Sunday, February 26, 2006

February 26, 2006

Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings..."

You gotta love Peter. He is so...well...human! Faced with a wondrous mystical experience on the mountaintop, he sees no reason to let it end.

That's how it is with mountaintop experiences. The euphoria is so intense, we never want it to stop.

But most of us don't live on the mountain. Eventually, we have to return to the valley.

For many people in this world, there are few if any mountaintop experiences in their lives. If the Transfiguration is the definitive mountaintop experience, probably most of us don't have much of a mountaintop to climb down from.

Walter Wink and Marcus Borg, among others, have tried to point out that the way we often think about god really doesn’t work if we are honest. It depicts a transcendent God who occasionally intervenes in human affairs. They suggest a God who, as Wordsworth would put it, "rolls through all things."

The difficulty in separating experience into categories of "supernatural" and "natural", or mountaintop and valley, is that it encourages us to believe that God is only encountered in the unusual, the miraculous, the spectacular. The natural world is seen as mundane, or even profane.

The movement of God is always from one moment of glory to the next moment of glory. We might split things up as natural or supernatural, secular or sacred, mundane or momentous, but our perception is not necessarily the reality. We are called to move from faith, to faith, trusting that God is in our midst, moving all around us and through us; transforming all of creation.

Those fishermen on the mountain with Jesus saw this glory, and their eyes were opened. If we open our eyes, maybe we might also? Of course, we may have to redefine what we consider glorious and sacred.

What might be often considered mundane, but might also be considered full of awe and wonder?

Watching the sun rise...amazing!
Beautiful music...awesome!
A child snuggling close...glorious!
Fresh fallen snow...beautiful!
Reconciling an argument...peace!
Quiet prayer...refreshing!

Once we begin to look for God's glory, we find it all around us. It's a matter of perspective.

Beyond the glory we stumble across in our daily routines, we can also be co-creators with God, by transforming our environment.

Recently I came across an article by James McGinnis entitled Households of Faith. He tells about taking each of his young children to a large park, and encouraging them to pick out their own special prayer place. For the next years, as the children grew up, one of their parents would take them to their prayer place the day before any special religious commemorations, such as first communion or confirmation, so that together they could prayerfully reflect on the upcoming event. What a wonderful example of creating a mountaintop experience!

I still say that we need to live in the valley, to serve those who know nothing of the mountaintop. But, if we are to be of service, we need to have something to offer; which may require us to redefine the mountaintop.

It just may be that we may encounter the glory of God in the face of those we serve, if we look carefully, and listen closely.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

February 19, 2006

February 19.2006

This morning I want to invite us to hear the message from this morning’s Gospel by considering the story from four different perspectives.

First, let’s consider the paralytic man who was healed. Being paralyzed, there wasn’t much he could do to help himself, was there? So, he asked his friends for help. Asking for help is not always easy to do. It means swallowing our pride. “Pride,” says the writer of Proverbs, “goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). We want everyone to think we’ve got it all together. We don’t want to admit we can’t make it on our own. And so we suffer in silence, out of prideful ness.

In the United States, 33.6 million people including almost 13 million children live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents approximately one in ten households.(10.7 percent).

In America, it is a shameful thing to be poor. It means that you have failed to live up to the American dream. To admit you need help means that you are somehow flawed. Consequently, many of those who are suffering from poverty try to say invisible. They don’t ask for help.

We may all have enough food, but I would imagine that there are some of us here today that need help of some kind, but don’t ask for it, because of their pride. Here is the lesson for us from the perspective of the paralytic man; if you want help; if you want God’s healing, you have to humble yourself enough to ask for help.

The next perspective I want us to consider is the friends who lowered this man through the roof so that he could be healed by Jesus. These are some pretty creative friends. When they see the huge crowd filling Jesus house, they didn’t give up on their promise to help their friend. They got creative, and got the job done.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked to you about an effective form of evangelism based on the saying, “Make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ.” This story is a literal picture image of how to do this kind of evangelism. When we commit to befriending someone, we don’t give up when things get difficult. We stick with the, we be a real friend. And we never forget that in the end, we cannot offer them the help, the healing that they seek. We bring our friend to Christ.

Next, let’s consider the perspective of the crowd watching this man being lowered from the roof. I would imagine that some of the crowd were not that pleased. Here they had stood in line, pushed and almost trampled by the crowd, in hopes of getting near enough to Jesus to receive his healing touch. And this guy cuts right in. It’s not fair. He cheated! Why should he get healed, when I’m the one whose been waiting in this crush of flesh for hours!

Life isn’t fair all the time, is it? And sometimes God doesn’t seem fair. The wind of the Spirit blows where it will. We don’t see the big picture, so we may never know why this person is touched by God an another is not. But, if we give in to feelings of resentment and envy, one thing is assured; we will have moved farther away from God. When another is blessed by god, rejoice with them, and give testimony to others of the mighty acts of God.

And finally, let’s consider the scribes. They are not pleased that Jesus had the audacity to declare the forgiveness of sins without all the ritual their tradition required. Once again, the wind of the Spirit blows where it will. And yes, especially on this point, I am preaching to myself. We must be careful not to limit our experience of God by trying to put God in a box. Our ways are not God’s ways. If you want to know if something is of God, consider the fruit of the work. The man was healed. The healing offered by Jesus was obviously of God. Instead of rejoicing, the scribes are complaining that Jesus didn’t use the right liturgy! Don’t let your pride block your view of God moving among us, loving us, and healing us.

Ask for help. Be a helper. Bring the wounded to God. Rejoice in the good fortune of others. And be open to experiencing the healing of God in unexpected places.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

February 5, 2006

February 5, 2006

In this morning’s epistle, St. Paul writes to the church in Corinth these words;

“I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”

For the Jew, he becomes a Jew. For the Gentile, he becomes a Gentile. This flexibility, this ability to meet the other person where they are in their spiritual life, and avoid the temptation to drag them to where we think they should be, is the Christian ideal when it comes to evangelism. Unfortunately, that’s often not what happens in the world today.

There’s a story about a man walking across a bridge one day. He saw another man standing on the edge, about to jump off. He immediately ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!"

"Why shouldn't I?" he said.

The first man said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Well ... are you religious or atheist?"

"Religious."

"Me too! Are you Christian or Jewish?"

"Christian."

"Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!"

To which the first man said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off the bridge.

What an sad witness such an attitude offers the world of what it means to be a Christian! What is even more sad is that often this same approach is how some Christians respond to those who are not Christian.

We are facing a new world today. The way we understood Christianity during to 50s and 60s will simply not do today. Since the 70s, many people have simply dropped out of the church. Their children, and their grandchildren, have no idea of what the bible or Christianity is all about, except what they see on the TV. At least two generations are unchurched today. The majority of Europeans have no connection to any organized religion. We live in a different world, a world that requires new approaches to evangelism, the ways in which we proclaim to the world the Good News of Jesus Christ.

When looking for new ways to witness to others, Paul’s words give us some good guidance. Our response to those who do not know Jesus must be more flexible. For the weak, we appear weak; to the strong, we are strong.

Loren Meade of the Alban Institute has looked more closely into the difficulties in our approach to modern day evangelism.

In one of his presentations, “The Once and Future Church”, Mead breaks down the history of Christendom into three eras; the Apostolic, the Christian, and the Emerging. He identifies three different environments in which each era existed. During the Apostolic era, the environment was hostile to the message of the Gospel. During the Christian era (which lasted through most of the 20th century), the environment was primarily Christian, as that was the dominant world view. In the Emerging era, the external environment is, at best, ambiguous to the message.

Some of us have witnessed this shift from the Christian to the Emerging era in our own lifetime. Here's just a few of the indicators;

In the Christian era, all of society was understood to be religious. In the Emerging era, society is often not religious at all.

In the Christian era, most public institutions were permeated with religious values. In the Emerging era, most public activities have no reference to religion.

In the Christian era, most people were expected to be members of a church. It was almost considered un-American not to be. In the Emerging era, church is for religious people, not ordinary people.

In the Christian era, religion was very public. In the Emerging era, religion is private, irrelevant, or optional.

In the Christian era, almost everyone is acquainted with the biblical story. In the Emerging era, few people know anything about the bible.

I think much of the Church is in denial of this reality. The energy seems to be drawn towards trying to recapture the glory days; to turn back the clock. In the meantime, God has continued to work in the world, but not always in the same ways as the Church has perceived the movement of God in the past.

The apostolic mission of the Church has to be rethought; no longer can the mission of the Church be primary. It has to give way to the mission of God, which can often be discovered outside the traditional boundaries of what we understand to be "church" or "religion."

Our mission of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ is hindered when we understand that to mean we are taking something out into the world that does not already exist; that our message is the most important one. That blocks our ability to see what God might already be doing in the life of someone else. When we insist on others accepting our understanding of God, and use the bible as a weapon to beat them into submission, we turn them away from Christ with our arrogant manner.

The world has changed. Today, we are called to meet people where they are in their spiritual life, and not drag them to where we think they should be. We listen to their story, offer our story, and look for the places that God's story intersects them both.

This doesn't dismiss the need for a catechumenate process, continuing education, amendment of life and spiritual disciplines. Those are elements that will gradually become meaningful to a person who is nurtured into developing a relationship with Jesus Christ. To demand it all from the beginning is blocking the way into the kingdom for others. It seems to me this is the error that Jesus saw within the Pharisees. Are we doomed to continue to make the same mistakes over and over again?

So how do we do evangelism today? There’s a saying in the Cursillo movement that might be good for us to keep in mind. Make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ. We begin our witness through our actions; being a real friend to someone else in their time of need. Through our lives, we testify that we are different, that Christ has made a difference in us. Eventually, if we have been a good friend, the other person will ask about this difference. That is our opportunity to tell them about how your relationship with God has transformed your life. Make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ.