“Setting the pace for the world” (January 14th, 2007)

Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10, Hebrews 2:8-9

I walked away from our worship gathering last Sunday really really glad to be a part of our church family. Then later that day, that feeling was reinforced for me that even while my New York Giants were in the process of choking like they’ve made a habit of the last few years, the Church Board met for over three hours, and in the midst of good discussion where folks weren’t always agreeing with one another, I walked out of that meeting feeling like we’re developing something tremendous with one another that, if continued, WILL bear fruit over the long-haul.

And I know that I suggested we’d be looking at the beginning of Romans chapter 13 today, but as I spent some time in prayer this week, something kept popping into my mind over and over again: and that is this…

How many of you have been at a family reunion or at your workplace or in a conversation with someone where you moved past just talking shootin’ the bull (so to speak) and one or the other said something that the other disagreed with immediately. What happened after that? (oftentimes, immediate tension arises, emotions rise, people get angry, we might think that someone’s disagreeing with one of our stances means they don’t like us)

And you know, in a society where challenge is not viewed as a healthy thing, many times we spend much more energy running away from others who disagree with us than we do staying and hashing some things out respectfully. This popped into my head as I thought about last Sunday and marveled at the reality that we talked about some things that not everybody agreed about, but I felt like it was fruitful, and people had something to offer to the conversation from their unique perspectives. And you know, that conversation is incredibly unique in our society, and I would add, sadly, unique in churches as well.

Because the reality is this, there are (number) people here today, and because each one of us is unique, we’re at (number) different places spiritually today. There are different political views sitting here today, different economic views, different moral views, and many other differences…but more often than not churches spend their time trying to pretend like they agree on everything, only to head home and express their disagreement with their family or a close friend that agrees with them. And you know, I’ve often wondered if the sermon doesn’t make that problem worse if a pastor stands up for a certain period of time and he or she says their piece, everyone listens, we all pretend we agree, sing a song and go home. That might be why folks put pastors on a pedestal today, because they’re often the ones talking about what God wants for us, and because they’re the only significant voice folks hear on a Sunday, they assume the pastor is somehow sin-free or above falling flat on their face. Or they assume that the pastor does the hard work of Biblical study to prepare a sermon, and they get to just sit and enjoy listening.

But I don’t think that’s a healthy approach to the reality that we’re all different today. You have called me out as a leader and expect of me to put in work to prepare a message that builds us up as a people, calls us to account as a people, something you can depend on each week. I recognize the responsibility of that. But I don’t think it’s healthy if that approach either makes me swell-headed cause I’m the only one talking or that encourages you NOT to read the Bible or do significant study and prayer because you’ll get it on Sunday. The Bible is best studied in community, as the community (which is full of individuals with a heck of a lot to offer: colorful personalities, unique perspectives, and stories that pop up in our memories as we read together) gathers around God’s desires for them.

And that’s all fine and good to say until we take a risk to say something we know someone else is going to disagree with. We immediately interpret disagreement as "fighting" and we get tense when a discussion starts to look like that, so we step back from the picture or withdraw quickly from the conversation. We often take the knee-jerk response of cutting off the tension by saying, “We believe different things” and move on, and we think we're doing something healthy because we don't want to "fight" with each other or have tension in a relationship

Now that kind of approach to conflict may seem to work in the short-term, but I think it's a very unhealthy approach for three reasons:

1) In our society where folks walk around saying, "Whatever you believe is ok," or “Never talk about religion and politics,” their hearts are really crying out, "There has GOT to be something more than this life, something more than this emptiness!" Our society is literally begging someone to care enough about our emptiness that we creatively think of ways to both challenge our and listen to them. But the only way we’re going to be able to do that is if we’re committed to making our church the kind of place where we meet together and pursue faithfulness together along with being honest with one another. And the goal we place before each other is that we agree and disagree knowing that we all want to follow Jesus more today than yesterday; and we’re committed to listening to God first.And THAT is another way that we are to stand out from our society. A people not afraid of challenge. And that is DEEPLY connected to my second point,

2) When it comes to followers of Jesus, growth ALWAYS takes place more rapidly and more deeply when we're a part of an honest, healthy community of grace AND challenge. But it is often in churches in our society that the most surface relationships exist, as folks hop around from church to church to avoid those deeper relationships, and

Again, we are called to create a place in our church where we value the fact that we're all different, that we're all not perfect, but we live life together, and that means taking a risk in relationships to trust others with the questions and the stuff of life. That cannot happen, I emphasize, CANNOT HAPPEN, if we turn tail and run when others start to get too close or someone disagrees with us. And I guarantee you, you WILL NOT find this vision for this sort of community anywhere else in the world.

So if we don't want this sort of community; if we're satisfied with where we are now...we settle for the "belief" that this is all we can ever expect from the church. A bunch of folks hopping around to get entertained, and if no churches in our area can provide such a service for us, we stay at home and fill the void with movies and TV and Xbox 360s.

3) Now the third and most important reason why we should stand up and face challenge is that God comes to us as an alien, as a mystery, as an immigrant, if that gives a better idea. We could imagine God as that immigrant to our world, who has his own strange customs, languages, and lifestyle that don’t seem to make sense to us. And this God has the audacity to tell us that the meaning of our lives will be found in our willingness to listen to Him, to repent of our self-centeredness and pride, to turn out of our rebellion, and let him turn our lives upside-down as we submit to spending the rest of our lives unlearning our old ways that were leading to death and instead relearning the new way that God places before that leads to life.

And in this process, God declares us righteous as we pursue him and love others. A righteousness that does not come from ourselves. But this does not come without a cost, because it’s not just all about grace and what God is doing, but it demands a life-altering response from us. One of the most famous batches of verses about God’s grace that is quoted ALL THE TIME by those who would claim that it has nothing to do with works is Ephesians 2, verse 8 that says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.”

So salvation is God’s action, right? We can’t earn it. That’s true, BUT what follows that verse? “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ to what? (Do good works), which God prepared in advance for us to do…(later in the letter, Paul writes) You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

So while you and I have done nothing to deserve this gift, and this salvation comes from outside of us, from a loving God, we also have to deal with the reality that the lifestyle God calls us to, expects from us, is also alien to us. And the faithful response is the obey God, listen to God, and through hard, consistent work, seek to have our lives line up with his desires for us.

So change, and a willingness to change (Jesus often said, "Those with ears to hear") is built in to the life of the people who have said "yes" to God. And I think we have to ask ourselves some important questions today that can guide us as we live our lives that can change the perception that others have of our lives so we look different from our neighbors in ways that are good and faithful.

And you might laugh at the first question I suggest we look at before everything else:

Who is God? And what is He all about?

The way we answer this and where we go to answer this will define our lives, and I don’t think I’m overstating this: Our picture of God affects our picture of Jesus, which affects our lives because God expects us as his people to follow the example of Jesus. And oftentimes, when people ask “Was Jesus God?” they usually think they know what the word “God” means, and are asking whether we can fit Jesus into that. I think this as deeply misleading. And if you’ll bear with me, I can perhaps make my point clear by a simple story from a guy named Tom Wright.

“For seven years I was College Chaplain and Worcester College, Oxford. Each year I used to see each of the first year undergraduates individually for a few minutes, to welcome them to the college and make a first acquaintance. Most were happy to meet me; but many commented, often with slight embarrassment, “You won’t be seeing much of me; you see, I don’t believe in god.” I developed a simple response: “Oh, that’s interesting; which god is it you don’t believe in?” This used to surprise them; they mostly regarded the word “God” as always meaning the same thing. So they would stumble out a few phrases about the god they said they did not believe in: a being who lived up the in the sky, looking down disapprovingly at the world, occasionally “intervening” to do miracles, sending bad people to hell while allowing good people to share his heaven. Again, I had a simple response for this very common perception of God: “Well, I’m not surprised you don’t believe in that god. I don’t believe in that god either.”

At this point the undergraduate would look startled. Then, perhaps, a faint look of recognition; it was sometimes rumored that half the college chaplains at Oxford were atheists. “No,” I would say; “I believe in the god I see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.” And so, the truth is, what most people mean by “god” in late-modern western culture simply is not the mainstream Christian meaning.

I mean, what are some of the temptations we might have in thinking about who God is and what he cares about?

And the most twisted thing that results often in our lives as Christians, and this is probably more of a personal confession on my part today, is that we have the life of Jesus right smack dab in front of us: everything he cared about, the way he lived, how he loved, how he faced evil, how he interacted with those he disagreed with, how he loved people…it’s all there; BUT, and this is a HUGE BUT…I still try to put God into a box where his person is defined by me, what he cares about is defined by me, and what he does is defined by me. I, as a human being, do NOT want my life turned upside-down, even if the way I live is really the upside-down life and God is calling me to live right-side up. I DO NOT WANT MY LIFE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.

But that’s the big problem here, because Jesus, in his coming, refused to accept the human definitions of who God is and what he is about; even though I STILL today try to reduce the meaning of the life of Jesus by calling him a good teacher, and focusing on his compassion while skipping over his hard teachings as if they didn’t exist often. Personal confession again!

And this is why we need to have the space in our church family where we can not only laugh together and share sorrow together, but challenge one another without being afraid of the other person throwing in the towel and quitting in the relationship. This space comes when all of us recognize our imperfection and limited understanding, when all of us pursue God to the best of our abilities, and when we talk on a deeper level about what that life looks like, knowing that we’re going to disagree along the way. Now THAT’S a vision for real community, people that trust each other.

Even though it can seem terribly complex to figure out what it means to abide in Jesus sometimes, there are multiple places in the Bible where we get real simple, straight-forward comments about what that means:

“Here is the test by which we can make sure that we are in him: whoever claims to be dwelling in him, binds himself to live as Christ himself lived.” (1 John 2:6)

So, even though life can be hard here on this earth, and it seems like everything is falling apart, we are reminded in Hebrews, “In putting everything under Jesus, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to Him. But…” in all that, as complex and tough and seemingly meaningless as life can be, we are given an example, a picture of what it looks like to live according to the purposes and desires of God, “But we DO, we DO see Jesus…now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death…he shared in our humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death- that is, the devil- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

There is something that’s been at work in my head for a decent while now, and it is this: no matter how large or how small a church is, the most important thing and the thing we will be held most accountable to when we stand before the judgment seat one day is the kind of people that this church is making. Our eternal legacy as a church will be whether we produce disciples of Jesus who pursue loving God and their neighbor passionately or whether we produce surface, what I call scratch and sniff Christians. They say all the right things on the surface when they’re around the right people, but there’s no depth, no consistent inner reality. In light of eternity, will we have made a positive impact on our world? Will we have made a difference? These questions should drive us as a church and as individuals whether we’re a ditch-digger or a lawyer…

And in order to be shaped into a people who passionately pursue the desires of God first, we have to create a safe space here in our church family not only for us to sing together and read Scripture together, but also to recognize that we are all at different places, and we need the room to challenge one another as well as show grace to one another. Otherwise we’re stunting our growth together AND as individuals.

(In Christ Alone)

In Christ alone my hope is found

He is my light, my strength, my song

This Cornerstone, this solid ground

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease

My Comforter, my All in All

Here in the love of Christ I stand



In Christ alone, who took on flesh

Fullness of God in helpless babe

This gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones He came to save

'Till on that cross as Jesus died

The wrath of God was satisfied

For every sin on Him was laid

Here in the death of Christ I live



There in the ground His body lay

Light of the world by darkness slain

Then bursting forth in glorious Day

Up from the grave He rose again

And as He stands in victory

Sin's curse has lost it's grip on me

For I am His and He is mine

Brought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death

This is the power of Christ in me

From life's first cry to final breath

Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man

Can ever pluck me from His hand

'Till He returns or calls me home

Here in the power of Christ I'll stand