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
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