Creative Repetition in Preaching

Repetition is the mother of learning, they say, and I don’t altogether disagree. It’s the kind of thing that requires balance in preaching over the long haul. On one hand, if you’re too repetitive, you’ll sound like you’re just riding a hobby horse to death, and you’ll lose people’s interest. Worse still, even the people still listening won’t be getting the sort of balanced diet that can help them grow and mature in the Lord—one dimensional preaching isn’t good for anybody. Your preaching needs a sense of breadth. On the other hand, preaching that has no element of repetition loses its sense of depth. The church needs some level of repetition to get the import of certain concepts, and to have a chance to really weave them into her life, so that they become part of the church’s identity and ethos.“Balance” may actually be a misleading word for what I think we’re trying to find here, because I don’t think the significant question is “How much repetition?”, but “How should we handle repetition?”. What I mean is, we want to employ repetition that doesn’t necessarily feel like repetition. We want to use creative repetition, so that even what we’re preaching about regularly can feel new and carry genuinely new dimensions each time. The repetitive element needs to be blended in, needs to become one of the layers just below the surface of sermons and series. If it’s always on the top level, sitting in the titles and showing up in the punch lines, it will lose its heft. But if it only shows up those places every once in a while, and the rest of the time is woven into the fabric of the sermons, it will add texture and continuity to your sermons.This isn’t sheer manipulation, by the way—it’s just good art. Good designers know how to use common elements across a series of pieces to tie them together, without that element of cohesion being the up front subject of each piece. Rather it becomes part of the framework that allows each work to speak to its own subject in a way that is part of a larger conversation. I think good preachers develop a sense of how to do this, how to weave certain motifs into their preaching over time, without hammering it in each particular sermon. Sometimes the motif comes to the fore and is the distinct subject of the sermon, but many other times it is just there in the background, a line or two in the introduction or a certain word choice in the narrative.It’s a useful technique to double back through certain themes and motifs in your preaching—just make sure you do it creatively. Otherwise, repetition will cease to nurture learning, and will only be the mother of monotony.

The Fruit of Hope: Mission

The first post in this series looked at nurturing hope. Here, I want to think about its fruit.It's not an accident that people into the missional church movement are also often rooted in the sort of eschatology emphasized by theologians such as N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight, and Jurgen Moltmann. These theologians focus on God's intent to bring about the redemption of creation—the reconciliation of all things to God. The sort of hope that this kind of theology cultivates points towards mission as its natural fruit. Here are four ways that a robust sense of hope moves us towards mission.1. Hope helps us deal with the brokenness that we experience in ourselves. Hope allows us to see our own conversion as something that has begun but which is not yet completed. Our own discipleship has a trajectory, even if the specific turns and twists along the way remain mysterious to us. In hope, we see ourselves as in the process of being formed, and that takes place for and by God's missionary work in the world. Thus, mission is no longer something that we only see as being given to the elite super-spiritual, but is something for all of us. It is not for those who have already arrived, but is a part of the journey towards God's future, the source of our hope.2. It allows us to engage in broken systems. As hope grows within us, we we have new energy to struggle against the dark powers of the world, knowing that God will indeed defeat them in the end...their ability to crush and grind people is destined to fall, and when they are defeated, the systems they use to break people will crumble to. That knowledge allows us to actively subvert those systems through story and action, even while facing the frustration that comes from facing their current powers. I know this particular point sounds super nerdy and theoretical, but there's one last one that we meet every day:3. Hope sustains our ability to love people. People are tough to love sometimes, and there are moments when our frustrations with their behavior can overwhelm our loving desires for their well-being. That's just speaking about the people we already have affection for—we still have to deal with the surely strangers who rub us wrong from the beginning! Hope can help us deal with those frustrations. It provides us the resources to be able to see people for what they can be, rather than only as they already are. Realizing that everyone we meet is on a journey frees us to think about how our relationship with them, even the smallest interactions, might move them along the way towards wholeness. I think this is part of Jesus's own way of dealing with people, an imitating it is a step on the path of discipleship.4. Hope broadens our vision. It's perhaps most obvious how this happens temporally, as we expand our view from the present moment towards a long view. However, hope properly conceived also contains within it a vision of how God reconciles all of creation, and so we find it broadening our field of vision spatially and relationally as well. We begin to see how God's mission, and perhaps to some extent our place in it, relates to all humanity and the wholeness of God's world. Hopeful people see beyond themselves.

Hosea and Gomer—A Sermon About the Love of God

When my friends and I used to sit around and talk about women (and the chasing of them), I used to say that I was looking for somebody with three "G"s.  I wanted somebody who was Genuine, Gentle, and Godly. (Kelly and I have often debated whether I have in fact gotten my wish list—I generally think she has a more gentle side than she recognizes herself.) There were two others aspects that, if pressed, I would have admitted pursuing. One is "Gorgeous", although I might not have confessed that because it doesn't sound too spiritual.The final element—and if I'm honest, this was at times the most important element of all—was that I was looking, quite simply, for a woman who would love me. For a while Kelly wasn't sure about that, and eventually, this was not just a peripheral issue, but THE issue. If she did in fact love me, we'd get married. If not, we were probably done. I knew I loved her, but if it didn't go both ways, I just wasn't willing to go any further.I suppose that isn't that uncommon. If you peel back the surface of what we all chase in relationships, it comes to this: we want somebody to love us.  We just want to love someone and be loved back. All the world's tragedy and comedy comes down to this.And so we can only come to Hosea's story with bewilderment. While Hosea's marriage to Gomer was introduced in the first chapter, there it is essentially the context for the children and their prophetic names, in an account told by a third person narrator—"this is what happened to Hosea". In chapter 3, it takes center stage, in a first person account. This is Hosea saying, "This is my story." The first verse is enough for us to start with: "The Lord said to me again, Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods..."God invites Hosea to dive into God's own heart by entering into a relationship which he knows will be unreciprocal. God wants Hosea to love someone—not just marry them, but love them!—in the knowledge that his love will not be returned.You ever been there? Maybe not on purpose, but have you ever found yourself completely in love with someone that just wasn't that into you?That is simply one of the most painful things that can happen to humans—and it happens to most of us at some time or another.What is amazing is that God experiences this in his own heart. This is the most fundamental story we tell about God and his relationship with humans—God loves us, knowing that we often won't love him back. Indeed, this isn't accidental, but God created us with this precise possibility. God created us to live in community with him, but also created us with the possibility that we could choose to walk away from him. We often say that God did this so that our love would be of a certain kind—love freely given is the only kind that really matters, after all.  I suppose there is a good bit of truth in that, but I think that this Hosea story reveals a deeper truth.The metaphor here works not because Gomer is going to love Hosea in a particularly powerful way after her faithlessness, although that is a possibility. Gomer's love simply isn't the point. It's all about Hosea's love—which of course means that it's all about God's love. See, God doesn't just give us freedom only for the sake of making sure that our love is free and thus particularly powerful. Even more, our freedom works to show us the incredible power of God's own love. God's love is a powerful "even though" sort of love that loves despite going unreturned. God loves even when repeatedly rejected.And yet, God's love always pursues us. God relentlessly chases us, desiring to draw us into relationship with him. God desires for us to respond to him, to freely come and join him. His desire in this text is that Israel would—eventually—come to love him, that eventually Israel would seek God out and join him.  He desires the same of us, that as Ephesians says, we may have the power to comprehend the breadth, length, height and depth of God's love for us, and that perceiving that we may be live in the fullness of God, firmly rooted in his love. Radically, we might even take this further. Not only does he desire that we realize his love and return it to him, but God's vision for his people is that we join him in loving the world. Jesus roots his command that we love our enemies in exactly this, that this is how God loves the world. He knows it is different than how the world thinks about love—that's his point!

"You have heard it said, 'you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect." (Mt 5:43-48)

God loves even when his love is unreturned, and Jesus calls us to learn to love in exactly this way. Do we have the audacity to mimic God's love in our own lives—can we learn to love those who simply do not and will not love us back? Can we stop using our love simply as a tool to gain love back for ourselves? Once, God called the prophet Hosea to put his love—God's love— on display by loving someone who would not love him back—now he calls the church to do the same. We are called to be "Hoseas." Despite the knowledge that it will often be unreturned, we are called to love all—even our enemies. We do it in the hope that such love might communicate the unbelievable, relentless love of God—in the hope that even our enemies may be redeemed by God. And yet, even as we hope for their redemption, we are called to love regardless whether it ever has that effect or not. We are called to become like God, to break away from the limited nature of our natural way of loving. We are called to become, by the working of God's own spirit, capable of loving with God's own love.Thus the story of Hosea is a story of the gospel, that God loves us furiously. But that gospel is never for us alone. As soon as we grasp its meaning for ourselves, we are drawn into living it out for the world around us. We love with God's own love, for the sake of God's own glory.  Amen.

Shepherds and the Story—A Sermon about Elders

I've been thinking about how our understanding of elders and their roles as shepherds relates to the big picture, the story the church has been brought into by Jesus. With elders, as with many other parts of church life, it's too easy to think about them in isolation, as though we can simply turn to the proper chapters of scripture that address them and retrieve the list of rules that will tell us what to do. A much healthier approach is to start with the larger story in which we live, and let our understanding of the church's shepherds grow out of that context, out of that story.That larger story announces the reality of God's reign in the world and his willingness to love and redeem the world. It is the story of how the creator God remains concerned with his creation, and is active within it. It is the story of how that God made for himself a people, by making covenant with Abraham, and with his rescued descendants at Sinai. It tells of God's pursuit of Israel even when the covenant was broken. It tells how, in Jesus, God has made a new covenant with his people and opened the door for men and women of all nations to join Israel in becoming the covenant people of God. That story offers a way for humans to live within God's reign, and warns of judgment for those who continue to live in rebellion against God's reign. That story brings humans into participation in God's plan to fight the darkness that has corrupted the world, and announces that his victory is certain, and what is wrong will be made right.The church exists because of that story. It exists in that story. And it exists as an expression of that story.When we talk about shepherds and elders, we can't jump out of that story and imagine that we're just dealing with a simple fact of ordering religious life. The shepherds actually function, like the rest of the church, within the context of that larger story.As God's announcement of his reign became known in the world through the ministry and resurrection of Jesus, it was made known concretely to a group of disciples who became apostles, carrying the word into new territories, establishing colonies of disciples who took on the story of God and began to live it out in community together, and in relation to their neighbors in the cities and towns where they lived. Those apostles and their coworkers were charged with delivering the story to the world around them, and were highly mobile. Because of that, as they founded new communities, it became clear early on that within each new community of disciples there would need to be people who could function as "stewards" of the story, who could take responsibility to oversee how the community of faith lived out that story as "church". Those overseers (elders, bishops, pastors) became shepherds of the church, and bore several responsibilities in regard to the story that was driving the church. They still bear those responsibilities.Shepherds tell the story. That means they should be able to share the gospel, be able to articulate the gospel story, and teach others what it means to live that story.  Both 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 refer to the need that those who become elders should be able to teach. That doesn't mean they're required to have great class management skills, but that they understand the gospel and are capable of sharing that story. Shepherds are storytellers, because the story of God's work isn't something we hear once and are done with, but we hear it over and over again, the church has to be immersed in the story, understanding the big picture and learning over time the finer points of what it means to live with God.One of the reasons the shepherds have to be continually telling the story is because the story is always vulnerable to distortion. People subvert the christian story for a lot of different reasons, replacing it with stories of gods who are legalistic, absent, only interested with the spiritual, spiteful, or apathetic to sin. Therefore, beyond being tellers of the story, shepherds guard the story. When scripture uses the language of guarding the flock, and defending the truth, it says the church needs people who can make sure that the alternative stories that threaten to draw people away from the one true gospel story are challenged and defeated.  There is a definitive story that defines the church.  That story can't be changed at whim.The relationship between the shepherds and the story goes much further than the types of things they might say about the story, though. Perhaps one of their most important roles as stewards of the story is being an example to the flock of what it means to live out the story—shepherds display the story. They extend the story by showing what it means to live in God's kingdom in work and play, within family and within a neighborhood. To say they are stewards of the story doesn't mean they hold an abstracted truth within their minds, but rather it means that the story has become enfleshed in them. they are committed to living faithfully in family life, to restraining themselves in terms of greed or argumentation, and living fully aware—refusing to drunkenly numb themselves or lose control of their lives to anything but the will of God. In all of this and more they put on display what it means to submit to the reign of God, and what it means to walk in God's presence and grace.Good shepherds understand as well that it's not all about them. they play a part in the story, but they are also mindful of what it means for the rest of their community to find its place in God's story. They are aware of doing the work God places in their hands, but also of helping the other disciples discern what it means for them to play a part in the story. Shepherds draw their flock into God's story. They can do that in some surprising ways.When shepherds encourage someone among us to find their ministry, equip them to do the ministry, and entrust them to do the work God has prepared for them, they help draw us into the story, into participation with God's work.When shepherds stand with us in crisis, they are a reminder that God is with us and active in our lives, they draw us out into the story, helping us interpret the crises and their places in our lives as part of God's story.When shepherds mourn with those who mourn, they help that mourning be placed in context and draw people into God's story—in which death loses its power.When shepherds celebrate with those who celebrate, they help interpret the moment as having holy significance, like all moments do. In so reminding us, they draw us into the story which is not yet finished, but ongoing.Shepherds are storytellers. they guard and defend the story, and display the story by living in such a way that the story is enfleshed in them. But they also draw us out with them into the story, so that it might be enfleshed in us as well.  May it ever be so, for the sake of God's glory.  Amen. 

I Just Wanna be a Sheep (Baaaa)—A Sermon on Receiving Shepherding

A couple of years ago a movie was released that I suppose a few have seen, although I have not and hopefully presume that not many of you have either. Indeed, it is astonishing that there was a market at all for Black Sheep. The film is set on a sheep farm in New Zealand, and tells the story of a farm where a bit of genetic engineering goes terribly awry, creating a new breed of—wait for it—Zombie Sheep. Yes, Zombie Sheep. The generally docile creatures turn bloodthirsty, devouring whatever humans they can find, and in true Zombie film fashion, develop the ability to turn some of the bitten farmers into mutant were-sheep—hideous creatures covered with wool, frenzied and ready to join the attacking horde-flock in their quest to devour the remaining humans.This may well be a parable of the church.While much attention continues to be given (appropriately) to training leaders and discussing the evolving model of elderships within churches, but we need to talk more about the other side of the relationship—what we sheep bring to our relationship with our shepherds. Like any relationship, we can't work on only one side of the equation. For our model of shepherding to become truly effective, it can't just be about the shepherds. We have to also develop our sense of what it means to receive shepherding. You can't have good healthy shepherds in a church full of bloodthirsty zombie sheep.Scripture says something really interesting about this in Hebrews 13, which reads "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing—for that would not be beneficial to you." Working on the sheep side of the relationship with shepherds doesn't just make their job more enjoyable for their sake, but it actually helps us, the sheep. When we engage our shepherds and willingly receive the shepherding they offer us, it is to our great advantage, because it creates the possibility of the sort of shepherding relationships we need—shepherds who show us grace, teach us the word, and help us carry our burdens when we are weak.But how can we have shepherds who show grace if we don't have sheep who show vulnerability? How can we have shepherds who teach if we don't have sheep who are eager to learn? How can we have shepherds who help the weak carry their burdens unless we are willing to freely admit our own weaknesses and accept help when it's offered to us?The shepherds don't function in isolation from the body, but function as a part of a body, as an expression of what God is doing in the church as a whole. And the relationship between how the shepherds do their work and how we do ours is one in which the church grows as every piece does its part, as each one of us contributes to the sort of community in which good healthy shepherding naturally happens. The eldership has a role in helping us become the kind of church we need to be, but we must also recognize that the church has a role in helping the elders become the kinds of shepherds they need to be.We need shepherds who help us hear the word, so that we can be formed by it and hear exactly what we need to take the next steps in growth. But to be able to do that, the elders need us to be willing to share with them where we already are in our process of growth. They need us to become candid about where we have grown, where God is working on us now, and where we are struggling in our faith. This is challenging, because we want to pretend that we're all in the same place, that we're all growing in exactly the same way, in exactly the same time—or worse, we want to pretend like we don't need to grow at all.  We treat Christian maturity as if it's an all or nothing deal, as if we come up out of the water as fully formed disciples and there is nothing left to do but just hold on and hope we don't mess up. But in reality, we always need to be fed, we always need to grow.Elders have a teaching role, not just in classes or big public settings, but as a part of their relationship with their sheep, they naturally feed the sheep with insight from the word. I remember hearing Brent say that an important part of his role is to help people in struggle see their situation from a spiritual perspective, to help them see themselves in a way informed by scripture. And we need that, don't we? We need people who can come alongside us to speak to where we're at. But, how can that happen unless we're willing to be honest about where we really are—not just in times of obvious crisis, but in the routine times that make up so much of our lives and where most of our growing takes place.We need shepherds who will walk with us in all of life. Not just because they're elders, but because they are simply part of the church, and that's what church folk do—we walk with each other. We take care of each other, experience life with each other. Like Paul says:

"But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." -1 Cor 12:24-26

That's for everybody, whether we think of ourselves as leaders or not—the church is built to be a community of people who live life together, and who share the ups and downs of life together. Good pastoral care doesn't happen in a church where the shepherds are the only ones doing it. It happens best in communities that understand that we all—each one of  us—has an obligation to look out for each other. Ken has talked with me about continuing to build a culture of pastoral care in the church where it's not just about the elders, but about all of us pitching in to care for each other. In that culture, the elders are shepherds who lead by example. Shepherds give care to the hurting, but not alone. They lead a community that cares for the hurting among us.And not just in times of struggle! As we walk together, we learn to give God glory for all the different ways he is at work in our lives. Lance wrote to me that one of the things that has most surprised him about being an elder is how he started noticing how the Spirit was at work in so many lives around the church—Not because of anything special about him being and elder, but because he started opening his eyes and noticing more. He wrote, "I am constantly amazed how the Word of God transforms, grows and matures the believer...To increase my awareness of God growing so many members’ spiritual lives has been a surprise I was not expecting." Maybe our shepherds could help us recognize more and more of those ways God is at work—but how will that happen unless we make a commitment to share more of our lives with them, to let them walk with us? How will we recognize God's work in each other unless we're walking with each other?As we developed the process we're using this time to appoint additional elders, Tom reminded us that we needed to build in, from the beginning, some way of gauging the willingness of men to serve. The concept of willingness is critical to the role—we must have willing elders, willing shepherds. First Peter uses that language, that elders should serve willingly, not under compulsion, even eagerly. It's also true on the other end—we must have members who willingly receive shepherding. Willing shepherds, and willing sheep. Willingness may come easily to neither. But that spirit of willingness is at the heart of the church.Remember Mark 10? It was in a discussion of who in the community of disciples would lead and who would be led that Jesus told the disciples that he himself “had come not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” In discussing their willingness to serve each other, Jesus called the disciples to consider his own willingness to walk the way of the cross. To close this morning, I want to call you to do the same: consider Jesus. Is there anything in this sermon that exceeds the cross? In the cross, Jesus becomes the ultimate willing shepherd, and paradoxically, the best example of a willing sheep.In this, as in everything, may we only follow him.

Motherhood and Mystery—A Sermon for Mother's Day

This past week has been an unusual one. Preparing for the sermon has not been about deep exegesis, but deep participation.Kelly, apparently knowing full well that I was unprepared to preach for mother's day—being a man who understands almost nothing about the subject, graciously offered me the opportunity to deepen my understanding while she went to the beach this week. That's right—for nearly a week I've been flying solo with the girls, which is of course a joke you can understand only if you know both me and the girls in question. Indeed, today's short sermon is mostly due to the fact that I have to get home and clean up before she gets back later tonight.Mothers are amazing. It is well and good that today is a day marked off to say thank you to all those mothers out there, the stay at home moms, the working moms, the single moms, the struggling and victorious moms who give so much of themselves to their families, fulfilling the sacrifice of Christ in the most humble and incredible ways. To you all we say, "Thank you. We could not be who we are without your love and sacrifice."The Bible has much to say about motherhood. The story of redemption is full of many stories of women, women who took down and raised up kings, who preserved the people of God and who opened the way for exodus, conquest, and redemption. Along the way, many of these stories (though not all!) are stories of women who worked, wept, and waited for children—women who saw their place in the story of God as being related to their calling as mothers. That's not at all to suggest that this was a single, homogenous sort of work. Indeed, stories such as Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah, Mary, Elizabeth, Bathsheba, Ruth, Jochebed and Zipporah testify to the diversity of paths that may all be called, faithfully, "motherhood". "Motherhood" mysteriously takes many forms, as each person who finds that role to be part of her story works out what it means in her own context, in the face of her own challenges and amidst her own blessings. We do motherhood a disservice when we try to make it take one form. Indeed, no two moms are any more alike than any two sons or daughters. Mothers, be free, not to become just like the other moms you see, but what has called you to be in the life of your family. Learn from the example and wisdom of other women as well as you can, but do not try to become them. God did not give your children to them, but placed them in your care, entrusted them to you. You honor that trust not by simply imitating others, but by seeking out the gifts and blessings that you can uniquely offer your children. That freedom is not license to be irresponsible (this is just my way!) but is an immense challenge, that by struggling, collecting wisdom, and discerning what is right and faithful you can become exactly the mother God created you to be rather than a copy of someone else.God gives us different mothers because we all have different needs and challenges. Some of us struggle to understand boundaries and responsibility, some of us struggle to find our independence. Some children need to be coaxed into hitting the books, some need to be coaxed out of them from time to time. Some of us need more help making friendships, some of us need more help understanding what it means to have boundaries in our relationships. Different mothers do things differently, and part of the challenge in this role—like in many of the things God calls us to— is figuring out what it means to do it as you. what does it mean to take all the things that make you unique and fit them to the unique challenges posed by your situation. Motherhood, as a calling, is intensely personal. But that doesn't mean it's all about you. Rather, if I have one challenge to give you today, it's to learn the mystery that as personal as your calling is, it is not all about you. In fact, in the call to motherhood we can clearly see the challenge of what it means to be called by God to do anything, namely that we must learn to live as though the world does not revolve around us. In accepting any call of God we lay down any claim to our own self-interests, and place ourselves at God's disposal. Hear that well: when I say that motherhood is not about you, I do not mean that it is all about your children, either. Rather, it is all about God. What you want or desire, as well as what your children want or desire, is not as important as participating in God's story and mission.Mothers do well when they teach their kids that the world revolves around neither the mother or the child, but for the sake of God's glory and honor. In motherhood, you participate with God in his work to redeem the world, by teaching your children to hear and follow God. By providing for their needs you can become for them both the means and a symbol of his gracious provision in their life. By your speaking and living what you see in the scriptures, God's word can again become incarnate before your children's eyes, so that faith can take on flesh and become a part of the world made up of car pools and summer walks, the world of crazy schedules and bedtime stories, the world of soccer practice and lost shin guards. Your participation with God makes you a missionary to a world of crayons and swim meets, to the foreign lands of sidewalk chalk and middle school cafeterias.Becoming a mother may not be the only expression of your role in God's mission, but it can be a powerful one, filled with the miracles of supper and found shoes, the hard tasks of homework and the perils of prom. Paul in his shipwrecks was in no place as strange as those corners of the world a mother's minivan takes her on her missionary journeys, and his heartbreak over the Corinthians scarcely matches the tears any mother sheds over the sorrows of the children God places in their hands.Mothers, may God bless your work, not because it is easy or rewarding, but because it is His work, because it is part of His mission, for the sake of His glory.  For your calling to be a mother is not about you, or even your children. It is one place where, mysteriously, we become co-workers with God, his ambassadors of reconciliation. Motherhood is about God, and God's work in the world. You may say about your work as mothers what Paul mysteriously says about his own ministry (2 Cor. 6:1), "As we work together with him...". This is the mystery of life, the mystery of ministry, the mystery of motherhood. It is a partnership with God, something that he gives us to do, but something that he also does with you and through you. In motherhood, you participate in God's work. May we all listen to the call of God, so that wherever he bids us to join him, we may joyfully and faithfully follow, for the sake of his glory.Amen.  

Ministry

Most people don’t feel good. Most people aren’t happy, and aren’t satisfied. For me, being a preacher starts with that gloomy fact, with that realization that most of the people I see walking around the world are terribly unhappy. And, it’s not without reason, either. A lot of people fight to keep depressing realities out of the forefront of their mind. Their families are crazy, and their friendships are shallow. Their jobs are unfulfilling, don’t provide what they really want financially, or are at risk of being taken away. Their life is slowly draining away, minute by minute, and it becomes increasingly obvious that they don’t really have much to show for it. And on top of that, most nights there isn’t even anything good on TV.I suppose in the back of my mind, a major part of what I’m doing in life is that simple—I'm trying to help people feel good. Sometimes that means ministry is about helping them get right with God, because when you’re out of line with God, it jacks up everything else. Sometimes it means helping people find something to do with themselves besides just turning the page on the calendar. Ministry means helping them see that there can be more to their life than chasing paychecks, boys, girls, and what passes for glory these days. Sometimes it means helping people pick up the pieces when they lose something like their job or their family. Sometimes it is full of the really hard work of helping people figure out what the next step is for them to take responsibility for their life, whether that means fixing or abandoning some old relationships or trying to figure out how they’re going to pay off the credit card. Lots of times ministry is about giving people a place where they feel like they belong.Sometimes, and maybe most of the time, ministry for me means just trying to help people believe that somebody else in the universe cares what happens to them. I guess I believe that if people think I care about them, it’ll help them believe that God cares about them. That seems to me like an important thing to do.I got into this business because I had a chance, early in life, to feel what it was like to help somebody get right, to help them untangle stuff in their mind just a little bit, and feel loved. I wanted to help everybody feel like that.  I suppose that’s what I’ll try to do again tomorrow.

Thoughts on Bread and Wine, Church and Covenant

Today I've been working on catching up on the sermon audio part of the site, with the recordings from the (Sermon on the) Plain, and James.Additionally, I also had these recordings from the day where we recently focused more on the communion part of our worship.  It seemed better to post them here, so enjoy these thoughts on Bread, and these thoughts on Cup and Covenant.

Team

This week, I've had the wonderful pleasure of hanging out a bit with Kyle. He's part of a missionary group in Peru that our church sponsors. It was cool to hear him talk about the other side of a pretty cool team dynamic.When we first came to Tullahoma, it became quickly apparent to us that the church had a pretty unusual relationship with this particular missionary team. They had been in the field for two years, but the church still talked about their work eagerly, intensely. Beyond talk, they seemed to really value relationships with the team members, and evidenced their desire to continue to invest in those relationship, talking about them as if they were church members who had just been out of town for the weekend.  People kept up with what was going on, and were sincerely excited whenever a bit of news came by of things going well. The upcoming furlough visits were anticipated not just like some sort of Return on Investment presentation, but like reunions with much loved friends—or family.  (And not just because half the team literally is family either.)All that speaks well of the degree of community developed between the missionary families and the church. Beyond that, what's really significant—and not accidental, is that a lot of people at Cedar Lane really seem to understand the goals and tactics of the team in Peru. They buy into the idea that we are all part of the team, that this is something that the church does together.  This particular mission team has helped people understand the part they can play, and helped them connect to the mission of God, both in Peru and, I think, here in Tullahoma. They've been provoked to think about mission not just as something we fund, but something we are and do.The partnerships between missionaries and the churches that sponsor them are complicated things, and I'm far from an expert in how those relationships should be developed and nurtured. But I do understand this: Whenever people become connected to the mission of God, it's a win. We need more things like this, places where people get a better understanding of how they can connect with the mission of God. When we try to "do" mission without making that connection, we waste a huge discipleship opportunity.Glad to hang out with you, Kyle and Larissa.  Greg and Megan, y'all come home soon.

Do Not Judge—A Sermon from Luke 6:35-42

I told somebody this past week that the sermon for today could really only last a few seconds. Don't get your hopes up, it's going to be longer than that, but it seems like I should be able to just say something like, "Jesus says, 'Do not judge.'  So, stop doing it. Amen, let's stand and sing."It's not as though the command is unfamiliar to us.  The text we're dealing with is in Luke 6:35-42.

"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you." And he also told them this parable:  " Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will not they both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brothers eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye."

It's one of the most popular passages in the Christian Bible, well known among Christians and nonbelievers alike.  In fact, I don't know if there is any Christian ethic as respected by the outside world as "Do not judge."  Of course, the world is also acutely aware of our failure in following this command, and knows that while Jesus tells us not to judge, we are quite practiced in the art.  Unfortunately, it comes quite easily to us.Judgement against our friends, family, neighbors and strangers simmers deep within our hearts.  Occasionally it might pop out as gossip or a sharp word, but we try to police ourselves about that, because we know it sounds bad.  We don't want to be known as judgmental people, but truthfully, even when we don't actually say what we're thinking, it is just so easy to harbor our verdicts, the bitter condemnations of people around us, deep in our hearts.  We don't want to judge.  We know we're not supposed to, but it just comes so easily to us. One of the problems here is that we try to avoid judgmental behaviors without really working on judgmental attitudes. We try to catch that stuff before it gets out of our mouths, but really, by the time we get to that place we've really already lost the battle.  The mouth is just speaking out of the abundance of the heart, and it's the fact that all that condemnation is in our heart that is really the issue.  Our morality begins with our identity, or at least our understanding of our identity.  The way we understand ourselves controls the way we interact with other people and perceive them in powerful ways.  That said, there are two significant things I have come to understand about myself that, the more I internalize them, the more they help me escape my tendency to judge.   I want to share and confess here in the hopes that they can help you out as well.1.  I am not God. I know, it's a shocker. But, seriously, it's helpful for me to get in touch with the fact that I am not the sovereign lord of the universe. I believe people are accountable for the good and evil things they do in the world—but most of them aren't accountable to me. I didn't create anybody, and I'm not supremely powerful.  Beyond that, my failure to be God also means that I have a limited amount of knowledge and insight into people.  I don't understand the whole of anybody's situation, don't understand the different things in people's backgrounds that make them act the way they do.  I don't even understand why I do half the stuff I do, much less what's going on in anybody else's heart! So I will never the authority or information I need to pass judgment on anybody else.2.  Not only am I not God, but I also know that I am not perfect. Far from it, in fact.  Most people I know can confirm this, but of course I know it more truly than anybody else could possibly suspect.  After all, they can't see what's inside my heart.  I am, like the rest of you, a broken human being, a person whose heart has been twisted by sin and who is powerless to recover except for the grace of God.This is an important nuance to the world's criticism of the church as being too judgmental.  It wants to believe everything is alright. It's as if the world wants refuse our right to judge on the basis that everyone is basically equally good. But we refuse to judge on the opposite basis, because we know that everyone, including ourselves, is broken and sinful.I know, that because I'm not God and I'm not perfect, that I need grace from God. I need the grace of forgiveness and the grace that God gives to change and purify me. Truthfully, I need all the grace I can get.  And that self-awareness really heightens the shock of this text for me. How I give grace to people around me can actually affect how God gives grace to me? Whoa. That is an absolutely stunning idea, and as it becomes more firmly lodged in my mind, it has the power to really shape the kinds of things I harbor in my heart towards other people.Gratefully, though, I'm also aware that I receive grace from God! It's not like I'm merely aware of my sin, awaiting some pending judgement and trying to butter God up before he makes his decision. I live in the joy and awareness that God has already acted decisively to extend grace to me.Many of us live fairly aware of those two things, our need for grace and how we receive it.  But, we stop there, not realizing that those who need and receive grace from God are also called to learn grace from God. I want God to teach me how to treat others like Jesus treats me.For our community of faith, that really is the critical turn. So much of our worship and conversation revolves around what we need and receive, and how valuable it is to us.  But how much value do we place on what we are called to become?  How much do we value a gracious spirit? May God help us to honor those among us who cultivate that spirit, who become people of heroic forgiveness, who turn back any effort to condemn others from taking root in their own hearts.  May we value those who work hard to become merciful, just as our father is merciful, and may we become a place of grace for those who—like us—need to receive it.Amen.(This is part three of a series on the Sermon on the Plain. A list of the sermons and the audio recordings are here.)