Archives For Preaching

The Future Church Started in 1940

Jason Micheli —  May 24, 2013 — Leave a comment

Taize-Pine-Ridge-2013I’m spending the next four days at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota as part of the Taize Pilgrimage of Trust. I’m joined here by 3 others from my church along with thousands of Christian pilgrims 18-35 from around the world as well as the brothers from the Taize Monastic Community in Burgundy, France.

The Taize Community was started by Brother Roger Schultz, himself a Swiss Reformed Protestant, in 1940 as an ecumenical monastery that would in its life together embody peace and reconciliation in postwar Europe.

What started as a small band of brothers from Catholic and Protestant denominations quickly grew to attract over 100,000 ‘pilgrims’ every year for a week at time. These pilgrims come from all over the globe, are primarily youth and young adults and for 7 days seamlessly integrate into the community’s weekly rhythm of fixed hour prayer (worship), bible study, and work.

As I tell people, think ‘Woodstock crossed with a Medieval Monastery.’

Every year the brothers of Taize take their community on the road in order to reconnect with former pilgrims and welcome others who might not be able to make the trek to rural France.

I’ve been to Taize a couple times in the past. The following are my journal reflections from my first pilgrimage.

Incarnating the Gospel: You are the Sermon

For years I studied preaching. ‘Homiletics’ is the official discipline, part theology of preaching and part the art of rhetoric. As a Protestant pastor, my bread and butter is the preached Word- that’s our tradition, our reason to be as Protestants. Many more people call me ‘preacher’ than call me ‘Father’ or anything like that.

And I like to preach. I enjoy the spiritual discipline of having to contend with a text every week, to dare God to speak or not speak to me and, ultimately, through me. Likewise, preaching is how I’ve learned to establish and build credibility with congregants. When I looked impossibly young to be a pastor at the very least my preaching reassured skeptics that I might know how to do a few things reasonably well.

And so it’s strange to me to worship in a place like Taize.

TaizeHere, we worship 3 times a day, between 45-90 minutes each time, every day of the week. Most of the worship is singing the short, repetitive, beautiful chants Taize for which Taize is now famous. The worship includes a scripture reading, usually in several different languages and then silence. Long periods of silence. Where my own congregants can hardly cease rustling their bulletins long enough to achieve silence, here at Taize the silence- of 5K plus pilgrims sitting on a cement floor, mind you-can last anywhere from 10-15 minutes. In the mornings, there’s Eucharist that is celebrated in a boldly ecumenical fashion and evening worship on Fridays and Saturdays mimics Good Friday and Easter.

 

But there’s no preaching. No sermon. Really hardly any spoken word at all- the songs are indicated not by announcement but LED signs on the left and right of the simple but beautiful sanctuary.

 

At the beginning of this week I thought this lack of preaching was surely a deficiency. ‘Doesn’t there need to be sermon?’ the Protestant on my shoulder kept asking. ‘Doesn’t the Word need to be proclaimed’ the Calvinist in me kept wondering; preaching is part of Calvin’s definition of worship in fact.

 

Now that it’s been a week here however I’ve changed my mind.

I now realize the silence is sufficient because the life of the community is its own witness to the Word.

 

The brothers and pilgrims here spend every moment together, studying scripture, sharing their stories, working together, eating together, worshipping and relaxing together.

In most churches, you need the sermon in order to ‘illustrate’ how to ‘apply’ the biblical text to every day life. And in most churches the starting presumption is that the connection between biblical text and every day life is forced at best.

But here at Taize it’s the opposite. It works in reverse. Their life together points to the truth of the biblical text. Acts chapter 2, the Sermon on the Mount, Paul’s Fruits of the Spirit- they’re all on display here both in the brother’s life together and in the hospitable, trusting way they welcome visitors in to that life.

They don’t need a sermon here. They are the sermon.

Together they’re- we’re- incarnating the Gospel in its essence: serving, sharing and worshipping. This is Church, or at least Church stripped of all the unessential, non-Gospel accretions that weigh many congregations down and fog the essence of what a life lived together in Christ looks like.

The word ‘incarnational’ gets bandied about a lot lately in its relation to the emerging future church. While I’m sure that term can mean many things to many people, I think the closest approximation is right here.

If incarnational is the buzzword of the emerging church and ‘intentional community’ its manifestation, then the Church of the future started in 1940 when Brother Roger rode his bicycle to this tiny little village.

 

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Sermon Shout Out from Scot McKnight: Wrath Reconsidered

Jason Micheli —  April 21, 2013 — 6 Comments

544900_608245191477_257197599_n Scot Mcknight has this up over at his Jesus Creed site. This week Dennis continues our sermon series through Romans by looking at Romans 1.18-32 in which lists the symptoms of a creation suffering under God’s wrath, or, better put, suffering un-righteousness. Romans 1.18-32 is the antithesis to Paul’s thesis in 1.16-17.

Since ‘wrath’ is the subject, I thought I’d offer this reflection on God’s wrath from Amos 7.

———————————————-

I’m sure you’ll know what I mean when I say that being a pastor is a lot like having a family member who is constantly in the tabloids.

I mean: here I am with this public relationship with someone who routinely shocks and outrages a reliable percentage of the population. While I can only guess what kinds of questions relatives of Lindsay Lohan and Tiger Woods are forced to answer, I do know the feeding-frenzy kinds of questions I consistently have to suffer thanks to my relationship with a different sort of celebrity.

Example:

This week I found myself in a conversation with a Unitarian Universalist clergywoman named Janice. Interrogation might better describe our exchange. Her every question to me was like the glare and flash of a paparazzi’s camera.

For those who might not know- Unitarianism began a few hundred years ago during the Enlightenment. As such, it was very much a reflection of its time. The Unitarian movement sought to strip traditional Christianity of its primitive, out-dated and superstitious trappings.

In many ways, Unitarianism is like Christianity but with less vocabulary for you to memorize since words like Trinity and Incarnation and Atonement and Resurrection have all been kicked to the wayside.

Janice has long, unnaturally black hair. She was wearing a hippie-sort of linen dress, had tattooed clover wrapped around her arm and, appropriate to her enlightened tradition, she was wearing not one but at least five different religious symbols on her hemp necklace.

She had a notepad on her lap which she wrote in whenever I spoke, as if she were the therapist and I was the delusional, misguided patient. She even kept referring to me as a ‘pre-enlightened’ Christian.

Now I’m sure you all know someone in your family or in your neighborhood who is a Unitarian and I’m sure they’re wonderful people. And I know there’s a Unitarian Church just down the road from us, and I’m sure that it’s filled with wonderful people. So the last thing I want to do is offend anyone when I tell you that I just wanted to slap Janice.

We were sitting around a coffee table: Janice and me and three other clergy from varying denominations. I was the last one to show so I got stuck sitting in a low, awkward butterfly chair with everyone else towering over me. And obviously given my height I’m sensitive to such things.

The chair was narrow across too; it kept me from being able to cross my legs or move my arms and only increased my sense of being trapped and on trial.

Because our meeting had no clear ending, the conversation unraveled quickly with Janice electing herself grand inquisitor. So with me trapped in my butterfly chair, like a reporter from the Enquirer Janice fired question after question at me:

Do you still believe in the Resurrection?

Surely you don’t still believe in Jesus’ miracles do you?

You don’t seriously think Jesus was God-in-the-flesh?

And the virgin birth…don’t tell me you…?

With her every question and my every yes she grew more incredulous.

How do you still hold to a pre-enlightened faith, she pressed, given everything we now know about the universe?

As if to teach me a thing or two about the universe, Janice’s next round of questions proved that she could make time stand still.

She kept me on the defensive, wanting me to explain every inconsistency and every troubling passage in scripture, every wicked thing ever done in Christ’s name, every theological claim we make in here that can’t be proven empirically. And the whole time she kept writing in her notebook!

Towards the end of the interrogation, Janice looked up from her pen and paper and she took a sort of cleansing breath and sighed, and, adopting a good-cop tone of voice, she said: I just don’t see how anyone can reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New.

I kept my mouth shut. By that point I knew exactly what I wanted to tell her but it wasn’t of a theological nature. Besides, I was afraid I might need her help to get out of the butterfly chair.

So I didn’t say anything.

Then she looked at me and she said:

Okay, you tell me. When you read the Old Testament what sort of God do you see?

As much as I wanted to slap her and throw her through the window, the truth is on some days, with certain passages of scripture, it’s a good question.

It’s a good question today because when you read through the Book of Amos you might end up with an answer that troubles you. You might decide that what you see in this book is a God who is incongruent with the God you know in your heart. You might conclude that the God who speaks a Word to Amos can’t be the same One who said to the Father ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.‘

What do you see? It’s a good question.

God asks Amos that same question in today’s text. And in that moment, what Amos sees is how Israel doesn’t measure up, doesn’t make the grade, doesn’t meet God’s expectations. But a ‘plumb line‘ is not the only thing Amos has seen in these seven chapters.

Amos is a prophet, which means ‘seer.‘ Prophets see what will come to pass.

And God has given Amos a lot to see.

Amos has seen God sending locusts to devour Israel’s crops. Amos has seen God ordering a shower of fire to eat up the land. He’s seen God’s anger roaring like a lion. He’s seen God shipping the Israel off into exile. He’s seen God made nauseous by the worship of his People.

And in today’s text he sees God vowing never again to pass Israel by, in other words, never again to forgive.

What do you see?

The hard fact is that in the Book of Amos God threatens to kill and destroy, God promises to send fire and pestilence and famine.

The hard fact is that in the Book of Amos there are 28 different verbs to describe God destroying what he’s created.

The hard fact is that even when you come to the end of the Book of Amos there is no word of hope.

There is no good news.

That wherever God’s mercy is mentioned it’s done so in the past tense because God’s mercy is all dried up, his patience has run out. God’s no longer willing to wait for us to change.

There’s a lot to SEE in Amos.

But I wonder- is that all there is to see?

I spent time not long ago in Cambodia, visiting with our mission partners there. I think it must be because of the language barrier I experienced there but most of my memories from Cambodia are visual. Most of my memories are of what I saw.

And so I don’t recall many conversations I had there. I don’t remember much of what I or anyone else said, but I do remember seeing.

I remember seeing:

Young men fishing for food in a thickly polluted pond.

Toddlers playing tag barefoot in an alley strewn with broken glass while others their age cried for breakfast.

School children walking home from school and disappearing into the smoke and smog of a garbage dump- because that’s where home was for them.

I remember seeing.

An old woman- a Sunday School teacher- sitting in a dark, hot corner of a decrepit old apartment building.

The hands that reached out for bread as I served the Eucharist- rough hands, broken and worn-down hands, wrinkled hands, dirty hands.

Teenage girls praying frantically and loudly and with tears on their cheeks, leaving no mystery about how hard their lives were.

Shanty towns filled with the poor and the forgotten, displaced from their homes in the city to make room for ‘progress.’

What sticks with me is what I saw.

And I’d like to be able to tell you that my reaction to seeing all of that was a sense of fulfillment that despite all of the challenges there this church is doing so much to help. I’d like to be able to tell you that my reaction to seeing all of that was one of humility- humility that the people I met there had such faith and joy despite having nothing.

And even though those things are all true; they’re not what I felt upon seeing everything I saw.

No, what I felt first, what seeing made me feel:

Anger and Indignation – that so many could be forgotten and so many others refuse to see them.

Impatience and Exasperation – that things are still so far from what God intends and so many assume there’s no other alternative.

I wanted to Judge…someone… anyone.

When you read the Old Testament, what sort of God do you see? Janice asked me.

I knew what she was getting at.

I knew she was hoping to checkmate me into seeing that the God of the Old Testament is angry and vindictive and impatient, that He frequently threatens to punish and to destroy and to call off creation completely and start over, that this God bears little resemblance to the One who, while we were yet sinners, died for us.

And the truth is-

If that’s what you’re looking for, then there’s plenty of examples to find. In the Book of Amos especially.

But if you read through scripture and see only an angry, arbitrary God,

then you’re not seeing all there is to see.

We think of prophets as future-predictors, as fortune-tellers. We think of prophets as people that God empowers to see what God will one day do. And so Amos sees plagues of locusts and famines and showers of fire and punishment and destruction.

But as much as that, prophets are people empowered by God to see the present, to see what God sees right now, to see how things are today, to see the things we refuse and choose not to see.

And so when you read through scripture, when you read through the Old Testament, when you read through the Book of Amos you don’t see a God who is arbitrary or petulant or vindictive.

You instead see a God who is righteously angry.

Angry over the way his people use violence on one another. Angry because they value silver and gold more than each other. Indignant for how they obey convention over covenant and for how they’re more faithful to the propriety of their worship than to the message of their scripture.

What you see is a God who is angry because His People refuse to see the poor, refuse to lift up the weak, refuse to remember the forgotten.

When you read the Old Testament, what sort of God do you see? Janice asked.

And I didn’t take the bait. I didn’t say anything.

After a moment or two she closed her notebook and, sounding disappointed, she said to everyone around the table: ‘Well, I don’t see how a loving God could ever be angry.’

And struggling to get out of the butterfly chair, I replied: ‘I don’t see how he couldn’t be.’

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Sermon Shout Out from Scot McKnight: Going to Hell on an Airplane with Sam Harris

Jason Micheli —  April 7, 2013 — 3 Comments

2007_resurrection_icon Scot McKnight has this sermon of mine posted today over at his Jesus Creed blog.
Eastertide is often a season in which the lectionary guides us through texts in Revelation and on reflecting upon how the Cross and Empty Tomb really has once and for all settled what separates us from God. Here’s a reflection from a few years ago on those very themes.

Going to Hell on an Airplane with Sam Harris: Revelation 22.14-20

It was my fault. I knew I should’ve carried on something by John Grisham or David Baldacci or maybe, like everyone else on the plane, The Kite Runner. Instead I’d fallen asleep with the evidence right there on my lap: a theology book, thick and unambiguous, with an unexciting orange cover that plainly, if obscurely, said Church Dogmatics II.1 by Karl Barth.

I’d just woken up after almost an hour not sure if we’d landed already or if we’d not yet taken off. I was out of sorts, my clothes were disheveled and drool was running in a thin, clear line from the corner of my mouth. The motionless plane was as hot and still as a subway car and damp from the rain that was still pelting down on the wings and the runway outside. I was hot and thirsty and stressed, knowing that I would now definitely be late, and, on top of all that, there was this question: ‘So, are you a priest…or a professor?’

It was my fault. I’d initiated conversation. I was the one who made first contact. ‘When she comes by again can you ask her for some water?’ I’d said. And the man in aisle seat said‘Sure’ and then pointed with his eyes at the boring-looking book that had slid off my lap into the buffer seat between us and with a raised brow he asked: ‘So, are you a priest…?’

I was not long into my ministry when I first discovered that there were simply some occasions in life that my job changed irrevocably for the worse, certain occasions when the disclosure ‘I’m a Methodist minister’ either stops conversation cold or else starts other unwanted conversations.

At parties, for instance, no one wants to find out you’re a minister. People don’t know how to talk to a minister or what to talk about and everyone looks painfully awkward when the minister sees them with a drink in their hands.

And when you’re a minister getting a haircut can be more time-consuming and far less predictable than it is for the rest of you. It’s not uncommon that before my sideburns are trimmed or neck shaven, I’m hearing a confession or offering consolation or sinking into the quicksand of some philosophical bull session.

One such haircut at my last church ended up with me sitting there in the barber’s chair with the apron around my neck and little clipped hairs stuck to my nose and forehead and eyebrows and with the barber sitting in the chair next to me, leaning over with his hand on my knee while crying and telling me about the wife who’d left him years ago.

It happens all the time.

On such occasions I’ve considered that it would be easier if, when asked what it is that I do, I instead, like George Costanza, simply made things up: ‘I’m an architect’ I could say. ‘I’m a marine biologist’ I could tell the woman at the Hair Cuttery. And that would be that. To this list of awkward occasions, I can now add Riding on Planes.

‘So, are you a priest…or a professor?’ It was my fault. I was flying Southwest so I’d chosen my seat. I had no one to blame but myself. I’d chosen to sit next to him: a business-looking type, someone with lots of files and a laptop and blackberry, someone who wouldn’t want to pass the time making conversation with a stranger.

On that weekday flight he looked like half of all the other passengers: forty-fifty, graying neatly-parted hair, blue suit and red tie loosened around his white collar. It was last October and I was flying from Baltimore to Ohio for a conference that concerned Aldersgate’s ministry in Cambodia.

‘I’m a Methodist minister’ I said, kicking myself for not buying a copy of the The Kite Runner. ‘Really,’ he said in a less than impressed tone, ‘my sister-in-law’s still a Christian.’Thus implying that he’d been inoculated against whatever superstition still infected his sister-in-law.

From there the conversation began as these conversations always do: ‘You look so young to be a minister’; ‘How did you decide to do that with your life?’; ‘Did you always know or did you have an experience?’

And after these questions were answered, those parts of my story vaguely answered, he asked me if I read the recently released book Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. I said that I had not but that I knew of it. I’d read a review or heard some NPR chat about it. With sudden vigor, he told me what a ‘powerful’ book it was.

Then, in the urgent rhythms of a beat poet, he told me how effectively Sam Harris’ book documented:

· all the abuses committed in the name of religion

· how it catalogued the many sins of the Church

· skewered Christianity’s historic fear of science

· revealed the inconsistencies in scripture and the often violent portrayals of God.

For what seemed like forever and with judgment in his voice, he shared these ‘insights’ with me. At some during his diatribe I realized that he was actually angry at me- that I was to him not a person but a symbol, a reminder of something he’d closed the door on long ago.

When he finished his book review, he took a breath and cast a glance down at my book,Church Dogmatics, and he said in a woebegone way ‘But you probably wouldn’t like it. My sister-in-law didn’t.’

‘Actually, I’m an architect’ I thought about telling him.

‘It’s not that I’m an atheist’ he said almost like a peace offering, ‘I just couldn’t believe in a god who sends all but a few of his creatures to Hell.’

‘Neither could I’ I said.

The captain’s voice crackled over the speaker, informing us that our delay would last a bit longer. ‘Do you though…believe in hell?’ he asked. And what I thought was: ‘Yes, I do. Hell is being asked questions like these while sitting captive on a hot, motionless plane.’

But I said was: ‘I don’t preach much about it or the devil either. They always end up sounding more interesting than God. And that can’t be true.’

He looked at me skeptically. ‘At my parent’s church, growing up, that’s all I ever heard,’he sighed, ‘fire and brimstone, judgment and hell, that sort of thing.’

To be honest, I didn’t really believe me at first. It sounded too cliché.

‘When I was finally done with all that,’ he said, ‘we had a youth rally at the church one night. We were supposed to invite all our non-church friends. The pastor came and he told them that if they were all to die that night all of them would be going to hell forever. The pastor said the ultimate question was whether you would spend eternity in heaven or in hell. It left a bad taste in my mouth. I just decided then that I couldn’t believe in a god who would do that.’

‘When I was in college I was rejected as a Young Life leader,’ I told him, ‘the director made that same sort of comment in my interview, and I questioned him on it.’

The man in the aisle seat looked at me, like I had surprised him. It was quiet for a few moments. ‘We’re not all like that you know, fire and brimstone’ I offered.

‘But it is part of your bible’ he hit back, waiting for a response.

‘Well, if the universe is moral, if God is just, then it makes sense that God punishes sin’ I argued, proud of my fortress-like logic. ‘But eternal punishment seems excessive don’t you think? Even for the worst of sins.’

‘Christians have different understandings’ I said. ‘Some think hell is a finite time of punishment or refining. Others think of it as annihilation- you just cease to exist.’

‘But what I’ve never understood… if God is all-loving and all-powerful why would things turn out differently than he wanted?’

That’s when I began to suspect he was a lawyer and not a businessman.

I didn’t answer him. I was too tired.

Tired of being put on the defensive

Tired of having to represent all of Christianity-good and bad

Tired of fielding arguments he’d obviously decided before he ever sat down on the plane

And I was tired of trying to wrap my mind around what the bible says about judgment and what it says about the love and mercy of Christ.

He just shifted his legs and took a breath, and I could tell he wasn’t finished yet.

One of the other things I learned early in my ministry is that the fastest way to shut down these sorts of conversations is for me to start talking like a pastor, in a probing, overly empathic way. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘what does give your life meaning? Are you satisfied? Is your life worthwhile? Or is just for you?’

And all of a sudden he look frightened- like I was about to proselytize him.

And that could’ve been the end of our conversation.

But instead I sat up in my too-small seat and picked up my orange theology book, and I explained to him that the mistake preachers and others make is thinking hell is God’s last word on sin. ‘The Cross is God’s last word’ I said, ‘the Cross really does reconcile everything that’s wrong between God and each of us.’

He was about to argue with me, I could tell. But I didn’t let him. I went on and told him:

• that whatever distance there is between God and us that it’s distance we put there ourselves

• that ‘Hell’ is the Church’s name for that distance and that you can suffer that in this life as easily as in any other

• that ‘Hell’ is not so much God’s unchanging decision about us as much as it is our self-imposed exile from the life that God makes possible.

And he looked at me as you all do when I’m preaching: a bit dazed and not quite tracking.

So I told him:

That when Jesus talks about hell, he does so by comparing heaven to a wedding feast to which everyone is invited. The problem isn’t with the party or the party-giver or the number of invitations sent. It’s with our unwillingness to come.

And even at the very end of the bible, in the very last chapter, after the Last Judgment has already happened and all the wicked and sinners and unrighteous and unbelievers have all supposedly perished in the Lake of Fire, even after all that- the bible gives us this last picture of the saints of God staring through heaven’s open gates at those still on the outside and along with the Holy Spirit they sing: “Come.”

Hell’s not so much a place we’re sent; so much as it is a place we refuse to leave when we’ve been invited to something more beautiful.

He smiled slightly, and I knew he thought that I was soft-selling the whole fire and brimstone thing. ‘My parents’ preacher would say the ultimate question is whether you’ll spend eternity in heaven or hell’ he countered.

I told him that actually I tend to think the ultimate question is: ‘Are you thirsty? Or, are you hungry? Are you lost? Or, are you empty? Because God doesn’t just offer eternal life, he invites us to live this life abundantly.’

I thought that was that, that he was done, that I’d left him tired or confused or disappointed.

He turned to face forward and he looked up at the air vent and the seatbelt sign above him.

And after a few moments he told me that he was divorced. That at first he was just trying to build a career but that his work had killed his marriage and that now he let it keep him from his children too.

He told me that he traveled all the time but that his life had no direction, that it was true that he no longer believed in his parent’s faith, but that he hadn’t found anything else in its place either.

‘I guess you’d say I’m lost’ he said.

He then looked over at me as if for a response. ‘Maybe, but if Jesus really is the beginning and end of everything, then his mercy is everlasting and he’ll never stop looking for you.’

‘Thus endeth the sermon’ I said and closed my eyes.

And he didn’t say anything for a long while.

And somewhere, the Spirit and the bride said: ‘Come.’

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Political Partisanship vs Civility

Jason Micheli —  March 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Yesterday afternoon, Dennis (my associate pastor for those of you outside the congregation) let me know he couldn’t preach this weekend after all.

So I’m up at the plate this weekend as we continue our Lenten sermon series on idolatry, Counterfeit Gods. And what absolute, crap, spit-ball of a topic do I get?

The idol of…

Politics and Political Partisanship.

Fun.

At least, you know, church people aren’t known to get their panties in a bunch over preachers mentioning politics.

The text for this weekend is the question put to Jesus about taxes. They crucify him right after he answers.

Let’s hope I fare better but I suppose if I’m faithful to the text, I shouldn’t expect to get treated any better than Jesus. 

Here’s a video with some bona fide Jesus truth from Tim Keller on how our poisonous partisan culture is a faith issue and how CIVILITY IS A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE.

If you think being right on an issue is more important than how you speak to or about someone who disagrees with you, then you’re wrong.

At least as it concerns your faith.

And which is the more important? Your faith or your issue?

Don’t believe me, check out Jesus’ brother:

The tongue is placed among Christians as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. 

7For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 

9With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 

10From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters. 

This ought not to be so.

- Book of James, chapter 3

Scroll ahead to 4:40 for the bit on Civility and Politics:

 

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Love: It’s Not All You Need

Jason Micheli —  February 25, 2013 — 4 Comments

Myth_of_You_Complete_MeHere is the manuscript of this weekend’s sermon for our Lenten Series, Counterfeit Gods. Unfortunately the text itself doesn’t convey the sermon and the video recording didn’t work out. You can listen to the sermon here, in the ‘Listen’ widget on this page or download it in the iTunes library. 

The sermon began with a flash-mob style rendition of ‘All You Need is Love’ sung by the Men of Note. In the middle of the sermon, I retold the story of Jacob and Leah using glasses and a whole lot of water. 

Choir:

Love, love, love.

Love, love, love.

Love, love, love.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.

Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.

It’s easy.

 

Nothing you can make that can’t be made.

No one you can save that can’t be saved.

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.

It’s easy.

 

All you need is love.

All you need is love.

All you need is love, love.

Love is all you need.

 

Nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.

Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.

It’s easy.

 

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Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but you all know that’s a lie right?

 

It’s a nice sentiment for a pop song or a rom-com, but as biblical truth it’s what theologians call ‘complete crap.’

 

Far be it from me to be cynical, but that song is a lie. It’s not true.

 

Love, whether we’re talking about your love for your spouse or your love for your children or their love for you, is NOT all you need.

 

We live in a culture that tells us love is what gives our lives meaning and value. We live in a culture that tells us you’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you; consequently, some of us will let any body love us.

 

We live in a culture that tells us if we just find the perfect person- or have the perfect child- then everything else that’s empty in our lives will be filled.

 

Love is all we need to live happily ever after.

 

Those are all lies.

You can call me cranky if you like, but you know I’m right.

 

Anyone who’s ever been married or had children knows love isn’t all you need.

On your wedding day you say with a twinkle in your eye: ‘Of all the people in the world, I choose you.’

 

But after the day you say ‘I do’ there are other days when you just want to pull your hair out and scream: ‘Of all the people in the world, I chose you?!’

 

     So, no. Love is not all you need to live happily ever after.

     It wasn’t enough to keep the Beatles together.

     It wasn’t enough to rescue some of your relationships.

     And it wasn’t enough to keep Jacob’s life from unraveling and damaging everyone in it.

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Speaking of Jacob, just as an aside, you need to appreciate the degree of difficulty I’m dealing with today. A few of you may have noticed that I have a certain affinity for those silly, salacious, crude and even offensive parts of the Bible. So you should know that today’s scripture passage contains the Hebrew equivalent of the F-word, as when Jacob says to Laban: ‘I want to ___________ your daughter.’

In Hebrew, Rachel is described as having a ‘hot body’ while her older sister, Leah, whose name means ‘cow’ in Hebrew, is said to have ‘nice eyes,’ which is a Jewish colloquialism for ‘she has a nice personality.’

And then, to top it off, Jacob, the hero for whom the People of Israel are named, gets completely wasted and has sex with the wrong sister.

Can you even begin to appreciate how difficult it is for me not run wild with this story and offend you all in the process? It was all I could do not to title my sermon ‘Beer Goggles.’

 

As tempting as the silly parts of this story might be for me on other days, today I want to take the story straight up. I want to be serious.

 

Because once you push aside the preposterous Jerry Springer parts of the story, this story is more common and more relevant for this community than you could possibly guess.

 

By my conservative estimate, I’ve done about 1500 hours of counseling with couples during my ministry: couples jumping into marriage, couples struggling through their marriage, couples jumping into parenthood in order to fix what’s broken in their marriage, couples getting out of their marriage- after a long time or not long at all.

 

Confidentiality means I can’t tell you who those couples are. I can’t point to them or tell you if you’re sitting next to one of them, though some of you are.

 

     But that doesn’t matter because I can tell you: whenever those couples come to my office, there’s a better than even chance their names are Jacob and Leah.

 

So, I think it’s important you know their story.

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[Pull out two glasses. ‘Leah’ is half empty and ‘Jacob’ is full] 

 

Jacob and Leah’s story- it has everything to do with the stories they brought with them to their marriage. It almost always does.

 

The story starts with Jacob.

 

Jacob has an older brother.

Jacob’s Dad always preferred his brother to him. [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

When you get past all the drama and bad decisions in Jacob’s life, that’s what it boils down to.

 

His Dad always insisted ‘I love you both the same.’

But even when you’re a child, you know better. You notice. You notice if your parent’s really listening, really paying attention to you, really enjoying you.

 

So Jacob grows up in his brother’s shadow, and the anger and hurt Jacob feels because of his Father gets expressed as resentment towards his brother. [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

And Jacob’s Mom, she deals with it the way all abusive families cope. She tries to compensate for what her husband won’t do. She turns a blind eye. She pretends the problem doesn’t exist. [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

But that never works.

 

Eventually it comes to a head. It always comes to a head.

 

So when Jacob is older, he hurts his brother- in a way that can’t be taken back. And, if he’s honest, he does it to spite his Father.

 

In just one self-destructive moment: his brother hates him, his relationship with his Father is ruined forever, and his Mother is forced to take sides. She doesn’t choose his. [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

Jacob’s never had his Father’s love. He’s lost his Mother and brother’s love. He has no sense of God’s love. He has no one in his life. He has no direction to his life. He has no meaning for his life.

 

He leaves home, completely empty inside. [EMPTY his glass]

 

The next part of Jacob’s story starts at a well.

 

But it just as easily could’ve taken place at a college or a club. In an office or at a party. Or over the computer.

 

He meets a woman. [Leah’s CUP]

He takes one look at her and he convinces himself:

 

She can fix what’s broken in my life.

She can give me what I’m missing.

She can fill the emptiness inside me, he says.

 

And he calls that love.

 

He’s like an addict, using the idea of this person to escape the pain in his own life, which makes him vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

Maybe he doesn’t realize it, but Jacob’s not looking for a soulmate. He’s looking for a salve. Or a savior.

Jacob marries this woman, hoping she can fill what’s missing in him.

His need keeps him from seeing who she really is. He doesn’t see that she has an emptiness insider her too. [hold up her glass] and that she can’t possibly fill what’s empty in his life. 

[pour her water into his so that he’s only half-filled].

So after they get married, he finds that emptiness is still there inside him.

And that brings conflict. It’s not long before he’s shouting at her:

‘You’re not the person I thought you were.’ [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

‘You’re not the person I married.’ [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

‘Why can’t you be more like this….’ [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

Eventually he stops speaking to her much at all. [Pour out some water from his glass, letting it drip everywhere]

Until finally Jacob’s married with children and discovers he’s even emptier on the inside than he was before and he’s long way from happily ever after. [EMPTY his glass]

 

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Then there’s Leah’s story. [FILL her glass]

 

On the one hand, she’s the causality of Jacob’s need, but on the other hand, she does to him exactly what he did to her.

 

Leah grew up in the shadow of her little sister.

 

Her sister was a knockout, always the center of attention. [Pour out some water from her glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

 

Compared to her, Leah was unlovely. [Pour out some water from her glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

 

Or at least that’s how Leah saw herself; such that, she didn’t believe anyone would ever love her because she didn’t believe she was worth loving. [Pour out some water from her glass, letting it drip everywhere]

 

 

And one day she meets a man, whose heart has an emptiness every bit as big as her own.

 

She meets him at a well, but they could’ve met anywhere.

 

Even though she knows he doesn’t really know her, doesn’t really see her for who she is, she marries him.

 

She marries him because she thinks he’s the only one who will ever marry her.

 

So she pins her hopes for happiness on this man, only to find one day that her emptiness is still there.

 

And that he can’t fill what’s missing in her life. [pour his empty glass into hers]

 

It’s not long before the marriage starts to suffer and strain from the emptiness both of them bring to it. [empty her glass completely]

 

So what’s Leah do?

 

She thinks children are the solution.

 

She thinks kids will fix her marriage and win her husband’s love.

 

So she has a little boy. She names him Reuben, and she says to herself: ‘Surely, my husband will love now.’ [POUR water into a shot glass]

 

But no, it doesn’t work that way. Never does. Though you’d be surprised how many think it will.

 

She tries again. She has another little boy. She names him Simeon. And this time she says to herself, ‘Surely my husband will pay attention to me now, will listen to me.’ [POUR water into a shot glass]

 

But with each child she’s pushed further into unhappiness.

 

She has another boy. She names him Levi. And she says to herself: ‘With three kids, now my husband will become attached to me.’ [POUR water into a shot glass]

 

     But kids can never fix what was broken before they were born.

 

Three kids later, Leah finds herself still empty on the inside.

 

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It’s not in the story today, but I can tell you how the rest of it goes because I’ve heard it too many times.

 

Leah turns to her children to bring her the happiness her husband hasn’t, to fill what’s missing in her life, to give her life meaning and purpose.

 

But no child is big enough to fill what’s missing in their parent’s life. [EMPTY the shot glasses into Leah’s glass, should only fill her 1/4 of the way]

And no kid should have to bear such a burden. They’ll only get crushed underneath your expectations. Because if you look to your children for validation, to fill an emptiness inside you, you’ll need them to be perfect.

 

And when they’re not-because no child is- there will be conflict. [EMPTY Leah’s glass completely]

 

And it’s not long before everyone is left feeling empty inside.

 

And a long way from happily ever after.

 

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Love is NOT all you need.

 

Psychologists call this a lack of differentiation, a lack of the ability to be a complete, fulfilled individual within the context of a relationship.

 

But Christians- Christians call this idolatry: Looking to others to give you what only God can give. Let’s not beat around the bush. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how long you’ve been married or whether your kids are young or grown.

     For most of you, this is the primary way you break the first commandment.

     Scripture says God is love; it doesn’t say love is God.

     You can’t replace God with your spouse.

     And you can’t replace God with your child.

     No spouse should have to love you that much and no kid can.

Until you realize that, you’ll always be frustrated with your kids and you’ll never stop complaining that you thought you were marrying Rachel only to discover you’re living with Leah.

 

For some of you, your marriage or your children play too big a role in your life precisely because God plays too small a role.

 

I mean, we forget that the first vows a bride and groom make aren’t to each other but to God.

 

If we make too much of our marriage and our children, we make too little of God. And when we put too much pressure on our marriage and children, we depend too little on God.

 

I’m not saying you should love your spouse or your kids less. I’m saying you should love God more. Because the bitter irony is that when we make too little of God in our relationships, we cut ourselves off from the source of Love.

 

Trust me, this is just on-the-job knowledge: focusing too much on your marriage or your relationship or your children is the best way to undermine them.

 

     I mean, some of you need Jesus Christ to come in to your hearts not so you can go to heaven when you die but so your relationships here and now will stop being a living hell.

Because you can only be generous with what you’ve got in the bank to give. If your only source of meaning and love and purpose and happiness and validation and affirmation and worth is another person, then you can never really love them.

 

The only way to say ‘I do’ and keep on saying ‘I do’ day after day is to first be able to say: ‘I’m a sinner saved by the grace of Jesus Christ.’

When God has the proper, primary place in your life- Your spouse can let you down, and sure it upsets you but it doesn’t undo you. Because you know God will never let you down.

When God has the proper, primary place in your life- Your spouse can speak the ugliest truths about you, and you don’t have to run away. Because that (the cross) has already spoken the deepest, darkest truth about who you really are and from that God said: ‘I forgive you because you have no idea what you’re doing.’

When God has the proper, primary place in your life- You can have patience with the flaws and sins in someone else. Because you know God has been gracious to you.

When God has the proper, primary place in your life- Your spouse can take you for granted, and yes it will disappoint you, but it won’t demolish your self-image. Because you know to God you are infinitely precious and worth dying for.

     [Pull out another glass and baptismal pitcher.]

 

There’s another story.

Jesus was on his way to Galilee, and along the way he stopped in Samaria.

At a well.

Jacob’s Well.

Jesus meets a woman there. She’s carrying an empty bucket.

But it’s the emptiness insider her that Jesus notices. The emptiness has carried her from man to man to man to man to man…

And Jesus says to her: [Pour water into glass, let it fill up and then overflow out on to the floor until pitcher is empty.]

I am Living Water.

What I can give you is a spring of water that never stops gushing, never stops flowing, never dries up.

    I can fill you, Jesus says.

With love. With meaning. With purpose. With value and healing and worth and validation.

I can fill you, Jesus says.

So that you can give love, not need it.

And she left that day, gushing to everyone about what Jesus had done for her.

She learned that day what the Beatles never did.

     The only way to live happily ever after is to first be happy with who you are in Jesus Christ.

 

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Why the Cross #2: Tony Jones’ Challenge

Jason Micheli —  February 19, 2013 — 1 Comment

54CrucifixionAs part of Lent, Tony Jones issued another of his ProgGod Challenges.

This one is for bloggers to answer the question: ‘Why the Cross?’

My first stab at Tony’s question is posted here at Patheos.

What Tony is after, I suspect, is the need for Emergent Christians to articulate an understanding of the atonement that is as robust and scripturally thorough as the ubiquitous penal substitutionary atonement theory (which holds that Christ dies in our place, his blood ‘satisfying’ the wrath of God towards sinners).

One of the reasons for the penal substitution theory’s staying power, I suspect, is that it ‘preaches.’

Indeed I’ve heard many a pastor worry that other understandings of the atonement- many of which are just as scriptural- lack the emotional resonance of ‘Jesus suffered God’s wrath in your place.’

Here’s an attempt to play with the traditional ‘Christus Victor’ (referencing Revelation 12) perspective in a way that’s practical and ‘preaches.’

——————————————————————————————————————————

Nearly a year ago this month, I found myself trapped on the corner of Washington and King streets in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.

I was headed into Banana Republic. I don’t own many ties.

I have fewer dark ones. And that Friday I needed one, a black or a grey one. Because the night before, Jack, the little boy from our confirmation class, had been pronounced dead as I held his hand in the ER.

I was in a hurry, still feeling numb. But standing there on the corner, blocking my path, were 4 or 5 men and women. Evangelists.

A couple of them of were holding foam-board signs high above their heads. The signs were brightly illustrated with graphic images of a lake of fire, a 7-headed dragon and a terrible-looking lion with scars on its paws.

At the bottom of one of the signs was an illustration of people, men and women…and children…looking terrified, looking like they were weeping.

A couple of them were passing out pamphlets.

I tried to slip by unnoticed. One of them tried to hand me a tract, so I just held up my hands and said ‘I’m a Buddhist.’

But the young man blocking my path wasn’t fooled. He pointed at my open collar and said: ‘But you’re wearing a cross around your neck.’

‘Oh, that.’ I feigned surprise.

The young man looked to be in his twenties. He didn’t look very different from the models in the store window next to us.

He handed me a slick, trifold tract, gave me a syrupy Joel Osteen smile and said: ‘Did you know Jesus Christ is coming back to Earth?’

Then he started talking, with a smile, about the end of the world.
I flipped through his brochure. It was filled with images and scripture citations from the Book of Revelation.

‘Martin Luther said Revelation was a dangerous book in the hands of idiots’ I mumbled.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Oh, just thinking out loud.’

Then he asked me if I was saved. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘Jesus Christ was returning to destroy this sinful world, but that Jesus loved me and wanted me to invite him into my heart so I could be spared the tribulation.’

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to admit it.
Sometimes, I’m prone to sarcasm.
Sometimes, I have a tendency to be abrasive.

But that Friday, the day after Jack, what I felt rising in me was more like…anger.

‘Lemme get this straight’ I said. ‘Jesus loves me so much that before he casts me and everyone else into the lake of fire and destroys all of creation, he wants to give me the chance to accept him as my personal savior.’

The evangelist smiled and nodded his head and immediately tried to close the deal, telling me I just had to accept that I’m a sinner and that Jesus died on the cross in my place.

Because he was still standing in my way, I decided to push his buttons.

‘Why the cross?’ I asked him. ‘Why does Jesus or anyone have to die? Why can’t God just forgive us?’

He gave me a patronizing chuckle and said: ‘But God can’t do that!’

‘God can’t do that? God can create everything from nothing

but God can’t forgive?’

He just nodded like this was the most obvious thing in the world and said: ‘That’s why Jesus has to die on the cross.’

‘So what you’re saying is…my salvation hinges on how persuasive I find you- out here with your huge signs with dragons and lions on them?

Okay, so maybe I was feeling a little sarcastic.

‘I’m not sure you understand how serious this is sir’ he said to me.

‘Oh, I got it. I just think its more serious that you don’t understand the cross or Jesus Christ and don’t even get me started on the Book of Revelation!’

It was right about then I became vaguely aware that I was creating something of a scene. A small crowd had stopped and were watching us like it was the scene of an accident.

And I could tell from the PO’d look on his face that this evangelist was now much less concerned about my eternal salvation, and if he could he’d probably volunteer to throw me in the lake of fire himself.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card. ‘Maybe you should talk to a pastor instead’ he said.
‘Yeah I’ll think about it.’

My assumption is that for most of you the Book of Revelation is like that acid-trip, boat ride scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I’s like those Cosby Show episodes where Cliff Huxtable sneaks a midnight hoagie and then has whacked out dreams of pregnant men who give birth to toy boats and more sandwiches.

And why not?

Revelation is filled with bizarre, crazy images: dragons and horsemen named Death, lions that look like lambs, robes dipped in blood, pregnant women and numbers pregnant with meaning and above it all this image of a boot-stomping, butt-kicking Jesus Christ.

And my assumption is that, like those evangelists on Washington and King, you assume Revelation is about the future. That it’s like a visual morse code, warning us of what’s to come.

But when we treat the Book of Revelation like a Ouija Board that predicts the future, we miss the fact that St John writes down this vision God gives him, sneaks it out of the prison Rome has locked him in, and he sends it out to his churches not not to warn them of what’s to come one day but to remind them of what has already come to pass, once and for all, in Jesus Christ.

The Book of Revelation is not primarily about the future.
It is instead in scene after scene, in image after image, in symbol after symbol, about the cross.

It’s about the cross.

And not only that- as bizarre and crazy as Revelation might seem to you, if you don’t understand what John’s trying to convey, then you don’t understand the cross.

Here in chapter 12, John describes this vision of a heavenly battle between the forces of Satan and the forces of God.

On one side of this battle is the Dragon, whom John identifies as Satan.

But John doesn’t stop there. John gives the Dragon 7 heads and 7 crowns, the same number (everyone of John’s churches would’ve instantly known) as the number of Roman emperors from the regime that killed Jesus to the regime that threw John in prison and now persecutes his churches.

So John draws Satan as a dragon, as serpentine, and then costumes it as Rome to remind you that the powers that once killed Jesus and now persecute his People- this is the Evil that’s afflicted God’s creation from the very beginning.

On the other side of the battle that John sees is the archangel Michael, who in the Hebrew Scriptures personifies the power and might of God.

And in the middle, in Satan’s sights here in chapter 12, is a woman crowned with 12 stars- that’s Mother Israel, with her twelve tribes, from whom comes the Messiah.

Now notice- it’s the archangel Michael, the power of heaven, that throws the Dragon down, but notice what John says: it’s the blood of the Lamb that conquers and defeats the Dragon.

You see what he’s doing?
St John’s telling you the same story the Gospels tell you.
He’s telling you the Passion story- only not from the perspective of those gathered near Jesus’ cross but from the perspective of heaven.

What John wants you to see is that if you could sit down in Heaven’s throne and look down upon the cross and see it as the angels see it, then what you would see is a battle, a cosmic battle.

That when Jesus collides with the powers of Rome and the religious authorities and the mobs who scapegoat him and the friends who betray him, what’s really going on is that God, in Christ, is colliding, once and for all, with the Powers of Sin and Evil and Death. Satan.

You see-
It’s not that the cross is about placating an angry God who demands blood.
It’s not that there’s something in you, something about you, called sin that keeps God from loving you until someone dies for it.

No.

It’s that there’s something called Sin-with a capital S- in the world, outside us, all around us, that transcends us and victimizes us and dupes us and seduces us and enslaves us.

And God loves us so much that he takes flesh in Jesus Christ in order to throw the Dragon down once and for all.

 

John wants you to see that’s what’s really going on in the Passion story is that the Powers of Sin and Evil do their worst to Jesus:

He’s betrayed by one of his closest friends.

Peter, who’d sworn to always be there for him, to be with him till the end, swears Jesus off not once, not twice, but three times.

In the Garden, when Jesus is afraid for maybe the first time in his life, his friends aren’t there for him.

He’s spit on, struck and ridiculed.
He’s accused and lied about.
He’s stripped and mocked and beaten down and then he’s condemned.

To be nailed to the cross:
Where he’s stared at: naked and shamed.
And abandoned by everyone, including- it seems- God. Everyone but his mother and a friend.

The Powers of Sin and Evil and Death do their worst to Jesus.

And how does Jesus respond?

Jesus never retaliates.
He never says a word in anger.
He never curses those who curse him.
He never raises a fist and strikes back.
He never prays for God to avenge him for what they’ve done to him. He never gives in.

Sin and Evil and Death do the worst they can do to him. And then three days later…guess what?…he comes back.

Jesus lives God’s love and forgiveness till his dying breath, and three days later his grave…is empty.

He wins. He conquers. He throws the Dragon down.

John wants you to see that from the foot of the cross Jesus might look like a suffering servant. But from the front row of heaven he looks like a boot-stomping, butt- kicking warrior.

Who wins with love.

What’s Good News about the cross is not Jesus’ death.

What’s Good News about the cross is that the cross is where the Powers of Death go to die once and for all.

What it means to be a Christian is to be believe that in Jesus Christ on the cross something cosmic and objective occurs.

Evil has been defeated and all that’s left of it in our world is like the last gasp of a dying enemy.

If you miss this…

The cross is not about individuals getting forgiven so that they can be with God in heaven when they die.

The cross and the empty tomb are God’s way of vindicating the life of Jesus; they’re God’s way of saying that love and forgiveness triumphs. Period.

And if that’s true, then it’s true not just on Good Friday, not just on Easter.

It’s true today and tomorrow and in our everyday lives: that the way we conquer and overcome and triumph over the sin and evil done to us is with love.

If I’m honest, I think what angered me most about those evangelists on the street corner- especially on the day after Jack- is how they made John’s Revelation seem so other-worldly.

And I know that for most of you any scripture about Dragons and Armed Angels and Women Crowned with Stars sounds very unrealistic.

It doesn’t seem to have much to do with this world, with this life, with your life.

I know that most of you have always assumed that any scripture with Dragons and Angels and Women Clothed with the Sun must be about some Future, not the Here and Now.

Then again, for many of you, I know something about your Here and Now. What’s it like.

I know plenty of you, in the Here and Now who’ve been betrayed, who’ve been sworn off by someone who promised to be with you always.

I know plenty of you, in the Here and Now, for whom those closest to you weren’t there for you when you needed them the most.

I know plenty of you, in the Here and Now, who know what it’s like:

To be struck
And ridiculed. Insulted and rejected. Lied about.
Scorned.
Rejected.

And I know there’s plenty of you in the Here and Now caught with someone else in an endless tit-for-tat, someone with whom you can’t resist returning every insult with a dig of your own, someone for whom you save one or two outstanding, unforgiven memories just to hang over their head and keep the upper hand.

I know there are plenty of you in the Here and Now who believe in Jesus Christ, who say you have faith in him, but still have someone in your life for whom you insist it’s impossible to forgive, someone in your life with whom no accusation can go unanswered, someone with whom you can’t put away the sword, turn the other cheek or show compassion or pray for the opposite of what they’ve done to you.

I know plenty about your Here and Nows.

So maybe, despite all your assumptions to contrary, you need John’s Revelation to tell you that the Battle’s over, that the Enemy’s lost, that the sin and evil in your life only have their dying breaths left.

Maybe you need St John to paint his pictures of the cross to remind you that you don’t need to give in to what’s going on in your life.

You don‘t have to become what was done to you.
You can overcome. You can conquer. You can triumph.

But only with Love.
Because the love of Jesus Christ has already won.

Maybe you need St John to challenge you: to have more faith in the power of Christ’s love than you do in the power of Sin.

Maybe in the Here and Now, as bizarre and strange as it might sound, you need someone to tell you that the Dragon’s been thrown down.

 

 

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Counterfeit Gods: A Reflection from Julie Pfister

Jason Micheli —  February 19, 2013 — 1 Comment

We’re continuing our Lenten Sermon Series, Counterfeit Gods, this weekend. Here’s another reflection from Julie Pfister on Tim Keller’s book by the same title.counterfeit-gods-timothy-keller

I’d like to pick up from where I left off last time, but unfortunately, until my family unsubscribes to Jason’s blog, I need to “cool it a bit”

Pick an idol – any idol.  That’s the way it seems to me sometimes.  Trying to exorcise all these false idols from my life can be difficult, but when we (and I mean I) are trying to protect a long held paradigm and comfortable way of life, identifying false idols and calling them what they really are can be the real tough part.

I remember being in a group study for The Hole in the Gospel and trying to find ways to live with myself after realizations that I am even more self-centered, self-absorbed and spoiled than I had thought.  I was seeking advice and honestly struggling with the concept that I could learn about the thousands that die every day from basic hunger as I lament the 15 pounds that I have gained. “How can I learn these things, without being CHANGED?”  I poured out to the group after a long sleepless night.  “Without needing to do more than check a box and donating a few dollars or serving at ROCK?”

“It was great” somebody offered in response, “the other day I got an email that the shelves were empty at UCM, so I cleaned out my pantry and took some food down – it  made me feel really good to do that.”

I asked “that’s great, but what if we need to do more than check that box and do something, that while responsive and generous, checks the box and makes us feel better?”  (I should have added a smiley face to the end of my question)

Somebody never came back to the group again.  I suppose I had offended her by diminishing what she had done, which was a generous act.  However, it was not my intention to diminish her.   I was deeply struggling with a concept that grips many of us in our comfortable lives.

How do we give enough money or time to others without upsetting that balance that we all like to think is more important than spending ourselves for Christ?

I want to be “exhausted for Christ” when I die on the one hand, but on the other hand, I want to just the food out of the pantry that we haven’t used and maybe throw in few other choice items.

People are so kind and effusive with their praise and thanks.  But, frankly, it makes me very uncomfortable.  I know myself well enough to know that it is only by the Grace of God and for His glory that I have time or energy for anything that I do.  Too often I have to fight the lazy bum I can be.

I am prone to wanna hang out on my porch and watch Netflix on my laptop and drink coffee and eat jalapeno chips all day….

I am prone to times of self-pity and self-doubt and subject to shame and regret at the time and opportunities I have squandered.

I am.

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love

Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above”

 

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Fell Through The Cracks: Sermon on Acts 2

Jason Micheli —  February 11, 2013 — 4 Comments

imagesIn case you missed it, Teer Hardy preached his maiden sermon this weekend and did a great job. How could he not, listening to me every week?

There’s audio of it here and in the iTunes store under ‘Tamed Cynic.’

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10 Problems with Left Behind Theology

Jason Micheli —  January 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

Yesterday, as President Obama was sworn in, the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir sang ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’
As catchy as is the chorus of that hymn, I’ve never enjoyed singing it in church. Whenever you conflate the Second Coming of Christ with the justness of an American war you’re on dangerous theological ground. Anyways, more on that later.

This weekend we conclude our Razing Hell sermon series talking about the Second Coming. Perhaps no other Christian doctrine is so fraught with popular misunderstandings and willful, fanciful misinterpretations of scripture.

van impeYou know what I’m talking about: guys like Jack Van Impe making dire predictions about current events, identifying politicos like Obama with the Antichrist, interpreting Middle East Politics according to the coded schema of Revelation. And don’t even get started on the rapture.

These ways of reading Revelation, popularized in our own day by the Left Behind novels, are actually quite new and modern ways of interpreting, beginning with the rise of the modernist movement in the late 19th century.

These readings distort John’s original hope. Typically, such movements join visions of cosmic, final warfare with political action, divide the world into good and evil, demonize all who disagree, and are convinced of the rightness and righteousness of their view.

Such groups differ in the extremity of virulence of their views but all of them see present world events as fulfillments of biblical descriptions of the end time and as heading, by God’s predetermination, toward the cataclysmic end of history.

There’s a reason this way of reading Revelation is appealing. It gives gravity to the events of our own day. It makes scripture ‘exciting’ in that Revelation becomes like a treasure map or crystal ball, and it raises the stakes of my own individual belief.

As you’ve probably been exposed to before, contemporary apocalypticism predicts an exact timetable leading to the awful end ordained by God and predicted in the bible. It sees the beginning of this end ushered in by the modern state of Israel and it will culminate in a final battle of Armageddon. The faithful, however, will be ‘raptured’ to the Lord, escaping the tribulations and destruction. Evangelization before the final destruction will be done by 144,000 converted Jews. This will happen in our lifetime, according to such groups.

The problems with this way of reading Revelation are many and it departs from an authentic hope in Jesus Christ in significant ways:

1) It depends on and feeds fear.

2) The ‘rapture’ is based on a solitary biblical text (1 Thessalonians 4.17).

3) The notion that the faithful will be exempt from tribulation or suffering is alien to the Gospels.

4) It elevates the power of Evil to almost godlike proportions.

5) The timetable is deterministic. God’s set it in stone from the beginning. There’s nothing we can do to change history nor does our faithfulness effect it.

6) The world is divided between believers and infidels.

7) Jews are not sisters and brothers in the covenant nor are they people whom God loves and we must love too. Israel is important only for the role it plays in a timetable towards Armageddon.

8) Reconciliation of sinners is impossible.

9) The real object of hope is not Christ or New Creation but rapture.

10) Most importantly, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are secondary, in this view, to the apocalypse. The Cross is less decisive than a final, cosmic war. Armageddon is more significant than Golgotha. Christ’s work on the cross was not ‘finished.’ Moreover, the Cross is no longer the full disclosure of God’s character or nature. In the Cross, we see a God who suffers wrath in our place: ‘while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’ By contrast, contemporary apocalypticism sees it as ‘while we were still sinners Christ smote us in a cosmic battle.’ What emerges from this view is an almost schizophrenic Jesus.

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How Do I Explain Heaven to My Kids? Or To Anyone?

Jason Micheli —  January 7, 2013 — 2 Comments

Sunday’s sermon for our  series Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Heard about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and the Second Coming included two audio clips of me talking about last things with my two sons, Gabriel and Alexander who are 7 and 10. 

You can find those audio clips, here, are by clicking on the links as you get to them in the text below. They’re also in iTunes under ‘Tamed Cynic.’

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Heaven: It’s Not Forever

Sermon on Isaiah 65, Revelation 21

When we first announced that we’d be doing our January sermon series on heaven and hell, I received a handful of emails from you, all asking roughly the same question:

‘How do I explain heaven to my kids?’ 

Evidently some of you see me as a model of child-rearing and maturity. Which just shows how little you know me.

Now, because I’m a pastor, many of you assume that I sit around with my family and, like, talk about God and read the bible every second of the day. But that’s not the case.

My boys do stare at their comic book bibles as if they were Playboys, but as a family we probably spend more time talking about The Lord of the Rings and making fart jokes.

My boys have attended funerals and burials and even prayed next to an open casket, but to my recollection I’ve never actually talked with my kids about heaven- not in any formal or deliberate way.

So this week, over dinner, I decided to talk to my kids about heaven:

- Audio Clip-

Is there an age when your-anus stops being funny?

I can see several of you nodding your heads so I guess so.

Not that I need to but, just for the record, my wife insisted I be clear about who’s responsible for the potty humor in my family.

It’s easy to laugh at how kids talk about heaven.

But let’s be honest.

And this is the part where I insult you to try and get your attention.

I’ve done enough funerals. I’ve sat with enough dying people- Christians and non. And I’ve counseled enough grieving families to know that virtually every one of you think about heaven and life after death just like my boys do.

And to be totally honest: in most cases your thinking isn’t much more sophisticated than my boys’ thinking.

If I asked you the same questions I asked my boys then, with few exceptions, you’d picture it this way:

There’s a God in Heaven above.

There’s the Earth below, which God has created along with each of us.

We live our mortal lives on the Earth, but, as the bluegrass song says, ‘This is world is not our home. We’re just passing through.’

And when we die, our soul- that eternal, immortal, spiritual part of us- leaves our material bodies and goes up to heaven to live eternally with God.

We fly away, as that other song says.

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And maybe you’d add a variation or two, like:

If you believe in God

Or if you believe in Jesus

Or if you’re a good person

Then your soul gets to go to heaven when you die.

But basically you picture it the same way my boys do.

And you assume that’s what the bible teaches.

You assume this is what the Church preaches.

You assume this is what Christians believe and always have; in fact, it’s what atheists think this is what Christians believe and always have.

But it’s not.

It’s NOT.

Just to make sure you heard me, I’ll say it again: It. Is. Not.

It’s actually what any Jew or Christian, until recently, would have called, without flinching, paganism.

Preachers like me can’t say that at a funeral. I’ve learned that the hard way. Deathbeds and gravesides are not the proper or pastoral place to deconstruct someone’s piety.

It only upsets them.

But, we’re not at a funeral today.

So I’ll just say it: there is nothing in scripture about our souls going up to an eternal home in heaven after we die.

Christians only started talking this way a couple hundred years ago, starting in the Enlightenment when people started disavowing the Resurrection and after the Civil War when this world did seem to be a wicked place that should be abandoned.

The reason so many of our hymns get scripture exactly wrong on this point is that they come out of that very time period.

What we take for granted about heaven and life after death- you won’t find that way of thinking anywhere on the lips of Jesus.

You won’t find it in the words of Paul.

And you do not find it in the vision given to Isaiah.

Or to St John at the very end of scripture.

What we take for granted as biblical, Christian teaching is actually a mishmash of pagan superstition that’s been superimposed on scripture to the point where we no longer notice what scripture repeatedly and unambiguously teaches.

Now that I’ve kicked over all your mental furniture: what is the ancient, biblical understanding of heaven and the life to come?

If this (our souls going to heaven when we die) isn’t what scripture teaches, then what is?

What do we tell our kids about heaven?

I tried with my boys this week. You can have a listen.

-Play Clip- 

When you turn to the very first page of scripture, you read that in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.

Both of them.

A better way to think about that is in the beginning God created the Spiritual and the Material. They’re both part of God’s creative design and NOT to be distinct from one another or in contradiction to each other.

What God intends in the very beginning is this unity, this overlap, this marriage of the heavenly and the earthly.

And this marriage- and that’s an important word- of the spiritual and the material is present in the humanity God creates too.

Genesis 2 says God created adam, which is Hebrew for the Man, from the adamah, which is Hebrew for earth.

Then after God pulls up the adam from the adamah, God breathes into adam his ‘ruach’ his Holy Spirit.

So in the beginning, God doesn’t just create Heaven and Earth. God creates this marriage of the spiritual and the material within humanity.

And in Hebrew this marriage of the material AND the spiritual that God creates in humanity is called our ‘nepesh’ and that’s the word your bibles misleadingly translate into English as ‘soul.’

But what happens?

Through the catastrophe of Sin, Heaven and Earth, the spiritual and the material, are pulled apart. They’re torn asunder.

Death enters God’s creation, and that curse- as we sing in Joy to the World- comes not just to Adam and Eve but to all of creation.

Everything God created and called very good suffers because of this breach between Heaven and Earth.

And so the plot of scripture- and, yes, scripture is a book comprised of many books but, like any good book, scripture has an overarching, unifying plot to it- the plot and promise of scripture is God’s work to restore what God creates in Genesis 1 and 2.

To undo Death.

To reunite the Heaven and Earth.

Salvation, Eternal Life, is about the reclamation and permanent restoration of God’s creation; it’s not about our disembodied evacuation from God’s creation.

It’s about Heaven coming down to Earth and the two becoming one, once again and forever.

That’s Isaiah’s vision. Isaiah doesn’t see our souls going up, up, up and away to Heaven and leaving behind everything else that God called very good.

It’s about Heaven coming down to Earth so that what God created is restored. That’s what we pray every time we pray the prayer Jesus taught us: ‘Thy Kingdom come…on Earth…’

Jesus gives us that prayer because Jesus is at the center of what God is doing to heal his creation.

Dennis said it on Christmas Eve. In the Incarnation, in Jesus’ own body, is this marriage of Heaven and Earth. He’s our future made present.

Jesus is the beginning of a New Creation- that’s how Matthew and John begin their Christmas stories.

And in his life, his teaching, his faithfulness all the way to a Cross Jesus undoes the curse of Death.

What we call Eternal Life- begins in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. God raised Jesus from the dead as the first fruit of God’s New Creation. He’s the Second Adam, scripture says.

If it’s just about our souls going off to heaven when we die, then why didn’t God leave Jesus in the tomb?

And just take the spiritual part of him up to heaven?

Why bother with a Resurrection?

As St. Paul says, Jesus isn’t the first fruit of anything if that’s not also what God will do with each of us.

The plot and promise of scripture, from the first page of scripture to the last,  is that what God did in Jesus Christ, on the last day God will do for us.

And what God will do for us, God will also do for all of creation.

The promise of scripture is that one day Heaven will come down and be made one with the Earth. That’s why the very last image in scripture is of a wedding, a marriage, between Heaven and Earth. And on that same day all who have died in the Lord, all who are resting in the Lord, will be Resurrected and Restored just like Jesus on Easter morning.

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‘Heaven,’ wherever or whatever happens to us right after we die, is not forever.

Heaven is not forever. When I first became I pastor, back before I was the sensitive and pastoral person you know now, I actually said that to a grieving widow. She asked me if I thought her husband was in heaven, and without thinking I replied: ‘Well sure, but he won’t be there forever.’

And she then started sobbing. And, maybe it wasn’t the best moment say it, but it’s still true.

Heaven- what we think of as heaven- is not forever.

When Jesus promises to the thief on the cross, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ The word ‘paradise’ in scripture refers to a temporary state of bliss.

And when Jesus says to his disciples ‘In my Father’s house there are many rooms…’ The word Jesus uses is ‘tent.’  A temporary structure.  That’s not what we usually think of when we think of Eternal Life. But according to scripture, we have a life after life after death.

What scripture means by Eternal Life isn’t whatever happens to us right after we die.

What scripture means by Eternal Life is our resurrected life in God’s New Creation where Heaven and Earth are made one, once and for all.

That’s the work God began in Jesus Christ, and that’s the work God is doing today in history through the Holy Spirit.

And that’s the work God enlists us to join in today. Now. Through baptism.

That’s what we do here.

If it’s just about our souls going up to heaven, then you don’t need to be here.

Sleep in on Sundays.

But if it’s about God one day reconciling Earth and Heaven, then what we do here as Church,

learning to love,

learning to hallow God’s name,

learning to be satisfied not with our desires but with our daily bread, learning to give and forgive,

learning to recognize and resist temptation,

learning to forgive those who trespass against us.

If it’s about God one day reconciling Earth and Heaven, then the work of reconciliation we do here, as Church, is forever.

Because it’s what God will do when his Kingdom comes to Earth…

That’s what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer.

And that’s what we pray at the end of the communion prayer: ‘By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all the world until Christ comes back.’

And his Kingdom comes.

On earth.

As it is in heaven.

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