God is with us.

Wait.

Stop.

Listen again…

Immanuel.

God is with us.

God. Is. With. Us.

Wait.

God is with you.

Sure.

But God is with me?

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

You don’t need to come to Jesus.

He’s has come to you.

He has pursued you.

Loves you.

Yes, you.

The wait is over.

Here’s a quick snapshot of some of “all of these things…”

• Salvation has been revealed and God has remained faithful to his covenant!
• God’s wrath was revealed to man by giving him over to their desire to worship the creation rather than God himself, who made the creation.
• This is true of everybody. Even the religious, even those who are supposed to be “righteous” in the worlds eyes.
• It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a gentiles, religious or not religious, all have turned away from God.
• But God is faithful to his covenant.
• We have been made right before Jesus.
• We can have peace with God
• We were once enemies; we are now his children.
• While through Adam came death to all; through Jesus came life to all.
• We are united with Christ in a way that what is true of him, is true of us.
• We have moved from death to life.
• We are now raised from the dead; so that we might bear fruit to God!
• There is no longer any condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!
• We are not controlled by sin, but we’re controlled by the Spirit.
• We are adopted as sons and daughters of God, we are co-heirs with Jesus Christ..
• We eagerly await our full adoption, for our adoption to be made complete.
• Now only we do eagerly await full redemption, but the world longs to be made whole as well. The world longs to be brought to rights.
• We long to be what we were meant to be, the world longs to be what it was meant to be.
• Through Jesus, this is possible, this is happening!
• The sufferings we are experiencing now will be nothing compared the the glory that we will experience when the world is brought to rights.

So what shall we say? What else is there to say except, “God is for us.”  God is for humanity. God is for the world. This is such amazing new eh? During the sermon, after I reviewed “these things” we stopped and sang a wonderful hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” It seemed appropriate.

NT Wright, in his excellent commentary on Romans, has a few poetic quotes in regard to this passage,

“We are back with the picture that has been there in Romans from the beginning: God and creation, with the human race poised in between, belonging within the latter but called to reflect the image of the former. Idolatry has reversed Gods intended order: humans had worshiped that which was not God, had ceded power to that which being itself, corruptible, could only bring death. Now, in the Messiah, Jesus, humanity has been restored death has been defeated, and creation itself, so far from being shunned as essentially evil, awaits its redemption….”

and…

“Paul has spoken, and we must speak, of the love of the one true God. This love of God calls across the dark intervals of meaning, reaches into the depths of human despair, embraces those who live in the shadow of death or the overbright light of present life, challenges the rulers of the world and shows them as a sham, looks at the present with clear faith and at the future with sure hope, overpowers all the powers that might get in the way, fills the outer dimensions of the cosmos, and declares to the world that God is God, that Jesus the Messiah is the world’s true Lord, and that in him love has won the victory.”

The one main thought that came to me while I was preaching is that so many of us believe, or at least live like we believe, that God somehow can stop loving us.  That there is something we can do to lose his favor. That somehow we aren’t worth loving. That somehow, he’s not for us.

But, if you believe that, or anything like that, let me tell you… You are wrong.

You may think that God has given up on you… but you are wrong.

God is for us.

Nothing can separate you and me from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Nothing.

For example,

“The problem is that evangelical/fundamentalist faith revolves around two directives: Be successful and evangelize. That leads to bad choices.”

Probably a lot of good stuff that is true to a point but might be an over-reaction on some level. But, this section really caught my eye:

I can’t prove this, but I think that any person who remains a “professional Christian” in the evangelical/fundamentalist world for a lifetime, especially any pastor, risks becoming an atheist and/or a liar. Such individuals put on an act of certainty. Sooner or later they become flakes faking it, or quit. Worse yet, some just stop asking questions. The very fact that a preacher can fool others when he or she has so many doubts makes the self-appointed mediator of faith the deepest cynic of all if, that is, he or she doesn’t embrace paradox. If you have to be correct all the time, while knowing that you are wrong most of the time, you become an actor. Been there, done that. If you think that to “be a Christian” means you have to identify with a club you loathe, you’ll have to choose to redefine your faith or lose it — even if it costs you a paycheck and your “good” life.

I have noticed this tension in my life. Good thing I am bi-vocational! That way this is only half true. :) Seriously though, I sense this as a pastor. But, I’m thankful that I really do have a community that allows me to work out my theology and doubts in their midst. For example, two Easters ago I was really struggling with doubt and my faith. I had to preach on Easter sunday. This was a serious struggle for me as Easter tends to be the most important celebration in the Christian faith.

How could I preach the resurrection when I was in the midst of such a funk? Well, what I did was preach with the doubt, preach with the frustration. How did it turn out? Well, for starters, my sermon was only 12 minutes long. Everyone was not only excited about its brevity but I think that is one sermon where people went out of their way to express their appreciation for my thoughts. I basically got up and said, “I can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I need the resurrection to be true. If its not, I have no hope..” If you are interested, its archived here. Heck, its only 12 minutes :)

As eikons of God our role in this world is to point others to what God is like.

This is our role in this world individually.

This is our role in this world communally.

“That’s community, a fellowship of little people who together make God visible in the world.” ? – Henri Nouwen

One thing I think is important to get in this is the individual and unique nature of you being an image.

One of the truths that has changed my life more than anything in recent years is for me to understand that who I am and have been created to be is good. In fact, its very good. I can’t tell you how freeing it is to be comfortable in my own skin, in my own shoes.

But here’s the thing. Here’s the kicker.

I’m broken. Despite all the beautiful ways that God has made me, made you, we’re broken. Our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses. Our greatest efforts sometimes totally flop.

As I briefly touched on last week, this image is broken. And make no bones about it, this is the result of sin.

You are broken. I am broken. We all are broken.

Hi, my name is Todd and I’m broken.

Or as the current lingo goes, we’re borked.

But I think it’s important to know that our own personal brokenness is not the bottom issue.

We live in a broken world. The entire cosmos is cracked, and we are part of it.

Sometimes, we talk about sin from only a personal perspective.

All I learned about in regards to sin growing up (at least, all I heard) was that I was a sinner.

I lie. I steal. I covet. I break one of the 10 commandments. Maybe a few at one time if I’m having a bad day.

But this isn’t the deepest level of the nature of sin.

The full reality of sin that goes a few layers deeper.

Sin is not only personal, but cosmological in its nature.

It’s not just you and me that is broken.

It’s the entire created order.

You can try and argue with me.

But look around…

We see the evidence in the newspapers.

If we don’t read the newspapers we the evidence on the news.coms

Heck, we even see the evidence on facebook.

We see it in the church.

Sin is global in scale and doesn’t discriminate.

Our world is broken.

I believe that as we seek to understand the nature of our own sin, we need to be sure to frame the conversation in the midst of the brokenness of our larger world and it’s need to find healing.

Now, if we have a broken world, we have a broken humankind.

And, if we have a humankind, we have our own broken souls.

And our own broken souls need, along with the rest of creation, to find healing.

In the same way that I don’t think I need to convince you that this world is broken, I don’t think I need to work really hard to convince you that you are broken.

?Most of us feel it every day in some way or another.

Sometimes it’s subtle. Other times it’s deeply intense.

Others of us have done a great job of numbing ourselves to it.

No matter what, we know that we don’t “work” the way we were meant to.

Sin has had its effects on us and sin continues to have its effects on us.

Our own personal sin has done its damage.

We knowingly walk down roads that we just shouldn’t go.

We continue to make decisions that we shouldn’t make.

We don’t go places we know that we should..

And it breaks us a bit more and more each time.

We carry the shame from this stuff around like 500 pound weights on our legs.

It desperately handicaps us from being able to live out our calling and to give the world a unique picture of the Triune God.

We usually refer to these things as the skeletons in our closets.

Perhaps for some of us they aren’t in the closet, and they are out there for all to see.

Either way, we carry around the shame and effects of this sin.

Sin has also been done to us and it’s also long taken its toll. This sin is often the harshest because its just not our fault.

Often this kind of experience takes the form of a careless (or worse, intentional!) word or action by someone else.

I remember when I was in high school, my youth pastor jokingly called me the black sheep of my family. For the next four years I lived scared to death that I would be the one of the three brothers that fell off the deep end and brought disgrace to the family.

So here we are.

We were created in God’s image.

Our primary calling in life is to represent God here in this world.

And sin makes this sometimes close to impossible.

So much so, that sometimes we just consider giving up this vocation and give our lives to something else.

Perhaps we have already given our lives to something else.

Maybe not intentionally. Maybe we’ve masked our calling for something that seems pretty good but it’s not as good as our full calling.

Maybe we’ve subtly moved from a vocation of representing God to others to a life of managing our own reputation and our own image.

Maybe we’ve subtly given up on ever having hope of really living as we were meant to live.

Maybe the idea that we can actually be unique representations of God is beyond us. Not possible.

Maybe the idea that we can be unique representations of God in this world is something that doesn’t even excite us anymore.

You’ve heard it said…

You aren’t good enough.

No matter what you do you will always be this way.

The deficiencies you have will never let you amount to anything.

The wounds that have been given to you by others will never be healed.

Your situational circumstances are beyond redemption.

You will never really amount to anything.

But I tell you…

We confess together the Jesus died.

?That this death had significance.

That it actually did something.

We also confess together that Jesus rose from the dead.

That this rising from the dead had significance.

That it actually did something.

And mysteriously, in Jesus lies the power of a new hope that we are not stuck here.

II Corinthians 3:17-18
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Each of these books (especially Exodus and Acts) have had some seemingly difficult, boring or irrelevant passages in them. Exodus and Acts had more because they are narratives. Each time I would come to one of these passages I would get frustrated that I had to preach it. But, like I said, the scripture never ceases to amaze me. I have found that out of those passages come some of the most amazing truths, stories and thoughts about faith and mission.

Yesterday morning at church I had the “privilege” of having one of these difficult passages again. This time it was Ephesians 6:1-9. Yeah, just what I wanted to do was speak about slaves, children and also go back to last weeks topic of submission.

But, like I said, I am always amazed at how the scripture comes alive when you wrestle with it and engage it deeply. This is especially true when you do it in community.

I was able to work through this passage with three gifted women in my community and they actually helped me preach it yesterday and I can honestly say that I really love this passage. I’d consider it a real privilege to preach it again.

If you are interested, you can listen here. Anna, Shannon and Shanna really did a great job of picking up my slack!

But for some reason, my mind is going to the idea that pastors need to be doing their own personal reading (call it devotions if you want) outside of the text they are preaching for the week.

I get the concept behind that.

But now I’m wondering, is this because we’re trained to approach the text that we are preaching in a way that doesn’t effect or transform our lives?

We encourage those who are part of The Well to sit with this text during the week and let it be part of their regular reading. But, as the pastor, that’s not good enough? I need to read beyond that?

When I study a text for a week that I am preaching I am doing background work and (some) language work. But, I am also sitting with the text all week long, keeping it in on the front of my brain all week long and letting it become infused in my daily life. Sounds pretty devotional to me.

The question for me is, am I doing this with the text when I am not preaching?

That’s another story altogether.

I guess my point is, as pastors, we better be taking in the text we are preaching in a way that it can transform our own lives, or we’re probably better off not preaching it at all.

And when we’re not preaching, we’d better be doing it too…

Now I am preaching at myself…

Part of my sermon was on how challenging its been for me to watch the early church and see how everything that the early church did revolved around the task of witness. This is the narrative that defined their entire way of life.

The text that really shaped this was in Acts 1:8

“But you will receive power when the Holy Sprit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”

I asked these questions:

• How fair is it of me to critique us for failing to do this well?
• How do we do at waking up each day and living the life that God has put before us with the understanding that, whether we like it or not, we live each day and each moment as a witness to a Risen Messiah?
• How do we do at taking our decisions, big and small, and filter them through the call to be his witnesses?
• How often to we step out from under that calling and live a different narrative?

And, as we look at the way that Luke shaped this book from a Birds eye view we see that he worked hard to make this point. Take a few minutes sometime to flip through the narrative of Acts. Luke intentionally starts the story in Jerusalem and it moves into Judea, into Samaria and then we end with Paul in Rome, which is symbolic of the ends of the earth.

You see, all the little stories in the book of Acts you know, the ones that make great sunday school lessons, seem to fall under this over arching theme.  each of these stories does have significance, but they are missing something if they are not tied to witness.

• We can talk passionately about community, but if its not in the context of witness something is missing.
• We can talk about the need for the Holy Spirit. But if its not in the context of witness we miss something.
• We can talk about persecution.  But if its not in the context of witness we miss something.
• We can talk about signs and wonders. But, if its not in the context of witness, we miss something.

You see, like I said, each of these things is important. For example, community is good for community sake. But its better and more complete when its driven by witness.

We cant separate them and far too often I think we, despite our good intentions, do just that.

Anyways you can listen to the sermon online if you feel so inclined.

Thought #1 – The culture in Zambia is beautiful and they get worship, prayer and community better than we ever have. Its part of their DNA. It’s beautiful really. I can’t wait to go back next summer if the Lord wills.

Thought #2 – While the church in Zambia is thriving, it has some massive challenges. The leaders and congregations are still in the midst of emerging from colonialism (under the British Empire). The Brits left only 40 years ago. This is causing the church to deal with rediscovering what it means to do and be the  church for themselves and break out of the mold, forms and structures that the Western missionaries gave them. It was a beautiful experience to be able to work through some of these issues with the leaders there. I believe that what is emerging and will emerge is a beautiful picture of what God has intended for His Church.

Thought #3 – While the church and the culture is beautiful, its clear that the way of life isn’t working very well in a material point of view. The roads are bad, AIDS is revenging the country and when 70% of a city lives below the poverty line… there are problems. Big ones. And that’s just the beginning. For example, the following stats aren’t specific to Zambia but they are reflective of sub-Saharan Africa:

Twenty five thousand children die every day from hunger and malnutrition. Ninety-one million children under five years old are severely malnourished. Two hundred sixty-five million have never been immunized. Three hundred sixty-six million lack access to clean water. Over fourteen million children have lost either or both parents to AIDS.

Big Realization #1 – The answer for the Zambian people and their African friends is not to find a way for each person to own single family dwellings in suburbia where they can have cable television, DVRs, xboxes, drive two cars and have 2.5 kids. Doing this would destroy the things that they currently have going for them.   Something struck me right between the eyes when I realized that if this true (and i think it is) then why do we constantly pursue this very thing?

Big Realization #2 – While we have roads, AIDS is fairly controlled, and relative affluence, our culture doesn’t work either. We just pretend that it does. Check out some of these stats from Tom Sine’s new book The New Conspirators:

• Americans now owe $750 billion in revolving credit card debt. That is six times what it was two decades ago.
• From 1989 to 2001, credit card debt carried by poor families increased 149 percent.
• Between 1983 and 2003, U.S. bankruptcy filings increased 500 percent.
• U.S. mortgage foreclosure rate has escalated 500 percent since the early 1970’s.
• Incredibly, while debt is soaring, one of the most rapidly growing industries in America is the $17 billion storage industry. Apparently we need more space to store all those consumer delights that we don’t really need and can’t really afford.

Here’s the deal.

Most of us would not argue that we should be living out Isaiah 58 – that we must spend ourselves on behalf of the poor, the hungry, the oppressed or our worship means nothing (if you don’t agree with me just read the passage) – but we just can’t because we live lives that feed into the stats above. Sure, we want to care for others, especailly the poor, but we’re living lives that are just not able to “fit that in.”

To use a Seinfeld-ism, I believe that I / we have been “double dipping.” We want to be living in the world that runs by the rules of the Kingdom and we’ve even got a foot in there. But, we’ve also got a foot in the world of the American Dream that tells us that happiness, pleasure, satisfaction, security and comfort comes from having stuff. Sure, we’ve dipped into the Kingdom. But then we’ve dipped again into the American Dream.  And we keep on dipping.

It’s kind of like we’re part of a mob.

Mobs are an interesting phenomenon because with a mob you will have all these people doing something that they normally wouldn’t do if they were acting as individuals.  I’m becoming convinced that the suburban world is a different kind of mob. It’s not outwardly violent. We’re not flipping over cars or anything. But it is subversively violent. So subversive that we don’t even realize it till it’s too late.

You see, most of us know that the best way of life is a life that gives and serves and follows after the way of Jesus. But, we’re in this mob that keeps calling us to another way of life and we just keep on giving in because that’s what we’ve always done and everyone else is doing it.

Its time to get out of the mob.

Or, since Melanie and I still feel very called to live the Kingdom in suburbia, its at least time to live alternatively with others in the midst of the mob…

So here’s the deal: if we really do want to give ourselves to those less fortunate and actually live for something greater than ourselves, but our way of life doesn’t let us, we must change our way of life.

That’s where Melanie and I are at this moment. Despite her not being with me in Zambia, God’s done some major work on her heart as well and we’re both on the same page.  We have to change our way of life.

Our sense of purpose demands it.  The future of our kids demands it.  The poor around us demand it. The gospel demands it.

So, whats going to be different?

We’re still figuring that out.  I’ve been trying to leave behind the temptation to change the whole world with the return from a missions trip.  I’m not throwing out all my non-christian CD’s or anything.

But we’re beginning with two little, mustard-seed type things:

First thing we are doing is letting the wind blow through our finances and seeing what’s left. We praying we can find a way to trim about $500 – $800 off our monthly budget so that we can life more freely. This is a bit radical of a goal and it mgiht take awhle to get there, but we’d like to be able to save our own money for Zambia each year rather than having to raise the support every time. We’d like to do this so that we can work less and give more. So, nothing in our budget is sacred really. It’s probably not a sell all you have and give it to the poor kind of thing at the moment, because I believe it would be hard to stay in suburbia and pull that off. But, it is a total reorientation and reevaluation of all the we own and all that we will purchase in the future. Again, nothing is sacred.

Second thing we are doing is we’re inviting the friends who are from our area / church over to our house each Sunday night for prayer and community. The goal will be simple: we’ll pray, repent and invite God to help us reshape our lives and imagine a new way forward so we are better equipped to respond when He calls. This will basically be a small group, but it will be focused around finding ways to live sustainably and generously so that have our feet firmly in the kingdom rather than the American dream.  Honestly, we aren’t at a loss for opportunities to serve the poor in our midst, our struggle now is living lives that give us freedom to do this.

We’ve got some work to do…

Or, I should say, the Spirit has some work to do.

If you want to join us, we’ll see you at 6:00pm at our apartment in Warminster.

I think there is an amazing future ahead of us… I’m excited.  And scared to death…

At the risk of giving away some of the big points of my sermon on sunday, let me share this quote from Willimon,

“If money is some how linked to our idolatrous attempts to secure immorality for ourselves, it is also the occasion for much self-deceit. There is something quite natural about the lies of Ananias an Sapphira, for we all know the way we rationalize and excuse our own covetousness, acquisitiveness and greed. “I am not really that well off,” we say. “I have all I can do to just make ends meet.” “I worked hard for this and deserve it.” Our lies are a correlate of our materialism, for both our materialism and our self-deceit are our attempts to deal with our human insecurity, our human finitude, by taking matters into our own hands. Luther once called security the ultimate idol. And we have shown time and time again that we are willing to exchange anything – our family, our health, our church, the truth – for a taste of security. We are vulnerable animals who seek to security and establish our lives in improper ways, living by our wits rather than by faith. This “self securing mentality” is at the heart of all failures to live by faith in God.”

Whoah. I think i could jsut read that then sit back down again. (But I won’t).