Outside the Camp

Text: Hebrews 12:28-13:16; Leviticus 16

In my hometown of Waynesboro, Va there is a parking lot at the end of the downtown area we called the Advance Lot because an early generation Advance Autoparts store once stood there but was levelled along with a few other old buildings to facilitate parking. When I was a teen on Friday and Saturday nights we would cruise Main Street from the north end of town starting at the McDonald's parking lot sometimes taking a detour through the Hardee's parking lot to see who was hanging out there and then on down through town to the Advance Lot where we'd cruise through and turn around to go back to Mickey D's and do it all over again. The Advance Lot was a happening place usually not in a good way. It could be a rough place with more than a handful of drunk or stoned teens and in such situations fights would break out. There were also those who, drunk or not, just liked to act tough and pick a fight. The Preppies and jocks hung out up at McDonald's. I had friends in both places.

One evening a classmate and occasional friend of mine, Billy, shot and unfortunately killed his best-friend, David, also a classmate and friend of mine. David was under the influence of a substance and waving a gun very dangerously about and probably would have done some shooting. David came from a good family who loved him, but he was troubled. Billy was a solid man. Few people have the wherewithal to do what he had to do that night. The city soon closed the Advance parking lot on weekend nights.

One could ask how such tragedies could be prevented. The police did make routine passes through the Advance lot but it wasn't enough to keep trouble from happening. What was needed were adults who would just go and hang out with the kids down there. The Advance parking lot would have been one of those "outside the camp" kind of places that would have been a great place for the churches to have been involved but they weren't and that leads me to ask why.

Well, it was the mid-80's just a few years prior to when that very popular and mass-marketed youth movement popularized by the slogan "What Would Jesus Do?" came to the fore. Churches obviously weren't thinking that or they would have been down there. Television preachers were beginning to fall in one scandal after another. The Health and Wealth Movement and Robert Schuller's Positive Thinking or rather magical thinking in a Crystal Cathedral was sweeping through the church making motivational speaking the modus operandi of aspiring pulpiteers. Jerry Falwell was had organized his Moral Majority. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and the 700 Club, was telling Christians how to invest their money in the newly evolving free market all the while pretending to be a prophet and running for President of the United States. That was Mainstream Christianity in North America on the cusp of the mega-church movement which would make Christianity in North America a very big media business and political machine.

But what about the Mainline church? Well, the 80's was the last heyday of the Mainline church. The over 65's who largely populate the Mainline today were in their late 30's and 40's. That was you folks and you were bringing your kids to church all the while believing things were good in the church. There were still plenty of bodies around and the youngest of the Baby-Boomers were practising that interesting phenomenon of dropping their kids off at the church for Sunday School while they went somewhere to read the paper. The Mainline was still continuing on as a backbone institution of morality and charitable support in the community - soup kitchens, clothes closets, supporting missionaries, we were doing it all. We were there for those that wanted to be good citizens, for them to come and participate in our programs. The emphasis was that they had to come to us.

Turning back to Advance parking lot, it didn't matter whether you were Mainstream or Mainline, Advance parking lot where things might get rough was one place church-folk were not going to be. The expectation was that those who hung out at Advance should get themselves together, clean up their acts, become good people, and come to church. The Advance parking lot was an "outside the camp" kind of place, a place of outcasts whom good religious people like us assumed God wanted nothing to do with unless they cleaned themselves up and came back in.

We might have looked to the Old Testament for that line of thinking and certainly not very closely. In the Old Testament, outside the camp was the place where sin and death and all things shameful were banished to. Leprous people, them that looked like the living dead, had to live outside the camp. The carcasses of sacrificed animals were destroyed outside the camp. And as we read from Leviticus, on the Day of Atonement the scapegoat upon whom the high priest had whispered the people's sins was led outside the camp and released to be destroyed by demons. Outside the camp was certainly not a place where one would expect to find God. Rather, inside the camp at the Temple was where God could be found safely tucked behind heavy veils so that his holiness would not shine through and cause mass destruction to the unholy.

Yet if we take a closer look into the world of Leviticus, it wasn't that God was perpetually mad at his people for their sins and that they had to sacrifice something to appease him and ward off his wrath and get him to show favour as some misunderstand the nature of those sacrifices. It was that God wanted to live among his people and with these sacrifices he provided a means for the camp to be cleaned of sin and death so that should it come into contact with him all and be destroyed. God is a consuming fire.

The sacrifices of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, were not about appeasing God. They were about cleaning things up so that God could continue to abide in the camp and the camp not be destroyed by contact with him. The cleansing happened by things being touched with life that had passed through death. Leviticus 17:11 says: "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." The priest did not kill an animal to appease God's anger. Rather, on the Day of Atonement he killed the animals, a bull and a goat, and took the blood which was life that had passed through death and sprinkled it on the priests who were representative of the people and then all over the temple culminating with the Mercy Seat or lid of the Ark of the Covenant where God sat. The end result was that both the people and the temple were cleansed of iniquity by means of life that had passed through death and God and the temple and the people were in essence united (at-oned) in this life that had passed through death. Then, with a second goat the High Priest scapegoated the sins of the people away to destruction. Thus, on the Day of Atonement God and the people were united and sin was utterly taken away from the people.

Applying this to Jesus and his death, his death was not in any way a sacrifice to avert the Father's wrath and gain his favour for us. Rather, it was so that we might be united with God in Jesus through his life that has passed through death. The Holy Spirit bonds us to Jesus and his resurrected life so that we may share his relationship with God the Father. Like the bull and the first goat on the Day of Atonement Jesus died to union us to God through his life which has passed through death and like the second goat he is the Scapegoat who bore away sin and death unto death once and for all. God the Son took on sinful human being at Jesus conception and living faithfully as a man bore it away unto death once and for all. There is no more veil on the temple. Humanity now has unhindered access to God and we are the temple.

Something of importance that we must note and take to heart here, Jesus' atoning work happened outside the camp. The temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices all the sacred things God had given his people for dealing with sin so that he could dwell in their midst had simply become the tools of religion used by the reprehensibly "good" to keep a nation in line and a certain element of the people wealthy namely clergy, lawyers, and politicians if you want your joke of the day.

Thus, the writer of Hebrews challenges us saying: "Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured." That verse, Hebrews 13:13, in my estimation is among the most loaded in the New Testament. Outside the camp to shameful places of human beings in their brokenness is where we are summonsed to go if we want to join with our Lord Jesus Christ to share in his redeeming and reconciling work. There's many a church-growth guru today who says if a congregation wants to endure these anti-church days then we must think "outside the box". I rather say that we need to stop worrying about our continuing existence (that's in Jesus' hands) and start thinking "outside the camp". We need to go to those we think are outside the camp and show them unconditional brotherly love, show them hospitality. We need to visit them in their prisons because we're prisoners too. We all live bound by lies we believe about ourselves and others. We need to go outside the camp and not only model healthy marriages but also be mentors to and support younger peoples in their marriages. We need to renounce our love of money for if there is one area in which we look like the world it is our materialism and consumerism and how we also equate success with wealth. We need to go outside the camp and live faithfully which means dedicating ourselves to live according to the values imposed upon us by the cross. This is worship that is acceptable to God. Friends, let us think outside the camp. Amen.

Loosed to Praise

Text: Luke 13:10-17

A few years ago while I was on vacation I decided to go to church and afterwards to a place called the Shawarma Queen for lunch. That's Middle Eastern food. When I got there to my surprise it was closed on Sunday. I had to settle for Subway. How dare they be closed on Sunday. How dare they ruin my shawarma craving on a Sunday of my vacation? Hopefully you know I'm joking. Actually, I said to myself I knew those people were Christian and I asked God to bless them for having the courage to close their restaurant on Sunday.

Well, I don't think I would be too far afield to say that we all are a bit amazed anymore when we discover businesses closed on Sunday. When I was a child only the odd restaurant and gas station/convenience stores that were open. Now, it’s the odd business that’s closed (and yes we view them as odd) and worse Sunday mornings are now fair game for children’s sporting events which only pits church in a losing bout...Sunday School vs. hockey. Over the past forty years this cultural change has come upon us and its not that it wasn't protested. Sadly, those who did protest were usually vilified as religious extremists. Yet in the big picture, the loss of a national Sunday Sabbath is simply part of the fall of cultural Christianity in the Western world. For some this produces great anxiety but in my opinion it is best we see it as an opportunity, an opportunity for Christians to truly be the church of Jesus Christ rather than just being a religion that's all bound up in a culture.

If I had to give an explanation for why this change has happened, broadly speaking, it is due a fundamental misunderstanding of what Sabbath is that has plagued the people of God from the days of Moses – a legalistic understanding of it as opposed to a restorative understanding. In our lifetimes the drop-off in observing Sunday as the Christian day of rest and worship has come about largely as a reaction by the Baby Boomer generation (those born between 1945 and 1965) against their parent’s and grandparent’s generations being so restrictive about Sundays. The Baby Boomers reacted to and rejected all that legalism but unfortunately threw the baby out with the bath water. Instead of trying to determine why Sabbath is so important they just left the church altogether dismissing it as an authoritarian institution we do well to be sceptical of. Their scepticism of institutions and particularly those that make truth claims persists now to their grandchildren whom are today's 20-somethings who view the church quite negatively as a recent Barna Study has shown.

That brings us to today, we Christians now ourselves need to hear the prophet's call to return to observing a Sabbath and the risks that it entails. I say that as one who is as guilty as anybody when it comes to not keeping Sabbath. I work on Sunday and my lifestyle is such that I need people to work on Sunday and that's simply for convenience' sake. Keeping Sabbath is not easy but we need to keep a day on which we do not work and on which we see to it that no one works for us, a full day of rest, of worshipful rest; a day for the people of God to share in God’s own rest. We need to learn to set that boundary for ourselves and our families and be particularly careful not to be legalistic about.

A quick look at the Old Testament shows us how this misunderstanding came into play. In the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter one it says that after he created everything God rested. Then in Exodus we are given the commandment to observe the Sabbath for as those who bear the image of the Trinity in creation we must rest as he rests and we do this that we might be blessed and be a blessing. Unfortunately, if we follow Sabbath observance among God's people as the Bible attests we find that the idea of the Sabbath being a gift of worship-filled rest got lost and Sabbath became a commandment accompanied by a list of do’s and don’t's that must be observed lest there be consequences. The result was that Sabbath became a means of national preservation and identity among the Jewish people in much the same way as it was in North America prior to the Baby Boomer generation.

In our passage from Luke, this misunderstanding of the nature of Sabbath is at the root of Jesus' conflict with the leader of a synagogue who has his list of things that can’t be done on the Sabbath. Jesus shames him saying, "you would untie your ox or donkey on the Sabbath to take it to water. What about this woman, this child of Abraham, who has been bound for…duh…eighteen long years, shouldn’t she be untied from this spirit of weakness that has her crippled?" Jesus reminds them that God gave us the Sabbath for our rest, renewal, and re-creation…indeed our healing, our being unbound from those things, those spirits, those lies that cripple us whether it be physically, mentally, emotionally, or socially. The Sabbath is not only a day of rest for us. It is also a day for the Lord to set us free from things that bind us so that when we like this woman are set loose from our binds we genuinely praise him. We are loosed to praise.

Going through Luke’s Gospel and noting what Jesus does on the Sabbath is a good way of seeing what Sabbath is. First thing to note is that in all but one instance Jesus went to synagogue on the Sabbath and shared the customary Sabbath meal. The only Sabbath that we don’t find Jesus in synagogue was the Sabbath he spent in the grave. Yet, even on that day his disciples still observed the Sabbath and refrained from anointing his body with perfume that day. This means that Sabbath rest is found in gathering together with God’s people in worship and fellowship and even in mourning. Therefore, I do not buy the idea that sitting on the dock or walking in the woods instead of gathering with God's people is observing Sabbath. It may well indeed be spending time with God but Sabbath rest is found among God’s people in worship.

The first time Luke mentions the Sabbath we find Jesus in the synagogue teaching where he reads a passage from Isaiah revealing who he is and then he picks a fight with the “religious” people saying their legalistic faith keeps them from knowing who he is as their Messiah, the Holy one of God, the Son of God, the bringer of the Kingdom of God. He reads a passage in Isaiah that says who he is and what he's come to do: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.” Thus, Sabbath is when we gather together in public worship and fellowship with God’s people and Jesus being in our midst makes himself known to us as the one who delivers and heals us.

On another Sabbath we find Jesus walking through the grain fields and his disciples glean some wheat. Another conflict with legalists ensues. Jesus ended the argument by saying that he was the Lord of the Sabbath. Then he goes into the synagogue and continues the confrontation by asking if it is lawful to do harm or to do good on the Sabbath and he heals a man’s withered hand infuriating the legalists. Jesus had quite a reputation for healing people and casting out demons on the Sabbath and it is by those works that he is able to silence the legalists...until the join forces with the political powers and have him crucified.

Well, with all this talk of Sabbath I hope that you are beginning to see the time we share together on Sunday morning in a different light. This is Sabbath, time when we gather together as God's people and in this time together Jesus is here with us to untie us from all that binds us and loose us to praise God in wholeness. This is the time and space that Jesus Christ comes to us to bring us Sabbath rest, restoration, and recreation. How he comes I cannot say. All I can say is that he does and he changes us. When we come to church we should come expecting to meet the Lord of the Sabbath for he is here and his personal ministry to us is a free gift to us not because we are worthy of it but simply because he loves us.

You know, when I was young I was taught that we need to come to church because God deserved to be thanked and worshipped for all he's done for us. Worship was something that we came and did for God. But, as I read the Gospel's and see specifically the way Jesus, God the Son himself, understood the Sabbath and what he did on the Sabbath, we don't come to worship for God's sake we come for our own, to lift up our burdens and be healed of our brokenness. The Sabbath is the Trinity's wonderful gift of his own rest to which by which we are healed and loosed to praise. Let us keep it. Amen.

Our Mystical Union with and in Christ Jesus

Text: Luke 12:49-56

Contemporary singer/songwriter Gillian Welch wrote a song back in 2001 called “Orphan Girl” which became quite popular. The orphan girl states she has no family but when she dies and goes to heaven she’ll meet them, but until then she wants Jesus to walk beside her and be her family. Please, allow me the opportunity to entertain you with it.

I am an orphan, on God’s highway. 

But I’ll share my troubles, if you go my way.

I have no mother, no father, no sister, no brother. 

 I am an orphan girl.

I have had friendships, pure and golden.

But the ties of kinship, I have not known them.

I know no mother, no father, no sister, no brother.

I am an orphan girl.

But when he calls me, I will be able

to meet my family, at God’s table.

I’ll meet my mother, my father, my sister, my brother;

no more an orphan girl

Blessed saviour, make me willing

and walk beside me, until I’m with them.

Be my mother, my father, my sister, my brother.

I am an orphan girl.

Now, if you don’t mind and with Gillian Welch’s forgiveness, I’m going to pick her theology apart a bit. These lyrics are comforting beliefs that she highlights particularly if you really are an orphan who does not have family, or over the years death has caused parting with family, and/or your family relations have become so broken that you might as well live on as if you had no family. She claims we look forward to meeting our family again as they should be when Christ calls us to glory. But, be warned the Bible never says that will be the case. It’s implied, but never stated to be the case. What happens to us after death and at Jesus' return is a lot bigger than a family re-union with a healed family though I would settle for that and a dose of instantaneous interstellar travel. Our hope is resurrection and the making new of the entire Creation when as Isaiah says "the earth will be full of the knowing of God as the waters cover the sea" (Is. 11:9).

Second, it is our desire to be with Christ Jesus not only after death but also now. Like Orphan Girl, our prayer is that Christ Jesus walk beside us through life and that he make us willing and able to follow him. The main biblical as well as theological short-sightedness here is that the Bible tells us that Jesus is not only with us, he is in us and for that reason we are no longer orphans now because God the Father is our father and our brothers and sisters in Christ are our family. Indeed, we are children of God by adoption in and by means of Christ Jesus through the free gift of the Holy Spirit. In Christ by bond of the Holy Spirit, we share not only a relationship with Jesus but more so we share with him in his relationship with the God the Father. Thus, we experience for ourselves the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father just as Jesus the Son knows it and we know Jesus' own adoration of the God the Father and his desire to be faithful. The very heart of the Gospel is that God the Father loves us each as much as he does Jesus the Son and acts on that love right now in the relationships and events of our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit to deliver and heal us from the effects of Sin and Death.

One of the key components to why the mainline church is so stagnant today is that the majority of the people in the pews and our ministers approach the Christian faith the way this song reflects. We basically say, “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour, that God is watching over me, and when I die I will go to heaven and see my loved ones who believed as I do. In the meantime I do my best to follow Jesus by doing what it says in the Bible and I pray that he is walking with me in life.” This popularized and easy system of belief neglects and falls short of the fact that in Christ we are participants in the divine nature. 2 Peter 1:4 says that and it means not the we are some how God but that we participate in the relationship of God the Father and God the Son through God the Holy Spirit so that it changes us and shows forth through us in our relationships with others particularly in how we love one another as we ourselves have been loved. By the gift of the Holy Spirit to and in us we are in Christ and Jesus is in us so that we share in his relationship with the Father and in his mission and ministry to the world. Indeed, this living, indwelling covenantal relationship with the Triune God of grace is the basis of what we mean by the words grace, salvation, justification, righteousness, and faith.

A couple of weeks ago my son William and His friend Calvin were having a bit of a playdate. This was Calvin's first playdate with William that didn't include his mother so he was there as a bit of an orphan if I may make that analogy. In playdates past Calvin has really not had anything to do with me. He's always been quite shy towards me. Well, William decided to do some karate with me which ended with him getting bear-hugged and tickled. Next thing I knew, Calvin was right in there with us getting the bear-hugs and the tickles too. For a moment, Calvin had entered into the relationship that William and I share. He could have stood off to the side and missed out thinking I wasn't his father and he had no right to play, but I don't know any kids who think like that. He just saw William having fun. It was good and he couldn't help but join in. He wouldn't have done that with just any kid and his father off the street. He and William have a relationship and the nature of that relationship helped Calvin feel at home enough to share in William's relationship with me. Analogy though it may be, I think it gets at what the heart of the Christian Faith, that it is our saving participation in Jesus' relationship with God the Father in God the Holy Spirit.

Now, what I'm addressing here – this living, indwelling covenantal relationship with the Trinity – is what has traditionally been called our “mystical union with Christ Jesus”. This “mystical union” is the key component of Christian faith. If we are not united to Christ in some organic, living, dynamic way, then the grace in him that the Father offers us in the loving presence and power of the Holy Spirit is meaningless and nothing more than a legal fiction in which Jesus did little more than take the death penalty for those who believe he did. By our mystical union with and in Christ by means of the indwelling relation building work of the Holy Spirit we share in his relationship with the Father. That is the grace by which we are saved.

Rediscovering our mystical union with and in Christ Jesus is the crucial need of the Church today. We need a conscious awareness of the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in and with us. We have all received the Holy Spirit in the midst of Baptism and conversion. As Jesus said, “I am come to cast fire on the earth and how I wish it was already kindled.” The fire he’s referring to is Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit and he is what divides us, indeed separates us from others, biological family included.

Developing prayer-filled and Scripture-filled lives is crucial to our sharing with Jesus in his relationship with the Father. Don't just pray in the morning or at night. Strive to pray without ceasing. Don't just settle for reading a passage of Scripture. If a verse speaks to you, memorize it and repeat it to yourself often throughout the day. Do this and the fruits of the Holy Spirit will begin to well up in you – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the qualities of character that make evident that we have new life in Christ and which set us apart as different; and which will prompt others to want to come and, like Calvin with William and me, join in on Jesus' relationship with God the Father. Amen.

Counting the Cost

Text: Luke 14:25-33

          People often remark how freeing it is to simplify your life by getting rid of the stuff you don’t need and even the stuff you do need. I did such a thing when I moved to Canada from West Virginia. I gave away everything I had except for kitchen stuff, some personal stuff, my books, and my computer. I came to Canada with only three carloads of stuff. It truly was freeing to be rid of that stuff. I could have had a great big yard sale, but I still would have had a few things to give away and the couple of hundred made, to me, would not have been worth the effort. I did experience getting rid of the stuff as freeing. I knew that there were some things I would have to reacquire eventually up here in Canada and when it came time to get some basic furniture and stuff when I moved into the manse, somebody not associated with this church gave me the essentials. Our Lord does look after his own, and I truly believe that when you are at bare minimum, having nothing to count on but the Lord, he comes through. This should point us in the direction of simplifying our lives of possessions in order to know what it is to have the Trinity truly provide for us. Otherwise, we can naively believe that the Lord provided for us when actually we did it ourselves.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is costly and I’ve come to understand that the cost is learning how to give and in order to do that we most count the cost of what our possessions mean to us. Simplifying our lives of possessions so that we have to rely on the gracious provision of the Triune God of grace and the communion of saints is a big step towards learning to live in the Kingdom of God. You see, when we all have the means to acquire as well as actual possession of everything we could possibly want, we totally take for granted the things that we actually need and I would go as far as to say we forget what our true needs are. In this age of Materialism and Consumerism, the experience of having to rely on the Trinity and the communion of saints is grossly supplanted by a false sense of security which we call self-reliance. Bother me if I’m wrong, but I think self-reliance is one of if not the most detrimental, indeed idolatrous, characteristics of our culture affecting us each. Our way of life, our economy, is built on the principle that everybody should be able to provide for themselves, but…if you look at the collective debt of every household in North America and beyond, something is terribly wrong. Most of us are not self-reliant. It’s an illusion. In fact, most of us are simply burying ourselves in the slavery of debt while some very sick corporations and individuals profit from it. But, then we have to ask what the alternative is because if everybody decided to simplify their lives of possessions, the consequence to the global economy would be utter disaster.

           One alternative, would be a more communal style of living in our neighbourhoods. Farley Mowat’s first novel, People of the Deer describes his involvement with an inland Inuit people known as the Ihalmiut. They numbered about 7,000 in the 1880’s and only 30 by 1950. They were starving to death because White’s were killing the Caribou they relied on en mass. One thing that struck me about Mowat’s description of the Ihalmiut way of life was the utter lack of a concept of private ownership. If there was a shovel, it belonged to everybody in the clan and if you needed to use it, you asked around until you found it. If we applied this way of life to our neighbourhoods, can you imagine how much closer we would all become with all the visiting that goes on while we try to locate a shovel, or a lawnmower, or a ladder? I think that sort of a neighbourhood vision is as counter-culture as we could possibly get in our culture, but I think its very Christian and would prove to be very evangelistic. But anyway, we’re not supposed to be talking about being counter-culture. We need to talk more about the spiritual problem of attachment to possessions and secondly, intentionally trying to simplify our lives of them. The reason is that it is truly freeing and does open up space in our lives inwardly and outwardly for Jesus to display his Lordship.

A few years back, a Quaker theologian and writer, Richard J. Foster best known for his book The Celebration of Discipline, wrote The Freedom of Simplicity in which he rather nicely covers the spiritual problem we have with possessions and what to do about it. Firstly, attachment to possessions is a form of idolatry that affects us at the level of how willing we are to give in order to meet the needs of others. In the new humanity which is the Christian faith, the new humanity which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and becoming more and more the image of Christ, Jesus is our model, Jesus of Nazareth who owned nothing and gave his very life for all. He had nothing, but God the Father saw to it that he had everything he needed. His life was all about being able to give.

We live our lives completely differently. We teach our children that if they want something, they must earn the means to buy it so that it is their possession. We adults do the very same thing. We sell our time for money to be able to buy and possess things we need or think we need or simply just want for whatever reason. Yet, what happens? Who here does not wish they had more time to do devotions, to spend with family, to be creative, to just sit and look around and breathe in the panorama and be thankful? How many of us find ourselves waking up in the middle of the night with minds racing about all the things that need to be done? How many of us simply no longer have the mental space to deal with one more thing? This is what attachment to possessions causes.

           In the second place, Foster gives an alternative for us and it is to simplify our lives by giving away what we don’t need and being intentional about living on the bare essentials from there on. This frees up our inner worlds. It makes us realize how much we truly have resource-wise that we could share with those who need. Moreover, it simply frees us up to be able to give. But, there is a catch. Foster says if we really want to address the heart of our problem, we must identify those things that are most meaningful to us and give them away and there is a profound reason for this: when we examine our attachments to our possessions particularly those that mean the most, we come to understand ourselves in a deeply profound way; our brokenness, our idolatry, even our deep need for the soul cleansing that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection provide.

           For a very simple example, two weeks ago I found an attachment that was very important to me, William’s little blue stuffed puppy that he has had maybe since day one. Saturday a week ago, William and I went to do some errands and Puppy came along. That night at bedtime, Puppy was nowhere to be found and I couldn’t recall if Puppy made it back into the house. So, William in his jammies and I got in the car and went searching and asking for Puppy. The next day either Dana or I did the same. I was deeply affected by the whole thing. I probably missed Puppy more than William did. I searched the Net to see if we could get a new one. They’re not made anymore. Monday came and Dana took William and Alice to get a new stuffy. William got a monkey because he is affectionately known as a silly monkey. Later that evening we had minister friends and their children over for dinner. The children went down in the basement to play. All of a sudden I heard William shouting, “I found Puppy. Mommy, Daddy I found Puppy!” Up the stairs he came to show us. I about cried.

           The point isn’t that I’m going to have to give Puppy away because he means too much to me. He’s William’s Puppy after all and one day he’ll/we’ll figure out what to do with it. Yet, realizing my over-attachment to Puppy made me look inside and ask why. Well, me being the youngest of four, my stuffies were often used by my siblings to be mean to me. Moreover, with my parents divorcing while I was a small child my stuffies meant more to me than they otherwise would have. And so, something I have to keep telling myself about William is that he’s a happy kid in a healthy home and he will not grow up with the same pains I did. To me, that is quite freeing.

            But, that’s an adult child pondering the meaning of stuffies. What happens when our most meaningful possessions are cottages, boats, or family heirlooms? Does this mean we are supposed to give them away? Well, that’s between God and our self’s and not a matter to be judged by others. The important thing is to examine the emotional roots of the attachment. What does it say when, for example, people know their cottage neighbours whom they see once or twice a year better than their home neighbours whom they see nearly everyday?

           Well, giving away what we don’t need is a good discipline. It shows us how and what we have invested our lives in. The end result truly is a less cluttered and more spacious interior life. Just ask any interior decorator how to make a room look bigger…remove one third of the stuff that’s in it. I don’t think we need to give away the most meaningful stuff, yet we should certainly ponder why these things are so meaningful that we couldn’t just part with them.

That leads us to intentional living: being intentional about keeping our lives free by trying to live on just the basics and when we do go beyond the basics, asking ourselves why we want what it is that we want. Substance abusers trying to go clean have to make a conscious effort to figure out why they want that substance. So, it is with our attachment to possessions. One key way for us to open up space in ourselves and in our lives for Jesus and for others is to simplify and intentionally live simply. As I hinted earlier, with Jesus as our model, the goal for us is to discipline ourselves to be more willing and able to give, to give sacrificially. That, my friends, is the cost of grace. Amen.

Turning the World Upside-down

Text: Acts 17:1-9 (2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-35)

“These men who have turned the world upside-down have come here also....” I hear these words, albeit the words of an angry mob, and ask how can they apply to us the church here in North America. How can we be those who turn this world, this culture upside-down when for the most part it owes its existence to Christianity. Seriously, literature majors in university are still recommended if not required to read the Bible in the King James Version because it is needed for making sense of so much of Western literature. Economics, we would not live in a capitalist economy without Calvinism's stress on delayed gratification. You know, deny yourself now for the heavenly reward later. That's called investing. Democracy, democratic forms of government are the result of John Calvin having declared in Book Five of his Institutes of the Christian Religion that the people of a land have a divine right to overthrow a tyrannical king. If you did not know, elections are basically a bloodless means of overturning a government. The justice system, it may sound a bit controversial but the church's misunderstanding of the nature of God's justice, mercy, and wrath has led to our having a justice system that is retributive rather than restorative. The environment, science and technology, the mindset that has brought on the destruction of the environment is rooted in Western Christianity's misunderstanding of what it means for humans to be in the image of God and have dominion over creation. We think we are little gods who have power to dominate the creation rather than power to caretake it. Sir Francis Bacon, who defined the scientific method, said it best when he said that humans are nature's masters and it must be made to obey us for our benefit. Cultural imperialism, Christian missionaries in the 19th and 20th Centuries took Western ways of medicine, lifestyle, education, economics, and progress into the Two-thirds World along with our version of the Gospel and made their worlds look just like our own to the detriment of indigenous culture! I'll stop there but I think it is obvious that we Christians made the world we live in particularly so in North America.

Yet, something has happened. Gabe Lyons, a Christian sociologist of sorts and author of unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters notes: “Not too long ago, belief in the Christian God was almost assumed. Judeo-Christian principles governed the public square and anyone who challenged them was marginalized. Christian leaders were considered forces with which to be reckoned, and politicians coveted the Christian vote. That is no longer true. The world today is increasingly pluralistic and post-Christian. Christianity is no longer the dominant religion governing the public square. Many faiths have a seat at the table. The world is also increasingly post-modern. Christian truth claims are questioned by a generation that is skeptical of statements of certainty. And,...negative perceptions about Christianity abound even as the faith's influence is slipping away and churches face declining attendance.”

I don't think that I am being too overly generalistic to say that in Western Culture particularly the North American variety the church has not and is not turning the world upside-down, but rather it's the other way around. The world is turning the church upside-down. Indeed, in Mainline denominations no matter the survey the divorce rate is just as high as it is out there; extra-marital sex even among senior citizens – just as high, substance abuse, domestic violence – just as high; our views on money, consumerism, materialism – pretty much the same. When it comes to morals, we for the most part don't look so much like the image of our God. Rather, we look just like the culture around us. And, a recent Barna study tells us that people outside the church, particularly those younger than forty think that Christians are simply anti-homosexual (91%), judgemental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), too political (75%), out of touch with reality (72%), insensitive to others (70%), and boring (68%). Apparently and in all sincerity, to the world around us we really don't look like Jesus.

To the world around us we do not look like those who are that new form of humanity Paul calls “in Christ”. Paul said there in 2 Corinthians 5:17 (and I'll give you a very literal translation), “if anyone is in Christ, NEW CREATION.” He means the people in Christ (that's us by the way) are return of Jesus, all things made new, Kingdom of God kind of humans reconciled to the God who made us right down to the deepest part of who or what we are by the incarnation of God the Son as Jesus of Nazareth applied to us by the indwelling the Holy Spirit. We don't look like new creation “in Christ” people who proclaim and minister the divine edict of unconditional reconciliation to God rendered in and by Jesus that is evident in communities of people who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and love one another so unconditionally and so sacrificially that we virtually eliminate poverty among ourselves as attested of the early church by the book of Acts.

Friends, there is another king. His name is Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews and the Lord and Saviour of the universe. In life and in death we belong to him. True? He has given us one commandment, only one. What is it? That we love one another as he has loved us. Why? So that the world around us will know that we are his disciples. One commandment, yes? Love one another, yes? So, why do we look so much like the world around us? Why are we looked upon so negatively when all we are supposed to be doing is loving one another with zealous authenticity as Jesus has loved us each laying his life down for us? It's time we got back to turning the world upside-down.

Well, turning back to the Book of Acts and taking a look at what Paul was doing that turned the world upside-down and well basically, it began with him going to his people and Jesus' people too, the Jewish people, to their Sabbath teaching sessions and there Luke says he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, 'This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Messiah'." Some of the ethnic Jews were persuaded and joined with them as well as many of the law-abiding Gentiles or God-fearers and many leading women. And then, even the altercation that followed spread the word even further. Please note that the early church missionary efforts of Paul were primarily an in-house Jewish thing. The first culture to be turned upside-down by the Gospel of Jesus Christ was Paul's own Jewish culture.

Well, applying this to our situation in North American, the first thing that needs to be turned upside-down is us, the Christian church. Turning the world upside-down must start in-house. We, the Jesus people, the people of faith must gather quite humbly and prayerfully around the Scriptures and let the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit teach us who he is, why he had to suffer, why his way of life is the way of the cross. We have to come back to him gathering humbly around the Scriptures so that we can take to heart his life and way of life and know him in not only his death, but also in his resurrection. As Paul said in Philippians: I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” We belong to Jesus. His way of the cross and his new life in resurrection is our way and our life. We are not to be the religious institution that undergirds Western civilization. That's colluding with Caesar. We are the new creation ones "in Christ" called to the ministry of reconciliation and restoration.

I'm one of those freakazoid ministers who still translate the Biblical passages from which I preach. For me, that first-hand handling of the Bible in its original languages is when and where I really get "it", where I feast on the word. Let me share some of that wealth from here in Acts. Luke says Paul reasoned with his people from the Scriptures. The Greek word for reasoned there is more or less our word dialogue and it literally means to mingle thought with thought, mingle thought with thought. The imagery there to me is quite simply beautiful. It's not arguing or banging your head against the wall reasoning. It's a gentle mingling. We Christians really just simply need to sit down together as much as we can and mingle our thoughts on Scripture passages not so much around the question of “what is the passage telling us to do” but rather “what is the passage telling us of who Jesus is.” Mingling our thoughts, together, around a table is a much richer way to experience the transforming power of Christ Jesus in Scripture than a private pondering of the Our Daily Bread that so many of us enshrine in our bathrooms of all places.

Another word Luke uses which we translate as “explaining” literally means opening completely. Luke uses it in his Gospel to describe how those two disciples on the Emmaus road had their eyes opened to see Jesus when he broke bread with them. He also uses it to say how Lydia, Paul's first convert in Macedonia, how the Lord opened her heart to accept Paul's message of Jesus. When we gather around the Scriptures to mingle thought with thought the Lord will indeed open our eyes to see him and our hearts to receive him.

Another word Luke uses which we translate as “proving” quite literally means to set before as in to set food before another. Jesus gave his disciples the miracle meal of loaves and fish to set before the multitudes. In our mingling of thought with thought around scriptures Jesus through the working of the Holy Spirit will open us up to see and accept him and will set before us the miracle feeding of his very life to enliven us.

Another word, the one we translate as persuaded. In Greek, it is a passive word, meaning something that is done to us rather than something we do ourselves. So, it is not "you've presented me with all this evidence that demands a verdict and now my decision is....". It's more like "suddenly my life makes no sense apart from what you just told me about this Jesus."

Winding down, what's usually the first thing people do when they come to church and sit in a pew? I've noticed that they thumb through the stuff in the pew racks as if searching for something. This is indeed proof that people do come to church searching for something and it is Jesus, our king Jesus, that they/we are searching for and he can indeed be found in our midst. So, let's gather around the Scriptures to mingle thought with thought particularly around the question of who is Jesus. Paul's quintessential question which he asked Jesus when he met him on the road to Damascus was "Who are you, Lord?" That's the question we must gather together around. Turning the world upside-down begins with the answer to that question. When we prayerfully gather around the Scriptures mingling thought with thought Jesus will come and open us up for the feast and he will turn the world upside-down yet again. The people who are most authentic in sharing Christ are those who are presently having enlivening and transforming encounters with the Lord that they feel not ashamed but empowered to share with others. Let me leave you with a thought to ponder: what would happen here if this congregation put aside everything it is doing and just hunkered down in prayer and Bible Study until it happened? Amen.