbroken relational unity. In other words, the unity Jesus is praying for is based in love for one another. We love each other because of his love for us. We recognize that Jesus loves that other person just as much as he loves me. It is his love that holds us together, even when we disagree (Barclay 218; Wright 99). It’s out of that prayer John will later write these words: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:18-19). Our call, our unity, is to love one another even when—maybe especially when we disagree.

We learned this in our prayer group, all those years ago. We had different styles of worship, even different ways to pray, and theologically we were very different. But we loved Jesus first, we were a Christ-centered community, and that allowed us and enabled us to love each other. We were able to stand together around the firm conviction that “Jesus is Lord.” We differed sometimes on how to live that out, but we never wavered from that belief that Jesus loved us and he loved that person we didn’t agree with, and his love had brought us together. The same thing ought to be true in a local church and, even more than that, between local churches.

But why is Jesus devoting time to this sort of prayer on his last night? This is, in fact, his final prayer before going to the Garden of Gethsemane where he will be arrested. This is the last prayer all of his disciples hear. Jesus tells us why it is so important not once, but twice in this passage. In verse 21, he says it’s “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” And again, in verse 23, he prays for “complete unity” so that “the world will know that you [the Father] sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” In other words, when we wonder why the church is so ineffective sometimes at reaching those who don’t yet know Jesus, when we wonder why young people are turning away from the church and calling us “hypocritical” and “judgmental,” perhaps we need to take a look at our level of love for each other. Jesus said when the world sees us unified, loving each other in spite of our differences, not divided over them, then they will believe. If the world could see a truly Christ-centered community, crossing over the barriers of race, custom, gender or class, they would see something that can only come from God (cf. Wright 99).

That’s the sort of thing Paul was describing to the church at Colossae. He tells them that, when they come to Jesus, they need to leave behind all that baggage, all those old ways of living. They’ve put on a “new self,” he says, one which is “being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (3:10). And with that new self comes a breaking down of the barriers that used to exist. Paul tells them, “Here [in the church] there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (3:11). He’s not saying when we come to Jesus we stop being who we are. We don’t give up our ethnicity or our nationality or our gender. What he is saying is that those labels aren’t the most important thing anymore. What matters, instead, is Jesus. We belong to him. We are Christ-centered first, and all that other stuff second. Paul then goes on to plead for that kind of unity among the church, and he tells us how to do it: “Clothe yourselves”—that doesn’t mean to just change our mind and think differently. To “clothe ourselves” means we are covered by these things. These things are what people see when they see us. “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (3:12-14). There’s that word again—unity, which flows out of love. When we drop the labels, when we drop the accusations toward each other of being unChristian, when we seek to love the other person the way God has loved us, warts and all, then, Jesus says, the world will take notice. Why does the world fail to see the truth of the Gospel? Because we’ve failed to live it out the way Jesus prayed we would.

Disagreement in the church is nothing new. Augustine, the fourth century Bishop of Hippo, is reported to have said, “In essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.” That became the church’s perspective on dealing with disagreements in such a way as to promote Jesus’ radical prayer vision of being one. In essentials, unity. There are core beliefs and doctrines we will not sacrifice: salvation in Jesus Christ, the cross, the resurrection, God as creator of the universe. Or, to put it in three simple words: creation, fall, redemption. That is the core of Christian belief, and have been for over two thousand years. We hold onto those things fiercely. But there are other things that aren’t clearly spelled out in Scripture, and in those areas, we allow liberty, freedom for disagreement among good-hearted believers. And in all things, charity. In all things, we love each other despite our disagreements. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, found those early Methodist meetings made up of folks from all sorts of walks of life, belief systems, social classes and backgrounds. Division amongst the Methodist small groups was always a danger, and so Wesley turned to Augustine’s famous directive and sought to distinguish between essentials for the faith and nonessentials. Love and commitment to Jesus are essential. Everything else was nonessential—not unimportant, just not things that ought to divide the church. (How many of the things we fight over fall into that “nonessential” category?) In one of his most famous sermons, Wesley put it this way. First, quoting 2 Kings, Wesley says, “If your heart is as true to mine as mine is to yours, give me your hand” (2 Kings 10:15). Then, he says, “By this response, I do not mean, ‘Hold my beliefs.’ You need not believe everything I believe. I do not expect it or desire it. Neither do I mean, ‘I will adopt your beliefs.’ I cannot do so…By this statement, I mean, first, love me for who I am… Second, by saying, ‘Give me your hand,’ I mean, commit me to God in all your prayers… Third, when I invite you to give me your hand, I mean, awaken me to love and good deeds” (Kinghorn, John Wesley on Christian Practice, pgs. 113-115). When we talk about unity in the church, that’s the image we want to work with: if your heart is as mine, give me your hand.

Now, this is not easy. It’s easier to focus on what we disagree about rather than the love we are supposed to share. I know that. I’ve lived that. But I’ve also lived in the place where we treat those nonessentials as just that—nonessential. Where we put aside our own human-made rules about what it means to be part of the church and we focus on loving each other. That is, after all, how Jesus said the world would know we belong to him. He didn’t say the world would know when we get everything doctrinally right. He didn’t say the world would know if we get all our politicians elected, or if we get everyone to behave in one certain way. No, the way the world will know we belong to him and the way the world will know the truth of the Gospel is when we live in unity. So how do we live this out? By loving those we disagree with—this is our Soul Training exercise for this week. Think about someone, maybe in this church or maybe in another church, someone you disagree with, someone who perhaps has different beliefs or practices than you do. Then, begin to treat them not as enemies or someone on the other side of the fence, but as companions, as a brother or sister in Christ. Become aware of those times when you are tempted to speak evil of them, like the conversation I mentioned I overheard in Starbucks. Focus instead on what you have in common. And pray for them. Pray for them every day this week.

In just a couple of weeks, there is a very practical way to do this. From Ascension Day (May 17) to the night before Pentecost (May 26), we will be having community prayer meetings. Every night at 7:00 there will be an opportunity to pray in a local church with believers from across the community. Ten days of prayer, beginning May 17; that night’s service will be held here, and the other nights are throughout the community and across the theological spectrum. We’ll have a complete schedule soon, and I encourage you to go and pray in a church you’re not familiar with. Pray with someone who isn’t from your tradition. Let’s give witness to our city of the unity of the body of Christ through prayer.

We can also demonstrate unity by encouraging one another to do good, like Wesley said, and to work together on projects in the community. But the focus is not on us, and it’s never about us getting together with others just to feel good about ourselves. The church is a Christ-centered community, called to find our unity in his love. If our focus is anything other than Christ, we’re just serving ourselves. And that’s why, I believe, true unity begins at the communion table. It’s oddly sad to me that this meal Jesus gave his disciples on their last night together which should bring us together often keeps us apart. There was one time when our pastor’s prayer group was given the opportunity to lead worship during the town festival on the courthouse square. And we were given free reign; the service could be whatever we wanted it to be. So we planned music, we volunteered someone to preach (they missed the meeting), and then someone suggested we share communion together. Sadly, that meant a few of our number could not participate, because their particular communities do not allow for open communion. But the celebration on the courthouse square was wonderful, even if it was not all of the body of Christ together. This bread, this cup—these are elements Jesus gave us to remind us that we belong to him and to each other. In fact, most every time we have communion, I use a paraphrase of Paul’s words to the Corinthians to explain it. Paul said this: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Every time we gather at the Lord’s Table, it is a reminder of his love for us and our unity with each other. As Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus, may we also be united with each other so that the world may know the truth of the Gospel.

So we’re going to celebrate Communion this morning, but we’re going to do it in a different way. To remind us that we are a community, a Christ-centered community, you’ll notice that the table of the Lord has been set up in the middle of the sanctuary, in the middle of the gathered community. In just a few moments, I’m going to offer a prayer and then invite you to come to the table and to serve one another. The only “rule” here is that no one should come alone, and if you see someone sitting alone, you invite them to come with you even if you don’t know them. And together, you’ll take the bread and dip it in the cup and receive the body and blood of Christ. Now I want to really push you in one more way: a radical thing to do this morning is, if there is someone here you have a disagreement or a conflict with, and you need to begin that hard work Paul described of forgiving one another, there’s no better place to start than the table of the Lord. So, this morning, let this table be our symbol of unity. Serve each other, and love one another. Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Let’s pray and prepare our hearts for Holy Communion.

Space of Grace

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Mark 8:27-38; Philippians 2:1-4

April 28/29, 2012 • Portage First UMC

I’m thankful for the church I grew up in, a little church in a small town. For the first eighteen years of my life, Rossville United Methodist Church was the place where my family went for worship, potlucks, and Bible studies. I still remember playing with the other kids in the basement of the parsonage while the adults studied the Bible upstairs. There were only three churches in our town, and we pretty much all thought the same as far as I knew. We were Methodist, and there were Presbyterian and Brethren, but family tradition had more to do with where folks attended church than any sort of theological differences. I don’t ever remember hearing the labels that are seemingly so important today: liberal, conservative, evangelical, progressive, social justice. Church was simply the place where you “got saved.” My pastor preached on that nearly every week. And once you were saved, you were expected to find your place in the church—on a committee, in a group, or helping with the potlucks. I honestly don’t ever remember hearing a sermon about Jesus’ call to serve the poor, but then again, as far as we knew, there were no poor or needy around us. Just sinners in need of saving.

Now, I’m not saying that to in any way diminish the faith I had growing up. That church still holds a special place in my heart. That congregation shaped me in many ways, some of which I’m probably still unaware of. But as I went to college, and then to seminary, I came to learn that the church is more than just a “saving place.” The salvation of people through Jesus Christ is absolutely essential; it’s our primary mission. But Jesus didn’t just say, “Make converts” or “make church members.” He said, “make disciples” (cf. Matthew 28:19). A disciple looks like their teacher in character and conduct. When you see a disciple, it’s like you’ve seen the master. So what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? Well, I came to realize, it means to do what he did, to act like he acted. And that means doing more than just “getting saved.” Once we are in a relationship with Jesus, he has work for us to do.

In these weeks, we are looking at what it means to be part of “The Good and Beautiful Community,” the church of Jesus Christ. And so far we’ve talked about the church as both a peculiar and a hopeful community. We’re distinct from the world around us and we have a message of hope to share with that world. But the church is more than that. The church is also called to be a serving community, and before we settle back and assume we know what that means, we need to take a little trip with a disciple named Peter as he follows Jesus to a place called Caesarea Philippi.

Caesarea Philippi was about twenty-five miles north of Bethsaida in Galilee, where the disciples had been, and the two places could not have been more different. In Bethsaida, they were in safe, Jewish territory, but Caesarea was a thoroughly pagan place. Caesarea was dedicated to emperor worship as well as being the legendary birthplace of the god Pan, a half-goat half-man god who oversaw shepherds and mountains (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pgs. 109-110; Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, pgs. 191-192). It was as far, geographically and spiritually, from Jerusalem (the center of Jewish faith) as one could get and still be technically in Israel (Garland, NIV Application Commentary: Mark, pg. 323). These disciples have been with Jesus for a while now, and he’s been giving them space to figure out what they think about him, who he is. Now, away from the crowds, away from the noise, away from the daily routine, Jesus asks a very pointed question. First, he does an opinion poll: “Who do people say I am?” (8:27). Well, Jesus, there’s this opinion and then there’s that opinion—and without commenting on any of that, Jesus then asks them, “What about you? Who do you say I am?” You who have been with me, who have watched me heal and listened to me teach, you who have seen everything I have done—who do you say I am? And Peter, who’s never afraid to speak for the disciples, says, “You are the Messiah” (8:29).

Now, up to this point, they have called him “Teacher,” and they themselves have asked, “Who is this?” But this is the first time in Mark’s Gospel the word “messiah” is used, and it’s the first time the disciples—out loud at least—admit that Jesus might be more than just a good, moral teacher. “Messiah” means “savior,” and for those first-century Jews, it was a word full of meaning, overflowing with significance. It was a word with political overtones. For some, “Messiah” meant a glorious king, sitting on a throne in Jerusalem. It meant a new, revived Jewish kingdom, a military commander who would get rid of the Romans. It meant he would fulfill all their hopes and their dreams and their plans. He would be a savior surrounded by glory, victory and divine power (Card 111; Garland 323). The Messiah was supposed to be one who would come and make them happy, who would fulfill their needs, and who, above all else, would preserve their nation. Little has changed in the last two thousand years. We still want Jesus to be a victor, a conqueror, one who is primarily concerned with my happiness, my needs and my self-preservation. Think about how we pray, for instance. What are the things that top our prayer lists? Health, wealth, happiness? To be spared from suffering and difficulty? When things go poorly, don’t we pray for God to end the hurt? We’re still locked into that false narrative, believing Jesus is primarily concerned for our success.

And when we come to church, we translate it this way: Jesus is primarily concerned about the success of our church, our community of faith. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting our church to succeed, to do well, but the unspoken assumption underlying most of those sorts of conversations is that what we really want is for our church to be the best, the biggest, the brightest, which implies we want other churches to fail. It also often means we become so focused on our own self-preservation that we have little time to fulfill the mission Jesus gave us of reaching the world. James Bryan Smith puts it this way: “The problem comes when the most important consideration, the dominant desire and the main focus of a community is its own success. Just as an individual whose whole life is focused on meeting his or her own needs becomes narcissistic, self-centered, ineffective and ultimately unhappy, so also communities can become so focused on themselves that they lose their souls” (The Good and Beautiful Community, pg. 68). 

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that such an attitude would never be ours. And I’m sure Peter didn’t think he would ever believe or act that way, either. Yet, when Jesus begins telling him and the rest of the disciples what it really means to be the Messiah, Peter stops him and corrects him. Can you imagine correcting someone you’ve just said is the Messiah? And yet that’s what Peter does. He takes Jesus aside and says, “Uh, Jesus, you’ve got it wrong here. That’s not how the Messiah thing works. You’re supposed to be focused on our needs, our self-preservation, our wants. So knock off this talk about suffering and death.” And to that, Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (8:33). We do this in the church when we claim to want to reach out to others, but we demand they conform to our expectations. Or we say we want to welcome new leadership, as long as they do it the way we’ve always done it. Or we say we are supportive of all the churches in our community but we never pray for them. We only pray for ourselves. This truth was brought home to me in a powerful way when a church in our community closed last fall. There are probably many of you who didn’t even know that. When I got word that the pastor was leaving and the church was closing, it cut me to the heart. I was reminded how often I see other churches as competitors. I hadn’t prayed for them and now their opportunity to reach people for Jesus was gone. So I’m working on changing my tune, and I’m praying more often for the other churches in our community because, for heaven’s sake, there are plenty of people to reach in Portage and Porter County and the larger region. We will all reach people in our own unique way, and we’ll do it together when we give up the false narrative that this whole thing is about self-preservation and comfort and our own needs.

So what is it about? Jesus gives us a powerful image in this passage, one we often rush by rather quickly but, for those first disciples, this would have stuck permanently in their minds and hearts. If Peter’s wrong, and the Messiah did not come to guarantee their own comfort, then why did he come? In verse 34, Jesus calls the crowd to him and says this: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:34-35). Now, we often quote that verse when it comes to the aches and pains of life, or when we face a difficulty or a challenge. “It’s just my cross to bear,” we say, but first-century Jews would not have tossed away such a casual phrase. For them, crosses—real crosses—were a reality they were exposed to often. For them, the cross represented suffering and death. It meant subjecting yourself to shame and to the “howling, hostile mob” (Garland 334). “Taking up your cross” doesn’t refer to just patiently enduring whatever challenge faces us today. “Taking up your cross” means joining the ranks of the “despised and doomed,” putting ourselves in a place where danger and sacrifice are a reality (Garland 328). Those who took up a cross were regarded as criminals and had no comfortable escape plan (Barclay 201). Perhaps the verse is best summed up by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said, in the midst of World War II, “When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die” (qtd. in Garland 335). Taking up a cross is a not a detour in life—it is our life. It’s a demand that separates the disciples from the admirers (Garland 334). It means we immerse ourselves and allow ourselves to be touched and impacted and focused on the suffering in the world. In fact, as one Biblical scholar puts it, “We have only found Christ when we are more concerned about others’ suffering than our own” (Garland 335). Or to put it another way: is your heart broken by the things that break the heart of God?

One of my heroes died a little over a week ago, and it’s been interesting to watch the coverage of his life, because he really had two lives. Some remember Chuck Colson as President Nixon’s “hatchet man,” one who went to prison because of his involvement in Watergate. That was the first half of his life, and just before he went to prison, he had accepted Jesus into his life and became a Christian. While in prison, he determined not to let his faith lapse and found others to share fellowship with. When he was released from prison, he promised the other inmates he wouldn’t forget them, but he still struggled with what to do with the rest of his life. He had no desire to do full-time Christian work and did not want to go back into a prison. And yet, God began to work on his heart, slowly, to the point where Colson began to see the great need not only for a Christian influence in the nation’s prisons but also for reform in the entire prison system. Out of that stirring, out of that thing he did not want to do, Colson established Prison Fellowship, which is now active in all 50 states and in 112 countries around the world. Their mission is to “seek the transformation of prisoners and their reconciliation to God, family, and community through the power and truth of Jesus Christ.” And those are nice-sounding words, but what made Chuck Colson to be more than just a talking head or someone who understood the problem of prisons intellectually was the fact that he continued to spend a lot of time in prisons. Up until this year, when his health wouldn’t allow it, he spent every Easter preaching the Gospel in a prison somewhere in the world. At a time when most people want to have their own celebration and be close to family with no obligations, Colson would go to remind prisoners that they were not forgotten. Is your heart broken by the things that break the heart of God? Jesus says it takes dying to ourselves, taking up our cross so we can follow him. We take up a cross and suddenly the suffering of others becomes more important than our own.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul encourages (or maybe “challenges” is a better word) his readers to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (2:5). And that “mindset” he describes this way: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others” (2:3-4). What would our world look like if we really took seriously Jesus’ call to mind the suffering of others, to relieve their hurt and pain as much as we can? What would our world look like if we changed the way we saw others, if we saw others as treasures rather than competitors? How would the world of politics change, for instance, if we took seriously this call to “do nothing out of selfish ambition”? How would our business life change if we put the needs of others ahead of our own? How would our interpersonal relationships, our marriages, our families be different if everyone in the family was busy caring for the needs of the others? Jesus describes it as “losing our lives for the sake of the Gospel” (8:35). Can we imagine such a world? What if even just those who follow Jesus live that out? What if we, as James Bryan Smith says, treated others as treasures, if we saw them the way Jesus sees them? What if, rather than focusing on our own self-preservation, we sought to live unselfishly? Well, you’re going to get a chance to try that out this week, as that’s our soul training exercise—your homework: live unselfishly this week.

So let’s talk about what that looks like on a practical level, in several areas of our lives. Unselfishness begins at home—because if we live selfishly around those who knows us best, we don’t have much hope for living another way “out in public.” So what if we lived this out by asking how our spouse or children are doing and really listen? Remember last week I said we live in a generation that does not listen? We communicate care for other people’s burdens when we really listen to them, even if we think we have something better to do. Or perhaps an act of unselfish living, if you have small children or grandchildren at home, is to let them choose how to spend this evening. Anything they want to do, you’ll do—game, movie, cooking together, whatever. The key here is doing what Paul said—putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own, and learning to serve them.

The next area of our life, where some of us spend most of our time, is at work. What can we do to live unselfishly, to serve others, in our work? Again, listening might be the most valuable thing we can do. What if you asked a co-worker how you could help them with a burden or a project they are carrying and then you did it? Or you might make some treats to take in to share. Something like that will often bring people together, create community where it might not exist otherwise. A couple of years ago, our Outreach team would take cookies—homemade cookies—around to places of business that were open late on the night before Thanksgiving, just to thank the people who were working. One year, I was in the office and happened to check the messages over the weekend after that night, and there was a call that had come in about midnight on Thanksgiving Eve. The caller first wanted to apologize that she hadn’t been very nice to the team who brought her cookies, and then she wanted to say how that simple act of unselfish service turned her whole night around. You never know what a simple gesture, like giving someone a cookie, can do for someone.

What about daily life? Where do we find opportunities to serve, to live unselfishly in our daily life? James Bryan Smith suggests one for us all: “When driving, be on the lookout for opportunities to let people in to your lane” (82). Now, that’s hard, isn’t it? We live in an age of aggressive driving, and to be honest, the worst experiences I’ve had of trying to get out of a parking lot have been after Christian events. The absolute worst was in Indianapolis after the first night of a Promise Keepers’ men’s rally. Everyone was leaving at the same time, hundreds of men, and I’ve never seen such aggressive and unkind driving in my life. We’d all just been singing praises to Jesus, and then we got in our cars and it’s like we asked Jesus to wait outside as we put on our driving face. “Get out of my way!” What if we show kindness and servanthood when we drive? Or we can offer to babysit for that single mom who hasn’t had a night out with friends in a long, long time. Or we can sit with that elderly neighbor or the person we know who is lonely in the nursing home, perhaps read a book or just enjoy the quiet. We can offer to take someone to grocery store or to a doctor’s appointment. There are untold numbers of ways to live unselfishly around those we see every day.

And then the final area of life is church. Shouldn’t it be natural to live unselfishly in this place? But do we? Do those of us who are able to walk park further away from the building, in the back or across the street so that those  who have difficulty walking or who are guests can park closer? Are we willing to give up our seats so that those who come late might have a place to sit? Several years ago, in our church in Kentucky, the new pastor and his wife came to lead their first service, and Sherry, Mike’s wife, took a seat in the middle of the sanctuary. Just as the service started, she felt someone hit her shoulder with a purse. She looked up and saw a long-time saint in the church, who, not knowing this was the new pastor’s wife, said, “You’ll have to move. This is my seat.” Are we willing to serve unselfishly, give up our own preferences if it will help someone else? Do we greet those who are new or do we leave that to someone else? When the baby cries behind us, do we turn around with angry eyes and stare accusingly at the mother? In my last church, a young family told me about their very first visit to the church with their two small boys. They sat in the back row, and of course, one of the boys started crying, which both frustrated and flustered the mother. Sitting right ahead of her was a saint in the church who had been there for many years. Marge turned around to look at her, and the mother said she knew what was coming next—except she didn’t. Marge smiled and simply told the young mother, “These are the best years of your life. Don’t worry about it.” That family joined the church because in that simple statement Marge served unselfishly.

There’s one other way I want to invite you to serve unselfishly this week, to give of ourselves for the sake of others in order to relieve some measure of suffering. For some time now, this church has been working steadily in area of hunger in our community. For the last two years, out of a burden that was birthed in Disciple Bible Study, we have been partnering with the Northwest Indiana Food Bank and feeding over 30 kids each weekend who live in “food insufficient households,” meaning that when they eat lunch at school on Friday, that’s likely the last meal they would get until breakfast on Monday unless they receive help. And those 30 kids are just a scratch on the surface; in Portage Township Schools, 50% or better of the kids are on free or reduced meals. That means there is a great need. Our township Food Pantry serves over 700 families a month and because of the growing need, they struggle to keep their shelves stocked. We collect food every month for the pantry, but at least once a year, we do a special drive, and that’s going to happen this week. We call it “Stepping Out to Stop Hunger,” and some of you have done this before, but some have not, so let me give you a quick explanation of how this going to happen, how we’re going to serve our larger community by an act that, honestly, makes many of us uncomfortable. I want to allow a member of the original team, Jacci Moore, to explain to us how it’ll work.

VIDEO: Stepping Out, Stopping Hunger

So that’s the uncomfortable part—going into our neighborhoods and asking for donations. But we’ve done this now for three years, and I don’t think anyone’s died of embarrassment yet. And, as I worked on this, somehow I heard Wanda’s voice saying, “Our Lord died on the cross for us; the least we can do is ask for donations to help his children.” Serving others won’t cost us as much as it did Jesus. So that’s it—take some grocery bags, collect some food from your neighborhood, drop it off anytime this week or next Sunday, and together, unselfishly, we can make a real difference in the lives of those 700 families and more.

You see, Jesus told the disciples it was their choice. He said if we want to follow him, it’s going to mean putting aside our own needs, desires, preferences and wants and taking up a cross. That’s true not only for us as individuals, but it’s also true for us as a church. If you only want to save your life here, Jesus says, you’ll lose it in the end, but if you lose your life for the sake of others, for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of Jesus, then you will find it in the end. “The value of a church,” writes James Bryan Smith, “is not in its longevity but in its love. The success of a church is not in its size but in its service to the people and the community” (72-73). The church is a serving community, a space of grace in the midst of a broken world, a place where people can find love in an unloving world, a place where service to others is not just a good idea but the very lifeblood. It’s part of our DNA, becoming this space of grace: loving God, loving others, offering Jesus. Being an unselfish community who is not afraid to serve is part of all three. So will you be a space of grace this week? The church is a community that serves others in good and beautiful ways, knowing that when we serve them, we’re really serving him who served us first. Let’s pray.