Some Reflections on Prayer

Some Reflections on Prayer

What, exactly, is the function of prayer?  One school of thought, which seems in many ways to be the most natural, is to say that prayer is a petitioning to God for things that might not happen otherwise.  For example, we pray that we might receive favor by some bureaucratic entity so that justice might be done, not because we think that they would be favorable whether we prayed or not, but precisely because we are concerned that they will not be.

There have been many who have felt that this kind of view of prayer portrays an undesirable view of God.  After all, it implies that God has to be coaxed into doing good things for us.  It implies that if something happens that we do not like, a reasonable explanation might be that we didn't pray hard enough, or well enough, about it.  It implies that, when something good comes to us that we attribute to the hand of God, it is very difficult to not read the unfortunate consequences of that thing for someone else as also from the hand of God.  It also seems to imply that God, the almighty, is easily swayed by our words and tears.

But what is the alternative?  The major alternative throughout history has seemed to be to say that God is going to do whatever God is going to do, whether we pray for it or not.  Some have asked, "Why do we pray?" if prayer doesn't really make any difference?  Some have drawn the conclusion from this that prayer is absolutely pointless and that we should not pray, though perhaps we should meditate.  Others, notably Calvin, argued that we should pray, not because of any change it might bring about in God, but because of the change it brings about in ourselves.  The retort might be, if prayer doesn't impact God in any way, it becomes pointless (not to mention significantly in tension with the rest of Calvin's theology, which stresses how important it is for our concepts to have significance, not only for us, but for God as well).

Are these really the only two ways (including any minor variations on them) of looking at prayer?  Do we really have no other way of looking at it without either making God remarkably capricious and pliable or making the entire practice nonsensical?  I think that there may be, and it is rooted in the actual life of Christ.

I am of the mind that one of the most concise yet powerful expressions of what the Christian life is to be about is when Jesus says, "If anyone wants to become my disciple he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."  This idea carries with it the notion that, as Christians, we go wherever Jesus goes, do whatever Jesus does, even to death and, through death, to resurrection.  If Jesus does something, we ought to do it too, even if it has to change slightly because of differences in time and place.

At the very least, this establishes the importance of prayer and the need to retain it, even if we do not fully understand it.  After all, Jesus prays to his Father.  Even if we do not know what that prayer means or how it is paralleled in our own lives, the fact that prayer is important is established by the fact that Jesus, God in flesh, prayed.  That, however, only solves part of the problem.  What exactly does prayer do and how does it work?

Ultimately, I don't think the scripture gives us an unambiguous answer to those questions.  To do so would transform God into nothing more than a machine who does what he does in response to prayer and so the way to get what you want is to make sure you pray in just the right way and, if you don't get what you want, it is because you didn't use the "Magic Prayer Machine" correctly.  God cannot be put into a box but remains free to act or not to act, based on his own view of the situation, which has a degree of insight and comprehension that dwarfs ours.

It seems to me that prayer, at its core, is a bringing to articulation and expression that we find our identity in Christ and that we have renounced ourselves and taken up the cross to follow him.  When we see prayer this way, then we don't simply ask for things, but cry out with Christ, "This is what I want.  Even so, not my will but yours be done."  It is an act of total submission, but it is not a submission that implies passive resignation.  After all, in Christ we see that God's will is not restricted to the natural course of events.  God does not sit idly by when the world is overcome with sin but actively engages, coming to be personally and physically present in his creation.  Jesus did not say, "Something will happen to those who are corrupting the temple," but went in with a whip of cords to drive them out.  Submission to God's will means, as often as not, a call to action that drives us forward.

St. Francis of Assisi is famous for saying, "Preach the gospel always.  Use words when necessary."  This, of course, emphasizes the holistic nature of preaching, that actions do, to cite the famous contemporary proverb, speak louder than words.  However, it sometimes gets interpreted in such a way as to imply that words are not always necessary, or that words can be, whether often or at all, jettisoned from the Christian witness.  This kind of interpretation runs up against the fact that Jesus is not just the Son of God made flesh but the Word of God made flesh.
The point is that, if the gospel transforms us, it ought to express itself in some way in every area of life.  It transforms our actions, to be sure, but it also must transform our words, our interpersonal relations, the very pattern of our thoughts.  It also transforms our relationship to God in a holistic way.  This means that we no longer seek to do things our own way, but God's way, which we see manifest concretely in Christ.  We pray because, as people who are not yet entirely conformed to Christ through the Spirit.  We pray, on the one hand, to remind ourselves that our desires need to change and that we need help from beyond ourselves.  We also pray, on the other hand, because we believe that God actually will speak into a situation and, more often than not, will do so in a surprising way.  Prayer does not imply that God will do anything we ask, so long as we get our prayers exactly right, but that God actually does listen to us and does respond, though in a personal, and not casuistic manner.

Why Do We Doubt (Matthew 14:22-33)

         08/27/12                    Why Do We Doubt?               Grace UMC
As a pastor, I have met many people who, because they are not pastors, think that they are unable to understand or explain the Bible.  They are quick to point out that they have not gone to seminary and so they are aware that there is much about the Bible that they simply have never been exposed to.  While many people have to endure their seminary experience, I loved seminary.  I learned a lot and got challenged in every kind of way you can imagine.  However, even though I think that seminary can be a wonderful experience, I am all too aware of the fact that there are times when seminary training does no more than teach people to read the same passages in the same ways over and over again, never learning anything new, never growing, never imagining that there might be something simple that speaks volumes that they might have missed.  Often times, these kinds of things are completely unrelated to the things you learn in seminary; that is to say, they are things that laypeople are every bit as equipped to discover as clergy.  In fact, it may be that lay people are even more prepared to notice them since they don't have their heads filled with all kinds of issues that may or may not be related.
I say all of this because I am amazed at how often a little detail, that I have never noticed but has been in the passage the whole time, something that seems so simple, will hit me like a ton of bricks.  This is the case with this passage we have just heard.  It is so simple that it doesn't seem like much at first.  It is so obvious and basic that the story simply couldn't have continued if it wasn't the way it is, and yet it is routinely ignored.  Let us consider the story.
Jesus has just fed the five thousand.  He had his disciples start across the Sea of Galilee while he stayed behind to dismiss the crowds and then he went off by himself to pray.  Several hours later, he was still on shore while the boats had gone on ahead.  A storm rose up and the disciples, experienced boatmen, were unable to make any progress, but here comes Jesus walking on the water.  At this point, Peter does something interesting; he decides that he is going to get out of the boat.  But first, he wants to make sure that he isn't dreaming or that all the hard work hasn't made him start seeing things.  He asks Jesus to invite him out of the boat, which he does.  At first, Peter does pretty well, taking a few steps as if he were on land.  However, his fear and doubt begin to get the better of him and he begins to sink, so he cries out, "Lord, save me!"  Jesus grabs him and chastises him a little, saying to him "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
Now, we could go on all day about the virtues of faith and obedience, about how important it is to trust that, when God tells us to do something, we shouldn't doubt but do it with all our might, that Jesus has given us no reason to doubt him, and all those are good things to remember.  However, there is just one detail that seems to me to be absolutely crucial to this passage that I feel that we keep forgetting.  Peter loses faith and the consequences are significant.  After all, he starts to sink and it is serious enough to provoke a critique from Jesus.  However, we must never forget that, even when all this happens, Peter doesn't drown.  Now that seems a little bit silly, doesn't it?  Isn't it obvious that Peter doesn't drown?  After all, he is in the rest of the story of Jesus' life and he continued to be in ministry long afterward.  It is so clear that Peter does not drown that it doesn't seem worth mentioning.
And yet, I think it makes all the difference in the world.  Look at it from this point of view.  The disciples are being overwhelmed by the storms.  They simply cannot make any progress, even with all their strength.  Then along comes Jesus, just taking a stroll across the stormy sea; not concerned, not even working up a sweat.  It is as if the dangers of the storm and the sea simply do not exist for him.  They certainly aren't impacting him the same way they impact the disciples.  Peter looks out and, because a disciple in ancient Israel was accustomed to doing everything that his Rabbi did, and seeing that it is better to walk on the water than to be defeated by the storm, asks to be invited out of the boat.  Eventually, he starts to doubt and begins to sink.  So now we have three different kinds of people.  We have Jesus, who has absolute faith in his ability to walk on the water, we have Peter who has a bit of faith, but it isn't as strong as he might like, who has some success but then his faith begins to fail, and we have the other disciples who were so terrified of the storm that they didn't dare to get out of the boat at all!  The point is that not one of them died that day.  Not one of them was defeated by the storm.  In fact, the storm was defeated by Jesus when he stepped into the boat and they all made it safely  to the other side.
Why didn't Jesus sink?  He didn't sink because his faith was so strong that he simply could not be defeated by the storm.  Why didn't Peter sink?  He didn't sink because when he went down, he was secured by Christ's hand grabbing him.  Why didn't the disciples sink?  Because Jesus calmed the storm and made a way when there had not been a way.  Not one of the disciples made it to the other side on their own strength; Jesus made it possible, even for those whose faith wasn't even strong enough for them to get out of the boat.
It is very easy to get caught up with the quality of our faith.  We look at ourselves and we see how often our faith has failed.  We look at others and we see how much stronger their faith seems to be than our own.  The single most significant issue that marked the Reformation was a revolt against the kind of attitude that said that you had to do all kinds of things right before God would accept you.  If you sinned, you needed to do penance, and if you didn't do it, it didn't matter what else you did, you still fell short of salvation.  There was always this sense that the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ wasn't quite enough, that God did most of it, but we still had to finish the job.  That kind of attitude only leads to pride, if we think, wrongly, that we have it all together, or despair when we realize that we don't.  If that is our position, than we can only say that Peter wasn't good enough because his faith wavered and the other disciples were really not good enough since their faith didn't even go as far as Peter's.  We would have to say that the story of Jesus walking on water is a story of the radical failure of humanity to be good enough for God.
Maybe it does teach us that, but is that all that it teaches us?  I don't think so.  It seems to me that there is something profound that is here that goes above and beyond what it says about our ability, or at least our track record, to do what we should.  Peter's faith wavers, but Jesus catches him.  The disciples can't move their boat forward, but Jesus calms the sea.  The success that saved all of them was not in any way, shape or form based on their abilities, as we see with the other disciples, or even in the strength of their faith in Christ, as we see in Peter.  The success of the whole trip depended on the strength and faithfulness, not of the disciples, but of Christ.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul takes an entire chapter and points out that the Jewish people, and remember that Paul was Jewish, shouldn't boast in the fact that God gave them the law if they don't even follow it.  He pointed out that if the Gentiles follow God, even if they have never heard the law, they are more fully God's people than the Jews were who had the law but didn't follow it.  What is amazing is that he immediately follows this up with a question that might be put to him.  "Then what advantage has the Jew?  Or what is the value of circumcision?"    The question is basically this, "The Jewish people, by and large, were not accepting Jesus and being transformed.  Is there really anything special about the Jews?"  Paul's response is passionate.  "Absolutely!  For in the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God."  God had singled the Jewish people out for special interaction through the years and spoke to them in a special way.  But the question could come back.  "Paul, but what if some of them, or even most of them, were unfaithful?"  Paul's response is amazing.  "Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?  By no means!  Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true."  Every pastor, every Christian, could be a liar, but that does not make God any less truthful.  Every human being could be absolutely faithless, but that does not mean that God has become unfaithful.
That is why everyone made it safely across the sea.  Peter's faith didn't get them across and the other disciples' lack of faith did not prevent Jesus from delivering them.  It was the faithfulness of Christ that does not give up when we make mistakes or when we aren't as good as know we should be that made it happen.  When we talk about having faith, the point isn't, or at least shouldn't be, to get all excited talking about how strong my faith is or how strong your faith is.  When we say we are saved by faith, we don't mean that faith is something that we do and, because we reach a high enough level of faith, we are considered good enough for heaven.  In many ways, that is just taking the Medieval notion of salvation by works and substituting faith in as the new work that we have to do.  Now, instead of having to reach a certain level of moral perfection, we have to reach a certain level of perfection in our faith, in order to be saved.  That is what the Reformers fought so hard to get rid of.
When we say that faith is important, what we mean is that it is the one in whom we have faith, that is important.  It is not a question of how much we believe but in whom we believe.  We are saved by grace through faith, but the reason that we are saved is not because we are so good at being faithful, but because Christ is so good at being faithful.  The good news of Jesus Christ for the one who has never done a good deed in their lives and has never even given a thought to God before is that, when they stand before God they can say, "I have nothing to bring.  No deeds that made people think that I was a good person, no wise words that built up my brothers and sisters, nothing of any value at all.  If what Jesus did on my behalf and in my place isn't good enough, then I have no other hope.  All of my trust, all of my hope is in Christ and if it fails, I have nothing left.  I would be as lost as Peter if Jesus had not grabbed him when he began to sink."  What makes that good is because that is all that is asked.  In fact, it is the only thing that any of us can say before God.
So why do we doubt?  That is the question that Jesus asked Peter.  What if the question about why Peter doubted is not a question of criticism, that is, what if it wasn't a way for Jesus to say, "Peter, you know you are supposed to believe, so why did you doubt?"  What if the question was a real one, one that Jesus asked because he simply could not understand why Peter could have any reason to doubt?  I can imagine that Peter might answer like many of  us would.  "But Lord, I got out into the middle of the sea and I began to realize that I can't do it.  I can't walk on water, so I began to doubt because I found myself doing something that I am not able to do and I didn't think that I could keep it up."
What would Jesus' response be?  If the real point of faith is for us to have strong faith just for the sake of having faith, as if faith in an of itself is a good thing, or if we take the modern attitude of self-help and the power of positive thinking as our guide, the question, "Why did you doubt," would be, "Peter, why did you doubt?  Do you not trust in the power of believing in yourself?  Keep trying and you'll make it someday."  But if that is not the case at all, if the point of faith is not that we believe but that we believe in Jesus, not that we trust our own abilities to do anything but trust in Jesus, who lives his life in us and through us, then the question is not, "Peter, why did you doubt yourself," but "Peter, why did you doubt me?"  Jesus was the reason why Peter could walk on the water in the first place.  His own abilities had absolutely nothing to do with it.  There was no reason to doubt because the ultimate responsibility to stay on top of the water didn't lie with him but with Jesus.
So that is the question for us this morning.  Why do we doubt?  And by that I don't mean to say that there is not room for a healthy curiosity about what we believe about God.  Anyone who has had a substantial conversation with me knows that I am all about probing beyond popular opinion about God.  What I mean is, if God has loved us so much that he stepped into our world of space and time in order to become one of us and one with us; if he was willing to not just come but to take our brokenness upon himself and take it all the way to the cross in order to deal with it once and for all; and if he did all of this, not when we had our act together but while we were yet sinners, before we even gave a first thought to God, why should we doubt whether God really loves us, whether God actually cares about us, whether God actually wants to redeem us and be reconciled?
Listen to Paul's reflections on this topic.  "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?"  If God loves us so much that he did that, why would we doubt that he wants to finish what he has started?  Paul continues.  "Who will bring any charge against God's elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is it 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."  Paul is saying that the only one in all of the universe who is in a position to bring a charge against you or to condemn you is God, but this is a God who not only loves you with a love that will not let you go, but one who has gone through tremendous lengths to make that love real for you and prays for you, even to this day.
Our God is not a God who sits up in heaven with a chart to keep track of whether you are good enough or whether you have believed hard enough or not.  Rather, he is a God who calls you to do things above and beyond what you were ever capable of on your own, to do things that are amazing from a human point of view.  And in the midst of that calling and empowering, you might make a mistake, but you can trust that, when that time comes, Christ will grab you so that you will not drown and remind you that you do not need to doubt, because your trust and faith are not in yourself, but in him, and he has strength to support all of creation.  Let us pray.

AMEN

Not the Same Weapons (1 Samuel 17:31-51)

         07/22/12              "Not the Same Weapons"        Spencer GUMC
If we were to try to make a list of the Bible stories that are most well known by the church and even the larger culture, the story of David and Goliath would almost certainly be close to the top of the list, along with stories like Noah's ark and Jonah and the whale.  In fact, this story is known and talked about more often, both in the church and out of it, than many of the stories that directly involve Jesus.  It is because it is so fantastically well known that I have felt free to limit the time that I spend this morning retelling it in order to free up time to explore a particular aspect that has been impressing itself on me recently.
At the time when David shows up to the battlefield where he will ultimately slay Goliath, he was not yet a warrior.  In fact, he was nothing more than a kid, likely no more than fifteen years old.  He was so far from being known as a great warrior that even his brothers were amazed that he would volunteer to go head to head with a giant like Goliath.  And yet, though he was young, though he had no credentials, though to all outward appearances, he was nothing more than the youngest of a large family, his appearance at this time and place is inherently political.
Remember that David has been introduced to the reader in the previous chapter, and that introduction took the form of the prophet Samuel, on orders from God, going to Bethlehem and anointing him as king over all of Israel.  This is, from a purely political point of view, high treason, since Israel already had a king, Saul.  It is fascinating to me that in the slaying of Goliath, David is able to defeat the Philistines, the very thing that Saul was not able to do with an army.
All that aside, it seems to me that the most common aspect of this story that gets emphasized in Sunday school, Bible studies and sermons, is the need to stand in faith, knowing that God is far greater than the giants that we see in our lives, no matter how big they seem or how many of them there are.  All of this is entirely true.  I do not mean to minimize that conclusion in any way, shape, or form.  However, I want to place my stress on a different detail, because I think that it is both something that I forget, though it is so obviously included in our normal way of discussing this passage, and because I feel it is something that is very much appropriate in this place and time.
I want to draw your attention to the interchange that David has with Saul, where Saul tries to equip David for battle.  This is what we read.  "Then Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail.  And David girded his sword over his armor, and he tried in vain to go, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, 'I cannot go with these; for I am not used to them.' And David put them off.  Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in his shepherd's bag or wallet; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine."
I feel that it is important to stress that, when David went after Goliath, he did not use the same weapons as Goliath did.  Now, this seems like a silly and trivial observation, doesn't it?  After all, we know that, while Goliath had a sword and a shield so big he needed someone to carry it for him, David simply had an ordinary sling with five stones.  However, I think that we often get so caught up in the glory of the victory, that David actually is able to defeat Goliath, that we forget how significant this fact really is.
Think about the sheer absurdity of David's decision.  He is only about fifteen years old, going up against a man who has been a warrior, likely for longer than David has been alive.  Goliath is trained in all the best military strategies, he knows how to use his sword, he knows how to fight, both in battle and in single combat.  David has none of these things.  He has spent his youth far from the battlefield, caring for sheep and playing his harp.  Saul is giving the best advice he knows.  The only way that makes sense to Saul to approach this incredibly significant battle is armed to the teeth, covered in armor and with the best weapon you can find, at least one that was created for battle.  Remember, Saul is no weakling, but is an accomplished warrior himself.  The maidens of Israel used to sing, "Saul has slain his thousands."
David walks out, completely naked from a military point of view, and does not just face his enemy, but defeats him.  What would the people's response have been?  I can imagine it would be something like this.  "How amazing is it that Goliath has been defeated at all, let alone by this young man, let alone with a sling and a rock."  The great glory is that God brought about victory in spite of David's weakness of weapon.
But what if that reaction misses the entire point?  What if God's victory wasn't in spite of David's inexperience, in spite of his unimpressive weaponry?  What if God brought victory precisely because of those things?  What if David didn't just find a way that worked as well in that moment as that of the great warriors, but found the only way that would work?  The fact of the matter is that if we wanted to say that the reason that David was victorious, even with a stone and sling, was because he was such a natural warrior, we would have to say that he could have defeated Goliath with Saul's sword and armor, he just didn't feel as comfortable doing it.  On the contrary, I think that the story forces us to conclude that, if David had gone to the battlefield doing things the way Saul told him to, meeting Goliath with his own versions of his armor and sword, the event would have ended very differently.  David would have been killed, Israel would have been defeated, and the whole history of the world would have changed forever.
But you know what?  Once I noticed that David not only did not fight Goliath using the same weapons, but deliberately avoided anything resembling conventional combat equipment, I started to notice that this is not the only time in the Bible that this kind of thing happens.  It turns out that almost everywhere you turn, there is someone doing something that makes absolutely no sense if we think about if as an outsider but we hardly notice it either because we have been trained for so long to see it as normal or because we are so quick to read the end of the story into its beginning that we never notice how odd it really is.
Perhaps the single best example of this happening is Jesus.  Here is a man who was being called the Messiah, the anointed one, the Son of David.  He was a man who was associated with the restoring of Israel and the hopes and dreams of the people.  He spoke of a kingdom that was coming but yet was already there in his person.  He gathered followers, he spoke against those in authority, and he sharply critiqued the ways that Israel had become just like the pagan nations.  And finally, when the time comes to complete his work, to release the people from bondage, to cast the powers of this world to the ground and shatter them, what does he do?  He dies!  He doesn't march on Jerusalem with a rag-tag army like the Maccabees did over a hundred years before.  He doesn't take up his rightful place on the throne of Israel and restore the Davidic line of kings.  In fact, Israel was still ruled by Rome and the people's lives were not noticeably different after he died compared to before.  When you think of it, it is a pretty funny way of establishing a kingdom.
And yet, we don't say that God established his kingdom here on earth in spite of the death of Christ, do we?  No, we say that God established it through his death, that there really wasn't any other way it could come about, that to try to establish the kingdom of God using the same "weapons" as human kings use would make absolutely no sense at all.  If Jesus' kingdom depended on how well he was able to marshal troops, to combat and defeat trained Roman soldiers, we would have no choice but to say that he was an absolute failure.  And yet, we don't say that, do we?  We don't say that because Christ's death wasn't a sign of his failure, it redefined what it means to succeed.  Success is not an avoidance of death, but an emerging on the other side of death in resurrection.  From the outside, we would have to say that the Jesus movement was kept alive in spite of Christ's death.  From the inside, we know that there was no other way, and to do it in another way, a more conventional way, a way that made more sense to the outside world, would never actually work.
Look at just about any hero of the faith.  Abraham was over ninety years old when God called him and told him that he would be the father of a great nation, something that is very hard to do if you have no children and are not likely to have any.  Moses was an eighty year old shepherd with a speech impediment who had burned all his bridges with the Egyptian royalty.  Gideon was dragged, kicking and screaming, into leadership in order to overthrow the nations that were ruling over Israel.  Jonah was a bigot who hated the Ninevites, the ones he was called to preach to, with every ounce of his being.  The list could be made as long as we like.  The point is that if we ever imagined that the standards of the world were the best way to move forward in God's eyes, not a single leader in Israel's history, including David and Jesus, would have been taken seriously.
What can we learn from this?  I am sure we can learn many things, but what I am increasingly convinced of is that it means that we should not pay even the smallest bit of attention to how other people do things, at least if they are people that we could consider, on one level or another, to be our enemies.  If David attempted to meet Goliath using the same kinds of weapons and armor that he used, he would have been killed; if Jesus tried to establish his kingdom like earthly kings, not only would it not have worked, we would have missed out on the real kingdom of God, which is far greater than the kingdoms of this world.
This means that we need to stop looking over our shoulders and seeing if we are keeping up with the Joneses, to see if we are doing the same things as everyone else, because what they are doing has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what we need to be about.  Trying to measure yourself by other people can only lead to pride, if you think you are doing well compared to them, or despair, if you think you aren't doing as well.  The same is true if you think that the only way that God could be calling you to behave is the way others behave.
Allow me to give some concrete examples.  Any of you who have children who are still in school, especially if they are in middle school, are doubtlessly aware of a phenomenon called "drama."  Drama, in this sense, is not to be confused with theatrics.  Drama is an age-old issue with a new name.  It is when one person, or group of people, starts spreading rumors about others, or begins to talk about someone else behind their back.  Drama is the number one complaint I have ever heard from people who are in school.  Seeing that it is such a big problem, and one that everyone seems to notice and understand, what do you think is the number one way to deal with school drama?  More drama!  As amazing as it might sound, the way that people in school most commonly deal with the drama in their lives is to instigate more drama, as if somehow, if we can just get the last word in, everything will be fine.  What is this but a modern example of using Goliath's weapons against him?  The result is never that Goliath is slain, but only that we get beaten, because he is a giant and we are small and he has more experience with them than we could ever have.  The only way to win at the drama game by using more drama is to somehow become the kind of person who is better at creating turmoil than anyone else, and then you may have won, but you have become a person whose self-worth is determined by how bad you can make other people feel.  You can only defeat Goliath using his own weapons by becoming a bigger, nastier, more cruel giant than him, which is no real victory.
When I was serving a different church, there were several churches, within convenient driving distance, who specialized in reaching out to college students.  To that end, they had developed fantastic praise bands, they integrated contemporary culture into their services, and they had an amazing network where new people in the school could be reached by word of mouth.  The people at the church I was serving were noticing that people they knew were traveling to attend these other churches and they wanted to find a way to get them back home.   In order to do that, it was suggested to reinstate our own praise band that had been discontinued by a previous pastor and to try to copy these other churches and do what they do to get those people back.
Now, there are many reasons why this is a problem.  First, there is a big problem with looking at other churches as being our enemies.  They aren't our enemies.  People may have left our church at one point to go there, but at least they are going somewhere, they are still putting themselves in a position of hearing the word of the Lord, of joining the larger body in worship, and learning how to live as Christians together.  There are far too many people in any given town who are simply unreached to worry about those who are still Christians, just a different brand than us.
But beyond that, it is an idea that is doomed.  There is nothing wrong with reinstating a praise band, there is nothing wrong with a church becoming more contemporary.  The problem is when those things are pursued in the belief and with the conviction that they are the way to reach others.  If that church had gotten a band together and said to the people of their community, "You should come to this church because we have a band," they could respond, "So does this other church, and their band is better."  The fact of the matter is that we could never win if that was our strategy.  The churches we would have hoped to compete against had been doing those things for a good twenty years.  They had experience and money invested in it that we could never even come close to duplicating.  It would have amounted to nothing more than looking at other churches and calling them Goliath (a problem in itself), and then saying that the best way to "slay" that Goliath is to do what they are doing.  It would have been as disastrous as if David had fought Goliath with a sword and shield instead of with a sling and some stones.
So I urge you, in every aspect of your lives; in your personal faith journeys, in your relation to the church, in the way you treat people in your workplace, and in every other way, listen to God and do what God tells you to do and do it the way God tells you to do it, regardless of how silly or counter-intuitive it might seem.  If David had said, "No way, God.  There is no way I can go against a giant with just a sling and some stones," he would have never won the battle and would have never become the great king that he was called to be.
On top of that, do not allow other people to discourage you from doing it.  What if Saul had said to David, "You will either fight Goliath my way or you will not fight him at all?"  He would have never defeated him, or even may never have gone out to battle in the first place.  Someone else would have had to fight the giant, maybe without listening to God at all, and that would also have been disastrous.  If God has called you, and he has, he will make it clear what you should do.  Do you wish that your church would develop a particular kind of ministry because it is something you care about and you know that others probably care about it, too?  Go do it!  If someone tells you that it is doomed to failure because you aren't doing it the way they would do it, even if you know that God isn't calling you to do it their way, keep faithful.  Sometimes the greatest victories, as we see in the Bible, come when they are the most unlikely of all.
When God calls his people, he equips them, not in the way that seems best to the rest of the world, but in the way that is actually best for that time and place.  We do not need to worry about what has happened before, or even what is happening right now.  We need to be about participating in what God is doing in the days ahead and we need to join him in that.  I am not sure that I know exactly where that is, and I am not sure that any other single person knows, but I trust that God will reveal it to us as an entire congregation and will do so by motivating individuals and small groups to step forward and make a difference.  God is likely even calling you right now, in this season of your life.  Be in prayer and be encouraged to step out boldly, for it not just a human being who believes in you and supports you, but the very almighty God of the universe.  As silly as it might seem, cast aside your sword and shield and take up your sling and stones, for the weapons that are chosen and anointed by God are better than the best that we could find on our own.  Let us pray.

AMEN

"Trinity Sunday" 2012

         06/10/12                  "Trinity Sunday" 2012               Grace UMC
Over the years, the worldwide church has suggested that local churches take certain times of the year and set them aside to talk about certain things.  For example, in December, we talk about Jesus being born and in the early Spring, we talk about the Resurrection of Christ from the dead.  There is nothing magical about these times; they could have just as well been different.  But the thing that is wonderful about this is that it gives us a pattern, a way to live our lives together as Christians that allows us to weave the key parts of the story of God's interaction with humanity into the very fabric of our lives so that it more deeply makes up part of who we are.
It is about this time of year that this pattern suggests that we should talk about the fact that the God we worship is not just a single isolated individual, marked simply by unchangingness and perfection.  After all, even the pagan Greek philosophers thought that God was like that.  Rather, the God we worship is a community of three Persons that are all bound together in the same Being.  That is to say, we worship a God who is Triune.
I would imagine that many of you have either not heard any sermons on the Trinity or, at least, not too many of them.  Why is that?  After all, we declare that we believe in the Trinity every time someone is baptized and we imply it every time we take communion.  In fact, the creeds that have historically bound the church together are deeply Trinitarian, both in form and content.  One could say that the Trinity forms the basic grammar of our Christian faith.  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was profoundly Trinitarian, though not everyone has noticed it.  In his sermon on the Trinity, after he had made a point of stressing that Christians can disagree on a wide variety of issues, says this.  "But there are some truths more important than others. It seems there are some which are of deep importance...surely there are some which it nearly concerns us to know, as having a close connexion with vital religion. And doubtless we may rank among these that contained in [the words] 'There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: And these three are one.'"  Wesley, who was so willing to be flexible on a number of significant issues, wouldn't budge on the Trinity.
Why is that we as Christians are so reluctant to talk about the Trinity in which, we say, we believe?  I don't think it is really all that much of a mystery.  After all, most people have never really heard the Trinity related to and connected up with their basic Christian faith and experience.  Now why not?  Why shouldn't a belief that lies so close to the heart of Christian faith be strongly related the very core of that faith in practical terms?  I think it is because we have had a tendency to start by saying, "Yep, I believe in the Trinity.  I'm not entirely sure why I believe in it, but they tell me that I should, so I'll go with it."  Once we do that, however, and it happens among scholars just as often as among laypeople, we have a doctrine that we hold because we were told to, not because it resonates with the depths of our Christian experience, and now we have to make sense of it.
But how do we make sense of it?  We sometimes use images like an egg, which is one egg but is made up of yolk, white, and shell, or water, which can be solid, liquid, or gas.  Now, whatever else those images might do, they certainly don't make us say, "Now I understand why the angels of heaven hide their faces before the glory of God and cry 'Holy, Holy, Holy!"  Even if we use more sophisticated images or ideas, we often set out to explain how three can be one and how one can be three in a way that doesn't really relate to what God has actually done in Christ.  I am not in any way blaming people for doing this, so don't feel bad if you have used those kinds of explanations.  After all, what better examples do we have?  In many ways, the history of the church has let us down because for the last 1,500 years, it is as if we have said, "We talked about the Trinity once upon a time but now we all agree, so let's stop thinking about it."  Then, it is only when someone comes along and says that the Trinity is nothing more than confused mathematical thinking, that we realize that we don't have a good answer.
Why is it that we should care about the Trinity?  The short answer is that it is bound up with the depths of our Christian faith.  Not a single other religion or philosophy has developed a doctrine of the Trinity like the church has.  In spite of all the times that it has been pointed out that the word "Trinity" does not appear in the New Testament, Christians have never yet been convinced, in general, to give it up.  There is something about the nature of Christian faith, that is unique, which drives us to consistently say that we have to think of God as one Being but three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  That something is the living reality of Jesus Christ.
Belief in the Trinity formed the major center of debate within the church for about a hundred years.  People wrote book after book on all sides of the issue, there were councils where the leaders of the church had heated discussion about it, bishops were exiled when they did not agree with the dominant opinion in their area at the time.  To us about 1,600 years later, it might seem hard to understand what the big deal was.  We might be tempted to think that the debates over the Trinity were like how our contemporary debates often are, either two sides who just like fighting and will fight over anything they can, or else a debate that has gotten out of control because both sides basically agree, but can't realize it.  However, neither of those things is the case.
The reason why the Trinity matters and why there were Christians who quite literally laid their lives down for it is because it goes to the very root of our Christian lives, whether we always realize it or not.  The very basic fabric of your faith is Trinitarian in nature and the fact that we worship a Triune God bears its mark on your most fundamental Christian experience.  John Wesley concluded his sermon on the Trinity with these remarks.  "But the thing, which I here particularly mean is this: The knowledge of the Three-One God is interwoven with all true Christian faith; with all vital religion...I know not how any one can be a Christian believer till he '[has],' as St. John speaks, 'the witness in himself;' till 'the Spirit of God witnesses with his spirit, that he is a child of God;' that is, in effect, till God the holy Ghost witnesses that God the Father has accepted him through the merits of God the Son: And, having this witness, he honours the Son, and the blessed Spirit, 'even as he honours the Father.'  Not that every Christian believer adverts to this [that is, not every Christian talks about their faith in distinctly Trinitarian terms]; perhaps, at first, not one in twenty: But if you ask any of them a few questions, you will easily find it is implied in what he believes."
The fact of the matter is that, if you are a Christian, if God has cleansed you with the blood of Christ and transformed you through the power of the Holy Spirit, you are already Trinitarian.  Wesley said that we could easily find that this is true if we just ask a few questions.  If I were to ask you, “Are you accepted in the eyes of God?”  You would say to me, “Yes!”  Then I would ask you, “How were you accepted by God?”  Your answer would be something like, “Because God became a man in Jesus Christ and died for my sins.”  Finally, I would ask you, “How did you come to know that you were accepted?”  Your answer might not be quite like this, but it would be similar.  “Because the Spirit of God bore witness in my heart that I am a child of God.”  Our very most basic Christian experience is rooted in the fact that God is triune.
I think it is one of the most profound tragedies of our contemporary Christian culture that we have neglected the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which is truly the Christian understanding of God.  And why do we do it?  We do it because we can't see how it actually applies.  We are told, perhaps in confirmation, that as Christians, we are Trinitarian, and so we believe it.  It has been seen for so long as so crucial to what it means to be a Christian that we are afraid to deny it, but we could never defend it if someone were to press us on it.  For many Christians, we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place with the Trinity and we are afraid to ask for clarification and often times we don't have any examples of people who think that it matters enough to talk about or think through.
So, what are we really saying when we say that God is Triune?  What we are really saying, what lies at the root of our fundamental, Trinitarian conviction is that, in Jesus Christ, we have to do with God.  When we say that we believe in the Trinity, we are saying that, when we look at Jesus and all the things that he said and did, we are looking at God doing them.  His words are the very words of God, his actions are the very deeds of God.  In Christ, we are face-to-face with God and not just a messenger of God.  Jesus is not merely a prophet, not just one upon whom the Spirit of God rests, but one who is God in his very self, at the core of his being.  We believe that everything that Jesus says and everything Jesus does is truth, that he is the very definition of truth, that he is the truth, and that this truth applies no less when we see him praying to and communicating with his Father in heaven.
When we say that we believe in the Trinity, we are saying that this same God that we come to know in and through Jesus Christ has also taken up residence in the hearts and lives of the people who belong to the Father through the shedding of the blood of Christ.  We are saying that, not only did God so love the world that he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life, but that this salvation does not come like a kind of "get out of hell free" card, but by God coming and redeeming us from the inside out.  In Christ, we see that God loves us so much to limit himself, meet us on our own level, and ultimately take our broken and diseased condition upon himself and condemn our sin to death on the cross.  In the Holy Spirit, we see that God loves us so much as to enter into each of our fallen lives, to meet each of us where we are and to take our hearts and connect them to the heart of Christ, so that our words begin to sound like the words of Christ and our actions begin to look like the deeds of Christ.
This is why we heard that passage from John as our text for this morning.  Jesus says, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine.  For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."  This is one of the most amazingly Trinitarian passages in the entire Bible.  Everything that belongs to the Father in heaven also belongs to Jesus, his Son.  There is nothing of God that is missing in Christ.  Everything we say about the Father, we say about the Son, except "Father."  But that is not all.  The Holy Spirit, to whom Jesus refers as the Spirit of truth, is the one who takes the things of Christ and declares them to us.  The Spirit is the means through which we have come to faith in Jesus Christ, the one who took the blood of Christ and made it real in our lives, who continues to take the things of Christ and make them known to us.  In a very real sense, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the very life of Christ, God in flesh, is made real in our lives so that the blood of Christ begins to pump through our veins and shapes us into people who begin to follow more closely in the footsteps of Christ in his life of love, devotion and obedience to the Father.
So, aside from the fact that the very fabric of our Christian life is Triune, what impact does the Trinity have on our daily lives?  It shapes the way we live because we have not just been made in the image of God, but in the image of the Triune God, the God in whom the relationships between the Persons is every bit as important as the Persons themselves.  This means that we are people for whom our relationships are just as important as who we think we are on our own.  It means that we cannot be the people we were made to be if we insist on doing things by ourselves and always doing things our own way.
​ So, if we are made in the image of this Triune God, we would expect that we are made for relationship and that we cannot be who we were made to be if we do not allow those relationships to touch the core of who we are.  The fact of the matter is that, whether we like it or not, we already are affected by our relationships.  More and more, both in theology and in natural science, it is becoming clear that our relationships make up part of who we are.  If our relationships with other people are not centered in Christ, there is a part of us that is not centered in Christ.  If we surround ourselves with people who do not love the Lord, who live in ways that are not compatible with the Gospel, it is only a matter of time before those relationships begin to drag us away from our God.  However, there are other people whose lives are so characterized by faith that it is the easiest and most natural thing in the world to be a Christian when we are around them.  When we surround ourselves with people like that, it is only a matter of time before we begin to become more faithful, joyful people.  Both of these things happen because our relationships really do affect us.
We are the church.  We are the people whom Paul describes as being the ones who live lives worthy of the calling with which we have been called, who live with all humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another in love.  We are the people who are to make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  We are one body with one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.  If you notice, Paul even speaks of the church in Trinitarian terms.  We are the people who have been made right with God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit; we are the people who give our prayer and praise back in the Holy Spirit, through Christ to the Father.  And because of all that, we are bound to each other, to build one another up, to contribute in our own unique way to the work of God in our midst.
We are Trinitarians because we believe that when we look into the face of Christ lit up by the Holy Spirit, we see the very face of God.  We are Trinitarians because we believe that what God has done shows us who God truly is.  We are Trinitarians because we believe that God does not just sit up, far away from his people, telling us what to do and what not to do, but loves us so much as to meet us where we are, to transform us, and to lift our lives, even here and now, into his presence.  We are Trinitarians because we believe that we is just as basic as me and we live our lives for each other because we know that what happens to you impacts me and what happens to me impacts you.  And finally, we are Trinitarians because God has loved us so much to reveal himself to us as he actually is and not how we would like to imagine him.  And that is good news.  Let us pray.

AMEN

"The Most Frightening Day of the Year" (Pentecost 2012)

05/27/12 Pentecost 2012 Grace UMC

Something I say with some frequency is that Pentecost is the single most frightening day in the entire church year. Often, when I say that, I get funny looks, as though people can't understand why Pentecost would be a frightening day. After all, it certainly seems like it is a time of great joy and celebration. It is indeed that, but it is the most frightening day of the church year nonetheless.

Why is that? I had the tremendous privilege at my last appointment to preach, passage by passage, through the entire Gospel according to John. It took two and a half years, but it was a significant time of growth for myself and, I hope, for others. As we spent a great deal of time looking at that particular account of the life of Jesus, we found ourselves paying attention to what the disciples were doing. It was an incredibly encouraging time because we realized that the disciples were so far from being perfect and unattainable examples of what faithfulness ought to look like, that they were just as messed up as we are. Time after time, we read about disciples putting their feet into their mouths, saying things they immediately regret, doing things that only a moment's worth of reflection would tell them is a bad idea. We realize that if Peter can still be a disciple after breaking his promise to stand by Jesus' side until death only hours after making it, then we can still be disciples in spite of all the mistakes that we make. In fact, Peter makes just about every mistake you could imagine. There is probably not anyone else in the gospel narratives that should fill people who make mistakes, which is everybody, with hope than Peter. Peter was given his name, which means "rock" by Jesus and throughout the gospels, you can't help but think that the name is meant to be ironic, since he is probably the least stable, least reliable disciple of the bunch.

And then comes Pentecost. All of a sudden, the Peter who didn't seem like he could do anything right, the Peter that we all too often can identify with, starts to act differently. All of a sudden, the man who's name "rock" only served as an ironic reminder of how not firm he was, starts to be bold in a new way. The Peter who was unable to stand firm for Jesus in front of a servant girl the night he was betrayed, stands up before thousands of people, including some of the leaders, and proclaims the good news, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him."

What exactly has happened? We live in a world where the disciples have been glorified to an almost unhealthy degree. They were the ones who followed Jesus, they were the ones who wrote the New Testament, they were the ones who took the gospel out to the ends of the known world at the time. They are the kind of people that we sometimes even name our churches after. When we read the accounts of the life of Jesus, it takes us a while to get used to the fact that these people are, in so many ways, just like we are. It is almost as if we are afraid to really say that the people who followed Jesus so closely could be just as broken and messed up as we can be, but that is what we read.

However, it seems that it is right as we are getting comfortable with this idea that the disciples had just as many problems as we do that we run into the story of Pentecost and the rest of the book of Acts. All of a sudden, it becomes much harder to relate to the disciples. After all, how many times have you been walking down the street and someone who is sick asks for help and, simply by reaching out your hand to them, radically and dramatically cure their disease and send them on their way rejoicing? I must admit that it has never happened to me. It is almost as if we have just gotten used to the disciples being just like us and now we are made to come face to face with mighty heroes of the faith, miracle workers and life-changing preachers. What in the world has happened?

I remember the first time that I asked the question, "What is the difference between the disciples in the gospel accounts and the disciples in the book of Acts, and what is it that brought about that change?" There is no real conflict of opinion about what happened. The disciples were radically transformed. Within the space of a single chapter of the Bible, we see just how amazing this transformation really is. At the beginning, the disciples are all huddled together, frightened that the people who killed Jesus would kill them, as his followers. By the end, we find that they are proclaiming the good news of Christ to everyone around, in every language, with such passion and such anointing by the Spirit that over three thousand people, something like a quarter of the population of Spencer [2010 census], gave their lives to Jesus that very morning.

So, if we can see that the transformation went to the very root of who these people were and we could see that, for all intents and purposes, it happened in a moment, we have to ask what actually brought it about. Really and truly, at the end of the day, there are no sociological reasons why the disciples should have changed so radically in such a short period. There must be something beyond the merely natural to account for this. Some people want to figure out other explanations for the miracles of Jesus, but I think that the transformation of the disciples on Pentecost is every bit as amazing and is something that actually goes to the root of your life and mine.

According to our text, the only real difference between the disciples before Pentecost and the disciples after Pentecost was the giving of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The people who were shy, who had so clearly misunderstood Jesus, because they thought he was going to be a political king who would overthrow the people they thought were the enemies of God, who were afraid of being killed because of their association with Jesus became people who stood up and made the name of Christ known to those around them, who did not stop short at just sharing words, but followed through with deeds of love and kindness, and became people who were indeed killed because of their association with Jesus, and went boldly to their deaths.

Now why is all of this frightening? It just sounds like great news, and it is indeed great news, the greatest of all possible news, but that doesn't make it any less frightening at the same time. The reason why this news is so great is because it reminds us, once and for all, that what God has done in Christ is not just something that happened once upon a time, a long time ago, that God did not stop interacting with us once Jesus had died and been raised. It means that the very same God who came among us as Jesus Christ is still at work in us, that the ministry of Christ did not stop when he ascended into heaven, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, it has been entrusted and imparted to ordinary people like you and me. What's more, we see that all our mistakes that we have ever made do not disqualify us from being called and equipped by God to be about his work here and now. After all, the disciples made all kinds of mistakes and yet the Spirit had no problems coming on them. If it could come on the people who scattered when Jesus was betrayed and denied him within hours of pledging their undying loyalty to him, what have we done that makes us think for a moment that the Spirit cannot do in us what it did in the lives of the disciples?

And that is why Pentecost is the single most frightening day in the whole Christian year. The fact of the matter is that many people not only relate well to the disciples in the gospel narratives, but like to relate to them. We love the compassion that Jesus shows to his disciples who make so many mistakes, many of which are so foolish that they are almost laughable, because it reminds us that, in spite of all our own foolishness, God's love and grace is there. Even if we remember that this love and grace is still available, we don't necessarily like to relate to the disciples after Pentecost.

The moment we realize that the only difference between the weak disciples before Pentecost and the bold disciples after Pentecost is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the moment we realize that this same Holy Spirit that radically transformed those disciples is not only available, but promised, to us, we are forced to ask the question, "Does this mean that God might want to so transform me that I go from looking like the disciples before Pentecost to looking like the disciples after Pentecost?" How can we avoid that question? Well, we might try to say something like, "I love Jesus, but I don't really want the Spirit." However, in what we could call one of the most significant chapters in the entire New Testament, Romans 8, Paul says this, "But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." It seems that, according to the New Testament, it is simply not possible to really be a Christian if we do not have the Spirit dwelling in us.

When all of these things weave themselves together, we are forced to answer that question from a moment ago, "Does this mean that God might want to so transform me that I go from looking like the disciples before Pentecost to looking like the disciples after Pentecost?" with a loud and resounding "Yes!" Now, that boldness, anointing and strength might look a bit different from person to person. After all, not everyone who was radically changed because of the gospel and the indwelling of the Spirit did the same thing. Yes, the twelve apostles had a strong preaching ministry, but there were more people transformed by the Spirit than just them. We read about seven people selected to be deacons, to help make sure that all the Christian widows in Jerusalem were taken care of. We know there were wealthy Christians who were empowered by the Spirit to give boldly of their resources, not only by taking care of the poor but also by providing the means for the other Christians to do what they were called to do, not least by providing the upper rooms in their homes for the church to meet in.

We know that Paul, one of the people who was changed perhaps more than anyone else, acknowledged that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are bound to one another as the body of Christ, with gifts as different from each other as eyes are from hands and ears are from feet. He says, "We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness."

By all of this, I hope that you take two things to heart. First, make no mistake; if you belong to Christ, you have the Spirit dwelling within you and if you do not have the Spirit dwelling in you, you do not yet belong to Christ, though God yearns for you to receive that Spirit. Though the strongest examples that we see in the book of Acts of people being empowered by the Spirit are preachers and teachers of the gospel, there are a wide variety of gifts that God gives in order to build up the church and if you have not received one of them, you most certainly have received another one. If necessary, recruit the help of friends, but find out where God has gifted and called you.

The second thing that I hope you have noticed is that, in many of you and in many ways, this transformation has already begun to take place. The fact of the matter is that there are at least several people in this congregation who have witnessed miracles in their lives or in the lives of those close to them. Undeniable miracles; miracles that can be explained in no other way than as the result of the almighty power of God intervening in our lives. There are those have seen a transformation, not altogether unlike the one we see on Pentecost, take place in their own lives. There are people who can go into great detail about what their lives were like before God transformed them and what they are like now and the difference is like night and day. There are people who have found strength in times when they thought they would have no strength, who have found boldness in difficult situations, who have tried something new and found that they were really good at it. I know that these people exist, even in this congregation because I have met you, I have heard your stories, I have seen the mark of grace on you, in worship, in studies, in your homes, in the hospital, and even in the grocery stores. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but if you have experienced the Spirit in your life, if you have had your life touched in any way by the power of God, if you have tasted any of these first-fruits of the transformation of the Spirit, will you please raise your hand as a testimony to the goodness and faithfulness of God.

Those of you who raised your hands (and those of you who could have raised your hand but didn't), share your story. Share it with me if nothing else, but share it with others. Remind others of what God has done in your life. Not only will you encourage them when there may seem to be no hope, but you will remind yourself of what God has done and how far he has brought you. Tell the stories, rejoice in what God has done, fill your hearts with joy that God has transformed your life. Always remember the amazing transformation of the disciples on Pentecost and always remember that the same transformation, in whatever form it may take, is promised to you today just as much as to those disciples two thousand years ago. Who knows? If you can get excited about sharing and hearing what God has done in this community, we might be able to have a Sunday morning where we have a love feast like the first Methodists, where we set aside time to bear witness to what God has done and is doing so we can be reminded of what God has promised he will do, and maybe God will move among us in the midst of that sharing like he did among them.

God has given his Spirit to his people, his church for whom he died. This Holy Spirit is not just some kind of Spiritual substance [spiritual energy goo] that we use for our own purposes, but the high and holy God of all, who takes up residence in our hearts and lives. With confidence that the only thing you need to be transformed into a bold, equipped servant of God is the Spirit that God gives freely to all who believe, go out into the world and do great things! Go heal the sick, go raise the dead, go be the means through which the world comes to know the healing and transforming love and power of God. Let us pray.

AMEN

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