Real Love: the Directions of Love

My friend Charlie Brown, the lead character in the “Peanuts” comic strip, wants very much to be loved and treated with respect.  In one strip he is lying down with his head resting on a stone as Lucy stands beside him.  Charlie looks up at Lucy and asks: “If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?”  Lucy replies, “I promise.”  To which Charlie responds, “This is very personal and I don’t want you to laugh.”  Lucy responds: “You have my solemn promise.”  Charlie than shares something very special to him: “Sometimes I lie awake at night listening for a voice that will cry, ‘We love you, Charlie Brown!”  Lucy bursts forth with a boisterous “HA! HA! HA! HA!” and Charlie is bowled over from his reclining position.  Can you relate, to wishing that somebody would come up and let you know that you are loved?  Well this morning let me be the one to tell you that you are loved.  God loves you very much this morning, and I love you as well.  This morning is all about love.

If you would, join me in the gospel of Matthew, the 22nd chapter, verses 34-40.

Jesus is asked what the most important commandment was and he gives a two part answer.  The first thing to realize is that unless Jesus says that the laws are all equal then he is getting it wrong in the eyes of those questioning him.  To the Pharisees all the 600 plus commandments found in scripture were of equal importance.  And since they were divine law it was unlawful for lowly humans to elevate one law above the others.  The next thing that we should notice is that at the end Jesus says that not only the entirety of the law rest on these commandments but also all the teachings of the prophets, in other words Jesus is saying that everything that has ever been from God has these two commandments behind them. 

The first one is obvious, we are supposed to love God with all our heart all our soul and our entire mind.  Then Jesus says that we must love our neighbor as ourselves.  Actually what Jesus says is that the second is like the first, which means that loving our neighbors is the same thing as loving God.  So here in these two commandments we find what I like to call the three directions of love.  First, we need to love upward, toward God.  Secondly, we need to love inward, toward ourselves.  Thirdly, we need to love outward, toward our neighbors, and enemies.

Direction #1: Upward

Our love for God is upward and must take precedence above all else.  God, after all deserves all of our love, not just a part of it.  

If I were to be honest I have trouble loving God with my all, I always want to leave some love out, so I have enough for everyone else, but the truth is that if we love God with our all we will necessarily love others even better than we currently do.  C.S. Lewis once said, “When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

Now I want us to be clear that there are about as many ways to love God as there are people who love God.  Some people love God through intellectual pursuits, to them the more they study the Bible and other writings the closer they get to God.  There are other people who love God through nature, to them working the land or merely walking though it allows them to connect with God.  There are others who love God in music, some in singing songs, and some in writing songs.

Then you find people who love God best through the general act of creation, they understand the God of the Old Testament, a God who created and then was let down by that creation.  But there are also people love God through the miraculous or the charismatic, these people are always trying to get in touch with the Holy Spirit.  And there are people who live their lives as a sacrifice to others; they love God through the person of Jesus, laying down their lives in order that they might best love God.

In addition there are other people who love God in a million other ways, some I have heard of, many I have no knowledge of, but they are loving God in the ways that make sense to them, As long as we believe that God created and loved us enough to send Jesus to live and die for us, we are allowed to love God in a variety of ways.  God did not create us to be the same, but used many different colors and brush strokes in order to create a very varied masterpiece.

Direction #2: Inward

After we first direct our love upward we see that we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  Love them like we love us.  Hence we must first love ourselves, so our second direction of love must be inward, but before we can love ourselves we must first know ourselves.  We must know who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses and learn to accept them both; we must know that which we identify with, where our allegiances lay; and once we do that we are open to loving ourselves correctly.

Peter knew this.  Last time we were together you may remember that we spent some time with Peter and his attempt to walk on water, well time has moved on so when we look at Peter within the happenings of the book of Acts we see a man who knows himself.  As I mentioned two weeks ago Peter is less than consistent through the gospels.  One minute he is throwing down his nets and the next he is sinking into the water.  One minute he is confessing Jesus as Lord and the next he is being called Satan.  One minute he is chopping off an ear to save Jesus and the next he is denying that he even knows him.  Peter in the gospels is the personification of oxymoron, emphasis on moron.  But by the time we find him in Acts there have been changes.  Jesus has died and lived and then rose into heaven, and Peter is becoming the rock that Jesus said that he would be.  He is embracing his new role within this new construct which we call the New Testament church.  He knows the times that he has fallen and the times he has succeeded and he is better because of this knowledge.  The same can happen to us when we acknowledge both the negative and the positive aspects of our past and our present.  At the same time we need to have control over these acknowledgments, so that we do not beat ourselves up over our weaknesses nor lift ourselves up too high because of the multitude of positives that we find.  Because our positive aspects do not make us any more worthy for God to act in our lives and our negative aspects do not make us any less worthy for God to act in our lives.  He acts because of love and grace not because of our level of worth.

Besides knowing his strengths and weaknesses and making peace with them Peter also knows where his identity is found.  Peter is a “Christ believing Jew”.  That is a term that we find difficult to understand these days, where we draw a bold defining line between Christian and Jew, but we should remember that Jesus was Jewish and that fact defined quite a bit about his words and his actions.  Through the first 9 chapters of Acts this isn't that big of a deal, but then we get to Acts 10 and Peter’s Jewishness and his Christian-ness come into conflict.  You see Peter has a dream about clean and unclean animals, and the second that the red-letter voice speaks Peter is quick to point out that he has never partaken in a BLT or a hot-dog at the ballpark.  These foods, among many others, were off limits to a good Jew who still followed the food commands found in the Old Testament.  He knew who he was by the groups he identified with.  Who are you?  A father?  A mother?  A man?  A woman?  A student?  A child?  An American?  A Christian?  I am a son, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a nephew, and a grandson.  I am a friend, a lover, and a husband.  I am a believer, a follower, and a Christian.  I am an employee, a coworker, a leader, and a Pastor.  Who we identify with will define who we are when we arrive at the feet of God, once there change may occur.

Once you know who you are, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and knowing how you identify yourself you are open to loving yourself correctly.  Because I am not talking about a love where you hold yourself high above others.  And I am not talking about a love where we understand that we have it all together and other people don’t.  I am talking about a love that holds us in a true light, knowing that we aren’t perfect but knowing that we are still loved by God and still should be loved by ourselves and others.  Much like loving God allows us to love others better, so loving ourselves correctly allows us to love others better.  This leads us to the others.

Direction #3: Outward

About 18 years ago I received my first CD player for my birthday.  The first CD I got was Some Gave All by Billy Ray Cyrus featuring that amazing song Achy Breaky Heart.  The second CD I received was from my sister and it was dc talk’s Free at Last.  The first track on it is a song titled love is a verb.  I would like to share the first verse with you, 

Pullin' out my big black book

Cause when I need a word defined that's where I look

So I move to the L's quick, fast, in a hurry

Threw on my specs, thought my vision was blurry

I looked again but to my dismay

It was black and white with no room for grey

Ya see, a big "V" stood beyond my word

And yo that's when it hit me, that luv is a verb 

So, the first direction we must love is upward to God, then we must turn inward to ourselves, and finally we must turn our love outward to our neighbor, which Jesus has already expanded, in the Sermon on the Mount, to including our enemies, in other words then we are called to love the entire world.  Much like we need to love ourselves correctly we also need to love others correctly.  To that extent I am not talking about a good feeling in your heart about someone, I am talking about a love of action.

To that end I would like to talk about one of my favorite parables, it is found in Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10:30

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of my favorite parables; it just seems like a really great example of the loving kindness that we are meant to share with our neighbors.  Of course the problem is that Jesus never really tells us who are neighbor is, does he?  After all the expert in the law asks Jesus who his neighbor is and Jesus relays a story about how one is a neighbor.  Which is not the same thing.  Jesus never tells us who our neighbor is, he never defines it, he just tells us that we are to love them, have mercy on them, and then we will be their neighbor.  I think that the reason Jesus goes about it this way is to illustrate that everyone is our neighbor, and if we treat everyone with love and mercy we will also be their neighbor.  

So what do loving Christians do?  The first thing that a loving Christian does is echo the love that has been shown to them.  God shows us love in three major ways, first God shows us love through mercy, because we do not get what we deserve.  Secondly, God shows us love through grace; we get what we don't deserve.  Third, God shows us love through his compassion, we get what we could not obtain on our own, namely salvation.  God did not save us based on how great we were or how much we could do for him, but rather because of his great love for us.  As a Christian it is our call and duty to show the same love to others.

The second thing, is that loving Christians are people of action.  They are loving in what they speak, or don't speak.  Whether in the prayers that they pray or the topics that they talk about loving people try to speak positively.  Loving Christians do not put people down, they raise them up.  They tell people to stop when inappropriate things are being said, whether it is racial, or political, or sexual, or even denominational.  It also means that we need to be about the truth, even if the truth is painful.  A good friend does not bite their tongue when they see a friend stumble; they do not turn a blind eye when someone is hurting their friend, nor when their friend is hurting someone else.  To quote Professor Dumbledore, “There are all kinds of courage.  It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”  

A loving person also shows love in what they do, even when it is costly, and even when it is time consuming.  We need to be willing to go out of our way to help another person, if we are not how can we ever hope that someone else will for us.  Looking at the parable we see that the priest and the Levite were willing to cross to the other side to get away from someone, but not to go toward someone.  And we see that the Samaritan was willing to help the injured man, to pay for his room, and to promise to pay for any other expense.  We know that the road to Jericho was one of the most dangerous roads in Jesus' time.  Murderers and robbers prowled the road to Jericho, but the Samaritan was willing to stop and help anyway.  That is what we need to be about as well.

Like the good Samaritan we also must be willing to show love to all kinds of people.  We are meant to be kind to anyone and everyone, no matter their race, or their religion, or their age, or their gender, or the amount of money in their wallet.  How much greater of a witness is it that we, as Christians are willing to help anyone who needs our help.  Jesus knew this, its why he said the following in Matthew 5.  “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?  Do not even the pagans do that?”  If we only show love to the people in this church, or even worse, only show love to the people we know are saved, what good is it?  Pretty much everyone shows love to the people who are like them, mainly because they are like them.

This morning we are going to end with what is most likely a new song for you.  It is a song that was written in 1968 by a Catholic priest by the name of Peter Scholtes.  It is a song that I feel adequately conveys what we are at base to be about, Love.  In John 13:34 and 35 Jesus says “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

We are meant to love our God we are meant to love ourselves and we are meant to love our world.  We are meant to do this because God is love, when we love we show God to others, by our words, yes, but mainly by our actions.  This song talks about being one, which we will spend next week talking about, it talks about sharing the news that God is in our land, which we will also talk about down the road.  But mostly it reminds us that the world should know that we are Christians by our love.

Peace and Love,

Pastor K

Real Faith and commas

At the base of everything that we do in this life there is an element of faith.  From the moment we rise in the morning to the moment we lay ourselves down to sleep.  A faith that we will continue to move ever onward, toward, something.  From starting our cars to eating our meals to loving our spouses, everything has an element of faith.  And the same can be said for every aspect of a church service.  We have faith that when we show up God will be there also.  We have faith that when we lift our voices in song God will be worshiped   We have faith that when we raise up our prayers that God will hear and that God will care.  We have faith that there is knowledge to be gained from this really old book, which by and large isn’t the easiest thing to read or understand in the first place.  We have faith that the pastor will get up here to preach and that what he has to say will be what God wants us to hear, as long as we can stay awake to hear it.  We have faith that God is somewhere there at all.

And speaking specifically of sermons faith lies at the base of every sermon, and this one a little bit more so.  As I said last week for the next three weeks I will be preaching about the six words at the end of each service outline.  Real Faith.  Real Love. Real People.  So, today is about faith, because faith is at the base of everything we do and it should be at the base of everything that we are trying to be as followers of Jesus.  Whenever I start thinking about a sermon I start with trying to figure out which scripture should be used.  I immediately thought of Matthew 8 and the story of the centurion.  You may remember it, a centurion has a servant, or perhaps a son, who is sick, dying, and he comes to Jesus and speaks of authority and asks Jesus to save his servant, son.  Jesus says that he is healed and the centurion believes and goes on his way.  Jesus responds by saying that no one in Israel has the faith that this gentile has.  But as I was delving into the scripture I realized that it was not talking about the faith that I wanted to talk about this morning.  It talks about the faith in Jesus to do something, which is a faith that we should have, after all with God all things are possible and we need to believe that.  But what I really wanted to talk about was having faith, as in belief.

To that end I consulted the smartest person I know and Mary suggested that Matthew 14 may be a better text for what I had on my heart to say.  Turns out she was right, which whether or not I like to admit it, she usually is.  So this morning we are going to be looking at the 14th chapter of Matthew, specifically verses 22 through 36, feel free to turn there in your Bibles, if you would like.

Matthew 14:22-36

Jesus has just finished feeding more than five thousand people with a small amount of food.  I assume that Jesus is tired, worn out by the miracle that he has just provided, so he tells his disciples to get in the boat and cross to the other side while he dismisses the crowds and goes up on the mountain to pray.  Jesus prays for a long time, a common occurrence for Jesus, if you notice in the Bible whenever Jesus goes to pray a lot of things happen, so they couldn't have been just short prayers.  Anyway, Jesus prays and by the time he finishes the disciples are quite a bit of ways from the shore and a storm has come up, a storm that, depending on the version, batters or even torments the small boat.
I believe that today’s scripture gives us a real faith road-map   It lets us know how we get to a place of having real faith and it shows us the three things that real faith requires of us.

The first marker on our map is that there are times in life where you are going to be alone.  Sometimes you will be alone even in the midst of a group.  The first thing I want to point out to you is that this is the first time that the disciples have been sent out without Jesus.  So for the disciples in the boat the God with us is no longer with them.

The second marker on our road-map  the second truth is that when you are alone sometimes troubles will come.  The next thing to notice is that the boat is battered; it is tormented by the sea.  Jesus has left the disciples to fend for themselves and they are being beat up.  This often happens to us as individuals and also to us as a church.  We feel alone and battered upon the seas of life.  We are abandoned by those who are meant to love and care for us.  Our bodies which once gave us so much freedom seem to be becoming prisons for our souls.  The dreams that once gave us hope lay as reminders of what we have never accomplished and most likely never will.  Things are dark, the waters are choppy, the wind is rough and we are in the midst of being thrown overboard and we need help.

The third marker is that when you are in the midst of trouble help might come in surprising ways.  It is in this midst of struggle that Jesus re-enters the picture, but not as you might first imagine.  Jesus enters as a shadowy figure that the disciples don’t even recognize.  The NIV tells us that it is during the fourth watch when the shadowy Jesus shows up, which means it is about 3 in the morning.  It has been a long and treacherous night for the disciples, they have fought for their very lives and now they see what they first identify as a ghost.  It is not surprising that they cowered in fear.  Nor is it that much of a surprise that they don’t notice that Jesus is Jesus.  After all this is the first time that they have seen Jesus walk on water, it has been hours since they last saw him, and he told them to cross over without him.  If it was me I would expect Jesus to meet me on the other side, not out in the middle.

The fourth marker is that when the help comes you need to be able to recognize it. Maybe you’ve heard the following story before, but I feel that it is worth repeating it.  A religious man is on top of a roof during a great flood. A man comes by in a boat and says "Get in, get in!" The religious man replies, "No, I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle." Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the guy tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in God and God will give him a miracle. With the water at about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again, because "God will grant him a miracle." With the water at chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to get in, mumbling with the water in his mouth, he again turns down the request for help for the faith of God. He arrives at the gates of heaven with broken faith and says to Peter, I thought God would grant me a miracle and I have been let down." St. Peter chuckles and responds, "I don't know what you're complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter."

The fifth marker is that when help comes, even if it is recognizable, we are allowed to question it. Jesus comes walking on the water and they are afraid, but then Jesus speaks.  He tells them to have courage, that it is him, that they do not need to be afraid.  And Peter opens up his mouth, and questions Jesus.  Peter is the first one to talk a lot of times in the gospels.  He is the one who puts his foot in his mouth again and again, at the same time he is the one that Jesus says he will build his church upon.  Peter is the one that the Catholic Church considers the first Pope.  Peter questions Jesus, is it really you, if it is let me come out there with you.  Questions are all right to have.  God is big enough to handle whatever questions you have for him.  You may generally question why there is evil in this world.  Or you may have specific questions about why someone died or what you should do with your life.  You may not always get the answer you want, you may not get any answer at all, but ask the questions that you need to ask.  There are over 30 thousand denominations in Christianity, that is a lot of people asking a lot of questions and coming to different conclusions, yet we still all believe in Jesus, all follow him as best we know how.

The sixth marker is that after our questions are answered we must be willing to get out of the boat.  Yes Peter asked the question, but once its answered then you still have to get out of the boat.  Believing in Jesus is nothing if you don’t start following Jesus.  Claiming Jesus died for you is nothing, if you don’t then start living your life the way he has shown you.  Knowing Jesus is nothing if you aren't willing to put your money where you mouth is and start moving.  If you want to walk on water you've got to get out of the boat.  The question then, is what is your boat?  John Ortberg lays it out this way “Your boat is whatever represents safety and security to you apart from God himself.  Your boat is whatever you are tempted to put your trust in, especially when life gets a little stormy.  Your boat is whatever keeps you so comfortable that you don’t want to give it up even if it’s keeping you from joining Jesus on the waves.”  Maybe you boat is a job, or a relationship, or success or secrecy or this church.  What is holding you back from following Jesus just a little bit closer?  If you know the answer, get out, move on, and walk on water.  It’s dangerous; you might fail, but walk anyway.

Which brings us to the seventh marker, which is that if you are willing to get out of the boat you still might fail, but failure is not a period, just a comma.  Failure is not a period, just a comma.  Failure is not a period, just a comma.

I spent my teen years in West Virginia.  We got quite a bit of bad weather in the winter and so I was used to driving in less than ideal conditions.  Point of fact the year I got my learner’s permit there was a mid March blizzard and so I partly learned to drive in snow.  I know that if you drive a little slower and are a little more aware you will be just fine.  But then a weird thing happened a few years ago.  Mary and I were planning on visiting her family in Ohio, and we ended up getting a weekend with a snowstorm.  The conditions were awful, snow and wind and ice and we started on our way after I got off of work.  Before we even set out I didn't want to go, I was concerned about the weather and driving conditions and felt very uneasy.

As we set out in a snail’s pace we would pass car after car that had run off the road and each time I would feel a little worse and a little worse, my stomach started going crazy, my breathing was short, in other words I was having a panic attack, for the first time in my life, I wasn't even the one driving.  After almost two hours we arrived at the Gas City exit, normally the trip takes about 20 minutes from Anderson, and we decided to stop for the night and set out the next day.  The next day wasn't much better for me, so Mary once again drove, the roads in Indiana were awful, but as soon as we hit Ohio the roads were perfectly fine.  It was the worst car ride of my life, and if it hadn't been for Mary being there trying to comfort me, I don’t know what would have happened.  Since that day I have had quite a few more times when I was quite concerned getting behind the wheel during bad weather.

My point in bringing this up is that Peter has been in a boat a lot of times over the years.  Jesus called him from a boat, he saw Jesus command the wind and the waves in a boat, but here he is and things have taken an unexpected turn.  Peter is out of his comfort zone right in the middle of his comfort zone. And then he gets out on the water and things at first go just fine.  But if you ever risk something it is possible that you may not get what you want.  Peter gets out of the boat and wants to walk with Jesus, but then he focuses on things that are not Jesus.  Matthew writes that Peter noticed the wind…it’s a storm and Peter notices the wind.  What’s more amazing that Peter notices the wind when he is walking on the water or that he didn’t notice it when he was paying attention to Jesus?  I would say the latter, when you are walking in the midst of the storm it would be hard to not notice the storm.  So Peter notices the wind, and he starts to sink.

But, then you have the eighth marker, which is that if you end up failing, ask for help.  I think that the smartest thing that Peter does in this whole section is that when he starts to sink he cries out to Jesus for help.  I mentioned a couple weeks ago that when I started to pray about having to lead worship I felt a little better about it.  I must confess that the entire time I was panicking in the car I don’t remember praying, I wasn't smart enough to know where to turn, I wasn't smart enough to ask the right person for help.  I tried to close my eyes, tried to block out the storm, instead I sank.  If you’re in trouble ask for help.  If you are in pain, go to a doctor.  If you are lonely call a friend.  If you are lost, consult a map or ask for directions.  If you don’t know the answer, call a lifeline.  There is help all around us that we never reach out for.

The ninth, and last marker is that if/when help comes name it.  Peter was smart enough to ask for help, and of course Jesus gave it.  And Jesus, being the teacher that he is uses the moment to ask Peter a question of his own, why do you doubt?  We don’t get the answer, but we do get the response from the group as a whole.  They worshiped him, saying that truly he was the Son of God.

As I said at the beginning these markers, this scripture, is a road-map   It is the directions that we need in order to have real faith.  Because real faith requires three things, it requires vision, it requires movement, and it requires trust.

If we are to have real faith we must have vision.  When we are in the midst of struggle we must have a vision that exceeds our circumstances.  It is not enough to know that we are in trouble; we must also recognize that we have been in trouble before and gotten past it.  We must recognize that the God who has gone with us before continues to go with us today.  We must see that there is help, and sometimes it comes in the form of a boat or a helicopter, not in a 'miracle'.  We must look for Jesus in every circumstance, because if you aren't looking for him, you just might miss him.

If we are to have real faith we must have movement.  We cannot be willing to stay in our boat, to stay where we are comfortable.  We must be willing to risk a lot in order to gain so much more.  Our little church will only ever be a little church if everyone of us is not willing to get out of the boat for the chance to walk on water.  What traditions are you willing to give up so that this church can reach our world in a better way?  What songs can we stop singing, what clothes can we stop wearing, what actions can we start doing, what love can we start showing?

Finally if we are to have real faith we must have trust.  Trust that God will continue to walk alongside, to lead, to show, to guide us to the place he has for this specific church in this specific place at this specific time.  We must also trust each other; trust that what we all want is for this church to be God’s church, for this people to be God’s people, for this time to be God’s time.

Peace and Love,
Pastor K

Real People - The Unity of All Believers

This sermon can be summed up in one sentence, if we are to be the church we must strive to be one, one body, one faith, one love, one people.  The end.  Okay, so its not quite the end, sorry for those of you who want to go home and get ready for the Super Bowl.  As you may have realized in the last three months but I usually do a sermon over a single piece of scripture, I sometimes will talk about other scriptures in a sermon but they are all for the benefit of understanding the main scripture.  Today is going to be a little different.  I have four points this morning and there is a scripture for each point.  I did it this way to illustrate that much like the many of us are to be one, the many of the Bible is one as well.

One Body – 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
I could just say that Paul says it pretty good in this scripture, so I don’t really have anything much to add to it.  But I will try to, if not add, at least expound on a few things that Paul brings up.  The first thing I would want to say is that each part of the body has something in common.  For instance this is my hand, and my eye and my foot, they have me in common.  Now if my body was made up of parts of different people it wouldn’t work that well, if I had one of my legs and one of Mary’s I would be leaning here not standing.  For my body to work to its fullest it has to be comprised of my body parts.  Much like my body the church must have something in common.  We are not a bunch of bodies we are all part of Christ’s body.  We are Christ’s hand, and Christ’s eye, and Christ’s underarm, and lets face it someone has to be the underarm.

Secondly we are all different.  While we make up one body we bring our own gifts and talents and stories to the table.  I know full well how some of my body parts work.  I can somewhat explain how the lens and cornea and iris work, to explain how my eye can see.  I could talk to you a little about veins and arteries and how the blood pumps oxygenated blood around our cardiovascular systems.  There are other parts of my body that are a complete mystery to me, my gallbladder for instance.  The same can be said for us as a church.  I can tell you my story and most of Mary’s story, but only a little bit of John’s story or Donna’s story.  I do not have Jennica’s gifts or Linda’s.  I have some talent in several areas but not enough for the church to be great by myself.  Only when we are all bringing our gifts, talents and stories to the table are we able to accomplish all that God has in store for us.

Third, we all must go is the same direction.  The thing about a body is that the parts are not detachable.  The hand can not take a vacation from the body if it expects to still have movement.  You can’t pluck out your eye and expect to have the same kind of vision that you used to have.  No part of the body can go its own way, nor can the body get rid of any of its parts and still work the same way.  The body must continually go in the same direction.  To this end we must be willing to work together toward the same goals.  To do this we all must be willing to occasionally not get our own way.  We must be willing to lay aside our own ambitions so that the body can become greater than its parts.

The final thing I would like to say about being a part of the body is that when one part of the body hurts we all hurt.  Two weeks ago I was sick, among other symptoms I had a pretty bad cough, at first a very dry one and then one accompanied with chest congestion.  After one particularly bad night I went to work and every time I coughed my chest and sides hurt.  This happens because the body is one whole.  Much like the body cannot be separated without drastic damage neither can one part hurt without the rest of the body being affected.  That’s the negative aspect of being a body, yes by the joining of the various parts we are stronger and more capable of greatness than if we go it alone, but we are also more susceptible of being caused pain.  At least we are if we are truly being the body that we are meant to be.  If any one of our parts hurt we all should hurt.  If Julia loses someone we should ache with her.  If someone loses a job we should all attempt to lift them up.  People often complain about how the government should not be in the business of helping people who need help.  Maybe they shouldn't and maybe they wouldn't need to be if the church was doing its job and helping the widows and orphans and holding onto the people right in our midst.  If we are ever to become the body of Christ we need to get his hands working his feet moving and his voice speaking words of comfort and hope.

One Hope – Romans 5:1-11

Which brings us to the second point this morning, we need to be a church, a people, a body with one hope.  In 1992 Steven Curtis Chapman released an Album titled Heaven in the Real World the title track had a quote on it from Charles Stanley that went, “Where is the hope?  I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us.  The hope that each of us have is not in who governs us or what laws are passed or what great things we do as a nation.  Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people.  And that is where our hope is in this country and in this life.”  And I think that is what we need to focus on the work that God is doing in our hearts and in our lives.  How often do we tend to focus on other things, namely the negative things that pop up.  We focus on the car breaking down or another bill in the mail when we don’t have enough money for the previous one, and there are still things that you hope to accomplish and do, but they keep getting pushed back.  Instead maybe we need to refocus on God, refocus on what God has done for us already, the places that God has already brought us through, and then remember that this too shall pass.

To that point I would like to share a story that I found online recently.  "It was a beautiful spring day, and a sense of peace stayed with me as I left the cathedral on Easter Monday morning. I paused for a moment on top of the steps leading to the avenue, now crowded with people rushing to their jobs. Sitting in her usual place inside a small archway was the old flower lady. At her feet corsages and boutonnieres were parading on top of a spread-open newspaper. The flower lady was smiling, her wrinkled old face alive with some inner joy. I started down the stairs - then, on impulse, turned and picked out a flower. As I put it in my lapel, I said, "You took happy this morning."  "Why not? Everything is good."  She was dressed so shabbily and seemed so very old that her reply startled me. "You’ve been sitting here for many years now, haven’t you? And always smiling. You wear your troubles well." "You can’t reach my age and not have troubles." she replied. "Only it’s like Jesus and Good Friday... ’ She paused for a moment.  "Yes?" I prompted.  "Well, when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, which was the worst day for the whole world. And when I get troubles I remember that, and then I think of what happened only three days later-Easter and our Lord arising. So when I get troubles, I’ve learned to wait three days ... somehow everything gets all right again." And she smiled good-bye. Her words still follow me whenever I think I have troubles. Give God a chance to help... wait three days.

What if we decided to wait three days, or just one, or why not just a few hours, if we waited to begin stressing out, waited to start complaining, waited on the Lord.  I wonder how many times we would be comforted before we lamented, how often would an answer come before we questioned, how often would we never need to stress if we simply waited and had hope in the Lord.

Another quote that I found when looking online was “Is there a hope when hope is taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question leads us to Christian hope, for in the Bible, hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the promise.”  A couple weeks ago I mentioned that failure is not a period, just a comma.  The main reason for that is that we continue to go on.  We continue to have faith, and hope in God.  That’s what we’re talking about here, hope in God, not hope in ourselves, and not hope in each other, but hope in God.  That’s why it’s not about a passion for the possible, but rather a passion for the promise, God has already promised his love, his caring, his companionship.  All we have to do is believe, and if each one of us could believe that then we would all have the hope that we need to be uniquely one.

[This next section references a post that has not yet been uploaded, sorry for the confusion]

One Love – Galatians 5:22-26
Once we realize the impact of being one body and once we can gravitate toward having one hope we can also start living one love.  Last week I talked about the directions of love.  That we need to first love upward to God then inward to ourselves and finally outward to the world.  This is a continuation of that final direction, about loving the world.  In addition I spoke about two months ago on the fruit of the spirit, kindness in particular.  I touched on the fact that the fruit of the spirit might best be understood as being love, a love that looks like joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.  DL Moody says it this way “it speaks in Galatians about love, the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, gentleness, long suffering, meekness and temperance. The way this writer has put it -- and I think it is very beautiful -- is that joy is love exultant, peace is love in repose, and long suffering is love enduring. It is all love, you see, gentleness is love in society, and goodness is love in action, and faith is love on the battle-field, and meekness is love at school, and temperance is love in training.”

In other words if we are to be one we must have a well rounded love.  Our love must be a positive outpouring of joy from time to time.  We must verbally share our love with others.  I don’t know how many times a day I tell Mary I love her, but I do it at the end of every conversation, every time I go to work, every time I come home.  Letting her know how much I love her is very important to me, and even with the amount of times I say it she seems to overlook it sometimes when I screw things up.  We need to share our love with each other and with others.  In addition our love needs to be one of peace.  It needs to be a love that can calm certain situations.  A love that brings peace to us and others when the storms are raging and we don’t know which way is home.

Our love needs to be a love that endures, a love that is patient.  We can not show a fickle love to the world.  If we only love people who are like us we fail, but if we love people that are not like us only when we see them as being on our side we still fail.  Our love must endure the hardships, it must keep us together during the arguments and bring us back together when the arguments cease.  Also, our love needs to be a love of kindness, a love at school, a love that educates, a love that brings along those that have little love so that they can have great heaps of love.

Moody said that gentleness is love in society, which means that when we are showing love outside our walls it must be a love that holds on instead of letting go.  Our world is all about putting people in boxes.  We’re Republican or democrat, we’re young or old, we’re rich or poor, we’re educated or stupid, we’re this or we’re that.  The love of God unites us into one, with differences of opinions, but one none the less.  Our love must also be a self-controlling love, a love of temperance.  It must be a love that holds us accountable, a love that understands that we must not be extremely loud nor extremely soft in our love, but to find a happy medium.

Love is the most important thing that we can do in this life because there is a need to seek joy, a need to fight for peace in your lives, there is time it takes to be patient, the learning for goodness, the action of kindness, the loyalty of faithfulness, the soft touch of gentleness, and finally the strength that is found in self-control.  May we now move forward with the fruit of the spirit indwelling in our lives ever deeper ever more true.  It can be difficult to live as a follower of Jesus in the world we live in.  It takes each of the fruit of the Spirit in order to do it, and it takes a lot of self-control to do it successfully, but if we are not willing to engage the world how does Jesus ever met the people who need him.

One People – Ecclesiastes 4:8-12
As I said at the beginning my reason for using different scriptures throughout this sermon was to show the unity of the Bible.  From the very beginning to the very end the Bible is about calling God’s creation to be God’s people.  He started with a single couple in Genesis, then a family, then a people, then it was expanded it to include anyone who would believe, in the end the whole world bows and praises God.  The Bible is a book of unity.  This morning I want to end with my favorite Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes.  In my opinion Ecclesiastes is a book of philosophy, and being a philosophy major in college I greatly enjoy it.  It is about deep thoughts and deep problems.  Sometimes the author, who most agree was probably Solomon, speaks of the waste of things, about how there is nothing new under the sun, but in chapter 4 he turns to a lone man and then friendship, and finally to community.  [Ecclesiastes 4:8-12]  You see when we stand alone it is just a matter of time before we fall.  And if we fall alone there is no one to help us back up.  So we need friends.  We need a helping hand, a reassuring hug, a shoulder to cry on.

About a year ago I preached a sermon on friendship at the church we were attending at the time.  My three points were (1) where you find a friend is sometimes surprising, (2) how you become friends is by trusting and (3) the way friendship grows is by loving.  I will not bore you with another sermon, but what I will say it that the way that we can become one people is by becoming friends.  By asking how we are doing and caring about the reply, by offering our hands, our hugs, and our shoulders, and by walking alongside each other through the good times and the bad times and the times in between.  A three strand cord is not quickly broken.  A four strand one is even better, but what about a thirty strand one, how strong can that be, what can that cord accomplish.

Today I would ask you to care a little more about each other than you did when you walked in here this morning.  I would ask that we strive for a real faith, to show a real love, and to be a real people.  Then we will be this church for this place at this time.

Peace and Love,

Pastor K

Real People, Real Faith, Real Love - an intro

So, the six words of the title show up every week in my church's bulletin.  I came up with them several years back when I was thinking about planting my own church [an idea that still percolates inside my mind from time to time].  To be completely honest they are a bit of thievery from Mark Krenz, who was the youth pastor at South Meridian Church of God when I was a youth counselor.  At the time the church had a three word statement of mission, Belong, Believe, Become, which came out of a Doctoral Dissertation that Mark completed while at seminary.  I loved the idea that there was this movement from the first time you stepped inside the church until the last day we step foot on this earth [at least that's how my mind thought about it]  To that end I decided that I would steal it and morph into something that could be my own, hence Real People, Real Faith, Real Love.

At base they mean the same things, we belong to the church, we believe what the church [God] says, and we then become the church.  I added the word real to each concept because for too long I believe that the universal Church has turned out incomplete people instead of the genuine articles.  The Church, by and large, has created this Utopian vision of who we actually are, people who always have it all together, people who only share the positive aspects of their lives with one another, and people who never question, never falter, never doubt.  If we are honest [and it is my dearest hope that the Church can once again become honest] we are fully aware of our own misgivings and failings, I for one sing the line 'Prone to wander Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love' from the classic hymn Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing a little louder than I sing the rest of the song, because I am just as likely to dismiss God's work as I am to uplift it.  And if I, someone who feels a calling on their life, how much more must the average person who sits in the pew feel the same way?

I am a worthless creature sometimes, like Paul, I am more bound by my sinful fleshful ways then the holy spiritual ways I long for.  I am too often a wreck, trying to convince myself of the words of my sermon as much or more so than any of the congregants sitting in front of me.  I believe that their is a God who loved me so much that he would go to any length to re-establish the broken relationship, but getting my heart, mind, soul, and strength to actually live that way is sometimes like trying to tame a wild lion, sometimes I need a chair and a whip.

So, first we must become Real People who can wear our hearts and failures on our sleeves, in order to help each one of us be most honest and realistic about the work that we need to do in our daily lives.  Once we can be honest with each other we can then attempt to follow the teachings that have been passed down through the generations to us.  Teachings that, in my humble opinion, revolve around the concept of God's love.  Some people believe that there are other aspect's of God's character that superimposes God's love, for instance God's sense of justice, but I disagree, because where is God's justice at the moment of creation?  You create something because you love that thing, not because you think, "hmmm, I really need some thing to judge", you only have the need to judge it after its creation.  More importantly, if God's justice was the base aspect why send Jesus?  I mean, really, why send Jesus?  To balance the scales?  Fine, but that concept only works if there is a part of God who wants the scales balanced, a part that wants the relationship fixed, otherwise God could simply live in the realm of having judged us and been done with it.  A judge doesn't initiate an appeal, only the person who stands as an advocate for the accused does that.

So, it is my belief that God has always been on our side, always wanting to show us that we are loved, that we matter, that we are better when we are with God.  To that end I believe that our main goal on this earth is not to evangelize the 'lost' [a term I absolutely hate by the way, but that is another blog post all together] but rather to love every person that we come into contact with while we are walking this blue-green ball we call earth.  To that end it is not my job to tolerate people, but to love them where they are.  It is not my job to love the sinner, but hate the sin, it is my job to be there for them in their times of need and their times of plenty.  It is my job, and your job, to stand in front of them when someone tries to harm them, to stand behind them when they need help to stand, and to stand beside them when their voice is not being heard.  Do I tell them about my Jesus? Yes, but more important is my need to show them my Jesus, and apologize to them when I fail to do so.

So, we need to be honest, and then we need to follow the teachings of Jesus, but beyond that we need to become people who don't need to be reminded of who we are supposed to be like.  Jesus was the Son of God, but he was also human, he bled, and cried, and cursed.  He called the religious establishment a den of vipers, threw over tables of commerce when it attempted to intersect the temple and he bade us to give to Cesar what was Cesar's but to give to God what is God's.  So I will pay my taxes and not complain, but I should just as easily give my all to God, however God may want to use it.

The next three posts will be the sermons I gave about a year ago that fleshed out these ideas a little more, I share them to remind myself as much as to share them with you.

Peace and Love,
Pastor K

Rescuing God from Praise Songs part 1

So...there is an idea I have had for quite some time that most praise songs have terrible theology.  To that end from time to time I am going to tear apart a worship song's theology.

Today's entry is on the song Above All, written by Paul Baloche and Lenny LeBlanc and popularized by Michael W. Smith.  It is a song which at first glance seems to have a great theology behind it.

Above all powers, above all kings

Above all nature and all created things

Above all wisdom and all the ways of man

You were here, before the world began

Above all kingdoms, above all thrones

Above all wonders the world has ever known

Above all wealth and treasures of the earth

There's no way to measure what you're worth

Crucified, laid behind a stone

You lived to die, rejected and alone

Like a rose, trampled on the ground

You took the fall and thought of me

Above all

Like I said at first glance you might not realize my big issue with this song.  I am a firm believer that God is above all of our man-made institutions, above whatever we consider to be worthy, and above whatever accolades that we conjure up for ourselves.  In addition I can totally get behind that Jesus died rejected and alone, and the line 'like a rose, trampled on the ground' is great poetically and visually.  But then the song takes a giant leap into absurdity and claims that Jesus, while hanging on a cross thought of 'me' above all.  This is simply not true.  What saying of Jesus can we point to that says that he holds any one of us in higher esteem than another?  Where in scripture can we find even one iota of the concept that the individual is greater than the community?

That is where I think that American Christianity has missed the boat, we tend to think that this faith is really all about me and God, all by ourselves, which couldn't be further from the truth.  Jesus didn't come for an individual he came for a body comprised of many parts.  Yet we do exactly what we are told not to and decide that the eye is more important than the body, or that the pinkie finger is more important than the body.  If we look at it from that perspective we understand the obviousness of its ridiculousness, but when we say things like 'even if I was the only sinner Jesus still would have died for me,' we see no problem with it at all.

To be honest I don't think that if I was the world's only sinner Jesus would have come to die for me, nor do I think that he would have even had to consider that option.  I am sure Jesus could have just come down, talked to me, and if I chose to follow him he could have simply said 'you are forgiven, go and sin no more,' which he did do from time to time before he was betrayed and hung on a cross to die.

As I said, I think that we have missed the boat in regards to the individual vs the community.  The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a book of, by, and for the people.  God even went so far as to say that it was not good for man to be alone at the beginning of the book, which kinda implies that we only find our best when we are found with others.

I still find the song very meaningful, but when I sing it I change the last line in this way, 'you took the fall and thought of me and of all,' it is a simple change, but one that places me in the context of the larger body, not as an elbow all by itself.

Maybe I am being ridiculous, maybe I am venting, or maybe I am attempting to rescue God from the praise song.

Peace and Love,
Pastor K