Bringing Heaven to Earth: Lord's Prayer Week 2

Below you'll find the second message in our series on the Lord's Prayer. The message was focusing on "Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." And below the message is the questions that we discussed following the message. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, etc....

This morning we continue our series that we started last week looking at the Lord’s Prayer, or as one author that I have been reading called it, the Disciple’s Prayer. Over 6 weeks we will be breaking down the Lord’s Prayer into six sections and themes, that I believe are crucial for a disciple of Jesus to understand, live out, and apply to their missional context. Or to put it in another way, to genuinely pray this prayer and live a live according to its truth is to walk in the way of Christ.

Last week we took time to focus on the very first part of the prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” and we talked about prayer needing to start with God the Father. But we also spent a lot of time talking about some of our struggles calling God by Father or even Dad. But in the end we talked and discussed most about the love of our Father in that he adopted us as sons and daughters. And how this should change the way we interact with not only Him but with all people, whether they are followers of Jesus or not, because in a way we are all children of God.

Today we are going to cover probably my most favorite part of the Lord’s Prayer, the second part. And in covering this part, we will be taking time to dialogue and discuss these provocative questions, “What would it be like if Heaven touched down on Planet Earth? What would happen? What would be different? And how are we called to live out that reality right now.”

So let’s turn to Matthew 6:9-13 where we find one version of the Lord’s Prayer. Mathew 6:9-13 are the words of Christ himself and he says this, “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

So we today we are focusing and unpacking this part of the prayer, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We probably could have chosen to do this one in two parts talking about what the Kingdom of God is, and his will and also what it looks like when heaven comes to earth. But I truly believe that the Kingdom of God is what happens when heaven touches down on earth. And believe it or not, that question, “What does it look like when heaven touches down on earth?” has actually been answered for us, and the answer is in the person and work of Jesus, and by definition what we are then called to do and be about. This declaration that Jesus is making for his Kingdom is one that is affirming a distinct future hope. It is a declaration that God will, in human history, fulfill his covenant promises and establish his kingdom in fullness. Jesus is promising that the blessed kingdom of Shalom (Peace) is breaking through, if only in part, into the world here and now. So let’s take some time exploring the idea of the Kingdom of God and what our role in the Kingdom is. And the best place I believe to find out our role is to look at what people have called Jesus Manifesto or his mission statement for his ministry on earth. Let’s turn together to Luke 4:16-21 and see what it might say to us in relation to bringing heaven to earth and living out his will and his Kingdom.

“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

So as I mentioned before this is kind of like Jesus mission statement for his ministry. And I believe by definition, if we are followers of Jesus, then in some way this should also be what we are all about as well. This is what I believe it looks like when heaven touches down on earth. This is how Jesus lived his life, and this is how we are to also live out the Kingdom of God here and now. As Luke 17:20-21 says, “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” The Kingdom of God is in our midst when we live out what we are called to do, which is live in such a way that the DNA of Jesus is lived, breathed, and spread into the world. But what is the DNA of the Kingdom or what is the mission of Jesus? He spells it out in verses 18-19. His mission was to and is to heal the fivefold damage that sin has brought. He did this in such a way that it wasn’t just spiritual healing but physical as well, and we are called to the same thing, to heal spiritually and physically.

So Jesus was about preaching the gospel to the poor. Sin impoverishes and the Messiah will bring good news to the poor. Jesus had and has a soft place in his heart for the poor. After all just a few verses earlier in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” So if Jesus was about bringing good news to the poor, one way that heaven comes to earth, is when followers of Jesus bring good news to the poor. Now this doesn’t just mean preaching to the poor about Jesus (though this includes that) but means figuring out what good news is for the poor and then when you find it out, acting upon that. Good news changes when you take time to listen first and you’ll then know what next steps to be undertaken. If we are truly the followers of Jesus, then the poor in our world should hold a special placed in our hearts and we should work to bring good news to them (that means taking care of their physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and even economic needs). Jesus mission was also to heal the brokenhearted. Sin breaks hearts and the Messiah has good news for the brokenhearted. Think about the stories of loss and pain because of disease, sickness, and death that Jesus came upon in his ministry. Think about his ministry to these individuals, their families and ultimately their communities brought good news to the brokenhearted. If we are to see heaven come to earth, we need to work to heal the brokenhearted. Whether that means through praying for them, spending time just being with him (like how the 3 friends of Job did when they spent the first 7 days with him without saying a word), or listening to them to discern what would heal their broken heart (if anything…because we all know there are things that no matter what, only Jesus and Heaven can heal).

Next in the mission of Jesus is to proclaim liberty for the captives. Sin makes people captive and enslaves them and the Messiah has come to set them free. Jesus set us free from the chains of death, sin, evil, and Satan but all too often we all too often then choose to put the chains back on ourselves. His life, death, and resurrection has freed us from those things and we don’t need to go running back to them and be enslaved to them anymore. And as a part of bringing heaven to earth, followers of Jesus need to proclaim liberty for the captives. I believe that means both spiritually and physically. We need to proclaim the freedom that comes from giving your life to Jesus, but we also have to be on the forefront of working to end the issues of Human Trafficking, and Slavery, because believe it or not there are more slaves now in our world than ever before. There are between 14,500-17,000 humans trafficked in the US each year. And Human Trafficking is a 15.5 billion dollar industry. These numbers should not be and is an area which I feel strongly about, that followers of Jesus, who should work towards heaven coming to earth, should fight this, and there are many who are. I believe that this is one concrete thing that Veritas can be involved in and work specifically with. Jesus was also about bringing recovery of sight to the blind. Sin blinds and Jesus came to heal people from blindness. In this ministry, he healed people from both their physical and their spiritual blindness. Part of bringing heaven to earth includes working on bring sight to the blind. And just like Jesus this means spiritual blindness and physical blindness. Whether that means going to other countries with doctor’s and doing eye examinations, collecting eye glasses for people who need them, or sharing the gospel of Jesus and praying that the Holy Spirit will open the eyes of those you share with. And lastly Jesus worked at liberation of those who were oppressed. Sin oppresses its victims and He came to bring liberty to the oppressed. We also need to work for the liberation of the oppressed in our world. Oppression takes many forms including religious oppression (of all kind and not just Christian oppression), gender oppression (many women in our world are the victims of various forms of oppression- economic, domestic violence, spiritual, etc...), and ethnic oppression (based on ethnicity, etc...) Also we need to work for the liberation of the spiritually oppressed, those who need to experience the freedom that Christ came to give. The freedom from the oppression of the evil one. Only when oppression finally ceases will heaven fully come to earth. But we need to continue working for freedom for the oppressed, so that heaven begins to come to earth. So let’s talk more about what it looks like when heaven touches down on earth, what God is already doing, what he wants to do and how God might be calling Veritas to partner with him in the building of his Kingdom

1. Thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc. regarding the message and the Scriptures? 2. What does it look like to you when Heaven touches down on earth? Tell a story when you have been a part of or seen heaven touching down on earth. 3. What is God already doing in our community/world? What does God want to do in our community/world? 4. How might God use Veritas and each of us in what he is already doing in the world and what he wants to do in the world? How can we help bring heaven to earth?

Whose Your Daddy? Lord's Prayer Week 1

Below is the text for my message from yesterday's gathering focusing on the first part of the Lord's Prayer. Below the message is the discussion questions that we used for after the message to flush out the application in a deeper way. Today we begin a six week series looking at what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. We’ll break down the prayer into six parts with six different themes and we’ll seek to apply those themes to our lives as followers of Jesus both on an individual level but also a corporate level. We’ll be taking a look at the prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 and using other Scriptures throughout the six weeks to further explore the themes found in the prayer.

But before we get into the first part of the prayer, we need to look at the overall context of the passage in which the Lord’s Prayer sits. Matthew 5-7 is what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, and includes some of Jesus most foundational teachings on what it looks like to live in the Kingdom of God and the values that are a part of life in the Kingdom. And so Matthew 6 starts off by talking about giving to the needy and also about prayer. But the thing that underlies both themes is that giving to the needy and prayer shouldn’t be about getting and gaining recognition for these acts of Kingdom life. Jesus is contrasting the life of the Pharisees with what life in the Kingdom of God is all about. And so what we find in the Lord’s Prayer, as far as the themes that we will be exploring, ideas that are crucial to life lived with Jesus and life in the Kingdom.

And so in this part of Matthew 6 we see Jesus again contrasting two types of prayer, one type of prayer that is prayed by Pharisee’s who want recognition and honor from people, and one type of prayer that is about God primarily and also about life in the Kingdom of God. And so with that context for the Lord’s Prayer, that it is about life in the Kingdom, let’s turn to the prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 and we’ll read the entire passage and then focus our energy today on the first verse, verse 9.

“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’” So we will be focusing on “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” And before we jump into this message too much farther, I realize that this might be a difficult theme to talk about, the Fatherhood of God, due to perceptions and relationships with our earthly Father’s. I know that some of us have really difficult and strained relationships with our earthly Fathers, and that it might be a struggle to call God our Father. But my prayer today is that each of us will come to a place realizing that God is the perfect Father, and no matter what your relationship is with your earthly father, that you can call out to our Heavenly Father, and even move beyond calling him Father to calling him Abba…which means Daddy or Dad. And that you will then rest in the knowledge that not only is God your dad, or father but that you are an adopted child of God, and that there is nothing you can do to make God love you anymore and there is nothing you can do to make God love you any less. He loves you fully as his adopted son or daughter. You are a son or daughter of the King of the Universe. And so I pray that this message and our discussion today can redeem, even in a small way, the term Father (Dad) for you and that you can begin to pray, not to God, Lord, etc… but to cry out (especially in hard times, and struggles) to Dad/Abba/Father. With that in mind let’s turn to further explore the idea of God being Father and also our role as adopted sons and daughters of the Father.

In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus begins where all prayer should be focused, on the true focus of prayer, God himself. I don’t know about you but a lot of the time it seems like my prayers are not about God and for his glory. Instead they are about me and my glory and happiness. “God if you will only……” Here Jesus is placing our focus during prayer squarely on God the Father. This, according to Jesus, is the right way to pray. Acknowledging that God is Father and also acknowledging that he is our Father in heaven which means he is holy and full of glory. And so as we pray we call out to our Father in heaven, which would then make us children, sons and daughter’s of God. And living as a child of God should mean an intimate, joyful relationship with God- not like the bondage and fear by the law. As a child of God we can have a relationship with God so close that we can cry out “Abba/Daddy/Father”. Let’s look at some other Scriptures throughout the New Testament that unpacks what it means to be children of the Father and a metaphor that the writers of Scriptures give as we live out our roles as children of God. The first Scripture we can look at the talks about the Fatherhood of God and our role as sons and daughters is found in Romans 8:15 which says, “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” Here the Apostle Paul is contrasting the status of slaves versus sons. The status of a slave was actually no status at all. Slaves lived in fear, had really no socio-economic status, and definitely weren’t loved by the Father of the household. But the son of the Father, had his Father’s status (or would) and was loved by the Father. Even if that son was an adopted son. In the Roman world of the 1st century an adopted son was a son deliberately chosen by his adoptive Father to perpetuate his name and inherit his estate; he was in no way inferior in status to a son born in the ordinary course of heritage. Also under Roman adoption the life and status of the adopted child changed completely. The adopted son lost all rights in his old family and gained all new rights in this new family. The old life of the adopted son was completely wiped out, with all debts being cancelled, with nothing from his past counting against him anymore. Sound exactly what happens when we become adopted sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Followers of Jesus are called to perpetuate the name of the Father, inherit his estate called the Kingdom of God, our status gets radically changed, we gain all new rights, our old life is wiped away, and all our debts are cancelled with nothing from our past counting against us anymore. When we become followers of Jesus we become adopted sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. This concept that our Heavenly Father has adopted us as full children of God is all throughout the Scriptures and the Apostle Paul talks a lot about it not only in Romans but also in Galatians 4:4-7 which says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” The Apostle Paul in verse 4 is using language of the Roman legal world when he refers to adoption to sonship which means full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture. You and I are sons of our Heavenly Father all due to Jesus, as it says in verse 4, that “God sent his Son to redeem those under the law so that we would receive adoption to sonship/daughtership. And so we have been redeem from slavery to sin, death, and Satan, and made adopted sons and daughters. And because we have moved from slave to son/daughter we are able to cry out in prayer, Abba (Daddy) Father. And because we are sons and daughters of God, we have access to the same intimacy with God the Father that God the Son, Jesus Christ had. Jesus addressed God the Father as "Daddy" when He prayed, Abba, Father as recorded in Mark 14:36. And Jesus is telling us the very same thing in the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer that we can address and have the same intimacy with our Father as he has with His Father.

There is one other Scriptures that I want to briefly touch on that, if you haven’t heard it by now, deal with the fact that we have a loving heavenly Father who has adopted us as his own and because of that adoption and love, we can call him Abba. That Scripture is 1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” We are children of His not because of anything that we are, have done, or ever could do. We are adopted sons and daughters of our Father because of what it says in this verse, because of the love that he has lavished on us. It’s because of him, his love, his sending Jesus, his Kingdom, his vision, and his redemption that we can stand before him and even pray the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s because of him that we can even cry out or utter those words, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

So let’s spend time unpacking what it looks like to live as adopted sons and daughters of our Abba Daddy in Heaven. Let’s honestly confront the struggles that we have in even calling him that. Let’s talk about our prayer life and how this part of the Lord’s Prayer speaks to us. And let’s look at what it might look like in regards to our mission as followers of Jesus and our life in the Kingdom.

1. What thoughts, comments, questions, insights, push back, etc... do you have regarding the message and/or Scripture? 2. Do you find it difficult to pray using Father in your prayers? If so, why is that? How can the term Father be redeemed for you? 3. What does it mean to you to know that you are an adopted child of God? How might this knowledge play out in terms of our missional engagement with the world? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What do you think God is saying to us as a community and what should we do about it?

Jesus Wardrobe and Advent

Last Sunday for our gathering I had asked a few artists, musicians and writers to be involved in our worship gathering to give the gathering a more creative flair. And the art, music and words that were created were awe-inspiring. I love that our community is full of creatives who write, draw, paint, play music, and live out God's creative gifts that has been given to them. One of the people who had a hand in the gathering is a writer and I asked her to write two pieces; one reflecting on Love All (which was the theme for the day) and one reflecting on Advent (and ending our gathering and our Advent Conspiracy series) After she was finished with the pieces, I asked if I could share them on the blog and she has graciously allowed me to repost them here. So I share them with you and may them bless you as they have been a blessing not only to me but our entire Veritas community.

Jesus Wardrobe i want to wear love. i find that so insanely beautiful, that i want it that bad. i want balance of course but if i could pick one thing out to wear each day it would be love. that kind of love that christ wore, that drove out all of that fear in us. i want that, i don't know if i can own it but i want to borrow it, i want to try it on as much as i can. until it becomes natural. so natural that it just kinda fits on me, i dont even need to try anymore. because when you are able to wear that love, things start to come easily, almost like you can just throw on a scarf to top your outfit off, or a subtle bracelet. touch it off with some compassion or even some of that kindness. i believe that as we grow and start to fit into the wardrobe God has made us, we can start to understand Him. It is like that favorite shirt that you own and can't get enough of it, it makes you look great. Just imagine putting Jesus's love on every morning. Imagine what kind of glow you would have, what kind of overflowing passion to serve the person beside you. And the best part of it is that we just need to ask. I think i get so used to complaining, and never seem to look down and see what He had dressed me in today. i want that love. i want to dress in it, sleep in it, walk in it and talk in it.

you know i feel in the all of everything, the center of it is love.

Advent advent season seems to come and go, and as it goes we anxiously wait for the true gift of it all. for some of us we want to be able to put that gift into a box, in a nice snowman bag or even on a plastic card. how easily it is to twist a bow around it, stick a to and from tag on and place it under the tree. and by christmas day, we find ourselves asking, where did advent go?

our eyes turn to the tree and we see the presents spilling over the floor, knowing that as we unwrap them one by one. none of them will hold the joy of advent. Because we are so busy wrapping up advent, I want us to unwrap. I want us to see it unraveling before our own eyes. Get on your hands and kness, and take that red bow off of that christmas box,

how as we wait, we find ourselves kneeling, and as the days of advent go on, the christmas box seems lighter and lighter even if it was just that red bow that was removed.

As you wait for the next week to remove the wrapping paper, it seems to come off smoothly, you find it pointless to buy new wrapping paper when this kind fits perfectly fine on any christmas box. as you carry your naked christmas box around all you want to do is to show people, telling them you can’t wait to see what is inside. how you want them to hold the same thing you have in your very hands. how eager you are to tell them what is to come!

as the last week passes, you wonder what this could be. what could this simple white Christmas box hold? and when that day arrives, you rip open that christmas box and thin air appears from the inside of it. your still, and there is just that pure silence. and somehow you find yourself on your knees again, your hands empty and the only thing that you feel is that presence filling your heart.

so, when it comes to unwrapping your gift, what is in the inside of yours?

Love All: Week 4 of Advent Conspiracy

This art above was created by an artist during our worship gathering yesterday. The art ties together all 4 tenants for the Advent Conspiracy (Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All).

Below is the message from yesterday and also the discussion questions that we spent time discussing following the message.

Today we have come to the end of our Advent series and we officially wrap up Advent tomorrow night. Over the last 4 weeks we have been exploring this conspiracy called advent. Hopefully our discussions have inspired, challenged, convicted, and push you towards relooking at the subversive nature of this season and how we have completely missed the point about Christmas in our world.

When we started Advent Conspiracy at the beginning of Advent we looked at the first of the 4 tenant of the Advent Conspiracy movement, that of worship fully. All too often, as I mentioned last week, our worship doesn’t start with Jesus, but with stuff. Our worship isn’t a holistic part of our life, consumerism becomes the defacto behavior, and the mall becomes our church. But Advent begins and ends with the Christ Child born 2,000 years ago.

The second tenant we spend time unpacking together was the tenant of Spending Less. I don’t know about you but I was blown away by the statistic that every year American’s spend 450 billion on Christmas. I also heard that the average American family spends 750-1000 dollars on Christmas. So we talked about what would happen if we just spent less, maybe 1 gift less than this past year, and also taking some of the money that we would spend on ourselves and giving it to others to bless them. We also talked about 2 types of yokes- the yoke of Christmas (or we could say the yoke consumerism) versus the yoke of Christ.

Last week we covered the 3rd tenant of Advent Conspiracy, which at first look seems to go contrary to the 2nd tenant. We covered the tenant of Giving More. Giving more not in terms of Presents, but of presence. We talked about 4 parts of the Incarnation, FOR, WITH, ONE OF, and IN and how we are called to the same thing. That we, as followers of Jesus, are to incarnate him in the world by being FOR people, WITH people, ONE OF people, and finally the DNA that is within us from Jesus, will be IN people.

So this week we are covering the 4th and final tenant of the Advent Conspiracy, that of Love All. And my hope and prayer is that we will see the familiar story of the birth of Jesus in a brand new way. And that as we unpack it together it will regain its subversive, radical, message and will push us out into the world to LOVE ALL, and get back to what we as followers of Jesus should be all about. ‘

To do this we will look at the second account of the birth of Jesus in the New Testament. So let’s look at Luke 2:1-7 and see what we can learn about this racial call and tenant to LOVE ALL. Luke 2:1-7 says this, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” This story of the sleeping baby told all of this land and the world has become all often the symbol of the status quo- a safe, sanitized, twenty-first century savior. But it is time to take a closer look at the stories of Jesus birth, reading them with Israel’s history wrapped around the newborn baby rather than with our sugar-coated sentimentality. Only then will we truly understand that the Christmas story is a radical message that sets the scene for all that is to come from the most challenging and controversial figure of all time.

I was doing some research this week about the cultural setting and the historical setting in which this story took place, and I was totally blown away by a description of the world into which Jesus was born. I want to read it to you, as it, to me, didn’t sound too different than the world that you and I live in. “The lusty peninsula was worn out with twenty years of civil war. Its farms had been neglected, its towns had been sacked or besieged, and much of its wealth had been stolen or destroyed. Administration and protection had broken down; robbers made every street unsafe at night; highwaymen roamed the roads, kidnapped travelers, and sold them into slavery. Trade diminished, investment stood still, interest rates soared, and property values fell. Morals, which had been loosened by riches and luxury, had not been improved by destitution and chaos, for few conditions are more demoralizing than poverty that comes after wealth. Rome was full of men who had lost their economic footing and then their moral stability: soldiers who had tasted adventure and had learned to kill; citizens who had seen their savings consumed in the taxes and inflation of war and waited vacuously for some returning tide to life them back to affluence; women dizzy with freedom, multiplying divorces, abortions, and adulteries." (Durant) Society was ripe for deliverance, peace, and hope and many were looking at someone who was called the Son of God, and this person was not Jesus but Caesar Augustus. People were looking with hope at the power, might, and strength of Rome to deliver peace. It is into this world that the true Prince of Peace would be born. God came to the poor- or in other words, all of us. Jesus gave up the glory of heaven to be born into a sin-scarred world that glorious night in Bethlehem, every day of his life and in the deadly pain of the cross. Jesus became poor for our sake. Jesus entered our poverty so we would no longer be poor. The priceless gift of a restored relationship with God and others is now offered to those who could never afford it. The outrageous wealth of his righteousness is credited to those who don’t deserve it, to those who are poor, that is good news.

Jesus coming into the world they way he did, proves the fact that he LOVED ALL. He didn’t come just for the rich, privileged few. He came to LOVE ALL. In fact, a great case can be made that he came more for the poor, needy, and oppressed than any others. You see Jesus himself was poor. He chose to be born into the poverty of a family struggling beneath the heel of Imperial Rome. Writer Scott Bessenecher suggests that “the very first statement that Jesus ever voiced about his concern for the poor, oppressed and marginalized people was when he cried out as one of them- eyes tight, mouth open wide, wailing, kicking. It was one of the most profound acts of solidarity with the poor he could make. When God voted with his birth, he voted for the poor. He voted to LOVE ALL.

We see in the stories of Jesus’ birth, particularly in Luke, the first glimpses of what will become a central aspect of the Kingdom of God, status reversal. With the birth of Jesus, the sun had risen on a new Kingdom of which the poor would become first-class citizens. The King of this Kingdom would love all. We see this fact that Jesus came for all, to LOVE ALL in two other narratives tied to his early life. Right after the text we just read, comes the story of the Shepherds encounters with the Angels. We talked about the fact that Shepherds were probably one of the least respected people in all of Israel. They were considered unclean by the religious elite, because of their duty and their inability to go to the temple and get cleansed. Their testimony wasn’t valid in a court of law. And yet God chose these unclean, and unreliable to spread the news of the birth of the Christ child, the true Savior and Prince or Peace. It reminds me of the text in 1 Corinthians 1:26-28, “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,”

The other narrative related to the Infancy stories of Jesus is told in Matthew 2 about the Magi who came to visit the Christ Child. The star appeared to them, and they traveled to worship the new born King. These wise men were gentiles, and so were probably not looked on kindly by the religious Jews. But Epiphany Sunday is where we celebrate the revelation of God the Son in Jesus Christ and his breaking down the dividing wall between Jesus and Gentile, right at his birth.

His birth to poor parents, in an out of the way corner of the empire, not born to privilege and wealth, God’s choosing a bunch of Shepherds to reveal the birth of his Son, and having Gentle wise man appear to worship, and give him gifts, all point to fact that Jesus truly was about the tenant of LOVE ALL. God’s coming Kingdom is about inclusion. But what does this all have to do with today? If we follow Jesus, and seek to be like him, how do we follow him to LOVE ALL. And why in our world are Christians known more for what they are against than what they are for (It seems like we miss this tenant to LOVE ALL, and only love those who agree with us)? Let’s dialogue around these questions and come up with some concrete ideas of LOVING ALL, not only in this Advent Season, but all year long.

1. What are your thoughts, comments, insights, questions about LOVE ALL? 2. If you were to grade the church on this tenant of the Advent Conspiracy how would the church fare? If the coming Kingdom of God is about inclusion and LOVING ALL, how can we improve our grade? 3. Consider the dirty manger, the seemingly indifferent community of Bethlehem, the not-too-impressive first visitors after Jesus’ birth, and the temple sacrifice of two doves or pigeons, all these are subtle clues that Jesus was born into poverty. Imagine reading this passage (Luke 2:1-24) through the eyes of someone lacking the same resources as you. How might reading it this way change the way we worship this Christmas? 4. If our community were to “LOVE ALL” this Advent Season (and all year round), what would that look like? 5. What is God saying to you through this message and series and what are you going to do about it? What do you think God is saying to us through this message and series and what should we do about it?

Merry Christmas from Veritas

Light in the Midst of Darkness

During this Advent season we have seen our world seem to grow darker. With discussion of financial cliffs, shootings of innocent children, more violence in the world, war, and supposedly the end of the world (according to the Mayans), our world seems to be on the brink. The world 2,000 years ago was surprisingly very similar to our own right now. Into this world 2,000 years ago the Christ Child came, in a small, insignificant town, in a corner of the empire, to a frightened and poor teenage girl and her husband. The Christ Child came to liberate us from the darkness, to defeat the powers of sin, death and evil, and to shine the light of the Kingdom of God. And so in this Advent Season he is calling us to the same thing... to shine the light of the Kingdom of God in this dark world. May this Christmas be filled with the light of the Christ Child burning from within you.

Advent Credo: From Testimony: The Word Made Flesh, by Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Orbis Books, 2004

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss— This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction— This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever— This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world— This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers— This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history— This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.

Water from an ancient well: Celtic Spirituality for Modern Life

The other week I received an offer to review the book Water from an Ancient Well: Celtic Spirituality for Modern Life by Ken McIntosh through the blogging program Speakeasy that I am a member of. As someone who has some Irish heritage and roots, I jumped at the chance. I have always felt a connection to Ireland and since I have been a follower of Jesus, a connection with Celtic Christianity and people like Saint Patrick and Saint Brendan (I sometimes joke that I have 3 patron saints from Ireland...the 2 previously mentioned, and then for a good laugh I throw in Saint Guinness)

It took me a while to work through this e-book not because it was tough reading or hard to understand. It took awhile because of a combination of my families schedule and my desire to go chapter by chapter savoring each chapter and the jewels contained within them.

There are 15 chapters in the book and each chapter seeks to tie together ancient Celtic Christianity and modern day life of following Jesus and how they can intertwine and impact us today. Some of the chapters cover the themes of God in the everyday, the meaning of the cross, solitude, spiritual friends, community, nature, Scripture, arts, and hospitality.

I found many chapters encouraging and challenging as well as thought provoking. Many of the themes in the 15 chapters I strongly resonated with and many of these themes I have been seeking to embed them within the life and ministry of Veritas and in my own personal life of following Jesus.

The one downfall that I experienced while reading the book, really had nothing to do with the book at all. It had to do with my longing to have a spiritual pilgrimage to Ireland. To walk where Saint Patrick walked. To see the Book of Kells firsthand. To climb Croagh Patrick (maybe not barefoot like people do on Reek Sunday). To visit St. James Gate and take a tour of the Guinness Factory as well as consume a pint. To see the beauty of the Island and immerse myself in the land of some of my forefathers (both in the sense of my actual descendants and those who followed Christ before me).

If you feel a strong connection to Ireland and also to Celtic Christianity, and have ever wondered what it might look like to live out some of the same values that the Celtic Christians lived out, only in our time, than grab a copy of this book and drink the Water from this ancient well.

Give More: Advent Conspiracy Week #3

Below is the text of the message from yesterday as well as the discussion questions that followed the message.

For the last 2 weeks we have been walking through our theme of Advent Conspiracy, with the hope of bringing the subversive nature of Advent back into reality. And with the hope that Advent becomes more than just a time of running around like crazy, spending money that we don’t have, to give people gifts that have everything. That it becomes about 4 main tenants.

When we launched this series two weeks ago we talked about the tenant of worship fully. We started Advent at the right place. We didn’t start advent where most people seem to start Advent, on Black Friday, at the church of the mall, and worshipping the god of stuff (and deals). We started Advent with worshipping the Christ child born in an out of the way, corner of the Empire, born to bring the Kingdom of God that would liberate people, and not enslave them. Whether being liberated from sin or liberated from consumerism, Jesus still liberates today.

Last week we talked about spending less. We talked about the fact that every year American’s spend a total of 450 billion dollars on Christmas. In comparison it would take 5-10 billion to give clean water to everyone in the world who doesn’t have access to it. So we look at which yoke were we going to live under. The yoke of Christmas (ie Consumerism) or the yoke of Christ, who would free us to not buy happiness, but spend less on ourselves.

This week our theme seems to be almost in contradiction to last week. The theme is Give More. We are going to unpack together what I mean when I say Give More. We are called to give more Presence this advent season than Presents. And our model for giving presence is Jesus, the center of our Advent Season.

So today we’ll be looking at Matthew 1:18-25 and taking time to focus specifically on one part of this passage. But before we get to that one part, let’s look at the Scripture together. Matthew 1:18-25 is the first of two narratives of the birth of Jesus in the gospels. The other is in Luke (which we’ll look at next week). Matthew 1:18-25 says, “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.”

In the story we find out that Mary is found to be pregnant with Jesus, and has shared that information with Joseph. I am sure that all kinds of thoughts went through his mind before he went to bed that faithful night. Thoughts like, “I thought I knew her. Who was the guy she was fooling around with behind my back? What will my family and friends think or say?” And so before he hit the sack for the night, he had made up his mind to divorce her quietly. Now this is odd in our day, because at this point Mary and Joseph aren’t yet “officially married”, even though it does say in the text “Joseph her husband.” We need to take a look at the Jewish understanding of marriage and betrothal to understand this statement. In the 1st Century Jewish world engagement was as legally binding as marriage is in our day. The only way to break the engagement (or betrothal) was to get a divorce. But along with that divorce came all kinds of possible issues, mostly for the woman, who would be ostracized, condemned, and probably would never marry. And so Joseph had a lot to think about regarding his next steps. But in the Scriptures we see that Joseph is called a righteous man. And because of his righteousness, he was going to divorce her quietly. He was kind, tender and merciful. He was so attached to Mary, that he was not willing that she should be exposed to the public shame, so he sought to secretly dissolve the connection and to restore her to her friends without the punishment that was commonly inflicted on those who committed “adultery.” So he heads off to sleep with his decision made, until he has a dream in which an angel appears to him, and changes everything. The Angel verifies the fact that Mary hadn’t been running around on Joseph. But what was conceived in her was from the Holy Spirit. Not only did the angel verify the fact of where the baby came from, but also let Joseph in on what the name of the child should be. The name Jesus, which means the Lord saves. And so even the given name of Jesus, points to the next thing that the angel says, “that he will save his people from their sins.”

But the next part of the text is where I want to spend most of our time on this morning, as I believe it gets at our theme Giving More in a very real way. Verse 22-23 says this, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”[ (which means “God with us”).” This part of the story points back to the Old Testament and a prophecy that would be ultimately fulfilled by Jesus. The Old Testament text that the author of Matthew is quoting is Isaiah 7:14. Jesus, in his birth, was fulfilling a 700 year old prophecy.

And so Jesus, here is referred to as Immanuel, which we see means God with Us. Jesus was not only the first and greatest Present, but the first present he gave to mankind, and continues to give is his Presence. That God is with us. But there is more to this term Immanuel than just that God is with us. I believe there are 3 more parts to his presence, than just God with us.

Look at the screen and you’ll see that Giving More in terms of Immanuel means 4 things.

First, that God is for us. All too often in our world people think God is against them, but if we read John 3:16-17 it shows all of us, that God is really for us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” That is really really good news. But God being for us isn’t really enough. That is where we move to a big part of God giving more.

Not only is he for us, he is with us. God is with us all throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, and especially in the person of Jesus. He is God with Us. Immanuel. But that also is just the beginning.

It is good that God is for us, and it is good that God is with us. But probably even better is that God is One of Us. There was a song a few years back with that title, If God was One of us by Joan Osborne. And the answer to that question is that God was one of us in the person of Jesus. Colossians 2:9 puts it this way, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,” and John 1:14 (in the message) says, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”

Jesus moved into our neighborhood. Jesus lives as One of us, loves as one of us, even likes us while he is one of us. That is what theologians call the mystery of the Incarnation, that God becomes one of us, through Jesus.

And lastly, when we understand the implications of God being for, with and one of us, that often compels us to invite Jesus to be in us. That that changes everything. God himself passes the DNA of Jesus into our very lives, which empowers us to live as Jesus here on earth.

These four things (For, With, One of, and In) is all about our theme this morning, Give More. In Jesus, God gives more presence. In the Incarnation God displays that he is For, With, One of, and In. We are talking about the incarnation this morning because I believe it suggests, in very real terms, what it means to give ourselves to one another. I believe that the incarnation is full of giving. Or as one of my favorite authors says about the incarnation, “Jesus exploded into the life of ancient Israel – the life of the whole world, in fact – not as a teacher of timeless truths, nor as a great moral example, but as the one through whose life, death, and resurrection God’s rescue operation was put into effect, and the cosmos turned its great corner at last.”

So but what does all of this have to do with us living 2,000 years after Jesus walked this earth? What does it mean to us and our life that God is for, with, one of, and In? And what do those 4 things mean for how we live our lives and how we are to Give More in this advent season? It is to those questions that we turn to now to unpack, and to put it where the rubber hits the road in terms of our everyday life and existence, living in the USA in the 21st century.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message? 2. What does it mean to you that God is for us, with us, one of us and in us? 3. How do these four realities tie into our theme of Giving More? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

Spend Less: Advent Conspiracy Week 2

Below is our message from our second week of Advent Conspiracy, looking at the tenant of Spend Less. The discussion questions follow the message.

Today is our second week in our Advent Conspiracy series. Last week we looked at the first tenant of Advent Conspiracy, that of Worship Fully. The right place to begin when it comes to any season, but especially in the season of advent, which can get so crazy and off-kilter, that by January we realize that we didn’t worship fully in this most holy of seasons.

Next week we are looking at giving more. Giving more not in terms of presents and things, but giving more of yourself and in presence. Spending time with people, which is what truly matters. And giving of yourself, even in areas of gift giving…giving people things that you put time, thought, etc.. into and not just a sweater that will end up in the closet.

And the last week we’ll look at Love All and how, in this season especially, we should be loving all and seeking to be a blessing to those who are less fortunate than we. Which is one reason we went from 10% of our offering in September-November for Forgotten Voices, to 20% in December.

And this week we are covering the tenant of Spend Less. As I mentioned last week, Americans as a whole spend around 450 billion dollars on Christmas. Which boils down to an average of 750-1000 per family on Christmas spending. (As a side note, it takes 10-30 billion to give clean water to every one in the world that needs it).

Now, I am not saying that we should just not give gifts at all, or not spend a dime on Christmas (though if that is what you feel called to, go for it). But how often have we bought gifts out of a sense of obligation? Or how often have we been given gifts out of a sense of obligation? Or even a sense of fear, like what if they give me a gift and I don’t have anything for them? All these things, the obligation, the fear, and sometimes the one-up-manship, of getting someone a better gift, as well as the amount of money that we spend on Christmas each and every year, is what I would refer to as the yoke of Christmas.

So this morning we will be conversing around the concept of the yoke of Christmas vs. the yoke of Christ, and to do that we’ll be looking at Matthew 11:28-30, which says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

So let’s take some time to unpack the yoke of Christmas and the yoke of Christ by looking at this text together. The first thing we see in this text is Christ’s call to all who are weary and burdened and he will give rest. Jesus directs his call to those who are burdened. He calls those who sense they must come to Him to relieve their need, instead of living in self-sufficiency. Here in this text Jesus is, as we are today, contrasting two different yokes. We are contrasting the yoke of Christmas and the yoke of Christ. Here in this text Jesus is contrasting the yoke of religion vs. the yoke of relationship. And specifically the yoke of the religious leaders, the Pharisees, and teachers of the law vs. a relationship with Jesus.

The burden that Jesus is speaking of in the first verse of the Scripture that we looked at, is that of the Pharisaical and scribal religion; the contrast between the heavy yoke and the genuine disciple-joy of Christ is implied in this passage, but at the same time we can’t limit it’s application.

So Jesus calls all who are weary and burden, and he will give rest. The Yoke of Christ is one of rest and peace. After all, isn’t he called the Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 says, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Rest from striving to gain approval. Rest from trying to please God. Rest from trying to live up to the standards that even those teaching the law couldn’t live up to. In contrast, the yoke of Christmas is not of rest and peace but of busyness and consumerism. Of the endless to-do lists. The burden of making sure everything is just perfect. The burden of debt, buying the right gift, and the burden of buying stuff for people who already have more than they ever need. The yoke of Christmas, for the average American means months if not years of paying their debt off. Not to mention the stress, anxiety, and worry that comes with debt and the possibility of not being able to pay it back.

The next thing Jesus calls his followers to is in verse 29, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Now before we go any farther into contrasting the yoke of Christmas vs. the yoke of Christ, I think it would be wise to unpack the word yoke in all it’s meanings. There are many different meanings for the word yoke, and it definitely doesn’t refer to an egg. One of the first meanings of a yoke when we look it up in the dictionary is an animal harness. Or to link things together.

So when training a new animal to plow, ancient farmers would often yoke it to an older, stronger, more experienced animal who would bear the burden and guide the young animal through his learning. So in this teaching, one way to look at it, is that Jesus is using the metaphor of yoking two animals together to get at a deeper meaning of being a disciple of his. That we are to take up his yoke, be tied to him, and learn about what it means to live our lives by the way he lived his life. And that when we are yoked with him, we will see him pulling our load for us. That he wants us to give him our burdens, cares, struggles, sins, etc.. and he will put them on his shoulders so that we can be yoked with him without feeling those things.

Another meaning of the word yoke, not found in our world today, but common in Jesus day, is that yoke often meant religion or teaching of a Rabbi. So when Jesus says that he is gentle and humble in heart, he is contrasting his yoke (his “religion”, his teaching) as based on him being gentle and humble in heart, with the fear based, forced, condemning religion of the Pharisees and teachers of the law. And that when we take his yoke we will find rest for our souls. In contrast again to the yoke of the Pharisees which doesn’t produce rest for our souls, but a constant state of guilt, frustration, and fear from not measuring up and not living up to the letter of the law. Jesus yoke, when taken up, can free us from religion. Can free us from the yoke of Christmas. Of never measuring up to the standards of others in how they celebrate Christmas. Freeing us from the yoke of Christmas that says that the best Christmas is where there are a ton of Christmas presents under the tree and that the bigger gifts are the better gifts. Jesus can free us from the yoke of Christmas that says more, more, more. Can free us from the let down after all the presents have been unwrapped and we still cry out for one more present. Or the disappointment of not getting the gift that we really wanted. Jesus can free us from the demands of our consumer culture that cries out that if I only had this one thing, that I would be truly happy. And then when we get that one thing, we realize that we aren’t happy and we need just one more thing.

The Yoke of Christ is easy and light. His gift to all of us this advent season and every season is rest for your souls. It is a gift that is simple as it is powerful and profound. The Yoke of Christ is easy and light because he bears it with us, and bears the brunt of it for us.

The Yoke of Christmas is burdensome and heavy. The Yoke of Christmas’ gift to us is worry, stress, fear, guilt, busyness, and the pile of credit card statements that will come in January.

Which yoke we choose is up to us. Jesus won’t force his yoke on us, which would defeat what he and his yoke are all about. But I find it so strange that the yoke of Christmas, or we could even honestly say the yoke of Consumerism and debt, reach their pinnacle on the morning we celebrate the birth of Jesus- the Savior who came to liberate us from these things.

So let’s unpack the yoke of Christ vs. the yoke of Christmas a little more, and come up with some concrete, on the ground ideas, plans, and goals when it comes to living out the second tenant of the Advent Conspiracy, that of Spend Less.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message?

2. The founders of Advent Conspiracy suggest that the fastest growing religion in the world isn't Islam or Christianity, but "radical consumerism". Do you agree or disagree with this statement? In what ways are we drawn to this kind of worship?

3. The Yoke of Christmas is the yoke of excess. Unfortunately, this is more accurate than most of us want to admit. In what ways do you put on the Yoke of Christmas? Food? Drink? Overstuffed schedule? Overspending? How does the Yoke of Christmas leave you feeling after it is over?

4. What is one practical way of putting on the yoke of Christ or one practical way of taking off the yoke of Christmas this advent season? How can you spend less in this advent season?

Worship Fully: Advent Conspiracy Week #1

Below you'll find the text of the message from yesterday's gathering in which we looked at the theme of Worship Fully from the Advent Conspiracy series that we just started. The discussion questions that we talked about follow the message.

So today we are starting a new series. The new series corresponds with the 4 weeks of advent and is called Advent Conspiracy. For those who don’t know Advent is the 4 weeks before Christmas. Advent is a season observed in many Western Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. The term is an anglicized version of the Latin word adventus, meaning "coming.” So for the next 4 weeks we will be looking at Advent and wait to celebrate the coming of King Jesus, born in a lowly manager in an out of the way town in the corner of the Roman Empire. We will seek to untangle the cultural celebrations of Advent from the Biblical.

We will focus on four broad themes. This week we will start off advent in the right way by focusing on worship fully. To untangle ourselves from the cultural expectations of this season, we will need to be spending time worshipping Jesus, the real reason for the season. Next week we will look at spending less. The average American spends somewhere around 1,000 dollars on Christmas each and every year. In 2010 Americans spent 450 billion on Christmas. So we’ll also seek to untangle our celebrations by spending less. The 3rd week we’ll look at what might sound like an exact opposite of the week before. The 3rd week theme is Give More. We’ll be talking about giving more presence than presents. More time with people and also giving more away to those in need. Lastly, we’ll warp up the Advent season with the theme of Love All. If we worship fully, spend less, and give more but don’t do it from a heart of love, than it is all for naught. So my prayer for us is that we would, in a small part, recover the conspiracy that is Advent. Recover the subversive nature of Christmas and the upside down Kingdom that worships a King that doesn’t come with pomp and circumstance but comes to lowly parents. Not with a silver spoon in his mouth, but lying in a feed trough.

So let’s begin unpacking what it means for us as we begin Advent to worship fully. We’ll look at probably the two most familiar stories of the coming of Jesus into our world. We’ll also draw out 6 principles of what it means to worship fully.

So let’s turn to our first text of the morning, Luke 2:8-20. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”

So the first thing that we can draw from this text in relation to the idea of worshipping fully is found in verse 15. After the angels left and went back into heaven, the shepherds now had a choice to make. Do they continue watching the sheep on the hillside, or listen to the Angels and seek out Jesus. Obviously if a company of angles shows up and tells you some amazing news, your choice would be pretty obvious. So the Shepherds set off and began to seek out Jesus in the town of Bethlehem. So to worship fully in our day and age is no different, in some respects to what the shepherds did after the angels appeared to them. We need to seek after Jesus just as the shepherds did. Seeking after Jesus in our day and age means to spend time seeking Jesus in the Scriptures and in prayer, both individually, but also corporately. It wasn’t like the shepherds said, “Let’s designate one of us to go and seek Jesus, while the rest of us stay here and keep watch over the flocks.” They all went and they all searched together.

So our Veritas community needs to seek after Jesus together not only in this advent season but all year round. Everyone taking time to pray, read, and seek God on a daily basis. But also getting together to search the Scriptures, pray together, and seek Jesus together.

The second thing that we can relate to our theme of worship fully from this text is found in verse 17. Not only did the Shepherds seek after Jesus, they also turned around and shared what they had found. Scriptures say that “they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.” Worshipping fully not only means seeking Jesus in prayer, scripture, etc…. but it means then taking what you find into the world and sharing it with others. The really amazing thing about this part of the text is who God uses to spread his message. Shepherds were regarding as social outcasts. They had a bad reputation and were considered unreliable and were not allowed to give testimony in the law courts. But here God was redeeming them and spreading the kingdom through the most unlikely of people. In a very real way the shepherds were the first preachers and missionaries of the gospel of Jesus. They didn’t and they couldn’t keep it to themselves and when we worship fully we shouldn’t be able to keep it to ourselves either.

The last thing we can draw out from the story in relation to worshipping fully is found at the end of the story. What happens when they leave Bethlehem? They returned to their flocks, their vocation and their families glorifying and praising God for everything that had seen and heard and experienced. They didn’t just stay in Bethlehem. They didn’t just stay on the mountaintop, if you will. They came off the mountaintop experience of seeing and experiencing the birth of the savior of the world, and continued worshipping and praising God in the midst of their daily routine and life. The same needs to be said of us. We are so often tempted to try to stay on the mountaintop. You know those times when God shows up in an amazing way, and we just want to stay there and never come down. We don’t want to go back to our jobs, families, school, neighborhood, etc… But life is lived off the mountain, and I believe true worship is the kind of worship that is fleshed out and lived in the everyday and the ordinary. In the times when you don’t “feel it”. So to worship fully means that true worship is not just music, a gathering, an emotion, etc… but true worship is probably best described by Romans 12:1-2 (The Message), “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

So let’s turn to the next story and see what it has for us in relation to our first theme of the Advent Conspiracy, that of worshipping fully. The text is found in Matthew 2:1-11 and is the story of the Magi coming to Jesus. “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ”Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”

The first thing that we can draw from this text regarding worshipping fully can be drawn from what might seem like an incidental detail, the place of Jesus’ birth. Bethlehem can be broken down into two words in the Arabic language. First there is Beth which means house. Secondly there is Lehem which means flesh. So Bethlehem can mean the house of flesh. Or it could be called the House of the Incarnation. The place where God was manifested in the flesh for the salvation of a lost world. So part of worshipping fully, not only in this advent season, but also all year round, is incarnating Jesus in our world. Be the hands and feet of Jesus wherever you are. We are called to be incarnational in our community, in our work, in our school, in our families, wherever we go. To flesh out the Kingdom in the world. Or I could ask each one of us, where is our Bethlehem, where we flesh out the life of Jesus? To worship fully we need to be incarnational.

We also see in verse 2 that the purpose of the visit of the Magi was “to come to worship him.” The Magi, wise man from the east, coming to worship a child, who had been born in a manger, not in a palace. They understood their purpose. Do we? Do we understand that our overarching purpose is to worship him and that everything we do can be worship? We talk about this every week when we do the triangle, that they are totally connected and in all of those 3 areas we are really worshipping Him.

Part of the way the Magi’s expressed the purpose of worship, was what they did when they found Jesus. The gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. These were things that were highly valuable in their country, and they gave them as an act of worship. It again is no different for us, it might not be gold, frankincense, and myrrh that we are called to worship Jesus with. It might be our money, our time, our talents, and our abilities. Part of worshipping fully is what we call stewardship. God calls us to give back in worship what he has entrusted to our care. God calls us to be generous, just like the Magi were generous. Generous in our finances, in our time, in our relationships, and in every part of our lives. When we are generous than we are worshipping fully.

Finally, the last of the six principles we can draw about worshipping fully from this text is found in the last verse, verse 11. The Magi were warned in a dream about Herod’s true intentions, and they were obedient to that dream. Their worship went beyond their purpose in the trip, and the gifts that they gave Jesus. Their worship was also manifested in obedience. They were obedient to what God had communicated to them through a dream. Worshipping God fully means obedience to his will in all of life. Jesus said it himself in the last thing he said before returning to his father, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” A Dallas Willard said it this way in The Great Omission, “life in Christ has to do with obedience to his teaching.”

So we are going to spend sometime unpacking this idea of worship fully, especially in the midst of advent, by asking a few questions about what it looks like in the everyday and ordinary of all of our lives.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc… do you have regarding the Scriptures and/or the message? 2. Out of the 6 principles of worshipping fully found in the two Scriptures (Seeking, Spreading the word, Life as Worship, Incarnating Jesus, Stewardship, and Obedience) do you have the most trouble living out? What can you do during this Advent season to grow in that area? 3. How might starting Advent by talking about worship fully and Jesus, change or influence what you do and don’t do this Christmas Season? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

Schooled: Week 3

Below is the message and discussion questions from our 3rd and final week of our series called Schooled, looking at the Old Testament book of Jonah. Today we wrap up our series “Schooled” looking at the Old Testament book of Jonah. Two weeks ago we looked at Jonah chapter 1. We spent time unpacking the hatred that Jonah had towards the Assyrians, his call to his enemies, his willingness to sacrifice himself for pagan, gentile people that he knew, but wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself for those he didn’t know, and didn’t want God to have mercy on them.

Last week we looked at Jonah chapter 3 and talked about how Jonah, even though he was shown mercy, didn’t extend mercy. That the Assyrians were the heroes of the story, because they took God at his word, and acted immediately, unlike Jonah who had to be called twice to take up his missionary mantle. Also that Jonah was only obeying God out of duty, and not love, grace, compassion, and mercy for the Assyrians, based on the love, grace, compassion, and mercy that God showed to him.

Today we wrap up Jonah by looking at Jonah chapter 4 and how we can get schooled in the ways of the Kingdom of God. So let’s look at Jonah 4 and unpack the text, as it will definitely show us something about living in the Kingdom of God in our 21st century context.

“But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the LORD God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.” But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” So we see Jonah reacting to the fact that God was having mercy on the Ninevites and wasn’t going to bring upon them the destruction that Jonah was hoping and praying for. Jonah was angry because God granted repentance to the Ninevites, and the Assyrians were enemies of Judah and Israel. Jonah wanted God to bring judgment upon these people that he hated. Jonah knew that God was full of grace and mercy and that was why he was afraid to tell the people of Ninevah. He ran the other way. He ran from his missionary calling. He ran from doing what God was calling him to do, all because he knew that God was gracious, compassionate, merciful, and relenting. And he didn’t want God to be all those things, or at least not to his enemies. He wanted God to extend mercy, grace, compassion, and forgiveness upon him and his people, just not to those evil, no good, rotten, pagan, Gentile enemies.

What is even worse is the fact that no only does he want God’s grace, mercy, compassion, and love for himself, he actually calls on the mercy of God while in the belly of the fish and enjoys it when it was extended to him. But now he resents it when it is extended to others. What if God treated Jonah the way Jonah wanted God to treat the people of Ninevah? Jonah could be merciful to the pagan, Gentile sailors in chapter 1 but he is unwilling that God should be merciful.

All this talk of God’s grace and mercy and Jonah’s attitude that God showed it to the people of Ninevah remind me of a quote from the author Mike Yaconelli that I might have shared before. ““Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus' irresponsible love, we decide to make grace "more responsible" by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include).” Sounds exactly what was happening with Jonah, doesn’t it? And honestly, what happens with each one of us, if we aren’t careful. We can end up just like Jonah, being shown God’s mercy and being unwilling to show mercy to others, or even worse, praying that God wouldn’t show others mercy.

And so Jonah is ticked at God for showing mercy to his enemies, but he is still holding out hope that maybe, just maybe God will still bring judgment upon the city of Ninevah, and so he goes outside of the city to wait for the destruction to come. As he sits there he tells God that it would have been better for him to die, than to see the forgiveness, grace and mercy that God was showing the Assyrian people. So central was the hatred of the Assyrians in Jonah’s existence than when they escape from threatened destruction, he seemed to have nothing left to live for. Not only was this a condemnation of Jonah and his attitude, but Jonah also represented the people of Israel. That they had let hatred of the “pagans” become so dominant in their thoughts that to be frustrated in the desire for vengeance robbed life of all meaning. In fact, their hatred of the “pagans” robbed them of their original call, the call of Abram found in Genesis 12:1-3. The calling to be a nation that was blessed, not to the exclusion of others, but for others. That they were blessed to be a blessing. And so in order for Jonah to be confronted with his hatred of the Assyrians, his lack of living out his Abrahamic calling, and his lack of love, mercy, grace and compassion, God puts together a giant object lesson using a plant and a worm. God makes a plant grow up to give shade to Jonah, and then only a day later, God also sent a worm to eat the plant, so that Jonah was wilting in the hot sun.

Jonah was so pleased with this plant, that it had eased his discomfort and helped him avoid the hot blistering sun, but when the worm ate it, Jonah went back to wishing he had died. He cared about the plant because it gave him shade. In the end, the plant was all about him. Everything was all about him. Jonah was a very selfish man. But the point of the object lesson is that Jonah cared more and grieved more over the condition of the plant, than the condition of the people of Ninevah. God challenged him in his heart condition. God asked Jonah questions, because they revealed his heart. God likes to ask us questions, because they reveal our heart.

God boils it all down to this. How much more should God be concerned about the destruction of persons- those made in his image, even if they are Assyrians. God’s response to Jonah showed Jonah, the prophet, that he really didn’t know God as well as he thought. You see something that the people of God in the Old Testament (shown so well in this book) and the people of God in the New Testament (shown so well in Acts 10..where Peter has a vision) and I believe the people of God (those who call themselves Christians) in our day, need to realize, that God is the God of All People, and not just a certain group of people.

But the story of Jonah comes to a close, but not with a nice and tidy bow. It just sort of ends with God questioning Jonah. The story isn’t really finished. There are a lot of questions left unanswered. Does Jonah fall on his face and confess his sinfulness to God? Does he go into the city of Ninevah and repent with them? Does he begin to show the Ninevites the love, grace, mercy, and compassion that God has shown both to him and to them? Does he sulk off and write off God as not fitting into his agenda? And so maybe that is the point? Maybe we are supposed to wrestle with the lack of ending and ask the same questions of ourselves. And so that is what we are going to do, wrestle together with some of the open ended questions that the book leaves us hanging with.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message? 2. Share a story with us when you have been a recipient of the mercy and grace of God. Now share a story with us when you have been a Kingdom monitor and didn’t extend the mercy of God that was shown to you. 3. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it? 4. What has stood out to you during our Schooled series and how has it schooled you in the ways of the Kingdom of God?

Schooled: Week 2

Below is the message and the discussion questions from our worship gathering yesterday.

So last week we began a three week series entitled Schooled, looking at the Old Testament book of Jonah. We spent last week in Chapter 1 talking about God’s missionary call on Jonah, his outright hatred of the Assyrian people, his running away from the call of God, and his willing sacrifice for the gentile Pagan sailors who he looked eye to eye with, but not for the gentile, Pagan people in the city of Ninevah.

This week we are looking at the 3rd chapter of Jonah together and next week we’ll wrap up our series with the conclusion of the story in Jonah chapter 4. So let’s turn to Jonah chapter 3 and see what this chapter might say to us and how it might school us in the ways, values, and life of the Kingdom of God.

“Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” So the first thing we see in this text is the second call of God to Jonah. The second call to live out the Abrahamic covenant found in Genesis 12:1-3 as well as the second call to be a missionary of God and to share the redemptive narrative found in the God that Jonah worshipped. The interesting thing about this call in 3:1-2, is that it is a direct parallel to the beginning of Chapter 1, almost word for word. The author is skillfully trying to convey the idea that Jonah is being offered a new beginning, a second chance. A second chance to take up the missionary mantel that God was placing on him. A second chance to show love, grace, mercy, and compassion to the people of Ninevah as he had shown to the gentile, Pagan sailors. A second chance at faithfully living out the call that God was putting on him.

But he still had a choice to make. God was still not forcing him to go to Ninevah. He was just giving him a second chance and doing what God was calling him to do. He realized the first time that he couldn’t outrun or run away from God’s call on his life. (Anyone experience something similar, trying to run away from a call on your life and only realizing that in the end it was impossible?) And so we see in verse 3 that Jonah obeyed God and sent off for Ninevah.

What I find very interesting though is the words obeyed God. Why did he go to Ninevah and preach to it? Was it out of love, mercy, grace, and compassion? Was it out of duty to God because he couldn’t outrun God? Was it out of a sick desire to look people in the eye, and hope that he could see their destruction? Was it because God showed Jonah mercy in chapter 2 by saving him from death by having giant fish swallow him, and then spit him up on dry land? Was it from a heart of love that God had given to him for his enemies? Was it from a heart of repentance and wanting others to experience that same forgiveness that he experienced from God?

It seems like, at least to me and my reading of chapter 2 and chapter 3, that Jonah’s obedience to God’s call on his life, to be a missionary to the people of Ninevah, does not come from a heart of mercy, repentance, love, grace, and compassion. In fact, at no point is there an acknowledgement of disobedience or an expression of repentance on the behalf of Jonah. So I believe Jonah’s listening and going to Ninevah was not a willing obedience but a temporary forced compliance. He was taking up the missionary commission grudgingly. There was no mercy in his heart. God’s mercy upon Jonah in the belly of the whale didn’t kindle mercy in Jonah. So Jonah heads off to Ninevah, ever the reluctant missionary to a people that he, I believe, still despises in his heart and still desires to see God’s hand of judgment fall upon them. So Jonah gets to Ninevah and begins to proclaim “Forty more days and Ninevah will be destroyed.” Not a great message for the Assyrians to hear, but I can almost hear the love and hope that Jonah had that it would indeed happen. Almost like, I can’t wait for you guys to be destroyed and get what is coming to you. But something happens that I am sure Jonah wasn’t counting on, and I’m sure he was hoping that it wouldn’t happen. We see in verse 3 that a visit to Ninevah would require three days, and in verse 4 we see Jonah starting out on the first day. The very first day, when he had only gone 1/3 of the way through the city, is when his words took a starting effect on the population of Ninevah. We see in verse 5 the reaction to his preaching, “The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.” This verse is one of the most striking in the entire book of Jonah. In fact this verse and this chapter stand in direct contrast to the people of Israel, and in particular to the prophet Jonah. The lack of repentance on the part of Jonah himself through the book stands in striking contrast to the universal repentance and humiliation of the Assyrians. Jonah is singularly unmoved by his sin against God, while the pagan, Gentile citizens of Ninevah repent at the first word of judgment. This is surely intended to indicate how hardened against God, Israel had become in its proud, self-assurance and how wrong the Israelites were to think that they stood in a relationship with God of which the pagan, Gentile citizens of Ninevah were incapable of. Jonah was still a first class nationalist, exalting his own country, his own people, and “his” own God. This should strike us to the heart. The hero or heroes of this story isn’t the people of Israel represented by Jonah, (or the people of God if you will) but the pagan, gentile people who took God at his word, repented, and were justified. I’m sure that Israel hated this story, because God was showing that he showed no partiality and was no respecter of people. It was what got Jesus into the most trouble, because he was saying that it was the sick that needed a doctor, not the healthy. He said that the prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners were entering the Kingdom ahead of the religious leaders, Pharisees, and upright Jewish people. (Mt. 21:31) He told stories where the tax collector who humbled himself and was repentant went away justified, and the Pharisee who honored himself and condemned the tax collector went away not being justified by God, only by his self righteousness. (Luke 18:10-14)

Lastly, Jesus himself points his hearers back to this story that we are looking at today and paints the pagan, Gentiles of Ninevah with a beautiful brush of faithfulness, repentance, and justification. And paints his hearers as faithless, unrepentant and unjustified. In Luke 11:29-32 we read this, “As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom; and now something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now something greater than Jonah is here.” Jesus was driving home the same point that the writer of Jonah was driving. That the pagan, gentile people (whether of Jesus day) or of Jonah’s had a more open heart to the things of God than the religious people of Jesus’ day (or Jonah’s day for that matter). Could we say that about our own day? That people who are “outside” the Christian faith might have a more open heart to the things of God than “Christians”? Interesting question that we’ll explore together. So to end the story, the entire city of Ninevah, from greatest to least, from the King of Assyria to the livestock, sitting in sackcloth and ashes, fasting, and calling upon God in repentance. God hears their cries of repentance, their cries of mercy, and their pleading for forgiveness, and he relents from the destruction that he had planned (which would be an interesting discussion sometime).

So let’s turn to the question that I just asked about people outside the Christian faith having a more open heart to the things of God than Christians and a few other questions to unpack and apply this Scripture into our lives here in the 21st century.

Discussion Questions:

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the message and/or the Scripture? 2. Who is God calling you to be on mission with and on mission for? Have you obeyed this call and if so out of what? (Love, Compassion, Duty, etc..) 3. Have you ever experienced a person who wasn't a "follower of Jesus" looking more like a follower of Jesus, than someone who claimed the name of Jesus? If so, share with us the story. What do you do with that? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to go about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

Schooled: Week 1

Below is the first message in our three week series entitled Schooled, looking at the Old Testament book of Jonah. I have also included the discussion questions that we used to guide our conversation following the message.

Today we are starting a new series at Veritas entitled “Schooled”. In Schooled, we will be taking the next 3 weeks to look at the Old Testament book of Jonah and what it can say to us today. Throughout the 3 weeks we will be seeking to take the story out of the realm of Children’s Bible story books and into the realm that it should be, a deeply challenging, convicting, subversive, and radical call to those who would follow after the God of love, grace, and mercy.

I won’t be spending any time talking about whether this story is a true story or a parable. Whether it truly happened or is a story told for a point. I won’t get into try to defend or disprove whether Jonah was actually swallowed by a great fish, lived inside the fish for 3 days, and then vomited back up on land. I’m going to take the book as a story with an amazingly deep and challenging message for anyone who has or will read this story. You can argue if you want whether the story is true or a parable. I’m going to just look at the message that I believe God wants each of us to take away from this book and apply it to our lives. And if we apply it to our lives, I believe we will look more and more like the God of love, grace, compassion, and mercy that is described within its pages, and that in turn our communities will be flooded with radical followers of Jesus who want to, what Jeremiah 29:7 says, “seek the peace and the prosperity of the city.”

So let’s turn to Jonah chapter 1 and see what we might get out of this text that was written so long ago, but has some very relevant things to say to us gathered together in the 21st century.

The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD. Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.) The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the LORD, “Please, LORD, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, LORD, have done as you pleased.” Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him. Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

So the first thing we see in this first chapter of Jonah is God’s calling of Jonah to be a missionary to the people of the great city of Ninevah, which was the capital city of Assyria. Jonah represents the people of God called out from other nations to be a channel of God’s redemptive purposes. Now Ninevah was not a city of Israel and God was calling Jonah to go to a pagan, Gentile city and call them to repentance. As if God calling Jonah to go to a pagan, gentile city wasn’t bad enough, it was worse because the Assyrians were responsible for a number of Israel’s greatest disasters. God chose Ninevah to be an object of His mercy, because its inhabitants were more hated by the Israelites than people of any other city. You see the hatred of the Assyrians and by definition Ninevah comes from several places. First of all, as I just mentioned it was a pagan and Gentile city, of which good Jewish people should have almost nothing to do with, according to the OT law. Secondly, Ninevah was known for violence, plotting evil against the Lord, cruelty and plundering in war, prostitution, witchcraft, and commercial exploitation. Look at Nahum 3:1-4 to get a feel of the evil within Ninevah, “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims! The crack of whips, the clatter of wheels, galloping horses and jolting chariots! Charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses— all because of the wanton lust of a prostitute, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft.” Lastly, in the years following the exile of Israel out of their land to Babylon, there grew up in Israel a spirit of bitterness and vengefulness towards other lands. The nation had endured so much at the hands of enemies that there was little inclination to keep alive the vision of Israel as God’s servant through whom redemptive truth would one day reach all nations. The most passionate desire wasn’t for the redemption of all nations but for God’s wrath to utterly consume all if Israel’s enemies.

And so here God was calling his prophet Jonah to go to the very enemy of Israel preach to it, be a missionary to it and Jonah has a choice. Does he go, knowing that God is a God of compassion and mercy and if the Ninevites repent that destruction won’t come. Or does he disobey God and his calling as a missionary, and also the call to reawaken a nation to their missionary call to be a blessing to all nations, that they were called to all the way back in Genesis 12? Does he go the other way hoping that the Assyrians will be judged, condemned and destroyed? We find out his choice in verse 3 when it says, “But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish.” So the 2 questions that I immediately think of is: 1. Does he really think he can run away from God? And 2. Why and where is Tarshish? Well the first question I believe points us to the thought at the time, not so much from the Jewish perspective, but from other belief systems, that there were gods of various areas, and once you left a certain area, you could leave the god of that area behind. So maybe Jonah was trying to get away from God by leaving Israel, which we know was futile. But more than that, I believe the presence of God is intolerable to Jonah because it demanded of him the renunciation of his prejudices and his lust for divine vengeance upon Israel’s enemies. That I believe was the real reason behind Jonah’s running. He didn’t want to face up to the reality of his vengeful spirit and his hope for God’s wrath and judgment to be poured out on his people’s enemy. The second question I think is directly related to the first, in that Jonah thought, where is the farthest place I can go, to get away from God’s call on my life, and God’s desire to redeem these people. So he thought Tarsish, a city most likely to be identified with the Greek Tarteses in the south of Spain. It was as far west as ships were likely to sail from Palestine, and some thought it was almost at the end of the earth. Ninevah was east of Palestine and Tarsish was as far west as you could go, at the time. So he gets on board and ship heading to Tarsish and runs into trouble. The one thing that I find very interesting in this part of Jonah chapter 1 can be found in verses 11-13, “The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” Jonah was willing to give up his life to save Gentile sailors, but couldn’t bear the thought that God should save Gentiles in Ninevah. Jonah’s readiness to die to save the sailors contrasts with his later callous departure from Ninevah to watch while the city perish, or so he hoped. To Jonah, and to the Israelites, it was harder to hate individuals than it was to hate groups of people. And it was harder to hate these gentile sailors when he was in relationship with them, knew their names, and were face to face with them. For Jonah, it was by far easier to condemn and hate a group of people who were not in relationship with him, that he didn’t know and never were face to face with. And so the last thing we see in this chapter is when Jonah is thrown into the sea, and the Lord provides a great fish to swallow Jonah, and that Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. And so know we turn to our time of discussion and application. The time where we can unpack the text into our local context and what God is saying to each of us about living this reality out in our neighborhoods, workplace, school, families, and communities. So let’s unpack this together and see what God might be leading each of us as individuals and as a community to.

Discussion Questions: 1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, pushback, etc... do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message? 2. Who does Ninevah represent to you? Are you running away from them (and by definition away from God as well)? 3. Who is God calling you to be on mission with and on mission for? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

When the Empire gets Baptized

Below is the text for our last week in the Jesus for President series as well as two questions that guided our discussion time following the message. This morning we are wrapping up our 3 week series entitled Jesus for President. 2 weeks ago when we started we talked about Before there were Kings and Presidents, and we talked about 1 Samuel 8 where the people of Israel when to Samuel and demanded a King. They wanted a flesh and blood King who would fight for the nation, and would sit on the throne. They took the King of the Kingdom off the throne and put a human on the throne. Don’t we all do that as well?

Last week we talked about A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief. We talked about the coronation process of Caesar and the upside down Coronation process of King Jesus. We talked about the upside down Kingdom of God that followers of Jesus need to live out, in following our King.

Today our theme and topic of conversation is entitled “When the Empire gets baptized.” And so I thought I would kick off our conversation by asking, when have you seen or do you have an example of when the empire got baptized?

One example of when the empire gets baptized comes from the debate from the other night. At the very end of the debate Mitt Romney said these words, “America is the hope of the world.” Another example is closely tied into that comment but comes from a former president who said these two things, “There’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” And “The ideal of America is the hope of all mankind…That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” But of these statements are ripped from the Kingdom of God and used to describe the Kingdom of the World. The wonder-working power, in that quote, is not the blood of the Lamb (which is a hymn) but puts America there. And the other quote comes from John 1:5 and originally was addressed about Jesus, but the politician who said it said it wasn’t about Jesus, but about America. If that isn’t when the empire gets baptized, I don’t know what is.

To talk about when the empire gets baptized we’ll be looking at two different Scriptures. The first one is from John 18:36 and the second is Revelation 18:2-5, 11-14. So let’s take a look at John 18:36 which says, “Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

This Scripture is in the midst of the trial of Jesus before Pilate. Jesus response in verse 36 is derived from a question that Pilate asks in verse 33, “Are you the King of the Jews.” Pilate’s only understanding of King was based on worldly Kings and worldly Kingdoms and probably from his viewpoint; Jesus didn’t quite fit that label. Jesus Kingdom and his kingship, as he says in verse 36, is not of this world. This doesn’t mean that it is only concerned with another world, and another time. It doesn’t mean that he is only King of heaven and that the Kingdom of God is only for the hereafter. No, that isn’t what Jesus means when he says that his Kingdom is not of this world. What Jesus is really saying here, is that he is a King all right, and that he has a kingdom. But that he is a King and his Kingdom are both radically different than the Kings and the Kingdoms of this world. His Kingdom is one that doesn’t have soldiers to protect it, not does it come, like most kingdoms, through power, force and violence. But instead comes through love, sacrifice, freedom, and grace.

The early church theologian Augustine observed from this verse that earthly kingdoms are based upon force, pride the love of human praise, the desire for domination, and self interest, all of these displayed by Pilate, the Roman Empire, and honestly America as well. The Kingdom of God, unlike the Kingdom of the world, which is exemplified by Jesus and the cross, is based on love, sacrifice, humility and righteousness/justice. So that is why, to Pilate, it didn’t seem like Jesus was actually a King. He was having his blood shed by “his enemies”, instead of shedding the blood of “his enemies.” He was showing power not by dominating and having people serve him, but by taking off his outer garment, getting a basin of water, and taking on the role of a servant and washing the feet of his disciples.

We need to really take a look at that idea again, that true power, true leadership, true change comes from serving, humbling yourself, and sacrifice. As followers of Jesus must take care that we live and serve with the power of the cross and not by the power of Rome (or America). The key to living in Jesus’ Kingdom is not found in trying to rule over things or others, but in being more fully ruled by God. You see, however, that in Jesus’ day (and ours as well) they were conditioned to look for salvation in political solutions- we are also tempted to further the purposes of the Kingdom by the power of this world. To seek to bring the Kingdom of God though the power of the Kingdom of the world, and that never ever goes well. Just look at the Crusades as an example when the empire gets baptized. How did the Kingdom of God come through the violence, murder, and power in the Crusades? It didn’t and it never does.

We need to come out of that understanding, and that way of life, that the Kingdom of God can be brought through Kingdom of the world values. That the Kingdom comes through power over. That the Kingdom of God can come through voting. That the Kingdom of God can come through the American lifestyle or foreign policy. Or that the empire of the United States is actually part of the Kingdom of God, or put in another way, that the United States is a Christian nation. We need to come out of that. After all, as writer, speaker, theologian and professor Tony Campolo said, “We may live in the best Babylon in the world…but it is still Babylon and we are called to come out of her.”

Let’s look at what John the Apostle, said about Babylon in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, Revelation 18:2-5 and 11-14. With a mighty voice he shouted: “‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’ She has become a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “‘Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.” “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves. “They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’ Some very interesting points can be found in this passage. First we see that Babylon and the merchants who live under her rule and reign are drunk, drunk on the blood of the saints. Her wineglass is filled with the blood she has shed throughout the earth of “saints, prophets, and all who have been killed on the earth.” Her is the cup of empire, slaughter, genocide, and power over. Everyone has grown drunk from the blood, and they stand back and marvel, ‘Who is like Babylon?” Babylon the beautiful. But there are those who do not drink from her cup, who do not grow drunk on the cocktails of culture. Their cup is filled with the blood of the lamb. It is the cup of the new covenant. The question for you and I is which cup will we drink from? The cup of the empire or the cup of the Kingdom of God? One that sheds others blood, demands power, force, and power over or one that has his blood shed, and is all about the power under of service, love, and peace? Also John was seeking to make a point about the empire of Babylon and the Kingdom of God. You can’t walk the line between them. John’s language couldn’t be clearer. We are to come out of her, literally to pull ourselves out. Let’s be honest, this is Rated R. Scholars point out that this is erotic language and that the words John uses are the same ones used for coitus interruptus- to interrupt sexual intercourse before climax. As John is speaking of this steamy love affair with the empire, he calls the church to pull out of her, to leave the romance with the world and be wooed by God, to remember our first love, to say no to all other lovers. To say no to the empire of the world, whether that was Rome or America, and to say no to the values of the empire, and instead say yes to the Kingdom of God and it’s values, which are totally upside down from those of the Kingdom of the world.

But what does that mean for you and I gathered together here today? What does it mean to say no to the empire and the Kingdom of the world and say yes to King Jesus and the Kingdom of God? Well let’s unpack that together now.

Discussion Questions: 1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc... do you have regarding the Scriptures and/or message? 2. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief

Yesterday was our 2nd week in our Jesus for President series and we covered the theme: A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief. Below is the text of the message and the discussion questions we used after the message.

So today we continue our series entitled “Jesus for President”. Last week our theme was Before there were Kings and Presidents. And this week we are looking at “A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief.

As I was watching the Presidential Debate (this is the only reference to current politics that I am going to make) this past week a thought struck me. These men are talking as if they are the Messiah of America. They have a Messianic Complex. Now they wouldn’t come right out and tell you that, but when you listen to them they come off as “I can fix that. I can do this. I can do that.” Blah Blah Blah.

But that is nowhere near what the political scene was like in Jesus day. Let me read to you an inscription that was found on stone from the 1st century. “The birth date of our God has signaled the beginning of good news for the world.” Now this sounds like it was written about Jesus, but in actuality it was written announcing the birth of Caesar Augustine. In fact many of the titles and words we find in the Scriptures are directly confronting the Roman Empire. You see the title Son of God wasn’t just in reference to Jesus, but was a popular title for Kings and Emperors. Savior was a title also given to Caesar as was Lord and Emmanuel. Caesar if you will was the original Commander-in-Chief and ruled over the Roman Empire in such a way that he was definitely viewed as the messiah. So you want to talk about a messianic complex, this guy would have one huge one.

This morning we are going to do some looking at what kind of Commander-in-Chief Caesar was. We are going to look at the Coronation and Procession of Caesar. We are going to then contrast Caesar, the Commander-in-Chief of the Roman Empire, with Jesus, a new kind of Commander-in-Chief. We are going to also look at the Coronation and Procession of King Jesus and realize that this King and the Kingdom he rules over is an upside-down Kingdom and differs greatly than the Kingdom of the Roman Empire and by definition every other empire that has ever been on the face of the earth, including the Empire of the United States. And we’ll look at what it means to each one of us to live for commander-in-chief Jesus instead of ourselves and for his Kingdom and not the kingdom of our own making.

We all know, if we have done any study of history, that the Caesar’s were known for their insane, violent and power-hungry egos. As I mentioned before, the Caesar’s and Roman emperors were worshipped as gods on earth. So the emperor gained the title Son of God. Inaugurations of Caesars were ornate, public and meant to impress. The ceremony originated with the Greeks and was called a thriambas. Then the Romans adopted this ceremony. At the center of these ceremonies was the triumphant person to be deified- the triumphator. Both the Greek and Roman ceremonies were affiliated with gods that died and rose again. Dionysus and Jupiter.

The Christians in the Roman Empire recognized the power and devotion of the imperial cult. They also recognized that you could not serve the god of the empire and the God of Jesus. This is why they did not choose small language to communicate about Jesus, language such as ‘it’s just a personal spiritual conviction, not political.” No, they chose language and imagery with the weight of the empire behind their words. But probably the most poignant language in the Gospels that contrast Jesus with the power of his day is the crucifixion story in Mark (which we’ll turn to shortly). Ray Vander Laan notes the following 8 steps in the inauguration of a Caesar. Listen carefully to them, and then note the powerful and satirical method Mark uses to paint what he sees as the true inauguration of Jesus, the suffering and loving triumphator- or anti-triumphator.

So we’ll look at each of the 8 steps one by one of the coronation and procession of Caesar then we’ll look at the account of Jesus coronation and procession. Hopefully we’ll see clearly that this Kingdom that is the Kingdom of God is upside down, radical, and subversive and that it calls us to be upside down, radical and subversive as well.

The first step in the coronation and procession of Caesar was that the Praetorian Guard gathered in the Praetorium. The would-be Caesar was brought into the middle of the gathering. Now let’s look at Mark 15:16, which is the beginning of the Coronation and Procession of Jesus, which says, “The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers.”

The next step in the Coronation of Caesar was that guards went to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, got a purple robe, and placed it on the candidate. The candidate was also given an olive-leaf wreath made of gold and a scepter for the authority of Rome. In Jesus coronation we see this in Mark 15:17, “They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.” We see the soldiers bringing Jesus a wreath of thrones, a scepter (which they use as a weapon on him) and a purple robe.

Next in Caesar’s coronation was that he was loudly acclaimed as triumphant by the Praetorian Guard. Jesus however was sarcastically acclaimed, mocked, and paid homage to by the soldiers. Mark 15:18-19, “And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him.”

After loudly acclaiming Caesar as triumphant, the procession would begin through the streets of Rome, led by soldiers. In the middle was Caesar. Walking behind him was a sacrificial bull, whose death and blood would mark Caesar’s entrance into the divine pantheon. Walking next to the bull was a slave, who carried an axe to kill the bull. Some accounts note that some people would spread sweet-smelling incense around the procession. Looking at verses 20-21 is the start of Jesus’ procession, “And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.” Instead of a bull, the would-be king and god became the sacrifice, the bull. But he could not carry the instrument of death and be the sacrifice. So they stopped Simon and gave him the cross.

Caesars’ procession then moved to the highest hill in Rome, the Capitolene hill (head hill). On this hill is the Capitoleum temple. The account in Mark has Jesus also ascending a hill, “They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). In Aramaic, Golgotha is not precisely ‘skull hill’- that’s Calvary. To split hairs, Golgotha means ‘head hill,’ like the Roman Capitolene. Next, the candidate stood before the temple altar and was offered, by the slave, a bowl of wine mixed with myrrh. He took it as if to accept, and then gave it back. The slave also refused, and then the wine was poured out either onto the altar or onto the bull. Right after the wine was poured, the bull was killed.” Jesus, was offered wine as well, and he refused. Mark 15:23-24a says, “Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him.” The seventh step in the coronation process of Caesar was that the Caesar-to-be would gather his second in command on his right hand and his third in command on his left. Then they would ascend to the throne of the Capitoleum. In Mark 15:27 we read the words, “They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left.” Lastly, the crowd would acclaim the inaugurated emperor. And for the divine seal of approval, the gods would send signs, such as a flock of doves or a solar eclipse. In the last step of Jesus coronation and procession we see Jesus again being acclaimed (mocked) and a divine sign confirming God’s presence (the temple curtain ripped in two.) Mark 15:29-38 bears this out, “Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Other accounts have the whole sky becoming darkened, tombs bursting open, and the dead coning back to life.” So is it any wonder than that at the end of this story of Jesus crucifixion we read these words, “And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” After all he had probably seen a coronation and procession of “the son of God/Caesar” before, but here was the true Son of God and he pledged his allegiance to Jesus.

So now you might be saying, that is all very interesting, or not, what does it have to do with my life. But let me finish up with a few thoughts that hopefully will guide our discussion time. The commander-in-chief, the King Jesus, the true Son of God, comes to the throne not from power, violence, killing his enemy, etc..but from living a life of peace, justice, forgiveness and compassion. You see Caesar achieved the peace of Rome (Pax Romana) through violence (can Peace reached through violence and war ever be true peace??). The pax Christi (peace of Christ) is not a peace of conquest bur rather the peace of true reconciliation. The King achieves peace not by shedding blood, but by shedding his own blood. What does this say how we respond to violence? What does this say about how we (as a country or a society or individuals) respond to our enemies? Jesus lived out the upside down Kingdom of God. He calls us to the same thing. This upside down Kingdom says love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you, deny yourself, die to yourself, put others first, bless don’t curse, serve others, etc….. Let’s spend time talking and unpacking more implications of how this new commander-in-chief lived the upside down kingdom of God and how we can apply it to our own lives.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, pushback, etc… do you have regarding the message and the Scripture? 2. What stood out to you regarding the coronation and process of Caesar vs. the coronation and procession of Jesus? 3. For you what are some of the implications of the upside down Kingdom of God are you currently wrestling with? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

Giving everyone a voice

A few years ago Stuart Murray while promoting his book "The Naked Anabaptist" came to Elizabethtown College to speak and share. During that time he gave out a document called "Anabaptist Network Core Convictions". Number 5 of the Core Convictions is "Churches are called to be committed communities of discipleship and mission, places of friendship, mutual accountability and multivoiced worship." When I read that the term multivoiced worship jumped off the page at me and gave me words for what we had been attempting at Veritas. I wanted to know more.

Jump forward to a few months ago when Stuart Murray Williams and his wife Sian released the book "The Power of All: Building a Multivoiced Church." I knew that I wanted to read it and that is when I was given the opportunity to review the book through Herald Press. So I want to thank Herald Press for the opportunity to review this book.

The question that the authors are seeking to answer is how can a New Testament model help empower and renew the church in today's post-Christian society? And they spend the next 180 pages unpacking what it means to be a multivoiced church. They unpack what it looks like in worship, in leadership, in discernment, and in discipleship.

One of the first things though that needed to be explained by the authors is what a multivoiced church actually is. They define a multivoiced church as, "an alternative to the dominant traditions in which large numbers of the Christian community are passive consumers instead of active participants. It replaces reliance on one person (variously designated as priest, vicar, minister, pastor, lead elder, or whatever) or a small group of people (elders, deacons, leadership team, church board, parochial church council or whatever) with an expectation that the whole community is gifted, called, empowered and expected to be involved in all aspects of church life."

This approach, the multivoiced approach, to church life, ministry, and mission is something that we at Veritas have been trying to live out on a weekly basis in our gatherings. We have sought to move away from passive spectators to active participants by having discussion following the message as well as dialogue around our weeks and how we have been a blessing in the world, what God is teaching us, and how we are doing life with other followers of Jesus. Multivoiced worship takes longer. There is no in and out in under an hour. And that might scare some people away, because they want to come to church on Sunday and get out and get on with their day. But we are committed to being multivoiced even if it takes longer (in terms of worship but also in terms of leadership, decision making, etc..)

There is a wealth of information in this book. There is a lot to chew on and think about. There is a lot of ideas and concepts to think about and dream about, and figure out how to make it a reality in our faith communities. Here are some of those things that I will be chewing on in the days to come:

"Most Christians are not engaged as participants in the mission of God and Churches are structured for passivity." - Quotes from Ed Stetzer.

"It is not a big step from there to the notion that we come to church to be entertained and inspired by specialist."

"Post-Christendom represents a much more serious challenge to the churches in Western societies than post-modernity, although this also opens up many fresh opportunities."

"In post-Christendom there will be fewer cultural supports for faith, many more lifestyle options, and numerous disincentives to discipleship. Passive attendance at weekly front-led worship events, however inspiring, and passive consumption of sermons, however well crated, will not do."

"Those who urge us to abandon, or at least de-emphasize, attractional forms of mission in favor of an incarnational approach rightly recognize that in post-Christendom the church is no longer at the center of society but on the margins, that 'going to church' is culturally alien and unattractive to most people in this society, and that the onus is increasingly on all of us to engage in dispersed forms of mission in teh various spheres of life in which we spend most of our time. Our calling is to live out, and when appropriate speak out, the gospel in our homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and social networks."

I could continue on in quoting various sections of the book that inspired, challenged, convicted, and made me think. There is just so much richness in this book. Anyone interested in moving from a passive spectator form to worship, church life, mission, and leadership should read this book. Anyone interested in post-Christendom forms of church, mission, discipleship, and leadership should read this book. Anyone interested in missional forms of church, mission, discipleship and leadership should read this book. I can't recommend this book any stronger. It was a privilege to read this book and I will be continually referring to it and using it to help our community become a multivoiced community.

Thanks to Herald Press for the opportunity to review this book.