A Polanyian View of Church Order?

A Polanyian View of Church Order?

As most people probably already know, I am a theologian. I am not a theologian by profession except inasmuch as all pastors are implicitly theologians, whether they take that task seriously or not. I am not academically qualified to speak as a theologian in the sense of one with a PhD in theology. And yet, I consider myself a theologian nonetheless. This does not mean, however, that theology is my only interest. It isn't. My secondary interest that has developed is the philosophy of science. Though there are certain aspects of this field that do not interest me (perhaps because I am not convinced they are dealing with the kinds of issues that are primary), I am trying to read as widely as I can since I have found the issues being discussed in it to be remarkably parallel (though not identical) with my primary interests in theology.

One of my favorite philosophers of science is Michael Polanyi, who actually may have had a more profound impact and influence on theologians than on scientists, judging by subsequent literature. Polanyi began his career as a physician, then went back to school to be trained in chemistry. Later, he was pulled into philosophy almost unwillingly because of discussions about the nature of science that were going on between Western scientists and the scientists in the Soviet Union. The question that dominated these discussions was to what extent (if at all) should the state provide guidance for the development of science. Those in the Soviet Union argued that the state, which planned everything else, should plan science. After all, if one of the great purposes of science is to serve the advancement of a state, then the state should be able to say what these scientists should be working on. In the West, this was opposed, though there was a time when this opposition was rather weak which, it would seem, is what pulled Polanyi into the debate in the first place. Western scientists argued that science could only be pure if it was free from political oversight, at least in the sense advocated by the Soviets.

Polanyi had many reasons to advocate for his view. First, because he is convinced that all knowledge, not least scientific knowledge, is the knowledge of persons who are dedicated to the truth of reality. That is, all knowledge is personal knowledge, which does not mean subjective knowledge but the acknowledgement by persons of what is the case independently of that acknowledgement. Because of this, persons engaged in research must be free to follow their personal (and largely tacit) insights and hunches. Often, significant discovery arises, not because a research program has made it clear what one should work on but because a scientist travels down the lonely road where they see a promising result that nobody else could see.

Additionally, Polanyi draws attention to the fact that much of science is only verifiable by a small number of specialists. This deviates from the kind of objectivist notions that have become increasingly popular in our culture today that say that all scientific claims are publicly verifiable, that is, anyone could do the experiment and see that the results are true. This, of course, is not true. In point of fact, only people who have been educated into a scientific culture, who have been trained to operate in ways consistent with contemporary science, who know how to use the laboratory equipment, and who have spent years working on a specialty are actually able to verify every experiment, and indeed many experiments go unverified, not least because of the tremendous cost of time and money it would involve. The point of this for our discussion is that the state is fundamentally unqualified to discern which paths in research are promising and which are not. To trust what has traditionally been done by the dynamic and unformalizable scientific intuition to bureaucrats would be to destroy science in one fell swoop.

What would seem to be a measure introduced in order to improve efficiency would turn out to be grossly inefficient, because it kills the creativity that makes science, which is far less exact and formal that many people often think, work. Rather, Polanyi argues that the most efficient way forward is to allow each scientist the freedom to pursue their own interests, to follow their own clues, and to make their own discoveries. By making the government over what research is done decentralized, it can benefit from the mutual oversight of all scientists instead of one, perhaps scientifically minded but perhaps not, politician or committee. This means decisions can be made quickly by the people who are competent to make them rather than slowly by people who may know nothing about the matter. Also, because of the practice of academic publishing, scientists can know what is going on around the world and adjust their own work to most effectively take advantage of these global insights.

In the last month or so, I have been struck with the significance of this line of thought for the church. I have begun to realize recently that most of the churches I have known have a tendency to decide, in the abstract, what it is that a church should be about, develop ideas of the kinds of ministries that should happen, and then try to recruit leaders to shape it. When this is the approach, I have noticed that several things happen. First, we tend to have some degree of difficulty to find the right people to lead these different ministries. There are some who have the skills necessary but who are already overburdened with volunteering. There are others who have the skills but have no passion for the ministry they are being recruited for. There are still others who have the skills needed but have never been asked and so may not even realize that they have such abilities. There are also times when we have people who are excited and passionate about something but simply do not have the competence to get it done.

Secondly, I find that when the ministries of the church become fundamentally more basic than the people who are leading them, there comes a time when leadership shifts for whatever reason and we often find that the idea that we might allow a ministry to cease too horrifying, so we scramble to find someone, anyone, who is willing to fill the spot. They might not be the kind of person needed for that ministry, they might be being pulled from another area where they are effective, and we must also always entertain the possibility that the church might be being called to allow a particular ministry to come to completion so that resources can be reallocated and new things can get started.

This way of approaching ministry puts the main power in the hands of very few people, who are often all too happy to take it and use it. Masterful "visions" that are generated in the mind of one person are imposed on others and what is and what is not in line with it is decided ahead of time, which carries with it the double-edged sword of the fact that the vision is clear, but it is not necessarily shared by the people. What ministries should and should not be pursued are no longer based on the prayerful answer to the question, "What is God calling us to at this time and place" and instead rooted in the question, "In what way does this further the vision we voted on once upon a time."

The problem with this whole way of approaching ministry is that it sometimes works and it has worked for some time in many churches. Leaders in a more authoritarian past established such rules for church governance and they have remained more or less unchanged. Even those who have come from such rebellious generations, who have been ruthless at changing the outer trappings of so many churches, have left the internal structure largely unchanged. The people are different and the hairstyles and clothing have changed, but the top-down authoritarian structure that the church learned, not from the self-giving Lord, but from the marketplace, has remained.

This is why I have found Polanyi's conception of academic freedom for scientists to be so compelling for the church. This is not simply because I like Polanyi's work (though I do), but because it seems to give some concrete insight into what Paul wrote so often in the New Testament. Paul does not create job descriptions out of abstract speculation and then apply them to every church without adjustment. His vision for the church approaches ministry in such a way that ministry is never a job to do, where qualified people can be swapped in and out with no real change. Ministry is always done by people who are prepared and gifted by God for the task, which means that the gift of God must be understood as more basic than the task that is performed by means of it.

To put this in more concrete terms, when Paul speaks of a five-fold ministry in Ephesians 4:11-13, we must not read it in such a way as to imply that there were clearly defined "job descriptions" for what it was to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. Rather than saying, "We need these five tasks done, who can we find to do them," it seems more consistent with Paul to say, "God seems to consistently raise up these five kinds of people. It is not for no reason that he does this. Find them and recognize them." Paul often exhorts the leaders to lead, but he never seems to be concerned about where leadership would come from. God would raise it up if we only have eyes to notice.

Who knows what it means to be an evangelist? Those who receive the ministry of the evangelist? Not really. Who can spell out what an apostle is? Someone who has never been called to nor participated in the apostolic calling? In many ways, it is not even entirely possible to have the ministers themselves define what it takes to do their job, since God does not seem to be all that worried about the secular qualifications of those whom he calls. Jesus did not send Peter and the other disciples off to seminary to be trained; he simply called and they followed. Peter never took a preaching class, Paul was never formally trained in pastoral care. The passion and the anointing that comes from the Holy Spirit can do what all the training in the world could never do on its own (it should be noted that I am in no way against formal training. However, we must never imagine that God is waiting for someone to go to school before they can be used by him).

In spite of all the efficiency that seems to be inherent in a rigidly centralized conception of the church, it can be woefully inefficient. So long as the central leader is well aware of the gifts and graces of the people in the church and can entrust leadership into their hands, it is true that such church government can be quite efficient. However, it is often tempting to insist that the pastor is not only an overseer who responds to issues by reallocation of resources but is also the prime minister, who has skills that nobody else can approximate, who fills a professional need, who sees themselves primarily as an employee of a local church and not primarily as a servant called and sent by God. If this happens, ministry quickly becomes made after their image and any gift of a layperson that does not fit into such an image becomes marginalized, regardless of how necessary it may be.

If a central planning agency for science could be trusted to always know which are the promising projects, could be relied upon to always know what is needed and how to maximize resources to that end, it would be amazingly efficient and helpful. If it falls down, even in a minor way, it has the distinct possibility of crippling science and discouraging scientists from making new and hitherto unlooked for discoveries. In a similar way, if a pastor is always able to see clearly what is needed and the best way to go about responding to that need, it could be a wonderful way to run the church. However, if a pastor lacks the knowledge and discernment needed for this task at any point (which inevitably happens as they are human and finite like everyone else), they may find that their greatest strengths can turn out to be their greatest weaknesses in a given context.

Is pastoral ministry important? Absolutely. Is it as important as the ministry of lay people? Of course. But, it must be clearly noted, it is no more important than this. To behave as if this were not so not only skews the whole Polanyian system but is tantamount to an eye saying to a hand, "I have no need of you." It seems to me that a more significantly decentralized approach to ministry is more conducive to allowing the Holy Spirit to govern, not only the individuals who make up the church, but the church as a whole. Those who have gifts in particular areas will be able to provide mutual oversight, freeing up those with different gifts to work elsewhere and elsehow.

The questions that remain are these. How can we move forward? How can we convince the average Christian that God actually wants to use them, has gifted them, not only with skills, but with passions, that he wants to harness for the good, not only of the church, but of the world? Undoubtedly the answer involves prayer and repentance regarding ways we have been discouraging in the past.

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 (What the Resurrection Tells Us)

04/29/12 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Grace UMC

When I was a kid, I remember always being confused by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Christmas, after all, is only one day. It might be the case that we spend a few weeks building up to it, but it is just one day; that's it. Sometimes, we will speak of there being a "Christmas Season" but what do we mean when we say that? We mean the season of Advent. If you were to look at the church calendar, you would find that there actually is a Christmas season, and it is after Advent; in fact, you will find that the twelve days of Christmas are twelve days of celebration starting on Christmas and going until Epiphany. We might not always pay very much attention to it, but there is a whole season dedicated to celebrating Christmas, but what often happens? We tend to talk about Jesus coming into the world during Advent and then stop thinking about it altogether once the presents are opened.

The reason why I bring this up at the end of April is because there is an Easter season, too, and it isn't just the season of Lent. There are six Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, which is just enough time to forget about one and how it connects to the other. Well, I want to do my part to try to make this an Easter season and spend some time talking about the resurrection of Christ, but not so much the Easter story as such but what the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead in glory has to tell us about you and me and this life that we live in this world of ours.

It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of people who are not all that interested in taking the resurrection of Christ seriously. After all, do you know anyone who has been raised from the dead like Jesus was, in glory and never to die again? In the modern era, there has been some concern about whether the church should really be proclaiming such a gospel that includes a physical resurrection since it is so foreign to our experience. In the last few hundred years, there has been a significant reinterpretation of the story of Easter. The whole mainstream of what we call today "modern" theology has tended to say that the story of Easter is far less a story of what actually happened to Jesus in a tomb that morning and far more a story of the experience of the disciples that same day. That is to say, when we say that Christ was raised from the dead, we don't mean, according to this view, that a dead body spontaneously returned to life, got up and walked out of a tomb; we mean that the disciples had a profound encounter with the spirit of Jesus that was so strong that it was as if he was raised from the dead.

Now, what is the problem with that? If you look at it from a particular point of view, it doesn't seem all that bad. After all, if we imagine that Jesus' ministry was primarily, if not exclusively, about telling us how to be good and how to live in harmony with everyone else, what difference does it make whether he was physically raised or not? Not a whole lot. What it means to be a so-called "good person" doesn't fundamentally change if a particular person is alive or dead. In fact, given that we can all agree that we ought to love one another, like Jesus said, and resurrections are hard to believe, maybe we should spend our time talking about the former and kind of ignore the latter, perhaps hoping that it will go away and we won't have to deal with it.

As it turns out, the question as to whether Jesus was literally, physically raised from the dead is extremely important. According to Paul, it is something upon which the whole gospel stands or falls, which is not something he says about just anything. In his first letter to the Corinthians, which we just heard, he lays out an argument that goes something like this. "Now guys, I hear that some of you are saying that there is no such thing as people being raised from the dead, that dead is dead and that is the end of it. Now, if there is no such thing as resurrection, then nobody is raised from the dead, which means even Christ has not been raised from the dead since he is a somebody. Here's the problem, though. We have been proclaiming, and you all believed, that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that it is through this death and resurrection of Christ that God has worked out our salvation and we have been reconciled to God. So, if it is true that there are no such things as resurrections, then Christ has not been raised, which means that the gospel that is built on his death and resurrection is useless, which means your faith is useless, and we have all been deceived. If we trust in a Christ who has died and will live no more, we are the most pitiful people in all the world."

Now, I pointed out earlier, that if Jesus' main point was simply to teach us a good way to live and that we should be generally nice to each other, then it doesn't matter whether he was raised from the dead or not, but Paul seems to think that it makes a huge difference whether Christ is really raised or not. What then are we to conclude from this? If nothing else, it is that Jesus came to do far more than simply turn us into "nice" people. What is it that we learn from the resurrection of Christ from the dead?

We learn that our bodies really matter to God. I remember that I used to imagine that, once Jesus ascended to heaven forty days after he was raised, it was the end of his humanity, that Jesus shed his humanity like a snake sheds his skin. I don't know for sure why I thought that, since the Bible doesn't say that anywhere. I imagine that I thought that, since it was such a tremendous sacrifice for God to become a human being, when the time for being physically present with his people was done, he wouldn't need his body anymore. After all, what purpose would it serve? And yet, what we actually read in the Bible is that God becomes a human being, dies as a human being, is raised from the dead as a human being, ascends to heaven as a human being and will one day come again in final victory as a human being. That means that Jesus is a human being right now and will be forever.

This is really astonishing news. It means that, not only did God enter into our world of space and time in Christ but it means that God has taken our world of space and time back into God's own life in Christ. It means that the God who is so self-sufficient that he never needed to create anything has so loved humanity, has so loved you and me, that he has taken humanity back up into his own life, that human beings are so loved by God that he would join himself to our humanity forever. If nothing else, this means that salvation was never meant to be merely a gift of spiritual joy where we get to go to heaven, as amazing as heaven is. Rather, salvation is something that impacts every area of our lives, both our souls and our bodies.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead means that God knows what it is like to be a human being and to endure all of the trials of life, including that final trial of death. It means that when Jesus sends his disciples out, giving them a Great Commission to go and fulfill, he is not simply doing so as the God of the Universe who has the authority to command and expect it to be done; he does so as our elder brother, as the one who knows our suffering, our hurts, our limitations, our fears as well as our hopes, and entrusts his plan into our hands (which we might sometimes wonder whether it is a good idea to do so). When Jesus says that he will be with his disciples until the end of the age, it is not just that he is going to disperse like a gas cloud to the farthest reaches of the earth but that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ the God-Man will be by their side, in the nitty-gritty of life and the hard work we find ourselves engaged in.

I don't know about you, but I am quite glad to know that I have a God who knows what it is like to live in this world because, in spite of all the differences between first century Israel and twenty-first century Iowa, people are people. We all still have problems with money, with other people, we still have days where we don't like the weather, we have accidents, we make mistakes, and we live with broken relationships that seem like they never heal, regardless of what we do. God doesn't just know about all of that because he is God and knows everything, but because he has actually stepped into the middle of this broken world and experienced it for himself in an incredibly intimate and personal way.

One of the most welcome things that the resurrection of Christ from the dead means is that the way things are is not the way they will always be. It is easy to get into the mindset that, when we see Jesus raised from the dead, its just something for him and has nothing to do with us, other than the guarantee that our sins have been forgiven. And yet there are places in the New Testament where we read things like this, in the letter to the Romans: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you." Paul wants to make it as clear as possible that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not just a nice thing to believe and a thing to sing about on Easter Sunday, but something that impacts your life and your future. The good news is not simply that Christ is raised, but that, because Christ is raised, you too shall be raised.

At the end of the day, that is what Paul is saying in the text from First Corinthians. He starts out by responding to the claim that the dead are not raised, which is in many ways a reasonable claim as I pointed out earlier, by pointing out how disastrous such a claim is to the belief that Christ was raised from the dead. But we need to remember that Paul has no interest in doing what many Christians, especially Christians who are interested in theological issues enjoy doing, and I realize that I myself fall into that category; he has no interest in simply arguing a point that has no real impact on our world. At first glance, if we looked at it the right way, we could say that Paul is simply combatting with others over the issue of whether they have the "right" doctrines or not. We could interpret it as a preeminent example of a theological bully, marginalizing the beliefs of others in order to assert his own. But that would be terribly misleading.

After all, Paul is not interested in reinforcing a "party line," a narrow orthodoxy that is more interested in drawing lines to keep people out than sharing good news with them. According to Paul, the reason that we need to take the resurrection seriously is not because we need to pass some doctrinal examination, but because our future is bound up with it. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

In the resurrection we see our future. It is a future of glory, of life, of healing. We see that, as final as death may seem to us, and we have all seen what power death seems to have, for it has touched each of us in one way or another, it is not the last word for us. Our God is a God who conquers the grave, and who not only conquers it for himself, but makes us share in that same victory. There can be no wonder why those first Christians remained bold in the face of persecution. They knew the truth of what Jesus told his disciples, "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more." The worst the enemies of the gospel could do is kill Christians but they had no power beyond that, and in Christ, we can see that a power that can kill the body but nothing more isn't all that powerful compared to God.

We as Christians are called to be bold, to live strong in our faith in the good news of Jesus Christ. But what is the source of our boldness? It certainly isn't because we are better than non-Christians because it doesn't take much to look around and realize that Christians are sometimes some of they very worst behaved people around. It isn't because we have all our answers right in our heads because most of us give very little careful thought as to what we believe; speaking for myself, I am reminded daily about how much of God I do not know. Rather it is because we follow a God who has overcome the grave and has done so from within our own humanity. We are people who have been liberated from the need to fear death. In the light of the good news, we can say along with Paul, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

The good news of Jesus Christ is not that things will never go wrong. They will. Often. The good news of Jesus Christ is that the things that go wrong are never so wrong as to be the final word. Something I have found myself saying to many people is that, when we as Christians say "It will be alright," we don't mean it in any kind of wishy-washy way. Rather, what we mean is, "It will be alright, even if it kills me." That is why we are called to be bold because, in a very real sense, we simply cannot be stopped. There is persecution of Christians in various parts of the world, where people have to quite literally choose which is more dear to them, their faith or their life; and yet, they are not stopped. How much more so should we here, in the relatively safe and persecution-free community of Spencer, live with boldness knowing that, as John says, "greater is the one who is in [us] than the one who is in the world."

I would like to share words from Paul's letter to the Romans that are quite familiar, but I hope that, as we dwell on the incredible implications of the gospel, they might have greater weight than they might at other times. "What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let us pray.

AMEN

Palm Sunday 2012

04/01/12 Palm Sunday 2012 Grace UMC

Palm Sunday is a bittersweet day in the life of the church.  On the one hand, it is a day when all kinds of people were out and giving praise to Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.  On the other, the crowd crying out "Hosanna" serves as a striking parallel to the crowds crying out, only a week later, “Crucify him!”  On days like this, I sometimes wrestle with finding the appropriate emotions.  Should I rejoice or should I grieve?  Should I laugh or should I weep?  Should I be glad because Christ seems like He is being accepted or should I mourn because the masses will reject Him in only a short time?  You might not have this problem, but Palm Sunday is difficult for me.

I want to highlight the very last part of our text for this morning where we have the Pharisees saying to Jesus, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop [making noise]." Jesus' response is very interesting. He says, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

According to the Bible, stones are pretty impressive. They can do all kinds of things. In fact, just about the only other time that stones get mentioned in the entire Gospel of Luke, it is when John the Baptist is speaking to the Pharisees and sharing with them a few choice words. He says, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our ancestor;' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." It almost seems that stones are kind of a second-string, a "B" team, the ones that God turns to, or at least can turn to, when the people of God miss it.

What Jesus is saying is that God's will will be done, regardless of whether or not it is we who do it. Jesus is coming into his kingdom, into the royal city. There will be rejoicing, and if the people who are there do not rejoice, the stones themselves will cry out. There will be shouts of praise, and if the people don't do it, like the Pharisees wish they wouldn't, the stones will shout.

What does this say about the Pharisees? It means that they have absolutely no idea what God is actually doing in their midst. It means that the way they view reality is so skewed that, in spite of all their learning, in spite of all their experience, in spite of all their credentials and the respect they have accumulated from the people, they are far from understanding what the right thing to do might be. In fact, they are so completely confused that they think that the right thing to do is actually the wrong thing to do. Not only this, but it turns out that Jesus considers the response that the people are making and that the Pharisees hate to be obvious. It is so clear that even the stones on the side of the road would know to do what the Pharisees cannot seem to understand. What does it say about the Pharisees if the stones understand something about God that they cannot?

And yet, we should not judge the Pharisees too harshly or else we might miss the ways that we are all too much like them. After all, the people who are shouting Hosanna today are shouting "Crucify Him" within a week. The appearances are good, but they might not be any more than skin deep. We need to remember that, when Jesus was entering Jerusalem, most of the people who are shouting his praise were shouting because they expected him to come and overthrow the Romans, to rescue them from political oppression. When they finally come to realize that Jesus has no intention of leading a political revolt that would simply change the government but leave the corruption of humanity fundamentally unchanged, that he is not satisfied merely by invading the city of David but fully intends to invade the hearts of humanity and overcome evil at its very source, they drop their support.

This idea is that the entry of Christ is supposed to be a celebration. When God comes, the people rejoice. It's how it should be. And if God comes and the people don't rejoice, creation rejoices, to the shame of the people. The way it stands in the story, the people cry out in joy, the people rejoice, and that rejoicing simply as such, stands in judgment over the antagonists, because the antagonists don't get it. It's the fact that some people get it that reveals that those who don't get it are in the wrong, that there is another way to do it, that they don't have all the information, that indeed the fact that they ought to rejoice is made clear by the fact that there is rejoicing going on. And then Jesus says, "If they were silent, the stones would cry out." If the people are silent, creation itself rejoices. When God comes and we do not rejoice, creation rejoices; and that rejoicing, that honest to goodness response to God becomes the word of judgment for us.

But what does the shouting of a stone sound like? Have you ever heard one? The fact of the matter is that God is far more active in our world today than his people are, doing work in our midst and around us while we are trying to get our act together. Given how much God is present in our world today that we seem to miss, it seems to me that the stones should be shouting out with some frequency. But would we recognize it if we heard it? Paul has these interesting words to share from his letter to the Romans. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now..."

Jesus' words to the Pharisees strongly imply that it is entirely possible that stones can have a deeper understanding of who God is and what to do when God comes near than we human beings sometimes do. We hear earlier in the Gospel of Luke that all of our boasts to a strong heritage, that our families have been members of this church for generations, that we come to church every Sunday, that we participate in a class every week, or anything else, do not matter as much as we might wish they did, because God can raise up people like that even from the stones. So if the stones can do so many of the things that we can and should do, why are we the ones that seem to be in the center of this heavenly drama, why is it that the gospel is that God loves us humans and not that God loves the stones? Why is it that when God came into our world of space and time, he came as a human being and not as a stone? Simply and for no other reason than because he loves us. Why does God not abandon us when we are unfaithful and not follow through with raising up people of faith from the stones? Because this love is so strong that it will not let us go, but continues to pursue us.

So, what does that mean for us today? Does God come into our midst, does God meet with us, does God do these things, is there anything today even somewhat analogous to what we celebrate on Palm Sunday? Is God coming here? Because if he isn't, and if he doesn't, then Palm Sunday doesn't mean a lot for us today. All it is, is a remembrance of what happened once upon a time. But, if it does happen, if Jesus indeed does come here to Spencer, to this church, among these people, and if God does those things and we do not rejoice, then creation rejoices, to our shame.

Are we prepared to listen, are we prepared to hear, are we prepared to believe that God really moves? I've met a lot of folks in this church, and I've gotten to know several of you fairly well, and I know that many of you have had profound encounters with God in the past, that you can remember a time when God was so real to you that you would do anything to follow. And unfortunately, when I hear stories like that, what seems to be conspicuously unsaid, is that it's been a while since that has happened; that it's not something that happens everyday. And I can't help but wonder, if we do not feel the joy that comes with the presence of God, does it mean that God is not here? Or does it mean that we've stopped finding joy in God's presence? Or does it mean that we've become blind and deaf to the presence of God, that God could be here and we wouldn't even know it?

So the question is, how can we listen, how can we hear? To be honest, to understand this, if we look in the New Testament, we realize it is not simply a matter of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, it isn't simply a matter of taking initiative, "Now, I'm going to listen to God," because if we do that we tend to fall on our faces, just simply making a decision on our part does not necessarily solve our problems. We read in the New Testament several stories of blind men, and we read about one who cries out, "Have mercy on me, Son of David." Have mercy on me, come to me, heal me for I cannot heal myself; cannot pull myself up, cannot manufacture my own sight. Something has to happen from outside of me to make it happen.

And so, let us rejoice. God is here. God has triumphantly entered, has triumphantly invaded, into our place, into our town of Spencer. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is here now. We're going to celebrate communion. Gathered together as one body, with one bread and one cup. United in Christ, bound together by the blood of Christ, made brothers and sisters of Christ, fellow heirs of Christ. And if you can't rejoice today, if you think about the presence of God coming in here, into your heart, into your pew, and sitting along side of you, and if the very presence of God here and now does not get you excited, pray. Ask God to fill your heart with joy, to fill your life with wonder, to remind you every day of the things you once knew, of those times when God transformed your life, when God reached in and all of a sudden you realized that the gospel meant more than just words on a page, that it transforms hearts, it transforms lives, to remind you every day of those moments and to remind you that there is nothing to stop God from doing those same kinds of things today. Whatever you do, though, do not say, "O Lord, I'll get it right tomorrow, I'll get my act together tomorrow, or even today." Or "By golly I'm going to do what I can to get my act together now." Instead say, "Lord, save, Lord speak. Lord enter my heart because until you do, my heart will remain like stone.

So as we come before the table, as you come forward to receive, remember that when you celebrate communion, it's not a declaration that you've lived the last week or the last month totally devoted to God, it's not a declaration of how faithful you have been or even "This is how faithful I will be." When we come and we partake of the bread and the cup, we are saying "Lord I am in need, and I am in need of you in the same way as I am in need of the basic necessities of food and drink. I need you to come into me I need you to sustain me, I need you for whatever you will give. So as you come forward today, if you are rejoicing in the Lord, say, "Lord, come and reign. Reign more fully and more completely, take this joy and fan its flame into a raging bonfire, that it may be seen by all that your word and your glory may go forth." And if you have a hard time rejoicing this morning, come and say "Lord, take that fire that I used to have, that used to drive me, and relight it. And care for it, and kindle it and make it grow." Let us pray

AMEN

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

03/11/12 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Grace UMC

What exactly is the church? For some it may be nothing more than a place to go when it is time to get married or buried. Others might see it, additionally, as a place to get their children baptized. I suppose that it is all of those things and, to the degree to which those things get people to think about the grace and mercy of God and the abundant life as promised to us by Jesus, it is not a fundamentally wrong way to look at the church, though it is far from being adequate. Seeing the church as primarily a dealer of spiritual goods and services for people to come and consume is really not very helpful, though it is incredibly common in our world today. It is seen as a place where we can go and receive things that will help us to live our lives. The ministries of the church are understood to be a kind of spiritual marketplace, where we can pick and choose what we think will be relevant to us and, if nothing seems overwhelmingly appealing, we just walk on by and go about our business.

Now, there is probably at least one person here this morning who, when I asked, "What is the church" began to think these words: I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world! Yes, we're the church together! The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people. Those words come, of course, from a hymn that, for better or for worse, we are not singing this morning. The point that it makes so clearly is that, at the end of the day, the church is not about the building or the pews, or the pulpit, or even the singing and sermon, but the people. But even according to that hymn, it isn't just any old group of people, is it? No, it is "All who follow Jesus all around the world." Though neither of the Wesley brothers wrote that hymn, it certainly agrees with everything that John Wesley wrote about the nature of the church.

One of the most significant passages in the entire Bible about what the church really is can be found in 1 Corinthians, chapter twelve. Paul begins with this observation. "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." I think that Paul's use of this idea of Christians being bound together as the Body of Christ is incredibly interesting. You have a body and you have the members that make up that body. In spite of the fact that you can't have a body without the members, you really can't say that a body is nothing more than two arms, two legs, a torso and a head. The parts of the body aren't parts of a body unless they are related to one another, joined together in some coherent way. What Paul is saying is that we are not just isolated Christians, we are bound together as the body of Christ, that we might only be part of that body, but we are what we are because we are related to everyone else who is also a Christian. I have said before and I will say again that, as important as it is to get your own personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ settled, there is no such thing as an individual Christian, a Christian who is not bound to other Christians. There are only Christians-in-community. Whatever else a person may be who has isolated themselves from the community of others in the hope of doing things their own way, they are not a Christian, according to the Bible.

So, we are bound together, but what does that really mean? Thankfully, Paul gives us some very helpful guidelines. "Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. if the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?"

This tells us a few things. First, it tells us that God has not allowed us to exempt ourselves from the body of Christ. It does not matter who you are, what your gifts are, or what you do in the church, you are fully a part of the Body of Christ. In fact, you are much more dear to the proper functioning of the church than you realize. You should never say, "Well, I only do this. It really isn't that much." Every time you say that, you are saying that, because you are not a hand or an eye, that is, because you aren't doing one of the things that you think is crucial to the life of the church, your ministry does not matter, that you are infinitely replaceable, that anyone could do what you do. Nothing could be further from the truth. The longer I live as a human being and the longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see that it is seldom when two different people share the same gifts, graces and passions. The simple fact of the matter is that, whether you realize it or not, you have gifts that the church, both locally and at large, need. And if you allow yourself to fall into the trap of assuming that, because you don't do certain things, because you aren't a preacher, or because you aren't leading a particular ministry, you aren't doing vitally important work, you have missed Paul's point. Not one of us has the permission of God to excuse ourselves from our calling to participate, in whatever way, in the life of the church.

It also tells us that if a church ever becomes made up of the same kinds of people, people who all value the exact same things, it is something very much other than what the church was meant to be. The church is meant to be made up of all kinds of people, people who have different backgrounds, who have different gifts, who can do things that other people cannot do, or perhaps do not want to do. If everyone was a pastor, who would be in the congregations? If everyone led some ministry or group, who would be participating in them? The church was never meant to be a collection of people who all do the same things. The beauty is that we are called to be in this together.

Paul continues. "As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" If the first part of Paul's argument teaches us that we are not allowed to exempt ourselves from being part of the body of Christ, this part teaches us with equal force that we are not allowed to exempt anyone else from being part of the body of Christ. Unfortunately, this is something that has been all too common in churches throughout the years. It is no secret that there are many different Christian denominations in the world today. Some denominations are closer to being like each other than others are, but it seems as though every group of Christians has at least one other group of Christians that they do not believe are really Christians. It takes several different forms, depending on who we are dealing with, but it is altogether too common.

Our tendency to exempt others from the body of Christ is not less unfortunate within the context of a local church. It is entirely too common that people who are excited about one particular issue or ministry cannot see the forest for the trees and tend to behave as if the ministry that they are doing is the only ministry worth doing or the one that the church should really be focusing on. I cannot tell you how many people I have met over the years who have a great passion for ministry that is helpful and healthy for the church but aren't doing what they feel called by God to do because someone, at some time, told them that they couldn't or that it wasn't important, or that they should be involved in some other, real, ministry. What is this but the eye or the head saying to the hand or the feet, "I have no need of you," or perhaps the even stronger, "The church has no need of you?"

According to Paul, this must not be so. "On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." Paul is making rather a bold implication here. He points out something that is still as true for us as it ever was during his time. We go out of our way working on ways to take the parts of our body that we are less comfortable with and make them more presentable. We try to wear clothes that fit us well, that highlight our best features and downplay our worse ones. If we cannot avoid people seeing our less attractive parts, we do what we can to make them less embarrassing. This desire that we have to highlight our strengths and downplay our weaknesses as far as our bodies are concerned is the basis of the entire makeup and clothing industries, among others.

What Paul is suggesting is that maybe it is not altogether different in the church. The parts are interrelated in a way that is deeper than we might expect. There are, of course, certain parts of the church that we tend to think of as being "more important" than others and those that we think of as "less important" but it would be misleading to think this way. For example, speaking as a pastor, I cannot help but notice that the most faithful people I have ever met in my life have not been pastors but laypeople; the most capable workers and most dedicated people I have ever seen in the church have often been the people that everyone else may have overlooked. Does the church need dedicated leaders in order to be what it has been called to be? Of course, but this does not mean that such leaders are necessarily the most brilliant, most organized, most faithful people around; it simply means that they have been called to do what they do. I sometimes wonder if God called me to be a pastor because I have, in all reality, a fairly narrow skill set and that, because there are relatively few things that the church needs that I can do, I might be able to encourage others to use their skills for the greater health of the whole body.

The point is that, if we take what Paul has to say seriously, we find that our whole sense of "better" and "worse" in ministry is turned upside down. His point is that we are integrated together in the body of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and that this unity is so profound that to cut anyone off in any way is parallel to the amputation of the human body. It is true that the body might be able to live without a particular part, but it isn't how the body was designed to be and if we get too excited about cutting off body parts, there isn't much of a body left.

Let us look at one more part, at the end of Paul's words for us this morning. "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?" Paul asks this series of rhetorical questions, knowing that the answer that we have to give to each one is, "No." Not everyone does any particular ministry, but the important thing is not that everyone does a particular thing but that someone does it and that we rejoice as a body that it is being done, even if it isn't us who are doing it. Not everyone is an apostle, but there are some who are called to be apostles. Not everyone is a prophet, but God does indeed call people to the prophetic ministry. Not everyone is a teacher, but there is still a great need for capable teachers. If everyone did something, it would destroy the church. We need everyone to work together, doing what they are passionate about, making what they care about a reality. If we all simply listen to what God is saying to us and step forward in faith, God will take care of our needs.

Let me put it this way. What good is it for a church to have wonderful outreach into the community if they do not have any way to nurture the people once they become active? What good is it for a church to have brilliant preaching if there are no structures in place to provide follow-up for those who are struggling with how to respond? What good is it if a ministry is excellent at convicting people of their sins and making them aware of their need for God if they have no way of joining them with others to help them grow and be assured of their salvation? What good is it for a church to have a strong ministry to the poor in their community if they are not prepared to welcome them into their midst in the worship service?

We need people who are comfortable bringing the love of Christ outside of these walls, but we also need people who are comfortable with making people feel welcome in a church they have visited for the first time, which can be an incredibly nervous experience. We need people who are gifted and passionate about ministry to and with elderly people, people who are excited about ministry to and with young people and with every age in between. What we need more than anything else are people who are listening to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is indeed prodding you, and taking what the Spirit says and turning it into a reality. Your pastors have gifts and graces, just like you do, but we don't have every gift and every grace. There are some things we get more excited about than other things and if a Church has to wait until the pastors can get through all the pressing concerns that face them on a daily basis before we can make ministries a reality, there is much ministry that we could and should be about that will simply be left undone.

So, if you have given of your time, talents, and energy for many years now, thank you for your service; keep it up, we need you. If you have never acted on what God has called you to do, do it now, even if it is for the first time. If you have criticized the ministry of others because it doesn't fit in with what you think are the most important things for the church to focus on, I ask that you would stop doing so. If there are aspects of the ministry of this church that you don't think are as important or as respectable as others, consider treating them with even more honor, as Paul suggests. And finally, if you used to be active in ministry in whatever form but you have been told that your ministry wasn't important or were discouraged from doing what God called you to do, I beg you to forgive whoever discouraged you and give it another try. God loves us and the world too much to let little hurdles get in the way of being joined together in passionate ministry in the world. Remember, everyone you meet is someone for whom Christ has died. Let us join together, in whatever way we can, and be the church, for as different as we may each be from each other, we are all part of that same body of Christ. Let us pray.

AMEN

Experience and Self-Deception

Experience and Self-Deception

A week ago, I was involved in an accident while driving a church van. The roads were incredibly icy and we ended up fishtailing off the road and tipping over on the passenger side. It was an amazingly surreal experience, something unlike anything I have ever experienced before (even though I had previously been involved in a one-car accident, it was of a profoundly different kind). It was one of those moments where the accident seemed to be over in a moment and yet seemed, simultaneously, to be in slow motion.

There is a fair amount of physical evidence that this accident actually happened. In addition to my own experience there were two other people in the van when we went off the road (other people's children. Thankfully, nobody was hurt). There is an accident report that was filled out by the state trooper, the bill from the tow truck who tipped the van right-side up again as well as physical damage to the van (of course, as the van is going to be repaired, this last evidence will soon be done away with).

The thing I have noticed in the week following the accident is that my memory of it is not like much of my memories of ordinary experiences. In the main, the things I experience are similar to other experiences I have had. This one, however, is markedly outside the realm of that ordinary experience. I find that, when I recall the accident, it does not feel altogether different than when I recall a particularly vivid dream. The questions that I have been asking myself in the past few days are these: "What if there were no physical evidence at hand to support my thinking that I was in an accident recently? Would that make that experience any less real?" Also, "In the absence of such evidence, would it be possible to convince myself that the accident had never happened?"

Granted, these are perhaps slightly artificial questions given the inherently physical nature of such an experience. When a full-sized van lands on its side, you lose the mirror on that side as well as suffer damage to the body of the van. But we can surely imagine a situation where the police were not notified and we can surely imagine a situation where, through some other means, the van was righted without such documentation as I received. If someone were to quickly repair the damage on the van, what is left? Just the personal testimony of three, admittedly shook-up passengers. How would such people justify their experience to one who didn't see it? It would be very easy for a hearer to doubt that the accident happened at all and that we simply made up the story, for attention perhaps.

And yet, that would not make our experience any less real. It still happened. Even if, in the absence of the physical evidence that I do, in fact, have, I were to begin to doubt the reality of that experience, that doubt would not undo it. Even if nobody ever believed me, the experience would stand, with or without "sufficient evidence."

When the time comes and the van is repaired and I manage to misplace my copies of the police report and tow truck bill, would it be possible for me to convince myself that the accident didn't happen? I could be told by others who heard the story that it happened, I could be reminded by the other passengers that it happened, but if my own experience is the yardstick of what I will or will not accept, is it not possible that I could refuse to be convinced, even by strong arguments and testimonies from outside of myself? After all, there is much in the experience that is easy to doubt. It was an incredibly bizarre day; many odd things that had never happened to me before happened. Again, the memory of the actual crash is not altogether unlike my memories of vivid dreams. How am I to know for sure that I did not make this "experience" up as well?

Granted, this is not the situation and, even if I were to feel that my memory is betraying me, I imagine that I will choose to believe the testimony of others and the physical pieces of paper that bear witness to the accident. But is not my appropriation of that evidence truly a choice, a decision I have to make? It is clear that evidence can be manufactured and I could convince myself that it has been so in this instance, or I could choose to believe that nobody would make up something as mundane as this (after all, people have accidents every day and nobody died or was injured). And yet, that does not mean that I was not deceived. At the end of the day, I have to put my trust in the belief that the external evidence bolsters my memory sufficiently to conclude that it was not a dream. It can never rise above radical skepticism, but it is a decision I make and live in light of.

I cannot help see the parallel of this line of thought with questions I have had regarding people who had profound religious experiences and then ultimately renounce any religious faith. It seems possible that such a person may really have had such a profound experience but have convinced themselves that they were mistaken, or that they manufactured the experience because of pressure from the rest of the community, or some such thing. It must be granted that this kind of thing does happen, from time to time.

The question is, on what basis can we decide for sure whether the experience (which, in spite of witnesses and others having similar experiences, is radically subjective in the actual event of the experience) was real or merely a deception, whether from ourselves or others? The fact of the matter is that there is no surefire way to decide. We are always having to do tacit statistical analysis to decide whether our experience was likely or not (though "likely" must never be actually equated with "real"). The unlikely happens, the real is often baffling. Though we must admit that most memories we have of experiences that are radically outside our everyday experience are false, it does not follow that all such experiences are false. The trick, for which there is no infallible method, is to discern the truth, from case to case.

Jeremiah 29:1-14

02/15/12 Jeremiah 29:1-14 GUMC Youth

Have you ever heard this passage before, specifically verse eleven which reads, "For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future and a hope." If you haven't heard it, or at least if you don't remember that you have heard it, I guarantee that you will one day, if only when you graduate from high school. If you get a chance to go to an open house for a senior, keep your eyes open for it because it shows up everywhere. Jeremiah 29:11 is a verse that shows up every time someone graduates from something and it has been the favorite verse of a bunch of people I have met.

Why might people like the verse so much? I think because it is such a strong message of hope, such a profound declaration that God actually loves us, that God will take care of us, even when things seem hard and that, even if it looks like things aren't going well, we can trust that God's plans are for our good, not our harm. For many people, it is one of the most amazing declarations of hope in the Bible.

So, why did God say this to his people? Did Israel graduate from high school? Did God mean it for his people the same way we often mean it for our friends and family or inside greeting cards? Tonight, we are talking about the Exile of Israel, that is, the time when the Israelites were taken captive by the Babylonians and taken from their land, and I chose this passage because it is probably the single most quoted passage about the Exile that people have no idea is about the Exile. So, since we've been talking about the hugely important, overarching stories that have shaped the whole history of Israel, which means that they have shaped us, too, I wanted to finish up by spending some time trying to understand the Exile and what we can learn about God from it.

You need to understand, first of all, that God was warning people that they might be taken into Exile some day from the very beginning. You can find all kinds of passages in the first few books of the Bible where God is effectively saying, "Look, I have taken you from Egypt and brought you into the land that I promised to your fathers. Don't ever forget how you got here. You didn't free yourselves, I freed you. You didn't win this land for yourselves, I delivered it into your hands. I am the God who takes the way humans do things and turns them upside down. If you forget that you are my people and you turn away from me, I will bring about an exile where you will have to serve your enemies."

The Exile shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. It wasn't as if God sprang on the people the moment they first made a mistake. Remember what we talked about last week about the whole prophetic tradition? God had been sending prophets to the people for over a hundred years who all told the people that they needed to remember God and be faithful, that their identity was bound up with their relationship with God, that they couldn't abandon God without ceasing to be who they were, who they were meant to be. Each and every one of them warned the people of what was heading their way if they didn't change their behavior. Also, we need to realize that it wasn't as though the prophets were adding all kinds of rules for the people; they were simply reminding the people of what God had already told them years ago and pointing out in some concrete ways how they needed to change.

To make matters worse, before the Exile happened, the nation of Israel had split into two, a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom and when we talk about the Exile, we are usually talking about the exile of the Southern Kingdom. Over a hundred years before the Southern Kingdom went into exile, the Northern Kingdom was defeated by Assyria and they went into exile. The Southern Kingdom should have known better. They had seen firsthand how the people of Israel could be defeated, and yet they didn't listen. Now, we shouldn't be too hard on them. After all, I don't know if we would have done any better if we were in their situation. After all, the people in the South probably didn't think that the defeat of the people in the North had anything to say to them. After all, from their point of view, the Northern Kingdom had abandoned God so of course God let them be defeated; it would be different with God's true people. It is always easy to feel superior to someone else until the same thing happens to you.

So, the Babylonians who defeated the Southern Kingdom took the people, especially their leaders and their educated people, and took them to Babylon. This caused a serious problem for the people. God had told them over and over again that they were only supposed to worship God, in the sense of making their sacrifices, at the Temple in Jerusalem. Now they were far away from Jerusalem and couldn't make their sacrifices there if they wanted to. What are the people to do? Do they make their sacrifices in Babylon? That might make a bit of sense, but does it really help to respond to God's judgment because the people broke his laws by breaking more of his laws? The people didn't think so, so they tried to find some other way of following God.

Their answer was to develop the synagogue system. The people looked at their lives and their history and they realized that there were two parts to what God had called them to do. He told them to make sacrifices in a particular way and at a particular place and also to follow his law. Now, why were the people in exile? Not because they were making mistakes with their sacrifices. In general, they did what they were supposed to do. The problem, as the prophets pointed out, was that the people were not following God's laws. So, what is the solution? The people realized that they couldn't sacrifice in Jerusalem if they were living in Babylon, so the sacrifices were out. However, there was no reason why they couldn't obey the law. It might be the case that, by being very careful about obeying the law, they might stick out a bit; after all, Jewish people weren't supposed to dress like the Babylonians or eat the same food as the Babylonians. Do you remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? The whole reason they were thrown into the fiery furnace was because they refused to live like the Babylonians. The same is true for why Daniel was thrown into the lion's den. Both of those stories come from this Exile we are talking about.

So, if the people got in trouble for doing the sacrifices right but abandoning the law, they responded by saying, "Even though we can't make sacrifices anymore, we are going to be careful and follow every little law, so this kind of mess never happens again." This whole trend survived, even after the people got to go back to Israel and the people who really focused on the law were around when Jesus walked the earth; they were the Pharisees. In fact, we live in a world where the modern Israelites cannot sacrifice like they have been commanded so, as you might expect, this desire to follow the law carefully is still around today. Today, the people who are called Hasidic Jews are the modern descendants of this desire to carefully observe every part of the law.

The bigger issue, however, is that the Israelites realized that they were not meant to live anywhere else but where God had given them to live. They had originally thought that this would mean that God would simply not allow them to be defeated, but this didn't happen. All kinds of people were asking "Where is God in the midst of all of this? How could God have let this happen?" They were supposed to live in that particular place. How were they supposed to be who they were meant to be so long as they were forced to live somewhere else?

This kind of frustration is clear in one of the more controversial passages in the Bible, Psalm 137. "By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, 'Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!' O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!"

Not exactly a happy song, is it? Whether what they are saying here is a good thing or not, whether you agree with it or not, whether you even like it or not, can you at least understand the kind of anguish of soul that the people were going through? Their whole world had been turned upside down. Their anger is understandable. It feels as though God has abandoned them. All of a sudden, the warnings of the prophets seem to be all too clear. When they look back over the years of their lives, it starts to seem amazing that the people could have missed God's clear warnings. What, if anything, could they have done to prevent this?

And yet, the word of comfort, the reminder that God loves his people came from a singularly unexpected source: one of the prophets. Jeremiah was a prophet who relentlessly warned the people about what might very well happen if they didn't return to God and now it has happened. If Jeremiah was like we all too often are, we would expect him to say things like, "I told you so, but you didn't listen to me, did you? How do you like it now?" And yet, that is not at all what he says. Instead, he is transformed from being a vehicle for the judgment and warning of God to being a vehicle for the blessings and comfort of God. And yet, this isn't a contradiction, it is a window into the heart of God.

What we see in this transformation is not that God or Jeremiah changed their minds, but that when God said that he was primarily concerned about the people and that he didn't want the people to die but wanted them to turn from their evil ways, he actually meant it. The point of the Exile was not to destroy the people, but to remind them of who they were and whose they were. The last thing God wanted was any harm for the people, but when they refused to listen to words, it was worth the difficult times of the Exile in order to get the people back to who they were supposed to be.

What did this Jeremiah, who had spent so much time telling people that they needed to get their acts together or else they would go into exile, have to say when they actually went into exile? "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

Why would God give this advice to his people? In the following verses we read that there were other people, who were either calling themselves prophets are were being called prophets by others, who were saying that God was going to bring the people back anytime now. We get the idea that these people were saying either that God would realize what a terrible mistake he had made in allowing his people to go into exile and make everything right or else he would raise up a great leader who would deliver them. Jeremiah's words, as often as we hear them in encouraging situations, were once again not the words that the people wanted to hear. "What?" you can imagine the people saying, "We are supposed to build houses and settle down with families, put down roots and get involved in the community of Babylonians? Why should we do that? Isn't it not showing faith that God will deliver us?" And yet, Jeremiah was saying that the people needed to get used to the fact that they were going to be in Babylon for a while.

So what do we learn from this? We learn a hard truth and a welcome truth. The hard truth is that sometimes, when we make mistakes, we have to live with the consequences. Sometimes when we finally figure things out, when we finally actually do what is right, we don't have to suffer any consequences for what we have done, but sometimes those consequences still come. The people who never listened to God until the consequences came wanted to be faithful, but they didn't care about being faithful in order to be faithful, which is what God wanted, they only wanted to be faithful so they could get out of trouble. What is amazing is that, in order for the lesson to really be learned that we cannot treat our relationship with God like dirt, not even God could reduce the time the people were going to be in captivity. Anything less than the seventy years and the lesson would not be learned.

The welcome truth is that, in spite of the fact that it seemed to be a giving up of hope to settle down and build houses in Babylon, in spite of the fact that the people were being punished by God for what they had done, God had not abandoned them. He says, "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope." What God told those people and what he is telling us is that, during those times when it doesn't seem like things are going right, when it seems that the only real option you have is not the one you want, God has not abandoned you. God's plans for you are for your welfare and not for harm, for a future with hope.

What we find is that what the passage really means isn't anything less than what we thought it meant by looking at all those cards, it means so much more. It means that our God cares for us more than we can possibly imagine, that how things seem to us isn't always what they really are. It means when all hope seems lost we can say, "God, I don't know what's going on, but I know that through whatever I have to face, your plans are for my good. You are the God who brings good that we could never expect out of the evil we face; make the good that I cannot see come out of this situation." God loved his people with a love that would not let them go, even when he was in the middle of correcting them. The Exile was not a sign that God had abandoned his people but a sign that he would not allow even their sin to separate them from him. How much more will God's love bind us, for whom Christ has died, to him? Let us pray.

AMEN

Ephesians 4:1-16

02/12/12 Ephesians 4:1-16 Grace UMC

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I must admit that it feels as though I have been continually pestered by a theme over the last few months. Throughout the whole month of December, we were celebrating the season of Advent, culminating in Christmas. During that time, we were celebrating that the very Son of God has entered into our world of space and time, that when we say that God loves us, we do not only mean that God loves our souls or loves our spirits but loves our entire selves, body and soul. We saw that God did not leave us trapped in a body of sin but rather entered into our physicality and transformed it, offering us physical salvation every bit as much as spiritual salvation.

More recently, we had a Celebration Sunday, where we were reminded that when we talk about celebrating and being joyful in the Lord, we don't simply mean that we should have some kind of disembodied, spiritual joy, but that the joy should overflow and make a difference in absolutely every area of our lives. I feel like I have been reminded, over and over again recently, about the intense physicality of our spiritual lives and the intense spirituality of our physical lives. We cannot separate the things we do for our bodies and the things we do for our souls into different compartments that have nothing, or very little, to do with one another. Our bodies are always bodies-of-our-souls and our souls are always souls-of-our-bodies.

It is with that in mind that I wanted to spend some time talking about something we hear about every so often in the church but that we seldom really dig deep in: the role and importance of community in our Christian lives. It is interesting that it seems as though we live in a world that emphasizes faith as a personal thing, that it is something that each individual has entirely on their own and the faith one person has is so personal to themselves that it does not, or at least it should not, have an impact on anyone else. This last point is so strong that it has, at least in a way, been woven into the fabric of our American constitution. The reason that this is so interesting is that we find absolutely no model, anywhere in the Bible, for being an individual Christian. We hear about disciples (in the plural) and apostles (also in the plural), we hear about churches (groups of Christians) and we hear about the body of Christ (a term used for all Christians taken together), but we hear nothing about a person having such an isolated faith that it is theirs and theirs alone that they can either nurture or neglect based only on their own whims and desires and nobody can ever have a problem with it because it is their faith and their faith alone.

What we find is that the Bible is incredibly consistent about the importance of our interpersonal relationships together as Christians. In fact, the Bible is much more clearly consistent on this topic than on many others. The reason for this is rooted in the very most basic nature of our Christian lives. As much as some would like to convince us otherwise, we are not just isolated individuals on some kind of nebulous "personal faith journey" that has nothing to do with anyone else's nebulous "personal faith journey." Rather, as Christians, we believe in a very concrete spiritual experience. We believe not so much in the importance of faith, but the importance of the object of our faith. We believe that we are forgiven and reconciled to God, not through wishful thinking, not by being "good people," not even because we go to church, but because in Christ, God has met with us, has taken our broken condition upon himself, and has utterly transformed our situation. We as Christians are each made partakers of the ministry of Christ, again not by wishful thinking, but because we are actually taken and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, grafted into Christ himself like branches on a vine and are therefore joined to each other at the same time.

It is because we are joined together that the writers of the New Testament encourage us so often to pray for one another, to support one another through difficult times, to take on one another's burdens, to rejoice together and to grieve together. It isn't just because that's what good people do, but because those other people, in a crucial sense, make up part of who we are. There is a sense in which there are no such things as "individuals" in the fullest sense. To speak only of myself, I could call myself a father, but to do so is already to name my son; I could call myself a husband, but to do so is already to name my wife; I could call myself a son, but to do so is already to name my parents; I can call myself a pastor, but to do so is already to name all of you. Even to call me by my name is to tie me up with my whole family. There really is no way to consider a person in complete isolation from all other persons. We are bound together and cannot be isolated, even if we might want to be.

This idea, that things are only what they are because of the relations in which they are found is something that science has had to deal with. Ever since James Clerk Maxwell wrote about electromagnetic theory and, in doing so, pointed out that what we used to think of as individual particles or atoms are actually significant points in a continuous field of force, we have had to deal with the fact that we cannot isolate something without, in some sense, damaging it. The same is true for us. If we try to isolate someone, either ourselves or someone else, we have changed who they are, torn them out of the relationships that make up who they are.

This should come as no surprise to us as Christians. After all, we believe that God himself is Triune, that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that these three are one. The Persons of the Trinity are so completely united that everything we say about the Father we say about the Son except "Father," and everything we say about the Son we say about the Father except "Son," and so on. We cannot consider Jesus in isolation from his Father without destroying his identity, we cannot consider the Father except as the one who has sent his Son, and we cannot understand the Holy Spirit except as the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. This deep connection with others is not something that we invented one day but something that is part even of the nature of God.

All of this brings me to one of the most wonderful and, unfortunately, most forgotten aspects of early Methodism that contributed greatly to the revival and helped to shape generations of Christians both in England and in America. One of the most amazing things about early Methodism was the significance of their small group ministry. If you wanted to become a Methodist, you were asked only one question. Just one. "Do you desire to flee from the wrath to come?" If you could look into the depths of your heart and recognize that you were someone who needed saving by God, you were welcomed with open arms among the Methodists. You didn't need to pass a doctrinal exam, you didn't need to prove that you were reformed from sin, you didn't need to do anything to be accepted other than answer "yes" to that one question. If you did, you were enrolled in the society (remember, in its earliest days, Methodism was a movement of renewal, not a separate church) and, at the very same time, enrolled into what was called a "class."

Now, a Methodist class is not the same thing as a Sunday School class. It isn't a place where you go to learn, at least not in the sense that you have one person who has prepared and teaches the rest of the people. Instead, it is a place for people to gather every week and support each other as they grow in their faith. It is important to notice a significant difference between how small groups were approached in early Methodism and how they are often approached today. Today, most people in any given local church do not participate in a small group that is geared toward sharing life with one another. If someone feels that they desire to go above and beyond their experience on Sunday mornings, they might join a class where they can study a book of the Bible or one written by some significant contemporary Christian leader. Sometimes, such groups spill over from being just a study group to becoming a place where people can share their lives of faith, but this is usually not the primary goal of the group.

By contrast, in early Methodism, everyone was in a small group. And by everyone, I mean everyone. Absolutely nobody was exempt. The only thing that was asked was whether they desired to flee from the wrath to come, which meant that they weren't even asked if they were a Christian. In fact it was, in general, assumed that new Methodists weren't Christians, that they needed to learn how to be Christians, that simply joining a church or even a renewal movement did not imply that one already had saving faith but very likely needed to live in a new way in order to really believe the gospel. In doing so, they were building on the key insight of people such as Athanasius who argued that, if you really want to understand what the apostles have to tell us about Jesus, you have to live in a way consistent with how they lived, that you may have to live like a Christian before you can believe like a Christian.

For those early Methodists, participation in the small group ministry was not something extra that could be tacked on to "normal" Christian commitment, it was understood as an absolutely vital part of Christian life. If someone were to say, "I really love the Methodists. I really look forward to meeting with the larger congregation every week. I love everything about Methodism except those small group meetings. I will do anything you say except be a part of a small group," you were dropped from the rolls of the society. Whatever else you may have been, if you were not part of a small group that was actively helping you to live as a Christian in every aspect of your life, you were not a Methodist. It was taken that seriously.

It is important to understand, however, that the Methodists realized that not everyone was in the same place in their relationship with God, that different people who were in different places spiritually had different needs. If you were not yet a Christian, if you could only bear witness to your need to be forgiven but could not yet testify that you had been assured of your salvation by grace, you were part of a class. You met with between eight and twelve other people in similar life situations led by someone who was more mature in their faith as a guide and facilitator. After you became aware of God's saving grace in your own life and were able to bear witness to God's salvation and its impact in transforming your life, you became a member of what was called a "band." Now a band was intended for those who were confident in the grace of God, who could look back on their life and point to a time when they were not a Christian and a time when they were a Christian and share in concrete ways how God had saved them and delivered them from their sins.

When you joined a band, you were asked the following eleven questions, to which the answer "yes" was expected to each. 1. Have you the forgiveness of your sins?  2. Have you peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ?  3. Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit, that you are a child of God?  4. Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?  5. Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you?  6. Do you desire to be told your faults?  7. Do you desire to be told all your faults, and that plain and home?  8. Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in his heart concerning you?  9. Consider! Do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear, concerning you?  10. Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?  11. Is it your desire and design to be on this, and all other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?

Now, because we live in a different time and because this dynamic small group structure has been conspicuously absent from the mainstream of Methodism since the beginning of the twentieth century, we have a tendency to hear those questions and see them in a very much negative way. We start to wonder why we should allow someone else to ask us questions like this, we start to have serious doubts about whether we actually want to be told what is wrong with us. We might not actually want to let other people into the deep, dark secrets of our lives because, you know, sometimes we have sins that we like committing, that we have convinced ourselves don't hurt anyone but ourselves and that they might not even hurt us, either. If we answer "yes" to those questions, we realize that we might have to be a Christian full-time, that we can't really get away from people who will hold us accountable.

And yet, if we see those questions as being in any way negative, we have missed the whole point and the beauty of early Methodism. We were meant to have those with whom we can be open, honest, and transparent. In a crucial moment in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who fathered the child that marked Hester Prynne with her badge of adultery while he remained unsuspected, had this to say. "Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for what I am! Had I one friend—or were it my worst enemy!—to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me! But now, it is all falsehood!—all emptiness!—all death!" He realized that being vulnerable and honest with at least a few people, is much to be preferred to being loved and respected with guilt on his heart.

The beauty of the classes and bands is that it provided an opportunity to really put faith into practice, to allow our relationship with God and the salvation we have in grace to be made manifest in every area of life and to take seriously the fact that we were made to live in a community that shapes who we are and to live consistently with that rather than fighting it. It was a structure that professed that it was better to be known truly as a sinner by those who love us and who want to help the victory of grace over sin be realized in our lives than to continue to live tormented by our shortcomings and our falsehoods.

You see, nobody likes being corrected; nobody likes being reminded that they have done wrong but if I can be convinced that when you ask me if you can tell me everything that is on your heart concerning me, that whatever I may hear, it is coming not from a source of hostile criticism, but of genuine concern and care, that I should be prepared, not to be nitpicked but to be supported and assisted, it will help me to be open to positive change, the change the gospel teaches about, a change away from sin and toward God. If I know that, when you point out my sin, it is because you realize that my sin affects you just as your sin affects me and, because of that, you are willing to participate and give of yourself to help me be transformed by the gospel, and if I know that you say this, not from a position of superiority, but as another sinner, just as broken and in need of support and accountability as I am, I am far more likely to hear you and to hear you with joy.

The point of those questions is not to set up a bunch of rules to beat you with when you make a mistake, but to cultivate a community that is so marked by love and compassion between brothers and sisters in Christ that grace can rule the day, can make us into the people we were meant to be, to truly be God's people. Though we cannot pretend that we can import eighteenth century British Methodism into twenty-first century America without making adjustments for the change in time and place, do we not find ourselves in need of this kind of radical community, a community of people that makes sacrifices for the well being of others? Let us pray that God might bring about such a community in our midst and nurture it so that radical love and support can become the dominant characteristic of Christians in this town. Let us pray.

AMEN