Building a Multiethnic Congregation, Parts 2-4

Building a Multiethnic Congregation

CBFNC Annual Gathering – First Baptist Church, Hickory, NC

March 31, 2017 

Part 2 – My own Story

A.    Race Autobiography

I grew up in white suburbia, first a small town outside of Detroit, MI and then in Roanoke, VA.  I met very few non-white people, and I fell for all the stereotypes white people perpetuate. 

My lack of time with people different than me meant that I had a woefully limited worldview, and my ignorance often almost got me trouble.  Here’s an example. 

I was in army basic training. One day, I was kind of dogging it, going very slowly.  If I wasted too much time, it would bring discipline on my squad(extra push-ups). My squad leader (an African American and another trainee) was frustrated with my snail’s pace, and he hollered at me "Come on, Boy!" In my frustration, I yelled, "I'm coming, boy!" I did not know that you're not supposed to call adult African Americans males "boy." I have not done it since. With the hot tempers that foment in infantry basic where 19-year-old men chant mantras like "Kill! Kill! Kill! with the Cold Blue steel", it is a miracle a fight did not break out. 

I did not know that "boy" had been a term used by white men to strip black men of their dignity and to withhold the respect they are due.

I have had many lessons in experiences like that, situations where I blunder but then receive grace from a person of color and, humbled, learn in the process. 

I never in my life used the N-word or any other epithet (besides "boy"). I never thought of myself as an overt racist. But I am a product of white American suburban culture, a world in which whites have advantages they are unaware of and blacks, especially young black men, are accosted in middle class neighborhoods by the police. It has taken me years of experience, conversations, and study to become aware of systemic racism. I still have much to learn.

I started being intentional about learning my final year of seminary.  I was waiting for class to start and I opened my Bible and the passage we read a moment ago Revelation 7:9-10.  In that moment, I realized, nearly all my friends were from just one tribe, language, and nation.  I didn’t know people from other tribes, languages, and nations.  I’d be spending eternity with them!  But I didn’t know them – my brothers and sisters in Christ. 

So, when it was time to circulate my resume and hope some church would call me as a pastor, I searched for a church that would be in a place where I would develop friendships with people from backgrounds different than my own.  I found it in that small church outside of DC.  I have said some critical things about that church, but that comes from a place of deep, deep love.  Over 9 years there, I made life-long friendships with people whose background are similar to mine, and with other people who are very different from me. 

The church did not change while I were, but now it has.  I pleased to share that God has moved in that congregation.  They now have a wonderful pastor, a woman from Jamaica.  And their associate pastor in the English congregation is a Hispanic woman.  The pastoral leadership now resembles the surrounding neighborhood. 

B.    Adoptions

The next step in the transformation of my own understanding of race and ethnicity in America and in the church came when I became a parent.  I was married in 2003.  My wife is white.  In 2005, we adopted a child from Russia.  Our oldest son is also white.

Then in 2006 we moved to North Carolina and I began as a pastor in Chapel Hill.  We adopted a son from Ethiopia in 2009 and a daughter from Ethiopia in 2011.  Boom!   We were a multiracial family. 

With that reality, one of the more dramatic moments of my learning in terms of race came when Travon Martin was killed.  I suddenly realized something I had always known but never admitted.  White America is scared to death of strong black men, like the one my son will be in a few years.  Trayvon Martin died because he was a young black man in a hoody.  And someone got scared.  George Zimmerman got scared because so many of us are afraid of young black men.

Case in point: in my neighborhood in Chapel Hill, a supposedly enlightened town, someone emailed the neighborhood list serve and said, “I saw two black guys going door-to-door.  Should I call the police?”  Who were these invaders imposing themselves on our white suburban serenity?  They were members of a high school football team in town.  Their coach had sent them out to sell calendars to raise money for the team.  A week earlier, two other boys (white boys) from a rival high school were in our neighborhood doing the exact same thing – selling calendars to raise money for football equipment.  When white boys walk through the neighborhood going door-to-door, no one wonders if they should call the police.

To my wife’s everlasting credit, she confronted the woman who sent the email and requested she not call the police if she sees our son out playing.  To the woman’s credit, she was horrified at her own racism.  She did not recognize her own racial bias until an adoption mom confronted her.  She apologized, and I hope her embarrassment has been a teacher for her.  I hope she doesn’t still see black and assume the worst.

My journey has gone from awareness to serious, immediate concern.  My experiences with my kids has prompted more frank conversations with some of my good Asian and Hispanic friends.  I hope I can be the dad my son needs me to be.    I thank God for my black friends who have patiently listened to my questions and fears.

But, I am not just a dad and a friend and a Christian with his own personal worries.  I am also a pastor of a church and the church has a responsibility; a calling.  Millions of people in our country have some of the same fears that I harbor. 

·         If I am a racial minority, is America a safe place for me? 

·         If I am white, now that I am awakened to my own prejudice and latent racism, what do I do? 

·         In the current climate of racial tension, the church of Jesus Christ is called to be a witness. 

o   How do we do that? 

o   What is our testimony and how do we share it so it will be heard?

Part 3 – What do we do?

I think it begins with a true sense of God’s call.  Who is God calling the church to be?  By this I mean the church universal – Christians everywhere around the world.  I think the answer is quite clear.  We read this earlier.  It is Jesus’ commission to the first disciples.  It passed from them to the early church, to the succeeding generations of churches, down through the ages to us.  Acts 1:8, Jesus says to us, “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”  As witnesses, our testimony is that in Jesus the Kingdom of God has come.  All people can be freed of sin and have life in Jesus’ name.  He died on the cross for all, rose from the grave, and is the Savior of the world.  That is the testimony of every Christ follower everywhere.  We are witnesses called to testify.

            Once we accept that and commit ourselves to answering Jesus’ call, then what is the specific calling on any given local church?  What’s your context?  We’ve talked about racial tension in America today.  That’s one factor everyone has to face.  Within that and within the overall cultural climate of the United States, in your town, in your church, what are some context particularities that contribute to your church answering God’s call?

            I am in Chapel Hill.  We have the University of North Carolina there and the UNC hospital.  People from all over the state, all over the country, and all over the world make their way to Chapel Hill either to attend UNC, work at UNC, work at the hospital, or come as patients at the hospital.  Also, Duke Medical center and Duke University are 9 miles away.  Additionally, Research Triangle Park is not that far from us.  Student, doctors, and researchers come.

            Also in Chapel Hill, we have a large refugee population.  The Karen people, refugees from Burma, number in the 1000’s just in Chapel Hill.  The Karen Baptist Church that rents space in our building on Sunday afternoons has as many in worship as our church does on Sunday mornings.

            Furthermore, there is the historic African-American neighborhood called Northside in Chapel Hill.  That community is full of stories and a cultural heritage that is threatened to be lost to gentrification.

            Our specific context is teeming with human diversity.  Your town is probably very different.  However, there’s nowhere in North Carolina in the year 2017 that is culturally homogenous.  It might be worth taking a second look around your own community.  Make note of people you meet around town who are different than the ones you see in church on Sunday morning.  Ask the question I asked at my son’s choir concert.  Would these folks, people different than me, be welcomed in my church?  Would my church be willing to make changes to help these folks feel welcomed?  Would they find a home in my church?

            The reason I think this is so important particularly for America, particularly right now, is the mandate Jesus gives us to be witnesses.  Revelation 7 says there will be every tribe and nation gathered together to worship the Lord.  Does the world look at our churches and see living witnesses to this promise from scripture? With the way we do church, the way we gather as a church family, do we communicate to the world around us a vision of the Kingdom of God?  Can they look at us and see it.

            Answer the call to be witnesses.

            Know your context. 

            The third important point in what we do is stretch beyond your comfort level.  In 2016, our church decided that we would, in 2017, go through at church renewal.  One of the things we decided we would do is examine whether or not God was calling us to be a multiethnic congregation.  We’ll spend the remainder of this year examining this.  Currently we are multiethnic, kind of.  We have about 140 involved in ministry at some level.  About 12-17% of that group are people of color – African Americans, Burmese-Karen, Mexican, Chinese-American, Koreans.  Our leadership is dominated by Caucasians and by our traditions which are Eurocentric.  My dream is that we would become so welcoming to people of different backgrounds that in 2 years you come on a Sunday morning and clearly see that no group is a majority and that the worship is intentional about welcoming and appealing to all.

            To this point all we’ve really done is declare our intention to prayerfully explore the possibility of becoming truly multiethnic.  We said, “God, we think we’re going to try this, or at least talk about trying it.”  Since then, spring of 2016, 4 African Americans have joined the church as members, including one on the pastoral staff.  None came knowing what we were seeking.  They just came looking for church and stayed.  Additionally, opportunities for partnership have dropped into our lap: one is a fledgling Hispanic church plant; another is a potential Chinese-American church plant. 

            It’s like we told God, “This is what we want to do,” and God said, “OK,” amd and new people started coming.  For us, the answer to “what do we do” has been to explore a new call from God.

Part 4 – How do we do it?

The “how” is seen in our attitude.  It first has to be relational.  Do we have the capacity and the desire to be close and intimate in friendship and brotherhood with Christians whose cultural experience is different than our own?  The answer to that has to be “yes.”  Relationship comes before program because no program will satisfy everyone.  I get complaints in one ear that we do too many hymns and additional complaints that we don’t enough hymns in the other.  Some people clamor for communion to be served every week.  Others say, “Pastor, we’re doing communion too often. What are we, Episcopalian?”  The program, whether it is worship, church organization, or something else, will never satisfy everyone.  But if the programmatic challenges are worked within the boundaries of loving relationships, people will stay and stay invested even if the program is not completely to their liking.

The second word is humble.  We go into this humbly, always willing to learn.  This is especially true for white people because Eurocentric culture has dominated the United States since our nation’s inception.  A generic American is pictured as a white person.  Any other history demands a modifier: Asian American, Hispanic, African American.  The norm to which everyone has to adapt is the white cultural norm.  It cannot be like this in the multiethnic church.  The multiethnic church is part of God’s new creation.  We are curious about one another and eager to share God’s love with each other.  It imperative that those of us from what has been the dominant culture – Eurocentric culture – take the lead in humble learning.  We express curiosity about other cultures and we enthusiastically celebrate the unique characteristics of other cultures.

The third word is sensitive.  In the multiethnic church, we are sensitive about not insulting others.  This is straight out of Romans 14:21, “It is not good to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble.”  If an African American or Hispanic is insulted by something a white person says or does, that white person must repent and be willing to learn why this was an offense.  Similarly the person of color should show loving sensitivity.  But it is especially important that the person of privilege not say, “O I didn’t mean it that way.  Don’t overreact.”  The person of privilege must say, “I’m really sorry.  I didn’t know that was offensive.   I won’t say that again.  Please help me understand a better way for us to be friends.”

The fourth and final key word is persistence.  Our secretary at our church is one my confidants.  I share just about everything with her because she’s got a brilliant perspective.  She has a master of divinity degree from Golden Gate seminary, she is a competent musician, she leads Bible studies, and she has a great feel for the pulse of our church.  She is a Chinese American.  She’s not from China any more than I am from London.  She’s from San Francisco.  She and I were talking about multiethnic congregations and all that is involved when different people groups come together.  Based on her experience, she looked me and offered a warning.  She said, “You better be careful.  It gets messy.” 

She’s right.  Based on my experience in Arlington, I know exactly how right she is.  Someone will say something offensive and refuse to apologize.  We have to stick with it because building the multiethnic church is a call from God.  Someone will misunderstand something and there will be great confusion.  We have to stick with it because building the multiethnic church will say to the surrounding community, “this is what the Kingdom of God looks like.”  Through the misunderstandings, the unintended hurt feelings, the lamp that gets broken during VBS by a child from a refugee family, the frustrated old deacon who feels like I’m losing my church – through all the pain and mess, we stick to it.  We work without ceasing trudging through the mess because it is worth.  Building the Peaceable Kingdom is worth it. 

What we do is step beyond our comfort zone to answer God’s call.

How we do it is relationally, humbly, sensitively, and persistently.

We know our only success will come as God blesses our efforts and transforms our hearts.  God can be counted on.  God will work in us and speak through us.  That’s why for me, and I am praying for my church, building the multiethnic church is a call that must be answered. 

            I’ll take any questions, and then I’ll go over resources to finish up.

Resources

A.    Relationships – these are acquired throughout the process

B.    Experiences – these are acquired throughout the process

C.    Media

1.    Books

2.    Internet research

3.    Popular Christian Magazines

4.    TV & Movies

Building a Mutliethnic Congregation - Part 1

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago.  It is a long post, so I am separating it into two posts.

Building a Multiethnic Congregation (Part 1)

CBFNC Annual Gathering – First Baptist Church, Hickory, NC

March 31, 2017

Part 1 – The Issue

            Last week, I went to the local high school my 14-year-old son will attend next year.  His 8^th choir was performing with the various high school choirs.  One of the groups to perform was an ensemble made up of 18 male and female high schoolers.  They were wonderful musicians.  I sat and thought about how much I’d love for that group to sing worship music at our church. 

            I look more closely at the group and my mind began to race.  Each one of these kids comes from a family.  There are parents, maybe grandparents, and siblings.  Each young person represents something more than just himself or herself.  Would these teens and their families feels comfortable at our church? 

            One of the kids of the 18 in this ensemble was white, Caucasian.  One was black, African American.  The rest were various hues each distinct from eachother.  Asian; Arabic; Hispanic; there were kids from many ethnic backgrounds.  I sat and wondered, would each of these kids and their families feel welcome at the church where I am the pastor?

            Every one of us here wants to say “Yes” to that.  It’s why we come to a seminar on building a multiethnic church.  We’re at least pondering the idea.  So, would the kids in this choir, representing America in all its resplendent diversity, be welcome in our churches?  We want to say yes.

            And yes might actually be the answer.  The teen from an African American family or a Chinese family would likely be warmly welcomed into a predominantly Caucasian church.  The white church would, say, smiling, “Come in.  We’re glad you’re here.”  The white church would say it and genuinely mean it. 

The actions of the people in the white church in many cases communicate something else.  We’re glad you’re here.  If you want to stay, you need to adapt to the way we do community, the way we are comfortable relating to one another, the style and pace at which we worship, and the particular approach we take to being a family.  None of this is usually spoken outright, but it is unmistakably known.  And the way the predominantly white church does community, and the style and pace of worship in the white church, and the particular approach to being a family in the white church is loaded with Euro-centric cultural heritage. 

For nine years, I led a church in an extremely diverse community – Arlington, Virginia.  It’s right across the river from DC.  The Pentagon was a couple of miles away from our church building. 

The people in that church were generous with their willingness to welcome everyone.  In a congregation that usually had less than 80 people would include families or individuals from 10 ethnic backgrounds on any given Sunday.  However, even with this diversity in the pews, the church functioned the way it had in its heyday in the early 70s when it was an almost exclusively Caucasian Southern Baptist body of believers.  I arrived in the late 90’s when the church was a decade or more into decline.  When nonwhites stepped into leadership the church family, they adapted to the culturally Eurocentric way of doing things.  The church did not adapt to the way the new wave of believers lived and related to one another.  As the community around the church changed the older members tried to function the way they always had.  And the failure to adapt led to significant decline in membership and in relevance to the community.

            Now, I have been in North Carolina for almost 11 years.  I and the church I now lead am exploring a specific question.  Can what is a traditionally European-American church be transformed to the point that someone who is not white can be at home within that congregation?  Can this transformation be so complete that so many non-white people come that the church can no longer be described as a traditionally Euro-centric church?  The congregation becomes one in which there are Asian-background believers, Hispanic-background people, African-background individuals, folks with a European heritage, Native Americans, those with Arabic backgrounds, and mixed-race persons. 

There’s such glorious diversity in the church that I envision, that you look at the group the way I looked at that ensemble of high school singers.  No majority can be seen.  There a lot of people and they come from all over.  But, when I look at this church I am imagining, here is what I can see.  I can see God in this place and I see more of God in the diverse church than I would if it was just one culture that populated the church family.    The testimony of the goodness of God and the depths of the salvation in Jesus Christ is fuller and richer because more people and different people add their own stories to the church’s witness. 

A.    The Problem

This dream comes at a time in our history as a people when we facing a real problem.  One of America’s great prophets of the 20^th century named this problem. 

April 17, 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. said on the tv program “Meet the Press,”  “I think it is one of the tragedies, one of the shameful tragedies that 11:00 on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours in Christian America.”  Was Dr. King correct? Is Sunday morning segregation a shameful tragedy? 

He went on to say that he definitely thought the church should be integrated and any church that stands against integration and has a segregated body is standing against the teachings of Jesus Christ.  However, in the same statement, he acknowledges that his own church, Ebenezer did not have any white members.  They would be welcome, he said, if they came.  Maybe. 

I believe Martin Luther King Jr. would have welcomed the white guest who visited Ebenezer.  Maybe, many members would join him in that welcome. But, at that time, if a white person or several white individuals tried making Ebenezer their church, I believe many core members of the Ebenezer family would feel challenged and uncomfortable because the ‘other’ has invaded their sacred ground.

And we whites couldn’t blame them for such guarded attitudes.  February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin is killed by George Zimmerman.  He was 17, walking in his own neighborhood.  August 9 2014, Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer.  He was unarmed.  He was 18.  These events touched off a slew of high profile deaths of African American young men.  The perception over the last five years has been that there is a public, violent, growing conflict between law enforcement and people of color in America.[i] 

In addition to this growing racial tension, another reality that divides people in America is the tension between the American populace and Americans of Arabic descent.  If someone is perceived to be Arabic or Muslim, many Americans are suspicious of that individual.  We had a high profile shooting of three Muslims, dental school students, in Chapel Hill, February, 2015.[ii] Not all Muslims are Arabs, and not all Arabs are Muslims, but the tension conflates the identities.

Besides the racial tension and the uneasy relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans, a third reality to be noted is the massive growth of the population of persons who would be described as Hispanic.  Hispanics may well be the largest people group in the United States by the end of the century.

In this changing context where black people have trouble believing white people have good intentions, where white people are unaware of their own privilege or unwilling to acknowledge it, where American citizens are suspicious of their fellow citizens if they happen to be Muslim, and where we are near the time when whites will no longer have a numeric majority in the population, what is the witness of the church?

·         What does the Gospel have to say to America as it is today? 

·         How do we draw the people around us into the Kingdom of God through faith in Jesus? 

·         How do we show what the Kingdom of God is like?

B.    The Opportunity

These tensions are real and some of our friends who are white feel threatened.  Now all but some; there is a sense that we’re losing our country.  And if pastors like me drag multiculturalism into the church, then we’re losing our church.  However, it is not all bad.  We have before us a great opportunity. 

This can be a time when we open the Bible and allow ourselves to hear the word and hear God’s remind us of two things.  First, our loyalty and our calling is not to our country.  It is to the Kingdom of God.  We belong to the Kingdom.  Our eternity is not the United States.  Our eternity is the Kingdom of God.  We can reminded of that and how closely we are united to believers from different backgrounds.  And second, we can be reminded the church is not our church.  It is God’s.  If God is calling to make changes so that His church can grow and be accessible to more people, we should rejoice as we change because we’ll be closer as we do the work He sets before us.

The world is at our doorstep.  A couple of years ago, I was with my kids on a camping trip and we stopped at a service station.  This was way out in the boondocks.  The man running the station was Pakistani.  I am sure he had a family.  This was in the middle of nowhere.  We’re in a time when you could meet someone from just about anywhere and it doesn’t matter where in America you are.  When you meet that person, ask yourself the question I asked myself as I sat at the high school chorus concert.  Would this individual be at home in my church?

The reason this question is important is the Biblical mandate we have from Jesus.  It comes in Acts chapter 1. The risen Christ appears to the disciples and says to them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  In carrying out this mandate, the disciples did not attempt to create different, ethnic congregations. 

In Acts chapter 6, a conflict arose in the church, an ethnic church.  Acts 6:1 – “the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.”  The Hellenists were Greek-speaking Jews in the Jerusalem church, and the Hebrews were Aramaic-speaking Jews.  What was the young church’s solution to this ethnic division?  Appoint the very first deacon board, leaders of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom (6:3).  The first job of the first deacons was to attend to the task of equality in the church, keeping Hellenists and Hebrews together, even with their differences.

In Acts 10, Peter is given a Heavenly vision in which God tells him that in Christ there is no place for distinctions between Jews and gentiles.  Those who previously were kept apart are now united.  Peter then goes and baptizes the Roman Cornelius and his entire household.  The Romans were despised invaders who kept the Jewish people as exiles in their own land.  No one was hated more.  God showed Peter that Romans and Jews were united when they joined to one another in Christ.  Peter did not plant a “Roman congregation” that would share space in the Jewish church.  They were all together.

Much of the content of Paul’s letters was devoted to drawing together people who had been very much divided – Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Jesus.  Romans 9-11, Ephesians 2, and the entire letter of Galatians are some examples of Paul’s unifying efforts. 

Paul changed his presentation of the Gospel based on his audience.  He always preached salvation in Jesus, but he adapted his method based on the cultural experiences of his listeners.  He was a rabbi to the Jews, and in Athens, Greece, he took the approach of a philosopher as he shared the Gospel with philosophers.  This story is in Acts 17:16-34.  , Paul presents Jesus to pantheistic philosophers.  He adapts his message so that it is intelligible for his hearers. 

One of the issues that arose in many of the early congregations was the fellowship meal, where the main dish, the meat, was meat that had been sacrificed to idols.  Paul writes in Romans 14:15, “If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.” He neither recommends eating that meat, nor does he prohibit it.  His concern is doing what’s necessary to welcome all people and doing it with a loving, gentle spirit. 

The church I mentioned in Arlington sometimes failed to have that gentle spirit.  The Wednesday night dinner cooks, white women who for years ran the kitchen like drill sergeants, had gotten tired.  They were well into their 70’s, and while some people in their 70’s are full of vibrancy, these particular septuagenarians wanted me, their young pastor, to find a new Wednesday cook.  And I found one! 

She was a woman in her early 40’s, one of the women in our Spanish congregation.  She is Costa Rica.  The older white women complained about her to no end, often in her presence as if she wasn’t there.  They leered over her shoulder as she cooked.  One woman came to me and barked, “Well I don’t know what they eat, but my husband has a sensitive stomach.” 

After a few months of this, the Costa Rican sister came to me in tears and said, “Pastor Rob, I just can’t do this.  These women treat me like I am a child.  All I want to do is serve the church and I love cooking the Wednesday meal, but I can’t do it anymore.”  And we didn’t have Wednesday meals any more. 

That type of tension came up again and again in that church.  The people of the church welcomed everyone, but they did not trust everyone.  They felt genuine love toward their nonwhite brothers and sisters, the lack of trust negated their love. 

The witness of the New Testament is clear.  Throughout Acts and in the writings of Paul, we see numerous ethnicities together in the church: Jewish, Cornthian, Roman, North African, Ethiopian.  They were all together.  Not only that, but the destination to which history is moving, shows a united humanity under God. 

A key verse for my understanding of the church is Revelation 7:9-10.  John of Patmos has been guided through a vision of Heaven.  He has seen the throne room of God, the 24 elders representing the 12 tribes and the 12 disciples, he has seen spectacular heavenly creatures that defy description, the horsemen of the apocalypse, and the redeemed of Israel.  Then he writes, “After this I looked and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”  And people of every shade, from every background worshiped God together.  If we can successfully build multiethnic churches, we can show the hurting world around us a real life picture of this heavenly future.

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[i] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database

[ii] http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/11/us/chapel-hill-shooting/

God, the Maker of Worlds (Psalm 16)

Sunday, February 5, 2017

            In the Fantastic Four super hero comic books, one of the enemies of the Fantastic Four is Galactus, an alien so large, he travels through the universe consuming planets.  When they made the Fantastic Four into movies, in one of the films, another alien, the Silver Surfer, came to earth to warn us of Galactus’ approach and intention of eating our planet, and all of us.  The Surfer told the Fantastic Four, “It is called Galactus, ‘Destroyer of worlds.’”

            What kind of Greek trip am on that I would read Psalm 16 and think of Marvel comics and the Fantastic Four?  It’s not the first thought I had in my reading of Psalm 16.  In fact, I’ve been reading that Psalm over and over for almost a month now.  I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, what about that?  What about Psalm 16 and Galactus and the ‘Destroyer of worlds?’

It is actually something a great Bible scholar said about the Psalms and what Israel was doing when they sang the Psalms in worship and what God did through the Psalms in the heart of Israel and in us when we worship through reading, praying, singing, and most importantly believing the Psalms.  In his brief commentary Abiding Astonishment, Walter Brueggemann wrote the Psalms “intend … to unmake, deconstruct, and unmask … worlds which seduce and endanger Israel.”[i]

In this sense then, the real God, not the Marvel Comics Galactus, is the ‘Destroyer of Worlds.’  God destroys worlds – threats, ideologies, lies, false theologies, idolatries, fears, seductions.  The Psalms reiterate again and again that God is faithful and is Almighty.  No threat will come to Israel that possesses more power than God.  Foreign invaders like Egypt and Assyria and Babylon and Rome will hurt Israel, but only because God permits it.  And those injuries always come in conjunction with Israel turning away from God, turning to false God, trusting in unwise alliances, and exploiting the poor.  Unfaithfulness and exploitation always, always accompany the arrival of a foreign power in Israel’s history.

God is never off the scene.  God sometimes moves to the background to allow Israel to live with the pain that comes with her sins.  But God is always present to destroy the invader and ideological and political worlds that threaten God’s order.  God is a destroyer of worlds. 

What’s true of what God does for and in Israel is also true for the rest of human society.  First through the creation mandate to scatter over the earth, then through the priestly mandate to Israel to be a Holy nation that draws lost and sinful humanity back to God, then through Israel’s prophets who imagine a future in which all kingdoms of the earth find their fulfillment in the worship of God, and finally in the Great Commission to make all of the world followers of Jesus, the words of the Psalms ring true for the church.  God is a destroyer of worlds, the forces that would seduce, threaten, and ultimately kill the church. 

What are some of those forces?  What draws our attention away from the Gospel?  What tries to tell us who we are, when we know our identities are based on who we are in Christ? 

Some voices insist we must advocate on behalf of refugees.  Their lives are fluttering in the wind and we in the wealthy west must open our hearts and our arms and homes.  It’s matter of valuing lives.  Yet, the same voices will not permit space for the unborn when the conversation switches to crisis pregnancies or unwanted pregnancies.  Then, we can’t talk about the baby’s life, only the woman’s choice.

Some voices insist that we get very specific in damning certain sins, like homosexuality.  We must declare it an evil that threatens our way of life.  And this insistence ignores completely the way Jesus welcomed people – all people, and gave extra love to those who needed most, people rejected in society.  The voices insisting this righteous condemnation ignores the truth that the Holy Spirit is leading the church to love all people and welcome all people.

Conversely, there are voices that are just as loud that demand that all relationships be affirmed by the church.  A Christian baker or photographer sees his work as a kind of ministry.  But then these voices tell him, he has to serve a same-sex wedding.  His reading of scripture tells him that’s against God’s will.  Those voices aren’t interested in his reading of scripture.  He either has to go against what he thinks God is telling him in the Bible and bake the cake for the same-sex marriage; or he has to give up the business he loves and believes is a ministry. 

What forces draw our attention away from who God tells us who we are in Christ?

Some voices insists that our primary identity involves the country of our citizenship, instead of our belief that we are subjects in an eternal kingdom.  As citizens our top concern should be for border security.  We know our calling to go out; ‘go into the all world baptizing and making disciples.’  It’s hard to remember our call when so many voices vie for our attention and compete to tell us who we are.

I’ve done a very rough run through of just some of the issues that have dominated the headlines in the past couple of years, right up to today.  I believe we have a call from God to care for all lives – refugees, the unborn, persecuted persons in other countries, disadvantaged persons in our own community.  We are called to love these individuals and help them know Jesus as their Savior and thrive as his disciples.  We are called to love and welcome people who are confused about their own sexuality or who openly claim a sexual identity that is outside the parameters of what’s allowed in scripture.  The church must be in the mercy-giving business.  If condemnation is to come, let it come directly from God to the individual.  We’re to be mercy, love, and grace-givers.  And because theology is so complicated, I think we have to create space for people to have different beliefs on issues, but still feel at home among us.

The grand issue is calling.  We are called to the cross – to confess and then leave our sins there.  We are call to receive forgiveness and new life.  All these issues and many I have not mentioned turn into idolatries that seduce and endanger us.  God is the destroyer of the worlds that would come about if we forfeited our unity in Christ for the sake of commitment to issues instead of commitment to Him as Lord.  We’re not to be an issue-driven church.  We’re to be a Kingdom-driven church.  We love refugees and speak for the unborn, and we love and welcome straight people and gay people because love is a core Kingdom value intrinsic to who we are. 

Through the Psalms, through the church, through the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, God destroys some worlds to make room for the world God is constructing, creating.  There’s one line that has daily drawn me back to Psalm 16.  “In your presence, there is fullness of joy.” 

I look to God and say it over and I over.  I sit down to pray and begin with silence.  I try to shut out the noise of the latest rally or protest, the latest outcry or accusation that leaps off the new website.  I get my mind as quiet as I can before God, praying for the Spirit to fill the void.  After a minute or two, I then begin filling the quiet with that phrase, “In your presence, there is fullness of joy.”  I need to remember that God is present and what it means because God is present.

Reaching for that palpable sense of God’s presence, I then proceed into prayer and Bible reading and then into the day.  This yearning for God to be present and make sense of the world that seems to be devolving toward chaos is what led me to the whole idea of the ice berg.  If you haven’t been here, I’ve proposed that our mission in worship has been to seek more and more of God the way we might see more and more of the iceberg beneath the surface of the water.

This not escapism, an attempt to pretend the world’s problems don’t exist.  They do and we Christians must be a witness in the midst of the conversation.  But whether it is the refugee crisis, the abortion question, the conversation over sexual ethics, or something else, we do not come it as people of a particular stance.  We see as if we are standing in the Kingdom already.  We see it in the light of who God is.  Saying that, I do not give an answer as to what view the church holds in any specific case.  Rather, I insist that we who are in Christ view each issue through a prism of love, grace, and mercy. 

The debates over each of these issues that have produced such division turns the issues themselves into idolatries, but we will not be seduced into walking to our own destruction.  We are followers of Jesus who know God is present and thus we keep our attention on him.  We look to the Holy Spirit to know how to think, act, and speak.  And we keep looking back to the Spirit knowing the Spirit is dynamic, always on the move, leading us onto new paths. 

The Psalm itself gives markers both of God’s presence and of who we are because God is present.  In these markers we see the worlds God destroys.  We also see what God makes – a world of beautiful relationships; a world run by love.

The first marker is verse 2 – “I say to the Lord, you are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”  A few weeks ago, I came across a quote that is going to be part of my self-understanding going forward.  My life makes no sense apart from God.  Either I do good and help people because I yield to God love in me and allow God to direct my life, or I rebel against God’s love and thus I live selfishly.  Either way, the only way to understand a Christ-follower is in terms of his or her relationship with God.  Similarly, the only good in our lives is the good God brings into our lives.  Other pleasures will turn out to be relatively harmless forgeries or life-destroying seductions.  We are aligned with God when we can truly say the good in our lives comes from him.

The second marker is verse 5 – “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.”  Originally this may have be sung by Levites or referred to Levites.  In ancient Israel they were the one group not allotted land.  They were assigned to oversee worship, so their food and their provision was mandated in the commandments.  When society was obedient, they provided; thus, God was their portion.

The verse speaks to us to remind us that in addition to giving us all that is good in our lives, God meets our needs.  It’s basic to the Lord’s Prayer.  “Give us this day, our daily bread.”  Through the disappointments and triumphs, life’s wins and losses, God is always present.  God works in our pleasure and our pain, always making us new and preparing us for the eternal Kingdom.

That leads to the third marker of God’s world-making in Psalm 16 and it comes in verses 10-11.  “You, O God, do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit.  You show me the path of life.  In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  God gives us good things and our lives make no sense apart from him.  God is our portion, provider of all we need.  And, God’s future for us is rescue from death; rescue to eternal life.

The word Sheol and the concept of the pit are both Old Testament descriptions of death and separation from God.  The idea I’ve been trying to present is that God rescues us by destroying divisions and temptations that separate us from Him.  God destroys those worlds without him in our lives that would arise as we follow those temptations.  Where verse 10 says God does not let His faithful one fall into the Pit, we see a Messianic prediction.  God will rescue the Messiah and we believe that rescue comes when the Messiah, Jesus Christ, is resurrected.

First Corinthians 15 says Jesus is the “last Adam,” the “life-giving Spirit.”  As he was resurrected, so will we be.  As his disciples, we have resurrection and eternal life ahead of us.  It’s all promised in this Psalm: all the good in our lives, all our needs met, and rescue from death.  “In God’s presence, there truly is fullness of joy.”

So, we unite in God.  Plenty of ideas and movements, forces of evil afoot and on the move, are jockeying to divide us and destroy us.  The Holy Spirit is drawing us together in Christ because that’s what God does.  We’ve talked about how God is big and relational.  We’ve talked about how God goes out His way for poor and downtrodden people.  We’ve talked about God loves riches and powerful people and they can see that when they see their own brokenness.  Today we see that God is a maker of worlds.  God prepare us for life in a world where love what drives relationships.  We can be active in this world, helping people, participating in causes, and raising our voices.  But whatever we do, our eyes are on God and we step out at God’s prompting, as God clears the path ahead.

AMEN

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[i] W. Brueggemann (1991), Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History, Westminster/John Knox Press (Louisville), p.26.

Rituals of Holiness - Maundy Thursday (based on John 13)

March 24, 2016

            Has Jesus become a brand or a cultural-political mascot?  Theologian Michael Horton suggests as much in his Christianity Today article analyzing why people who call themselves ‘evangelical Christians’ give their votes and support to candidates who curse, advocate torture, don’t attend church, don’t confess sin, and remain unrepentant in spite of numerous divorces and affairs.  How is it that such candidates can use Jesus’ name for their own purposes and supposed Christians line up behind them and declare them to be Godly leaders?  Horton, professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in California, thinks pragmatism is the reason believers tolerate and even promote for president individuals who are antithetical to ways of Jesus.  They think certain people “get things done.”

            Jesus got things done, but he also paid attention to how he did things.  He did not surrender compassionate methods to achieve Kingdom results.  Every act portrayed the new reality God was in the process of creating. 

When Jesus knelt and washed his disciples’ feet, he demonstrated life in the Kingdom of God.  We are humble before one another. We serve one another for the sake of love of the other.  Michael Horton writes, “Jesus enacts a performance parable about power.  … Taking off his out garment, he wraps a towel around his waist and begins to wash his disciples’ feet.”[i]  Horton refers back to John 10 where Jesus asserted that there is no power that takes life from him.  Rather, he lays his life down (10:17-18). 

Horton then points out that the kingdom of God is founded in blood, but not the blood of the people, the subjects.  This kingdom is founded in the shed blood of the kingdom who led through compassion and sacrifice.  This contrasts the stance of many in American politics who claim the name Jesus, but then grasp desperately for earthly power that is divisive, destructive, and temporary.  “When Christian leaders are drawn to breath-taking expression of ungodly power, it raises questions about which kingdom and which sort of king they find most appealing.”[ii]

Our practices this evening are rituals that show what sort of King has our allegiance and what kind of life will be lived when the Kingdom comes in full.  We sing in worship.  In this way, our voices are joined to one another’s so that the worship we offer comes not from me but from us.  It is a communal act that says our hearts are joined out of love for Christ and for those around us and we are one in Christ.  We are invited into mediation – quiet prayer in which we invite God to fill us.  We don’t empty ourselves for the sake of being empty.  We empty our minds of the noise of the world in order to be filled with the peace of God. 

Also we have opportunities to see the story of our faith through windows, also called icons.  There is art – creative use of photography and other mediums that invite us to see Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.  There is creative writing, a practice that helps us awaken our own imaginations as we pray.  Our cultural currency sways back and forth from the gut to the intellect back to the gut – head and heart.  Both matter very much, but so too does the emotion, and our imagination awakens our emotion.  The creative writing station gives voice to another part of our selves as we pray.  And then there is enactment – as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, we wash one another’s.  The story comes alive.

Finally, the offering and the receiving.  We have stones, the burdens we carry, and we drop them at the cross, offering our sins, our hesitations, our doubts to God.  We give God our mess and God takes it.  We receive from him bread – the broken body of Jesus, the removal of our sins.  We receive from him juice – the shed blood in which we have eternal life.

What do all these rituals reveal about the kingdom of God?  When we sing, when we pray, when worship through art and writing, when we wash feet and release burdens as we drop stones in a bucket at the cross, when we eat bread and drink juice, when we do all these things, what of the kingdom is seen in these experiences? 

The Kingdom is a place of space – space to be and grow in Jesus.  The Kingdom is a place of beauty.  We serve each other.  We honor and care for each other.  God is present.  There are no presumptions, no prerequisites, and no regrets because we are free and made new in Christ.  All are welcome, all are forgiven, and all have life because Jesus has made a way.  Our participation in the worship practices is one way God prepares us to live in His kingdom.  I think we’ll find that this Kingdom is richer and more joy-filled than any kingdom we might build.  How could it be otherwise?  This is the kingdom of a loving God who desires to welcome us into His embrace.

AMEN

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[i] M. Horton (2016) - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/march-web-only/theology-of-donald-trump.html?start=2

[ii] Ibid.