"You are ..."

"You are ... "

In the movie "Overcomer," the main character is a high school runner who comes from a troubled family.   She has to overcome her tough background as well as asthma in order to succeed both in cross country meets and in the relationships in her life that are so broken.

At one point, her high school principal suggests that she read Ephesians.  She tells her she will discover who she is by reading Ephesians.  

After seeing the movie, I decided to read Ephesians to discover who I am.   Here's just a little bit of what I came up with:

I am loved  (2:4).

I am saved (2:5, 8).

I am created for good works (2:10).

I have been drawn close to God by the blood of Christ  (2:13).

I am a member of the household of God (2:19).

I am strengthened (3:16).

I am called (4:1)

That's just a taste, and that which is true of me is true of you too. 

Do you go through periods where you are really down on yourself?  I do.  I beat myself up pretty good.  Sometimes, I believe that voice in my head that tells me, “Rob, you’re a failure.  Rob, you’ll never do any better than mediocre.  Rob, you best days are way behind you.”  Those voices nip at my heels and I hear their sinister whispers and believe the lies.

Reading Ephesians, I rediscover who God says I am. God gets to be the authority, not those voices.  God gets to say who I am and who you are.

            Who will you believe, God, or those voices? You are a beloved child of God.   Read through Ephesians and rediscover who you are. 

Die to Self

I continue to be grateful to the church I serve, for allowing me a 4-month Sabbatical in 2017.  This week, I looked back at my journal from that time.  On one of the early days of my time away from the church, searching for a passage to be a theme verse for the Sabbatical, I stopped at Matthew 10:38, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus here, and in other passages, talks about this idea of dying to self.  At our church, the three foundational pillars of ministry philosophy are safe space, to be made new, and sent into the world.  The “safe” pillar is our commitment to being a welcoming community that loves people “as they are.”  We say, “All are welcome.” 

The “sent” pillar is our commitment to carrying the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ to a lost and hurting world.  When we think of the term ‘evangelical,’ we do not have in mind how you vote or what your politics are.  We mean evangelistic people, people who go out into the world motivated to help people they meet become followers of Jesus. 

The middle pillar, “be made new,” is where I lived during the Sabbatical.  It is what I think is happening in Matthew 10:38 when Jesus commends losing one’s life.  One of the things I have heard from people a lot is this question.  Can I follow Jesus and still be my “whole self?”  The answer from Jesus is “No, you can’t.”  Jesus promises to love us as we are, but when we follow Him, we do not remain as we are.  We don’t come to Jesus hoping to be our “full selves.”  When we come to Jesus and follow Jesus, we die to self.

I have relearned the depths of this concept over and over in my own life as a Christ-follower.  As a thoughtless college student whose brash words hurt others, I had to repent and apologize to those I hurt.  That repentance included dying to self.  When I was single, badly wanting to be married, I had to learn to be content in Christ.  In my marriage as significant challenges have arisen, both my wife and I have had to be humble before God and each other and this included dying to self.  In the privilege of leading a church, HillSong, that is full of strong leaders who will not sycophantically bow to the lead pastor’s will, I have to constantly die to self. 

In this past Sunday’s sermon, I talked about Daniel who refused to let his Babylonian overseers dictate his identity.  In their hands, he did not allow himself to be unmade.  I hope that as I unfolded the story of Daniel’s boldness, it was not lost that at a deeper level, Daniel and each one of us is in fact clay to be molded, just not the world’s hands.  We are in God’s hands and God stretches us, pounds us, hardens us, and shapes us.  Mixing metaphors, we also realize God prunes us, a painful process, but for our good.  Sometimes we don’t understand the creator’s work, but we are the creatures.  We submit to His will not because it is easy but because it is good.  There are no self-made men or women in the Kingdom of Heaven, only God-made men and God-made women. 

Are you ready for this kind of life, one lived in absolute submission to the will of God?  Are we prepared to answer the call to be disciples of Jesus?  Read Paul’s letters.  The disciple life is full of joy and wonder.  But, read all the letters, including 2 Timothy.  The disciple life includes weary days, uncertain seasons, and disciples sometimes have long nights.  No, we don’t say to Jesus, “Take me as I am.”  We say, “You, Jesus, are the Lord, the Savior, the Master.  Here I am.  Make me what you will.  Show me who you will create me to be.”

Almost 4 months removed from Sabbatical, I am grateful I went back and looked at the Sabbatical journal, which directed me back to Jesus’ words in Matthew 10.  My prayer now is the same as it was back in May.  Lord, here I am.  Make me your New Creation.  I hold this prayer up not just for me, but for anyone who would follow Jesus as a part of the church I lead.  

A New Way of Being Human (Romans 4:23-5:5), 3rd Sunday of Lent

Someone messes up and he’s really hard on himself.  “I can’t believe I did that!”  I’ve experienced this and you probably have too.  I fumble or say something I shouldn’t, something hurtful.  Or, I forget something, and it’s the 4^th time.  My forgetting disrupts things for other people.  My mistakes hurt not only me, but others. 

            “I’m such dope,” I say, being hard on myself.  But then a friend comforts me.  “Don’t worry about it,” he says trying to smooth things over, “You’re only human.”

            Only human.  Is that the mark of humanity?  Do we understand our humanness by the blunders we commit?  You’ve heard that old saying.  “To err is human, but to forgive is divine.” 

            God had something else in mind when humans were created.  “Let us make humankind in our image,” God said (Genesis 1:26).  To err is human?  Not according to God.  From God’s standpoint, to be human is to be the zenith of creation, the high point.  To be human is to be that created being that is most like God and related to God in a way no other created thing is. 

            I make a mistake and shrug it off, “Well, I am only human.”  No says God.  When we sin, we’re something other than what God intended for humans.  But we all sin and history has shown we don’t have the will power to stop.  We give in to temptation.  We say hurtful things.  We turn away from God’s path.  We lie, cheat, steal, and hoard.  Some even kill.  We disrespect, disregard, withhold help, withhold forgiveness, and withhold love. 

            That’s why Jesus came.  The only way to conquer sin was to allow it to reach its ultimate consequences – death.  When Jesus went to the cross, he carried sin with him.  When he died on the cross, he killed the eternal effect of sin.  When he rose, he conquered death.  In 2^nd Corinthians 5:17, the Apostle Paul writes that in Christ, there is new creation.  Commenting on this and on Paul’s concept of what happens when we turn to Jesus, the scholar N.T. Wright says, “Paul points to a new way of being human.”[i]  

            However, when we think back to God’s original creation intent, this ‘new way of being human,’ which is, I think the correct way of seeing Paul’s vision, this new way is actually a reclaiming of God’s original idea.  It’s not that we go back to Eden and live the way Adam and Eve did there.  But, we have the life with God that God always wanted humans to have with Him.  To be human is to be in relationship with God, free from sin and with no fear of death.

            Let’s follow Romans 5 to see how Paul presents a new kind of humanity that we experience and live when we give our lives to Jesus and decide to follow him as our master and Lord. 

            First we must refer back to Romans 4.  There Paul talks about Abraham the great man of faith in the Old Testament.  Paul’s point about Abraham is that he was considered righteous by God, but not because he did anything great.  Abraham did not earn the righteousness credited to him.  God gave Abraham favor because Abraham believed God (4:3).  Abraham trusted God and changed his entire life because God told him to.  Abraham moved his household to a new place because God told him to. 

At the end of Romans chapter 4, Paul writes this was true not only of Abraham, but also of us.  When we believe in God who raised Jesus from the dead, when we follow Him, and when we give our lives to Him, we are counted as righteous. Everything Paul writes about Abraham and about faith applies now to people who follow Jesus.

What does this mean?

To be counted as right with God because we believe in Jesus and live in his grace means we have peace with God.  Sin makes peace with God impossible.  When we benefit from lies and deception and get ahead in life by pushing others back, we can’t have peace with God.  When we participate in racist systems and fail to fight the evils of our day, our relationship with God is injured.  When we speak harshly to one another and do not show love, we’re cut off from our Heavenly Father.  But in Christ, all sins are forgiven and we have peace with God. 

Because of this peace, it says in verse 2 that we have access to God.  God may be a mystery we will never fully understand, but we are invited to step into that mystery.  We become a part of it. Within that mystery, because of Jesus, we are sons and daughters of God.  We stand in grace, and though we have made mistakes in life, those sins no longer cling to us or color us.  We are seen differently.  At the end of Romans 5:2 it even says we share the glory of God.  I don’t honestly know what that means.  I only have glimpses.  But I joyfully hold on to the promise that I will know more and more of the glory of God as I grow in Christ and even more when I enter the promised resurrection.  The blessings are here and then more so in the future. 

Yet this is not just feel-good, pie-in-the-sky, babble divorced from reality.  Paul knew better than most the hardships of life.  In 2^nd Corinthians 11 he recites his own resume of pain, suffering that came precisely because he was Jesus’s disciple.  Shipwrecked, flogged, beaten with rods; it all came about in the course of following Jesus.  In our reading, Romans 5, Paul declares the benefits of even these painful experiences. 

He sees God in the suffering and the suffering produces endurance.  He finds out who he is as a man in the most trying of times.  I have sat with people in hospital waiting rooms, visited people incarcerated, had conversations at the funeral home; people often have their most profound moments with God in these hard places.  From righteousness affixed to us by God when we believe, to an invitation into the mystery of God, to the audacious promise of sharing in God’s glory, to the sense that we even meet God in times of suffering, we grow into a knowledge of how life is different when we follow Jesus.

Without Christ, we think money, or the things money can buy, or the security money and power can provide will give us peace.  We are told fantastic experiences like a trip to Hawaii or sky diving or a golf vacation, or even simpler things like a “gold-level” credit card or a certain kind of look or body image will bring happiness.  I am not railing against vacations or material prosperity.  I am not railing against anything.  I am suggesting that the things we can buy are not the things that will give our lives meaning.  Nor are materialistic delights the source of transcendent joy. 

When we talk about the different kind of human, the people we will be in the Kingdom of God, maybe the distinction is most easily seen in how individuals orient their lives.  The woman or man who is of the world has happiness as his or her ultimate life pursuit.  The new kind of human, the one living as God intends his image bearers to be has love as the determining force in his or her life.

Why love?  We’ve talked about sin being nailed to the cross and death defeated in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  We’ve talked about the ways our life shifts when we are in Christ. We have peace with God, we have access to God, and in our sufferings and in hard times we grow closer to God.  Why we would claim that love is the ultimate value for the new kind of human?

Romans 5:5 says, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  Note the direct connection between love and the Holy Spirit.  With the Holy Spirit in us, love is in us.  Imagine you are a coffee mug, one full of fresh, glorious, hot coffee; full to the brim.  Now imagine someone pouring a brand new pot into you after you’re already full.  It flows out everywhere.  That’s the Holy Spirit pouring into us.  That love of God keeps coming and coming until it spills out, and those around us are drenched with God’s love. 

Some Bible readers rightly point out that the term ‘trinity’ is never mentioned in the Bible.  So, they ask, why do we insist that we know God as three – one God existing in three distinct person, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?  I think the answer is love.  Jesus – God the Son, God in human flesh – was asked, what is the greatest commandment?  He answered, “Love.”  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.”  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus gave these as the ultimate commands for how human beings should live under God, but Jesus also knew that it would be impossible us to keep this command on our own power.  He never meant for us to live on our own power.  To be the kind of people wants us to be, we live in constant contact with God, depending on God for help in all things.  When Jesus gave these commands, he add this: we are to follow Him.

When Paul writes Romans, Jesus has already risen, ascended, and is seated in Heaven at the right hand of the Father.  But thought he has gone there, that does not mean we are without help.  At the end of John’s Gospel, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit onto his followers (20:22).  In Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit spread like a wild fire to the hearts of people and they became followers of Jesus.  And here in Romans 5:5, it says God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus came, died, and rose, why?  Because God so loved the world.  Jesus in the flesh is God’s expression of love for us.  When asked how we should live life under God and into eternal life, Jesus said, “Love.  Love God and love people.”  Paul writes that love is poured into us by way of the Holy Spirit.  What holds the Trinity together?  Love.  How do the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, work together to redeem humanity?  God shows love, exercises love, and gives love to the point of overflowing.

This brings us back to the quote from N.T. Wright I shared at the beginning.  Romans 5:5 is but one of many places where Paul hints at this new way of being human.  Filled with God’s love, love then pours from us in hundreds of ways.

·         A mom is forced to travel to another country and so has to leave her oldest child in charge of the younger ones while she’s gone; another mom brings that family food while she is away.

·         A husband takes a week of paid vacation so he can sit by his wife’s side as she recovers from a difficult surgery.

·         A small church offers financial help to a woman who cannot pay her medical bills.

·         A community of believers comforts a grieving family when the mother/grandmother dies.

·         A small group rejoices when one of the members gets a new job and throws a celebration/goodbye party.  At the party there is laughter and congratulations along with tears because they are happy for him and at the same time sad because he is moving.

·         A young professional who is just starting to make money in his first job, sets aside part of his paycheck to sponsor an impoverished child in another country because he wants that child to have a chance in life and to know Jesus.

These things are not exceptions and they are not few and far between examples.  These are normal occurrences for followers of Jesus because that Holy Spirit love has filled the church’s heart and now is pouring over.  When love floods out of the church, all in its path are blessed. 

N.T. Wright recalls the famous quote from Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.”  Paul’s teaching about God topples over this old axiom.  My existence is not affirmed by the fact that I have self-awareness.  That I think is not proof of my existence, and more importantly it is not why I exist.  Per Romans 5:5, we say, “We are loved, therefore we are.”  Love is why God does what God does, and when we are in Christ, love is why we are who we are and why we act as we do.

As we sing our final song, think about how you have experienced God’s love and how the experience has changed your life so that you live differently now because of it.  If you’d like to, go to the witness wall, as we are singing.  Go write a little note about how you’ve been changed as a result of experiencing God’s love. 

If you don’t know what I mean, come and pray with me or with one of the others waiting to pray with you.  Come and ask God to pour His love into you today.  Come and do that as we sing.

AMEN

---

[i] N.T. Wright (2005), Paul: In Fresh Perspective, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.173.

Ash Wednesday, 2017

God’s Up to Something (2 Corinthians 5:20-21)

Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2017

When you’re around the house or hanging with friends by the coffee pot, what’s usually the topic of conversation?  The latest zombie apocalypse movie?  Downton Abby?  Or is that so 2016?  In this town, at this time of year, some people expend energy talking college basketball?  In your circles, what’s the rumpus?  Has anyone approached you lately and asked, ‘Have you heard what God is doing right now?’

That’s what we’re going to get to tonight.  What is God doing?  I’ll tell you one thing God is up to.  God is making things right in the world.  There is enough going wrong that this is not always easy to see. But, there are signs, and tonight we’ll look to those signs.  First, though, we have to acknowledge sin.  Sin is at the heart of what makes it so difficult to see God’s activity. 

If you doubt humanity’s ability to think creatively, just ask someone to explain his sins and then listen to the endless litany of rationalizations.  We don’t want darkness in us.  But, underneath the impatience, the foul language, the judgmental heart, lurking below the prejudice, the grudge-holding, the sloth, down deep, it is there.  We have a sin problem. 

The worst effect of sin is it cuts us off from God.  The solution to this separation is what Jesus accomplishes on our behalf.  The theological term is ‘justification:’ humanity declared innocent of sin before God because of what Jesus did on the cross.  We are justified because of Jesus and justification takes effect for each one of us when we put our faith in Him.  We still sin, but before God we are found innocent because of what Jesus has done.    

Still, even after we are saved, sin continues to vie for mastery in our lives.  The more we give in to temptation, the less developed our relationship with God is and the farther it is from what it could be.  We slip away into waste places.  Relationship with God is not rich, not a daily present reality, not a source of abundant joy, not as full, not as deep as it could be; as it should be; as God wants it to be; as we need it to be. 

How do we get past our sins so that we have a rich life in Christ, a life that is growing in holiness and relationship with God instead of life under sin? 

Theologian James McClendon wrote, “Authentic knowledge of my sin, clear awareness that I am a sinner, comes only when and as I am saved from it” (Systematic Theology: Doctrine, p.122).  McClendon offers two categories which help us see sin beyond simply misdeeds, disobedience, and bad behavior.  He describes sin as refusal and as rupture.

“God is making all things new,” he writes.  And then he refers to 2^nd Corinthians 5:17 which says that in Christ, there is a new creation.  Thus for McClendon, sin is whatever “opposes entry” into the new world Jesus creates (130).  We refuse to receive the new life he offers, drink the new wine he produces.  We willfully resist becoming the new creations he desires to make of us. 

We don’t mean to refuse God’s good.  It is just that we turn to other things – relationships, possessions, professional success – for the satisfaction that only God can give.  In this, we sin.  Even people who have confessed and believe in Jesus, in daily life settle for the world’s pleasures while neglecting God’s blessings.  We marginalize the place God has in our lives and thus reduce His influence on our character while at the same maximizing our own vulnerability to sin’s devastating consequences for us. 

Sin as rupture is McClendon’s second category.  This is the refusal to live by Jesus’ second great command to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Divorce; bigotry; verbal abuse; deceit; gossip; refusal to welcome those different from us; dividing people into ‘us’ and ‘them;’ this is not headline-making stuff like terrorism or school shootings.  Here we are talking about everyday relationship failures that 21^st century American culture considers normal in the course of human life. 

God is not happy with the state of affairs.  We are called by our Heavenly Father and prompted by the Holy Spirit to be a part of the body of Christ, the church.  To be Christian is to be unified with other Christians.  Yet, as Ron Sider points out in Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience the social ills that make the world a broken place exist in the lives of people in the church almost as frequently as they do in the lives of the unchurched.  Based on divorce rates, spousal abuse statistics, and a number of other categories, it would be hard to tell between two groups of people which was the church and which was a gathering of strangers in a restaurant.  How can the body of Christ show the world the way to the Kingdom of God when our own relationships are so broken?

Sin as refusal is a rejection of God’s blessings, an unwillingness to trust God with our desires and our happiness.  Sin as refusal is violation of the greatest command – to love the Lord our God with all the heart, soul, strength, and mind. 

Sin as rupture is a violation of the second great command, the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We treat people with contempt, not grace, and the world is marked by hatred and death.  We have a sin problem.

Of course, when we look to the cross, we know Jesus has conquered God and humanity’s enemies – sin, death, and Satan.  The question we face daily is do we live in God’s victory or in the old life, the life of sin, the life that has been nailed to the cross.  Which life do we live?

The first steps to move from death to life are confession and forgiveness.  We come before God in complete honesty.  We do not hide anything from our heavenly Father.  We stand before God exposed in our mistakes.  Doing that, we discover how much God loves us.  We receive the complete forgiveness God offers in Christ.  We know we sin, but we also know what God sees when God looks at us: the innocence of Jesus.  We come to trust that we have been made new in Christ.

After that, how do we live in the new life we’ve been given and are being given daily?  Here is the spiritual practice I propose for Lent 2017 for the HillSong Church family.  First, participate in worship.  Don’t miss it.  If you can be with us, be here.  Note the worship songs that lead to confession and the pronouncement of forgiveness.  Take communion – the body and bread of Christ.  As you participate in the story of the Gospel in this act of worship see that Jesus on the cross means God loves you and you are made new – one who is forgiven and pure.  Participate in the church’s worship of God.

Second, focus on the good things God is doing in the world. Second Corinthians 5:21 is a curious verse.  The first half of the verse says, “for our sake, [God] made him (Jesus) to be sin.”  Jesus is sin and on the cross, sin died.  That makes our confession and full forgiveness possible.  Sin cannot cling to us and cannot kill us, not when we have been born again in Christ.

The latter half of the verse says, “In Christ we become the righteousness of God.”  In other words, we are made right.  I hear that phrase – so and so needs to ‘get right with God.’  Well guess what?  Jesus has done it.  You and I, the church, as a forgiven people, are signs of God making things right in the world.

The spiritual practice I propose for us this season of Lent is to list specific examples of ways God is making the world right.  We’re going to put poster board up in the sanctuary and keep a running list.  Starting tonight and then every Sunday during the mission moment, we will invite the church to come and write down things you see that are indicators that God is at work, making things right in the world.  

There is plenty wrong too.  Jesus won the final victory on the cross, but though the outcome is certain, it won’t be complete until He returns.  As the world waits for the fulfillment of His salvation, sin and death clamor to claim us all.  The culture wars that are dividing America are but one example of the ways the world is fallen.  Another example is how our news media feeds on bad news, selling destruction. 

The spiritual discipline I propose is that we as a church body name the good that is happening in the world so that our focus is on God and what God is doing.  The first example I write down is something I see every time our church gathers – the little children who run the halls of our church.  Four-year-olds, 3-year-olds, toddlers; these children are little active witnesses to the goodness and presence of God at work among us.

What are other examples?  Do you know of someone who’s been forgiven and is experiencing new life in Christ?  That’s worth writing down and celebrating.  Has one of your prayers been answered?  That’s worth writing down and celebrating.  Did you see all the food our church collected for the Yates Association food drive?  That’s worth writing down and celebrating.  Did you have a great discussion in your small group this week?

You get the idea.

This Lent, if fasting is a spiritual discipline that will help you grow close to the Lord?  Do it!  Confession in worship is something we all need to do.  So do it.  And along with these and other disciplines, participate with us in the discipline of noting the work of God, making us his righteousness.  See God at work, write down what you see, and join the church as we celebrate together. 

I know Ash Wednesday is not traditionally a celebration service.  We do mourn sin and tonight we have some contemplative worship activities like the prayer labyrinth and the imposition of ashes.  We are reminded of how much we need God.  We are reminded that in sin, we die, we return to dust, and we are cut off from the Lord.  But along with our mourning and our acknowledgment, we are also called to tell God’s story.  God is making things right in the world.  That includes God’s work in our hearts, making each one of us a sign of his righteousness.

AMEN

Because I am the Lord Your God (Leviticus 19:2)

Sunday, May 22, 2016

          God created the world.  This is basic belief of Christianity.  Yet, we live in a post-enlightenment world, which, among other things, means a lot of people have problems with this simple statement – God created the world.  While this might be assumed in Church, some simply don’t believe it. 

          Maybe you are one.  You hear it.  But you know that the statement comes from authority of the Bible.  The Bible, if read as an official record, only accounts for about 6000-10,000 years.  Physicists and biologists are quite certain the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 14 billion years old. 

          We know that science leads to technological breakthroughs.  We have seen the skyscrapers.  We hold in our phones all the knowledge of world.  Diseases are eradicated.  All these advances begin with science.  So we trust science, whatever we mean by ‘science.’  This path has so many turns, we’re not sure we can find our way out of this forest.  We trust science; science says the universe is billions of years old.  The Bible seems to say something else.  So we end up doubting the simple statement: God created the world. 

          Even in the church, where such a statement appears to be painfully obvious, our lives are lived in such a way that we don’t really believe it.  Oh, we say, yes of course, we believe God is creator.  But when you look at the choices we make – choices that indicate our values and our deepest held beliefs, do our choices reveal that in our hearts we believe God truly is God? 

          Or is something else God – the God to whom we give allegiance?  Is a certain lifestyle the god that we actually serve?  The successful, middle class lifestyle.  Is that god the one who dictates how we live?  Does a particular ideology hold more sway over us than the God described in the Bible?  The tolerance ideology, in which everyone must be affirmed, the self is the ultimate measure, and no one must ever be question, criticized, or asked to change.  Is that ideology calling the shots in how we think, choose, and live?  Examples abound.  Political movements, family dynamics, competing loyalties, personal appetites – all these forces vie to tell us who we are and how we are to live.

          We have spent five weeks counting today paying attention to another voice – the voice of the Holy Spirit.  God is telling us who we are and how we are to live.  God claims the authority to call us to a way of living.  I have over and over emphasized this.  It is not only pastors, prophets, professors, missionaries, theologians, and chaplains who get called.  Those religious specialists each have a unique calling, noted by titles like reverend, ‘father,’ and ‘doctor.’  These unique roles are important, but your role is important too.  We are, each one of us, called. 

          Why?  Because God is the Lord.

          Memorize the second half of Leviticus 19, verse 2.  Fix that portion of scripture on your mind.  Emblazon that half of a verse on your heart.  You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. 

Imagine this being said to you, the individual human.  You are created in the image of God.  Perhaps you hear this and have no earthly idea what it means.  One thing it means is God had something in mind when you were made.  God calls you to be holy.

          You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Imagine this being said to the entire church family.  As a group, we are brought together for a purpose – God’s purpose.  Individuals and the church corporate are to be holy as God is holy.  We are called to this. 

Everything we have said over the past five weeks leads to this.  We have said we are called to fellowship at the Communion table in the Lord’s Supper and at the common table in meals.  We are called to be givers and receivers of hospitality. 

We are called to a story.  We understand our lives as stories that should be told.  We understand that the gospel comes to life when our stories intersect with and are woven into God’s story.  We are called by God to live the gospel story and to share it.

We are called to forgiveness.  The stinking pile that threatens the aromatic beauty of the Jesus way is sin. Sin clings, sin reeks, and sin sucks the life out of us.  But on the cross, Jesus has defeated sin completely and finally. So the threat is actually no threat.  We are fragranced with grace.  We are called to receive forgiveness and to give it.  We live as forgiven people, freed from sin.

Fourth, we are called to renewed humanity.  As we adjust to the idea of being forgiven and freed from sin, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit fills us.  At this point it is perfectly normal to assume that death is not part of our long-term future.  Yes, the world is still in sin.  No redemption is not complete.  But it is happening and complete restoration of God’s good creation is coming and we, in Christ, are part of it.  So even as our bodies die, we look forward to resurrection and life lived in healthy bodies that cannot be injured or killed, and this life is lived in good relationships, right relationship with God and with others.

My certainty that all of us are called to fellowship, story, forgiveness, and renewal comes from God – my understanding of who God is. 

I earlier urged us to commit the latter half of Leviticus 19:2 to memory. You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Now, we look to the setting.  Where and when did God say this and to whom did God say this?  At the beginning of verse 2, where God instructs Moses: “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel.”  He’s addressing the entire nation gathered at the foot of the mountain in the Sinai wilderness after they have fled Egypt.  There are words in the Bible that are only for priests.  This verse is not among them.  Who did God tell “be holy”?  Everyone.

Who was this ‘everyone?’  Israel had been a nation of slaves under the heel of a cruel taskmaster.  The Egyptian Pharaoh in the book of Genesis is kind to Joseph and his brothers, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

By the time we turn the page to Exodus, the second book of the Bible, the kind Pharaoh has died.  Joseph and his 11 brothers have sired numerous sons and daughters who in turn each became parents of large families.  The next generation did the same and so on, so that what began as a family is at the beginning of Exodus a growing nation.  The new Pharaoh has forgotten the relationship with Joseph.  This new despot feels threatened by this burgeoning population and enslaves them. 

Who is this ‘everyone’ of Leviticus 19?  They are a people who were powerless to do anything other than Pharaoh’s bidding until Moses, under the power of God, freed them.  So, they went from slaves to wandering homeless people.  Now, if I said, “Word association,” and I hollered out “holy,” would you immediately think words like “slave,” “homeless,” “beaten,” “powerless,” and “downtrodden?”  These words describe the Israel gathered at the mountain in Leviticus 19.  God looked at these desperate wanders and said, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Holiness is imparted by God on the most unlikely of people. 

In his book Desiring the Kingdom, a guide for me throughout this series, James K.A. Smith says, “Gathering [for worship] indicates that Christians are called from the world, from their homes, from their families, to be constituted into a community capable of praising God. … [Here, we are] a new people gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people.  Gathering … is a foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.”[i]

When we realize that we are who we are because by coming here we have answered a call from God and it is only possible for us to be here because God called us then it makes perfect sense.  Of course the people God calls “holy” are those who transitioned from defeated slavery to wandering homelessness.  The mighty of that era were the Egyptians.  By the time the Israelites stood at the mountain hearing God tell them to be holy those mighty Egyptians were fish food at the bottom of the Red Sea. 

Why?  Because the Lord God is Holy.

Because might or weakness by human standards is all the same – nothing in the light of God.

Because today nothing has changed.  The mighty today, 21^st century Pharaohs and power brokers, and the lowest of the low today, slaves and homeless, are all the same – nothing in the light of God.

However, this is not a sermon about how we are nothing.  This is not some sweaty preachers’ spit strewn soliloquy about the wretchedness of our condition.  This is an invitation to us to listen and hear.  God calls the wandering Israelites to be holy as God is holy.  God calls the Syrian refugee who is a Christian and is without home to be holy as God is holy. 

God calls the frustrated American who can’t shake his confusion.  He doesn’t know who he is supposed to be in a society where it appears that morality changes daily.  He doesn’t know what’s right and wrong because what was wrong yesterday is acceptable today.  And that American tries to take it all in and be faithful to God and he’s frustrated.  God calls the man of faith, drowning in confused frustration.  To him, God says, be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  You are holy because I am the Lord.

So we are called.  How then do we answer?  Hint: the answer is not found in whether we believe the earth is billions of years old or 10,000.  For the record, I believe Genesis and I believe the account scientists offer for the age of the earth and the development of life on the earth.  How can I say that?  Because I believe God when he says in Leviticus that He is the Lord. 

As Lord, God rules over all arenas of life.  God rules as we make personal choices.  God rules as physicists and biologists do their research, conduct their experiments, and draw conclusions from the results.  God rules when my family is at home at night and no one else is around.  No one knows your family when you go, the porch light is turned off and the shades drawn.  But God does and God is lord there too.  In light of HB2, I’ll say this: God is even Lord in the bathroom and in the chambers of the legislature where laws are drawn up. 

Gathered with Israel there at the mountain, we hear what they hear.  We are called as they were.  To us God says, “You shall be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy.” In practical terms, it means God comes first in all our thinking.  God influences every choice we make.  The rest of Leviticus 19 elaborates on life lived in holiness.  Some of the material was essential in 1200 BC and is irrelevant in 21^st century America.  Some of it speaks as loudly then as now.  Verse 18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  That teaching was on the books from the beginning.  In his life, Jesus demonstrated how to live it out.  In all the teachings, we are completely submitted to God’s rule.

This means we are completely apart from the values of the world around us.  It’s tough because most of us want to be accepted by our peers and neighbors.  We want to fit in.  Holiness is not an intentional move to be odd, but it is a declaration that we don’t care about fitting in.  We follow the Holy Spirit’s promptings and if that means going against the grain of society, then we do so. 

Pushing against the social currents as a way of living out holiness can be quite radical.  We may protest unjust laws; we may take up the cause of the victim and in facing get hit ourselves; we may change our lives completely in order to live out God’s love and God’s justice.  However, we can also push against the grain in small ways in our daily lives.  If these small attempts to live as God’s called people became a way of life, gradually we come to realize that we can hear God’s voice when we need to and we understand the world differently than people who don’t know Him. 

I was a senior in our high school church youth group, which was large.  Thirty of us where on the trip to Disney World.  I remember as an underclassman how hard it was for me to crack into the social cliques.  I had experiences of feeling rejected.  So on that trip, I looked our group and looked for the 6^th graders that seemed to have no friends.  My efforts were clumsy.  Some of those young ones didn’t know how to react when the youth group president grabbed and said, “You’re not going to be sad and lonely left out today.  You’re hanging out with us.”  I am sure I had a bit of hero-complex.  But residing in me deeper than that was a sense that in Christ all should welcomed and love.  Holiness is to be set apart, but everyone is invited and in fact called to this state of set-apartness. 

Over the years I have tried to become more delicate in my attempts to invite others into the holiness of God.  Those who know me well know that blunt, blowhard 18-year-old still lurks within.  And whatever warts were on you before you began to be transformed by Christ may still linger. Even so, find those small ways in which you can step to the God who invites and bring others along with you.  In the rhythms of your daily life, submit to God’s rule and extend God’s love and welcome.  The more God has authority in all areas of life, the more we live in the holiness to which we are called. 

And the more we live as called people, the less we are products of the fallen world around us and the more we are witnesses that show world a better, God’s way, the way of forgiveness, welcome, family, and eternal life.

AMEN

---

[i] Desiring the Kingdom, p.161.

Called to New Creation

One of my heroes of the Christian faith is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was hanged in a Nazi concentration camp for his small role in a plot to assassinate Hitler.  Bonhoeffer had been teaching theology in the United States.  He did not have to go back to Germany.  He was free and clear.  But his faithfulness to Christ compelled him to return home, face the dangers, and try to do his part to help his countrymen.  He was courageous and faithful and because of that, he died. 

          What was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “call” from God?  Was he called to be a theologian?  Was he called to be a martyr?  When I read a biography about Bonhoeffer, I was amazed to learn that one of his earliest jobs was as a youth minister in a German-speaking church in Spain.  I thought, “I can relate to that.  I’ve been a youth minister!  In a small way, I can feel connected to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”  What a thrill for me.

          What was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s call from God?  He was called to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  It is the same call God has for you and for me.  For Bonhoeffer, the call dictated how he would approach dating, which he put off for a long time.  By the time he was engaged to marry Maria von Wedemeyer, it was too late.  He was arrested before they could marry.  It’s sad, but it was a part of the testament of his life, a life lived following Jesus.

          His call led him to serve as youth pastor at that church in Spain.  His call led him to study theology and teach in New York.  His call led him, while in New York, to worship at a black Baptist church in Harlem and teach youth Sunday school there.  His call led him to go back to Germany.  And while he was in prison, prior to his execution, his call led him to stay even when he could have escaped.  He stayed in prison as an act of solidarity with others who were not getting out. 

          We have spent three weeks examining what it is to live as a person called by God.  Each one of us is called.  I occupy the role of pastor, I am called to that role, but I am no more called than anyone else here.  My calling is different than yours, but yours is just as much a call from God. 

My primary call is the same as Bonhoeffer’s and yours.  His call, my call and yours all stem from the heart of God who beckons all people to come to Him in faith and repentance.  We turn from sin and run into the outstretched, waiting arms of our loving father.  Jesus the Son bore our sins on the cross.  We are saved from death and saved to life as followers of Jesus.  In the disciple life, we live the life God saved us to live. 

          As called people, we live in fellowship – at the communion table and at the common table. We share life together.  A second way we live as called people is in the living of the Gospel story.  The story of our lives and the story of God are brought together in Christ, and we spend our lives telling the story of the Gospel.  A third we way we answer God and live as called people is forgiveness.  We live as forgiven people which means we receive forgiveness and we give it.  Today we receive as a fourth aspect of our calling.  We are called to be a part of a renewed humanity.

          Passages from 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 5 paint the picture. 

          In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, “So it is with the resurrection of the dead,” and he describes the contrast from the body we have now – bodies that are dying, and the body we will have when we join Jesus in resurrection.  Resurrection is a part of new creation – God’s plan to reclaim His original creation, which was good. God will reclaim the world and the universe, through the cross cleanse us of sin and defeat death, and all will be as God intended in the beginning.

          Right now we still live under the shadow of the Fall, Adam and Eve’s original sin.  Right now we live with sin in the world and with the shadow of death cast over us.  We are all dying but God calls us to something else.  To answer and to live as called people, we live as those who will live eternally.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrected body is imperishable, raised in glory, and raised in power.  It is a spiritual body.  This does not mean it is immaterial.  In Heaven, we are not shades and we are not beams of light.  We have bodies, but as 1 Corinthians 15 says, we bear the image of the man of Heaven.

          The Spiritual Body cannot be harmed nor can it be killed.  Our resurrection into these spiritual bodies is made possible by the death of the Son on the cross and is the work of God the Spirit.  As we turn to faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit goes to work in us, transforming us.  The transformation is complete at the resurrection at the end time on Judgment Day.

          We see signs of this transformation in how we live here and now.  In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul writes, “From now on … we regard no one from a human point of view. … If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”  We are still in the world where pain is present and the effects of sin and death continue to plague mankind.  However, we see this world from God’s perspective and we begin to invite people we meet to move from the story of sin and death into the story of eternal life. 

          How do we live with this eternal perspective when we are surrounded by cancer and depression, drunk driving fatalities and the complete breakdown of marriages and families?  How do we, with a straight face, claim to see the world from God’s heavenly vantage point when stories of terrorism and refugee crises abound?  How can we talk about abundant life and eternal life in our world of death?  There’s an orphan crisis in numerous countries.  Abortion – the death of defenseless babies – is accepted as a normal practice.  Decency is mocked and political vitriol seems to lead to more success than truth telling. 

          I asked the discipleship groups of our church to discuss this question.  If you could eliminate any one thing from human experience – arthritis, heartache, taxes, diabetes – anything, what would you choose?  What would you remove from the human condition so with this thing gone, life would then be richer, more fulfilled, and happier?  What would you choose to get rid of?

          When God created the world, the human condition was “good” from God’s perspective.  This means to be human was to be healthy, to live forever, and to be in right relationship with God and with other humans.  The renewed creation, the resurrected existence in the eternal kingdom is the experience of living in healthy bodies that never die and it is the experience of being in right relationship with God and with people.  James K.A. Smith says the call to new creation is “a call to be human, to take up the vocation of being fully and authentically human, and to be a community of God’s people who image God to the world.”[i]

          When we read 2 Corinthians and talk about us becoming new creations, this is what is meant: healthy bodies that live forever in right relationships; relationships of love.  We live to thrive and to create, just as our God created us.  We live to make something of the world – something good, something useful, something beautiful, something delicious, something melodic, something joyful, something life-producing. 

          Of course, this call can only be answered as the Holy Spirit of God works through us.  Today is Pentecost, the birth of the church when the Holy Spirit filled the original Christ followers seven weeks after the resurrection of Jesus.  When the Holy Spirit came, they were able miraculously speak each other’s languages.  They were able to understand as Peter preached in Aramaic.  And 3000 became Christians in one day.

          Today, the Holy Spirit continues filling the hearts of Jesus’ followers and speaking through the church, which is the body of Christ.  What is the Spirit saying and doing that leads us to answer and help other people answer the call to New Creation?

          We cannot cure all cancer, AIDS, heart disease, and other ailments that attack the body, not with a snap of the fingers or a simple prayer.  So what can the church do?  We pray fervently and unceasingly.  We support doctors and researchers and recognize that the work that they do is God’s ordained work and in answering God’s call, some Christ-followers go into medicine or research or nursing or pharmacy or public service as their life’s calling.  Those of us who do not go into these fields support and celebrate our brothers and sisters who do.  In this we way, we live into the New Creation.

Moreover, as the church, we come around our brothers and sisters who are troubled with sickness and disability.  As a community, we recognize that every member struggles with something, either emotional, physical, mental, financial, or some other struggle.  We wrap the arms of the body of Christ around every member in love so that while we won’t approximate the heavenly bodies described in 1 Corinthians 15, we will create space for all people to have joy, love, acceptance, and family.  We work for all to thrive.

How else do we answer the call to New Creation?  We won’t solve all the problems of evil and injustice, not with the snap of a finger or a simple prayer.  So, we pray fervently and unceasingly.  We see inequality and name it.  We insist that Black lives matter, we understand why, and we renounce systemic injustice as we create spaces for all people to thrive and have a voice.  We see tragedy, we open our doors and our hearts, and we creates spaces for immigrants, refugees, and homeless people to belong and be loved.  We see people Jesus loves before we declare nationality.  We recognize we are all children of God for whom Jesus died on the cross.  We, God’s evangelical church, proclaimers of the Gospel, are the loudest, most powerful voices that call for justice and brotherhood among people of different races.

How else do we answer the call to New Creation?  We won’t answer all the questions of identity and disagreement, not with the snap of a finger or a simple prayer.  So, we pray fervently and unceasingly and we go out of our way to pray for people whose perspective is different than our own.  This is how Paul’s vision in the two passages from Corinthians is lived out in our lives.  We welcome people – even people who disagree with us about what’s acceptable in terms of marriage and sexual orientation.  In the world’s fallen state, people of genuine good will have opposing opinions.  Opposing opinions does not mean we draw battle lines. As it is with disease and sickness and as it is with matters of justice and equality, we approach the question of identity and gender and orientation in love as we create a safe space where disagreements can be hashed out while maintaining the dignity of all in the conversation.  Creating safe space and living compassionately is how we answer the call to renewed humanity . 

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer played the different roles of his life – youth minister, theologian, German Sunday school teacher of black youth in Harlem, conspirator against Hitler – in every role, he was Spirit-driven.  However well I do in my roles – pastor, husband, dad, friend – I am Spirit-driven.  I mess up badly sometimes, but the Spirit has led me to these roles and when I perform in them, I am answer God’s call.  In the roles in your life, including getting out of bed to come to worship this morning, you have the opportunity to answer God’s call. 

When we all do that – answer the call, and cooperate with one another to create a space in our church community that empowers all present to explore God’s call on their lives and to answer that call, then we as a body are living into the resurrection reality.  Together, in worship, in faith, determined to maintain compassion, extend welcome, and share God’s grace-filled love, we lean in to God’s New Creation.

[i] Desiring the Kingdom, p.162-163.