Divine Commodity Week 8- Around the Table

Vincent Van Gogh once said these words, “Let us not forget…that our life is a pilgrim’s progress, and that we are strangers on the earth, but that we have a God and Father who preserves strangers and that we are all brothers.”  I believe this statement no doubt either influenced or came because of one of his earliest and one of his most favorite paintings, the painting that we spent time looking at early, The Potato Eaters.  

As we take another look at this painting together I want to point out a few things, things that we have mentioned and some other thoughts around this work of art.  In this pairing we see a peasant family gathered around a table together.  The hands who had picked the potatoes no doubt are now the hands that are reaching for one to eat.  You can see the quiet desperation in their bodies, hands, and faces.  You can see the dirty, depressing scenario that is being played out.  But something else I believe that you can see is a sense of hope.  Maybe it is the presence of the yellow light above them.  Maybe Van Gogh is again using the color yellow to symbolize, much like he did in Starry Night, the presence of God.  Something else that I believe points us in the direction of God’s presence around that table, is when you look at the Potatoes they actually look almost more like bread.  And if you look closely at the man in the back, he is passing a cup to the room to his left (our right).  It is almost like Van Gogh is subtly making reference to the act of communion around this table.  Making reference to the presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, and his presence with the poor and needy.  Kathleen Powers Erickson in her book “At Eternity’s Gate” said this about Van Gogh’s work, “Whether an elderly man sitting by a fire, or peasants digging, sowing, and harvesting in the fields, or a simple frugal meal, van Gogh’s depictions of peasants are often imbued with a numinous quality, a sense of the divine presence.”  And Christ is present around this table that we see on the screen. 

But Christ is present not just around that table, but many tables when we engage in the biblical and missional act of hospitality.  Christ doesn’t just show up in the bread and wine during a communion experience, but he also shows up when we invite neighbors, friends, and strangers into relationship with us.  And sometimes when we do this, like Hebrews 13:2 says, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”  This morning we’ll be looking at a story where a man lived out the Biblical and missional call to show hospitality to strangers and realized he was actually entertaining God himself.  

Let’s turn to Genesis 18:1-16 which says,  “The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.” “Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.” So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.” Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.  He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. “Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he said. Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him.  Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing.  So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’  Is anything too hard for the Lord?  I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

So what does this old old story have to say to us today in a 21st century western context about what it means to live out this biblical and missional call to be a people of hospitality?  What does it look like in our day and age of suburban sprawl, consumerism, broken community, underdeveloped relational ties, and the age of, what one author calls, “Bowling Alone” (which is a book about the collapse and revival of American Community)?  And just what does hospitality mean anyway?  Let’s turn to some of these questions. 

The first thing we need to do when we talk about hospitality is to actually define what hospitality actually is.  Hospitality is defined as love for strangers.  Hospitality is a way of welcoming people.  The Benedictine monks have various rules for their community, call it a Rule of Life if you will.  Rule #53 says All guest who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say “I was a stranger and you welcomed me in.”  Hospitality and welcome can be a healing balm in people’s lives.  I find it interesting that the word Hospitality and Hospital share the same root. It is like there is an innate link between being welcomed and being healed.  If you have ever truly been shown hospitality, you know what I’m talking about.   

Secondly, we need to look at the context of the story to see hospitality in action, from an ancient Near Eastern culture.  The one thing about Eastern cultures, is that hostility doesn’t even need to be taught at all.  It is innate in the cultures of the east.  If you have ever been to places that would be considered Eastern (like Iraq, Palestine, etc..) or have friends here from those contexts, you’ll know that they run circles around Western culture people when it comes to living out this value of hospitality.  

How does Near Eastern Hospitality work in this story?  Let’s look.  In verse 2 we read, “Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.”  Two things stick out to me.  Abraham hurries out of his tent to meet them and then he bows low to the ground.  In Bedouin hospitality when you encounter a person or visitor who is of equal social rank as you, you normally rise from your seated position to receive them.  But Abraham actually runs out to meet them.  You would only do that if the person or visitor was from a superior social status to yours.  So here Abraham, even though he is a very wealthy man (had servants, had many flocks, etc..) runs out to meet them and then he bows low to the ground.  Again taking the form of a lower social ranking than the 3 men.  In Verse 3 we read, “He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord,[ do not pass your servant by.”  He addressed the visitors as Lord and he also acted as if he would be a favor to him that they would let him serve them.  What we again see here in relation to hospitality and Abraham is that Abraham rightly sees his role as a servant.  He isn’t one to be served, but actually in this story takes on the nature of a servant.  Kind of sounds like someone else that I know.

After convincing the men (one of which is the Lord) the stay for a while, he calls for water to be brought so that they could wash their feet and be refreshed.  In a nomadic culture feet get really hot and dirty, and a bowl of water to clean and refresh your feet is an amazing treat, no doubt.  

So after bring the bowl for their feet, Abraham calls for his servant to prepare a lavish meal for the 3 visitors.  In verse 6 we see Abraham calling Sarah to have her make some bread.  He says,  “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.”  And in verse 7 we see him picking a choice calf and having a servant prepare it.  “Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.”  And finally in verse 8 he brings out, along with prepared calf some curds and milk.  “He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them”  If you want to be really really good at biblical and missional hospitality, food is an absolute necessity.  Nothing, I believe, can build community better than food and drink.  And I believe Jesus also understood and knew this.  Why do you think so many of the stories about the life and ministry of Jesus happen around a table?  In fact food and the table are so central to the Kingdom way of life, that Alan Hirsch says, “Sharing meals together on a regular basis is one of the most sacred practices we can engage in as believers.  Missional hospitality is a tremendous opportunity to extend the Kingdom of God.  We can literally eat our way into the Kingdom of God.  If every Christian household regularly invited a stranger or a poor person into their home for a meal once a week, we would literally change the world by eating.”  

Lastly, while while the three visitors were eating Abraham stood by under a tree.  Verse 8 tells it this way, “While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.”  You might ask why Abraham didn’t just sit down, begin eating with them and asking them a million questions.  Again Abraham is taking on the role of a servant.  Have you ever seen movies or TV shows where the butler or the maid is standing by waiting for any need that might arise?  This is exactly what Abraham is doing.  He remained standing seeing and tending to the needs of the visitors.  In the whole encounter with the three visitors (one of the visitors again is the Lord.  A theophany of Jesus in the Old Testament.)  

And so this story also reminds me of a story Jesus tells of the sheep and the goats.  The sheep are the ones who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners and the sick.  The goats are the ones who don’t feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and visit the prisoners and the sick.  And the sheep are celebrated because when they did those things to the least of those, they did it to Jesus/God.  And the goats aren’t celebrated because when they didn’t do those things to the least of those, they didn’t do it to Jesus/God.  And so here Abraham is giving food to weary travelers, one being the Lord.  And in a very real way living out a parable that would be told many years later.  When he lived out the Biblical and Missional call to hospitality, God was literally in the midst.  And when we live out the biblical and missional call to hospitality God will be in the midst as well.  

We have been talking about practices that challenge our consumer mentality and that extend the Kingdom’s value.  But what and how does hospitality challenge our consumer tendencies?  Probably the biggest thing, derived from this story, that will help us extend the Kingdom and fight our consumer driven tendencies is to see ourselves the way that Abraham did, as a servant.  And when we take up the position of a servant, we also become like Jesus who said, I came not to be served but to serve.  And when we take our eyes off of ourselves and onto others, and extend biblical hospitality, it counteracts the selfishness in our own lives and the give to me, I want what I want when I want it, and what about me attitudes that we all struggle with.  

So let’s break into groups of 3-5 and unpack the story even further.  Let’s share stories of when we have been extended hospitality and when we have extended hospitality.  Let’s talk about how over the course of the next week we can live out the biblical and missional call to hospitality, and live out the calling to be a servant.  And let’s see what God might be saying to us and what we will and should do about it.  

1.  Share a story when you have either been extended hospitality or have extended hospitality.  

2.  What thoughts, insights, questions, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message?

3.  How might you live out the Biblical and Missional call to hospitality this week?

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?

 

Divine Commodity Week 7

So let me give you some background and unpacking of the piece of art by Van Gogh that we just looked at called “The Yellow House”.  Like many artist Vincent Van Gogh felt misunderstood.  It seemed like every community that he entered (church, fine arts academy, etc..) eventually found his passion intolerable (or maybe his mental illness contributed to that as well).  Vincent longed for a community where his passions could be expressed and encouraged (don’t we honestly all long for that as well?)  From 1886-1888 he experienced some of what he longed for, in relation to community and freedom to pursue his passion for art, while living in Paris with his brother Theo van Gogh.  Theo was one of the few members of his family who encouraged him and helped foster Vincent’s artistic endeavors.  During his time in Paris Vincent began to formulate the idea of starting a studio, a place where fringe artists might live and paint together.  With the help, encouragement and financial support from his brother Theo, he moved to the town of Arles in Southern France, and rented a vacant house on the square….the Yellow House in the painting.  It was a 4 room house with no gas for cooking, the bathroom was next door and it was in poor condition.  But for Vincent it was a base for his dream of the “Studio of the South.”  His dream, he felt, was becoming a reality.  A dream to start a studio with live artists, who he would call, in religious terms, “Apostles of Art”.  

His house, the bright yellow house, on the square of Arles,  was to him a symbol of unity, community and mission.  His brother than paid an artist by the name of Gauguin a stipend to relocate to Arles and help Vincent start this refuge for many.  This refuge for many as he called it was also to be a place of healing for progressive artists who suffered from alienation and the stigma of being unconventional.  But as Gauguin and Vincent began to prepare the house and begin working towards the dream, they couldn’t seem to ever get along.  They were like oil and water.  And so two months after Gauguin moved in, the two artists were at a cafe and begin to argue.  Gauguin went to stay at a hotel refusing to return to the Yellow House and Vincent returned to the house, picked up the blade and put it to his ear.  Van Gogh’s dream of living in community with other artists, and being a refuge for many ended.  

The idea of community always appears more beautiful than the reality.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his more famous work Life Together says this about community, and more specifically Christian community,  “Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.”  The gift of Christian community is a resource and a spiritual practice that can help liberate us as we live as Christ’s people in the midst of the consumer culture in which we live which is directly opposed to the values of the Kingdom of God.  But what does true community look like and how can community help liberate us from consumerism? Let’s look at a prayer that Jesus prayed 2,000 years ago, when he prayed for us and see what it might have to say to us about community, consumerism, and what the purpose of community is.  

John 17:20-23 says, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

So right off the bat we see Jesus, in the garden, about to face the excruciating pain of the cross, the humiliation of the cross, the shame of the cross, as well as taking the sins of the world upon his shoulders.  And what is he doing?  Praying.  Is he praying mostly for himself, for God, for others?  He does pray for himself but not to help him get through the next few hours.  No, it is so that his life, death and his resurrection would glorify his Heavenly Father. Then he prays for his disciples.  And lastly, believe it or not, he prays for each and everyone of us, who are seeking to follow Him.  He is on the eve of his judgment.  The eve of his flogging.  The eve of him being stripped naked, beaten, and hung on the cross and his death…and he is praying for you, and me.  Do you feel the weight of that?  Do you understand the love that must beat in the heart of Jesus for each and everyone of us that he would take the time, at his hour of need, when he would be totally deserted by his disciples, to pray for us.  What was his prayer?  That we may be one as he and his Father are one.

This idea that we may be one as the Father and the Son are one is about unity.  And unity (community) is based on, not artificial things like ages, interest, social-economic status, etc..  As followers of Jesus our unity (community) needs to be based on and must mirror nothing less than the unity between Father & Son.  Just as God the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, we are to live into that unity.  Henri Nouwen put it this way, “Community is grounded in God, who calls us together and not in the attractiveness of people to each other.”  Our unity and our community come about because and as a result of his prayer for us.  

But all too often we are confused about this prayer in two different ways.  First we misunderstand what Jesus is getting at in this prayer that we would be one as he and his Father are one.  When we hear the word unity we think this is great, and we tend to think about sitting around a fire, holding hands, and singing Kumbaya.  We think it will conflict free because we will all just get along and we will be uniform.  But unity is not uniformity.  His prayer is not that they all may be uniform in belief, theology, values, look, political affiliation, socio-economic status, race, etc..  In fact, truly unity is not uniformity but unity in the midst of differences.  My dream, especially for this Christian community, is and has always been that our community would be one, based around Jesus, and that we would be able to hold differing beliefs around lots of issues, but still stay in relationship with each other.   My dream has always been with this community that we could have dialogue on Sundays and at other times around theological and social issues, even strong disagreement but still stay in relationship with each other.  I want to see a community made up of those who are conservative theologically, those who are middle of the road theologically, and those who are more progressive theologically.  I want to see a community made of up Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Independents.  I want to see a community that have different takes on social issues of our time.  I want to see a community that is able to disagree with each other, in love of course, but buck the trend that so many Christians over the years have fallen into, that as soon as we disagree with each other about something, we split and tend to start new communities or even new denominations.  

Look, here it is.  This community is not perfect.  We will disagree.  We will have conflict.  We will not all believe the same thing about every issue.  But we don’t have to, to be community and to be unified.  In fact, I truly believe it is better when we don’t all agree.  True Biblical community and unity, is when we can love each other despite our conflicts, disagreements and differences.  The Apostle Paul in Galatians 3:28 put it this way, There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  The early church was the only place in all society where male and females where together in public, with children in the midst.  It was the only place slave and free interacted in a Kingdom way.  It was the only place where Jew and Gentile were in relationship with one another.  The Gospel broke down (and breaks down) all walls that we put up between ourselves.  Republican/Democrat, Conservative/Liberal, American/Iraqi, Rich/Poor, White/Black, etc..  That doesn’t mean they alway got it right but that is the ideal that we should all long for.  The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.  That is what true unity, true community is.  That is Jesus’ answer to prayer.  

But true unity and true Biblical community isn’t just about inward relationships with other followers of Jesus.  Unity and community isn’t just about loving each other and staying in relationships in the midst of differences.  There is an outward and missional part to Jesus prayer for his church to be unified.  Look at verse 21 which says, “May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” and also verse 23, “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me.”  When we live out Kingdom community and unity, it isn’t just about us four and no more.  When we love each other the way Jesus wants, the world sees Jesus.  When we love despite differences, and refuse to pull away from each other, the world truly sees that Jesus is in our midst.  What does John 13:35 say?  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  When we are united under the King and are living out the Kingdom in the world, the world sees this amazing group of people who, for all intended purposes, shouldn’t be together.  Shouldn’t be able to get along.  Shouldn’t be able to anything be in relationship.  When the world sees a group of people who shouldn’t be together, loving each other in the midst of differences, there can only be one answer.  Jesus.  But what this means is that we need to put aside our consumer tendencies and actually commit to a community.  We are fickle people when it comes to community.  When things are going well, we are eager to jump into the community and join the fun.  But when community requires sacrifice, perseverance, and hard work, which is what community is really, we often bail.  But this is a value of consumerism and the individual and not a value of the King, the Kingdom and true community.  The result however of our unity and community is that people will see and know that this kind of human community can only come from the hand of God.  And when they see a community that truly loves each other in the midst of disagreement, conflict, etc.. it is highly attractive.  And people want to be in a community where they can be themselves, and be truly loved.  They want to be a part of a refuge for many.  

Van Gogh wanted to create a refuge for many but it didn’t happen.  Van Gogh and Gauguin weren’t unified despite their differences.  And so the the vision behind the Yellow House never came to fruition.  Jesus prayer for us is that we would be a refuge for many, both ourselves and all people.  He prayed for it during his last day on earth.  And he is calling us to put flesh to his prayers.  To put his prayer into action by loving each other, serving each other, and living out the 59 one anthers in the Bible.  And living in such unity and community that others will see Jesus living in and through us.  

So let’s unpack what it would look like if we actually lived out the prayer of Jesus in our world today and in our community.  What stands in the way of this prayer from becoming a reality?  What steps can we take as individuals and as a community to actually live out Jesus’ prayer?  And what is God saying to you and what should you do about it?  And what is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

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

2.  What stands in the way of this prayer actually being answered?  What things divide us?  

3.   What steps/things can we do as individuals and as a community to actually live out Jesus’ prayer?

4What 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?

Divine Commodity Week 5: Wind in a Bottle

In 1885 Vincent Van Gogh went to Antwerp to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts there.  Being gifted he had no problem with the classwork.  He did however find the academic institute stifling, probably not to different than how we came to view the institutional church.  The academic setting to him was too sterile, too programmed, too removed from the beauty of life.  

During those days students at the Academy of Fine Arts, and other art schools, would paint skeletons as a way of learning proper form and anatomy.  No doubt the skeletons to Van Gogh represented the lifeless, academy and the institutional form of art.  So Van Gogh to add life and spontaneity into the academy and into his painting, he added a burning cigarette into the mouth of the skeleton.  As you can guess this prank was not particularly appreciated by his professors.  He spent only a year at the academy before he could no longer stand the sterility of the academy.  He left to pursue art among the living.  He said, “I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing the latter may be- a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker, is more interesting to me.”    Van Gogh was full of life, spirit, and vigor, but through the influence of institutions like the Academy of Fine Arts and the Dutch Reformed church, he lost that life, that spirit, and that vigor.  

The Pharisee’s of Jesus day were very much like the professors in the academy who thrived, not on life and spirit, but on theological precision, rules, and following everything to the letter.  Ambiguity, metaphors, and mystery weren’t helpful in the least, and at the most they were the enemy of following God.  They treated God like a gum ball machine, or even like a slot machine.  They had God down to a mathematical formula, which looked like Sacrifice A + Recite Prayer B + Abstain from C = Divine Blessings D.  But is that what following God is really all about?  Pointing our coins (our prayer, tithe, going to church, worship, etc.) into the slot and turning the dial and getting our gum ball of blessing.  But God is no gum ball machine and we our boxes that we try to place him in can never hold him.  About the time that we think we got him corner and captured and will do and act the way we hope and expect him to act, he wiggles free and escapes.  

Jesus had a conversation one night with a Pharisee who, at the time of the conversation, thought he had God figured out.  He had his math lined up and figured out.  He spent his life putting God in his box, and on a faithful night God broke the box apart, and challenged his math equation, and his life was really never the same.  

Turn to John 3:1-8 to see this encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus.  “Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”  Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.   Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

And so that fateful night Jesus gets a visitor named Nicodemus, who according to this text was not only a Pharisee but was also a member of the Jewish ruling council otherwise known as the Sanhedrin.  The Sanhedrin was a group of 23 judges ruling in every city throughout Jerusalem.  Nicodemus because he lived in Jerusalem would have been part of the Great Sanhedrin, a group of 71 members who were like our Supreme Court.  So Nicodemus was not only a Pharisee of Pharisees but he was also a man of considerable wisdom, knowledge and power.  He followed God and also the rules, practices, and laws of the Jewish system.  But something drew him that night to meet with Jesus.  To look beyond his answers.  To look beyond his mathematical equations and his box.  To find God in Jesus.  

Jesus speaks to Nicodemus in two metaphors.  The first one that we find is the metaphor of birth.  Of course, Nicodemus being the literal-minded pharisee, completely misses the point.  He thinks Jesus is talking literally climbing back into your mothers’ womb to be born a second time, which of course, is not only gross to think about, but also completely impossible, which is of course is Nicodemus response.  Jesus then tells him that it isn’t about physical birth but about spiritual rebirth.  That to truly live out the Kingdom of God, that people need to be remade, renewed, and have a new way of being and living.  But Nicodemus doesn’t understand where Jesus is heading.  

So Jesus then shares the second metaphor.  Jesus being a master teacher and one who no doubt took the environment around him to teach spiritual principles, probably used what was happening around him at the time.  Maybe and quite possibly the night that Nicodemus met with Jesus was a very windy night.  So Jesus uses the wind to being to talk about a spiritual reality, that of the Spirit.  In fact, the Greek and Hebrew word wind also means breath and spirit.  Jesus tells this deeply religious, deeply committed man that, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”   What Jesus is telling Nicodemus that you can’t control, dictate, or direct the Spirit of God.  Your religious precision.  Your mathematical equations.  Your do this and God will bless you.  All those things have a huge flaw…they leave out the mystery that is God.  That the Spirit of God can’t be put in our box, and pulled out when we want to show him off to our friends, or use him to fit our schedules.  God is unpredictable and uncontrollable.  Instead of trying to control him and put him under our thumb, or treat him like a genie in a bottle, we need to humbly submit to Him and be carried along, like a kite in the wind.  

What God wants from us is relationship.  In fact relationship between God and His people is at the heart of the Old Testament and the New Testament rather than the construction of religious systems of control.  Sometimes the people of God create religious systems in order to actually shield themselves from actual relationship with God.  Highly institutional Consumer Christianity tries to construct programs to capture God’s power and produce predetermined outcomes, rather than surrender to the mysterious movement of God’s grace, which is like fire or the wind, which is beyond our control.  We can control the God that our systems make up, we can’t control the God of Gods, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.  It’s like the dialogue that takes place between Lucy and Mr. Beaver in the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, “Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

This is not to say that structures, and systems are inherently wrong.  Anytime people get together there are structures and systems at work.  We have systems and structures here at Veritas.  But hopefully these systems and structures are subservient to the Spirit.  If they aren’t, then we become like the Pharisees not even recognizing when God has left the building, so to speak.  We create more systems.  We build bigger buildings.  We turn the volume up on the rock band that we use to lead worship.  We turn the fog machines on.  (not that these things are necessarily wrong in themselves) Never realizing that we are seeking to fill the institution with the Spirit, when it is people that the Spirit fills.  And then we are caught propping up the system and the institution which is like the skeleton into which Van Gogh placed the burring cigarette.  

But what do people look like and act like when they are filled with the Spirit and try to live their lives in tune with the Spirit?  What does a community of Jesus followers/church look like when they tune their corporate existence to the melody of the Spirit?  What happens when we dismantle our boxes where we have held God captive?  (if that were really even possible?)  What happens when we set aside our mathematical equations, our approaching God like a gum ball machine or a slot machine or even Santa Claus?  What happens when we, as a community, set aside our formulas for success, our predetermined outcomes, and our own plans, and instead seek God’s face, God’s definition of success, his outcomes and his plans?  I think we have a beautiful picture of what that looks like in Acts 2:42-47 which says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching( and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.   Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,  praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”  As I mentioned before the driving force for God beyond his love, is his desire for relationships….both horizontal with people, and vertical with Him.  This picture of the early church bears this out.  The spirit moved in the lives of the believers, and they grew in their relationship with Him and with each other and with the world.  The Holy Spirit led them upward in relationship with Him, inward into the community of followers of Jesus, and led them outward into the community to be a blessing to those who didn’t know Jesus.  And the result of the Holy Spirit’s leading, guiding, and directing?  A massive amount of people came into relationship with Jesus and his Church.  

The Spirit guides us into relationships with Himself, His Church, and His world.  He doesn’t guide us into a relationship with an institution. He doesn’t guide us into a relationship with a skeleton.  No, he guides us into a relationship with a real, moving, active, and fully alive God.  And he wants us to follow His lead by being a real, moving, active, fully alive, led by the Spirit community of people seeking the face of Jesus together.  Seeking God, seeking each other, seeking the world.  

Van Gogh, tied of painting the dead skeletons, in the dead environment of the Academy of Fine Arts, left to paint the living.  One of his favorite subjects during that time was Augustine Roulin, a thirty seven year old mother of three.  His paintings of Augustine along with other faces he painted were in contrast to the paintings he painted in the Academy.  Van Gogh realized and recognized the people were the vessels of God’s Spirit and that love is something transmitted along the medium of relationships.  Van Gogh experienced the world of institutional art as a skeleton.  It had the form and structure of a human being but didn’t have the flesh, breath and life that would make someone alive.  Van Gogh experienced the world of institutional Christianity as a skeleton.  It had the form and structure of church and connecting people to Jesus but not the flesh, breath and life of the Spirit.  He experienced life and breath and the Spirit of God in the relationships of those whose faces he painted. His art was transformed when it moved beyond the academy and was integrated with life and relationships.  We are transformed by the Spirit when we move beyond our formulaic approaches to God, our mathematical equations,  our trying to get God in a box.  We are transformed by the Spirit when we also engage upward in our relationship with Jesus, inward with relationships with other followers of Jesus, and outward in our relationships with the world.  

Let’s talk about the boxes that we have put God in, the mathematical equations that we have tried to deduce, and how God has squirmed out of those boxes.  Let’s talk about where the Spirit has shown up outward, inward and upward.  And let’s talk about what God might be calling us to and what we should do about it? 

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

2.  What boxes have you ever put God in?  What mathematical equations have you tried to run God through?  How has God defied the equation and squirm out of your box?

 3.   Where have you seen the Spirit in your Upward relationship, your Inward relationships, and your Outward relationships?  

 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? 

 

Divine Commodity Week 4

Today we continue our series The Divine Commodity, looking at the life and art of Van Gogh, along with consumerism, the church and following Jesus.  Through this series we are hoping and praying that we’ll provide tools and spiritual practices that can help liberate us and our imaginations as Christ’s people in a consumer culture opposed to the values of the Kingdom of God.  

Over the last 3 weeks of our series we have talked about the spiritual practices of imagination, silence, and identity as a child of God.  Today our sermon is entitled “At Eternity’s Gate’ which is also the title of the painting that we looked at by Van Gogh a little earlier.  

Van Gogh said this about what inspired him to paint this painting, “This is far from theology, simply the fact that the poorest little wood-cutter or peasant on the hearth or miner can have moments of emotions and inspiration which give him the feeling of an eternal home for which he is near.”    And while Van Gogh gave up on the institutional church, and had a difficult time even finding God in the walls of the institutional church, he upheld his belief in God and in one’s ability to commune with Him.  He said this about prayer and communing with God, “I think there is no better place for meditation then by a rustic hearth and an old cradle with a baby in it, with a window overlooking a delicate green cornfield and the waving of the elder bushes.”  Van Gogh no doubt took time to commune with God.  But let’s look at another person in Scripture who took time to climb the mountain and have a mountaintop experience and see how that affected him.  

Let’s turn to Exodus 34:29-35 which says,  “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant) because he had spoken with the Lord. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.  But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.  But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded,  they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.”

So before the verses that we just read we see Moses on the mountaintop communing with God.  God delivers the Ten Commandments to Moses and then Moses begins to go down the mountain to engage the people with how they should follow God.  But as he descended the mountain, his face actually showed the fact that he had met with the Lord.  He face radiated from his encounter with the Lord.  But Moses with experience with God on the mountaintop is widely misunderstood in a number of ways.  

First, the Hebrew word for radiant or shone brightly literally means shot forth beams, it is also related to the Hebrew word for horns. That is why the Latin Vulgate, mistranslated the verb as ‘having horns” and so many medieval works of art have Moses having a pair of horns on his head.  Take for instance the sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo (show the picture)

Secondly, we notice a difference between this narrative, and where Paul mentions this narrative in the New Testament.  In verse 30 we read, “When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.”  And so here we see that Moses veiled his radiant face because the people were afraid to come near him.  But in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 3:13 we read, “we are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.”  His radiance was fading and so he veiled his face.  His mountaintop experience was genuine, glorious and full of God’s presence- but it did not bring lasting transformation.  

Notice the ending of the verses we just read, “But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded,  they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.”  No doubt that close communion with God physically affected Moses.  Every time he came from communing with God his face shone brightly, and he had to veil his face.  No doubt Moses experienced glorious, transforming communion with God on Mt. Sinai.  But the glory faded.  Whatever glory and transformation that Moses experienced in God’s presence was temporary.  And he couldn’t live on the mountain, he had to come down from the mountain and live his life with his people, lead them and govern them.  But his regularly communion with God no doubt influenced how he lived when he was off the mountain.  And that is why, I believe, he frequently met with the Lord, to be in relationship with God, to give him wisdom as he lead God’s people, and he knew that he needed close communion with the Lord.  The mountaintop experience, while great, wasn’t enough to cut it for Moses, and it really shouldn’t cut it for us.  

Notice something else about Moses and this narrative.  At the beginning of the verses that we are looking at we read these words, “When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai”  And at the end of the text we read these words, “But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out.”  Moses didn’t need to go back up onto Mount Sinai to commune with God.  He did go into the tent of the meeting to meet with God.  I am sure he could have wanted to go back up on the mountain.  I’m sure he could have had this reverence for the mountain and his experience there.  I’m sure he could have dreamed about the day that he could go back up on the mountain to meet with God.  But he didn’t have to go back on the mountain to meet with God.  He carved out space and time right where he was to communion and meet with God one on one and face to face.  He took what he experienced on the mountain, a deep experience of communion with God, and put it into practice down in the valley.  He didn’t live on the mountain, and his spiritually didn’t live on the mountain.  We don’t live on the mountain and our spirituality shouldn’t either.  

Have you ever had one of those mountaintop experiences where you knew that you had met with God?  Maybe it was on a retreat, maybe it was at a Christian event of some type, maybe it was on a mission trip, maybe it was getting away by yourself for a few days to listen to God, and maybe it was literally on a mountaintop.  How long did the spiritual high last?  Till you got home?  A week?  Longer?  We don’t live on the mountain and mountaintop experiences don’t last.  They can be important and can help us grow in our spiritual journey.  But we can’t expect to live there and we can’t expect that our spiritual life should be defined by them.  What has been happening because of the influence of our consumer culture (and our consumer christian culture) is that we have begun to believe that transformation is attained through external experiences.  What happens when we believe that transformation is attained through external experiences and through their consumption?  We make experience junkies in the world, but in the christian and church culture we create worship junkies.  Worship junkies who go from worship experience to worship experience looking for the next high.  And when the high begins to fade we go to another event.  Or if the church that we are going to doesn’t “do it” for us anymore, doesn’t give us that spiritual high that we want to consume, we go looking for a church that will give us that high again.  

It is like when you hear people say something like, “I just wasn’t fed this morning in worship.”  It’s almost like people see church like a gas station for their souls and the pastor as the gas station attendant.  Dan Kimball in his book “Emerging Worship” says this about a worship service and a gas station, “The weekend worship service has become the time in the week when we go to a church building much like a car goes to an automobile service station.  Most people view the weekend worship service as a place where we go to get service done to us by “getting our tanks filled up” at the service station.  It’s a place where someone will give a sermon and serve us with our weekly sustenance.  In automobile terms, you could say it is our weekly fill-up.  We come to our service station to have a song leader serve us by leaning us in signing songs.  All so we can feel good when we emotionally connect through mass singing and feel secure that we did “worship.”  So if we keep up the analogy, we come to the gas station/church, get filled up, and then drive around all week long, until next week when we are running on fumes, so we again pull into the gas station and get filled up.  If we don’t make it through the whole week, we either do a small group thing to top us off, or we blame the gas station or gas station attendant for not filling us up enough.  Never realizing that we are to take the role of gas station attendant and fill our own tanks, through spiritual disciplines like prayer, Scripture reading, meditation, etc…

And so what we as a people, unlike Moses, are missing in our consumer society which has definitely infiltrated the church, is a vibrant, self-generating relationship with Christ.  When we expect transformation to occur through external experiences we are opting for an inferior model of spiritual transformation.  Moses had a sustainable communion with God when he was on the mountain, but more importantly, when he came down from the mountain.  All too often we are settling for a temporary filling, a transient dose of glory to carry us along.  Instead of doing the hard work of communing with God one one one, face to face.  We long to go back up the mountain and get the experience, feeling, emotion, and high of meeting with God but he wants to meet us in the valley where we live, work, do life, and rest.   

At Eternity’s Gate was created twice, eight years apart.  The first creation was a charcoal sketch of the old man in prayer.  In the black and white version of At Eternity’s Gate Vincent differentiated the mans’s clothing in shades of gray.  Eight years later his revisited this drawing and proceeded to use oil paints.  We aren’t sure why he chose to do this piece twice.  But something that we do know is that the second time around he chose to use the exact same color of the man’s shirt, pants and even socks- the color blue.  He used this color to symbolize the infinite- remember the sky in Starry Night?  And so we see in At Eternity’s Gate, the peasant old man, by himself seeking to connect and enter into the presence of the infinite one by the simple act of prayer.

What about each one of us? Do we need to climb the mountain to commune with God?  Are we worship junkies jumping from one experience to the next to get that spiritual high?  Are we consuming the experiences for the emotion, feelings, and experience we get?  Or are we able, like the old peasant, to sit alone by the hearth, in solitude and silence, praying and being in communion with God, while not having to climb the mountain?

Let’s unpack times that we have had mountaintop experiences, how long they’ve lasted.  Let’s talk about ways that we need to sit, like the peasant At Eternity’s Gate. Let’s talk about how Veritas might help us as individuals and as a community, learn how to commune with God, so that we don’t have to hop from mountaintop to mountaintop but that we can live, move, breathe, and deepen as followers of Jesus in the valleys where we live.  

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

2.  Share a mountaintop experience story.  How long did the mountaintop experience feeling last?  

3.  What spiritual disciplines help you commune with God?  What can Veritas do to help us commune with God as individuals and as a community?

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?

 

Divine Commodity Week 3: Branding of the Heart

Let me start this message off by giving us a short pop quiz.  College students are thinking…a pop quiz, another one?  And those who aren’t college students are like, I haven’t taken a pop quiz in x amount of years, you can fill that blank in.  

Don’t worry it is probably one of the easiest pop quizzes that you will ever take in your whole life.  Ready.  Good.

(Show 5 brand logos- Nike, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Apple, Guinness)

Now that was easy.  It is easy to identify these corporate logos.  But let’s go one step further.  Let’s revisit these logos and I want you to share with me what these logos are saying, how do they make you feel, what emotions do they bring up in you, or what meaning do you derive from them?

According to Richard Branson, founder of Virgin, “Branding is everything.”  And while he didn’t say it, I would imagine that we could also everything can be branded.  But what is branding?  Brand is a manufactured idea that infiltrates the imagination and is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer.  It is what we did with the second part of the pop quiz.  Brands are really about identity.  And in the 21st century we derive meaning and value based not on what is inside, but by what brands we consume.  Consumerism has created a culture that values style over substance, image over reality, and perception over performance.  Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist and philosopher said, “Consumption is a system of meaning.”  

So if consumption is a system of meaning, giving us identity by the brands we consume, and meaning by what we buy, than shopping malls would be the new church.  And then Douglas Atkin’s would be right, “Brands are the new religion”.  And consumerism is a religion as well, giving us meaning, identity, and purpose.  

But what about Christians whose identity should be wrapped up in God’s image, are we any different?  Researchers were unable to differentiate between self-confessed believers and non relative in behavior and values except in one instance- what they buy.  The religious consumer industry is a 7 billion dollar a year enterprise.  So Christians, for the most part, are constructing and expressing identity not based on biblical worldview, or on what God says about us, as children of God, but through consumption of“Christ-branded products.”  Christ branded products are becoming the identifying marker then of a Christian- what a Christian wears, reads, listens to, gets inked on their bodies, or puts on the back bumper of their car.  

But before we go any further down this road, let’s go into the past and see what things brought people identity and what the markers were for the people of God.  

In the Old Testament, the identity of God’s people, was circumcision.  Circumcision was the external marker of spiritual identity and was identifying forming.  But another way to say it today, it would be like saying that circumcision was the brand of the people of God.  It was what set the people of God (at least the males of the people of God) apart from the rest of culture and the world.  To be uncircumcised was seen as rejection of their cultural identity as the jewish people.  In fact, in the Old Testament, when God gave the command to Abraham, for the males to “cut of the flesh of his foreskin”, those who didn’t were to be “cut off” from his people.  In fact the world “uncircumcised” became synonymous with “unclean and heathen”.  It was the people of God’s brand- an external marker of their spiritual identity.  A symbol which would pull together people and build feelings of national and religious pride.  

But is that what really is supposed to define or be the brand of God’s people today?  Are we supposed to define our identity on what we consume or what we do to our bodies?  Let’s look at a few Scriptures to see what is really suppose to be our brand, if you will.  What is supposed to give us identity and meaning as the body of Christ in this world.  

Romans 2:25-29 says, “Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised.   So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised?  The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the[ written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.  No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit,( not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.”  What Paul is getting at here is the connection between outward conformity and inner heart.  The outward conformity to the people of God, the Israelites, was circumcision.  But Jesus came not for outward conformity, but inner heart which would then change how you live.  What Paul is also radically redefining is the concept of who is a true jew, who is truly the circumcised and who is the truly uncircumcised.  To Paul, being a Jew is not about outward conformity to the law or to a physical marking or to an ethnic background.  No a true Jew is one who is one internally, who has a heart to follow God and live for Him.   Who has a heart that is branded (circumcised) towards God and His Kingdom.  

External branding or circumcision, if you will, doesn’t mean squat.  It is meaningless if there isn’t something behind and inside of that, an internal spiritual reality.  So what he is getting at, is the fact that true circumcision isn’t outward and physical.  No true circumcision is inward and spiritual- and not just for men.  (not that it doesn’t lead to physical and outward acts of justice, mercy, compassion, and love)

Let’s rewrite part of Romans 2 to reflect wording for today, and the connection of branding and consumerism.  We might rewrite it this way, “For no one is a Christian who is merely one outwardly, nor is branding outward and physical.  But a Christian is one inwardly, and branding is a matter of the heart.”  So if Paul was addressing us today he would say something like that.  It would say that if you want to wear a cross around your neck, that is fine.  If you want to have a cross tattooed on your body, that is okay.  If you want to wear a Christian-inspired T-Shirt, that is up to you.  If you want to display your faith by putting a fish on your bumper, than go right ahead, but make sure your driving reflects your faith (speeding, cutting people off, extending the one finger wave, etc..) But don’t expect that to give you identity, or meaning or identification as a follower of Jesus.  Because following Jesus is about the heart first and foremost.  That it is about love and relationship not just outward conformity to a bunch of rules and regulations.  

So when it all comes down to it, being circumcised or being uncircumcised outwardly doesn’t mean that much to God.  Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:19 puts it this way, “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts.”  And for Paul’s hearers this would have raised some serious objections from his Jewish listeners.  As I said before they put their spiritual identity and national identity on this brand of circumcision and now here Paul is saying that it doesn’t matter.  That what really matters is where your heart is.  Is your heart open and receptive to a relationship with God?  Are you following him with your heart or are you like the Pharisee’s who tried to follow every rule and regulation but their hearts were far from Him.  Or put in another way, their bodies were circumcised but their hearts weren’t.  They were all about the externals.  The washing of the hands.  The washing of the cups/bowls.  The 613 Old Testament rules and regulations that they were supposed to follow.  Paul was again trying to tell them that outward conformity to a bunch of rules and regulations was misplaced.  To assign a spiritual significance to an external mark, missed the mark.  And really wasn’t what God wanted.  He wanted their hearts, not just people following external laws.  He wanted a relationship not just someone checking off a bunch of boxes on a to-do list to be “right with God”.  

So what about us?  What are those things that we think gives us identity, that mark us as follower of Jesus, that when it really comes down to, are external and physical?  Are we seeking to be branded as a follower of Jesus because of where we shop, what we wear, what is tattooed on our bodies, or even what breath mint we stick in our mouths when we have bad breath (Testamints anyone)?  What are those rules and regulations that we think are essential to following Jesus but focus purely on the external without looking to the root of it all…the heart?  How often do we get caught up in the externals, even the externals that are good, and forget that when the heart changes, the externals will change.  The church focuses, in my opinion, on behavior modification, and not on heart change.  On the externals and not the internal.  On the circumcision of the body, if you will, and not the more important, circumcision of the heart.  

Let me close with two things.  There are outside markers that will give us identity and show who we live for.  It isn’t what we wear, where we shop, etc..  It is what we put on according to Colossians 3:12.  “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves( with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”  Instead of putting on Tommy Hellfighter shirts, Jesus is my Homeboy underwear, or a cross tattoo to mark us and identify us, we need to be identified as a people who are known by our love (John 13:35)  We need to be a people known to be marked by compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Do we as the people of God in this world today live this out?  Is that our brand?  When people see the brand or logo of Christians do they automatically think about those things in John 13:35 and Colossians 3:12?  And if not than we need to focus on having a circumcised heart that will change our heart and will change what we are known for.  

Lastly, I want to return to the painting by Van Gogh, the Good Samaritan painting.  How I wish that this could be our brand in the church.  How I wish Van Gogh would have experienced John 13:35 and Colossians 3:12.  Instead after moving to the tiny Belgian village of Petit-Wasmes to start a ministry to the impoverished miners of that region, of living in humble housing, giving away his clothes and furniture, and money, and becoming “a friend of the poor like Jesus was”, he was deemed as overly zealous, bordering on the scandalous, and his lack of concern for his external appearance unbecoming of a clergyman.  The church concluded that his lack of “certain qualities may render the exercise of an evangelist’s principle function wholly impossible.”  So they withdrew their support after 6 months.  Maybe that is why Van Gogh painted the Good Samaritan because he desperately wanted the church to be branded this way, and not in the way that he (and honestly so many others in our own day and age) experienced.

So may we be a community known by our love and a community that puts on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  

So let’s talk about what it looks like today.  Let’s talk about branding and the church.  Let’s talk about what our modern day equivalent might be of the identifying marker of circumcision.  Let’s talk about how we can be more about the heart than the external rules and regulations.  And let’s talk about how we develop a community that looks like Jesus together.

1.  What thoughts, comments, insights, etc.. do you have about the Scriptures and/or the message?

 2.   What is the modern day equivalent of circumcision?  An identifying external marker that we have as the people of God

3.   How can we be a community known by John 13:35 and Col. 3:12?

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?

 

Divine Commodity Week 2: Canvas of Silence

Last week we spent time looking at probably the most famous painting that Van Gogh ever painted, Starry Night.    But few know the things that converged together in his life that led him to put paint to canvas.  

First, one of Van Gogh’s favorite painters was a man by the name of Jean-Francois Millet. Twenty years before Starry Night, Millet painted his own “Starry Night”.  And one of Van Gogh’s favorite book was a biography of Millet.  Van Gogh had a longing for the infinite and a longing to experience that in nature.  He was known to go hiking in the hills, walking on beaches, and even went out into the middle of a field during a thunderstorm to experience the power of God’s nature.  

Secondly, on May 8, 1889 Van Gogh accompanied by a local Pastor took the train from Arles to Saint Remy and admitted himself into an asylum.  At night in the asylum Van Gogh could look out his window and see the Alpilles Mountains, the cypress trees, and the stars in the sky.  

These two things, his desire for the infinite and his condition, came together in Starry Night.  His desire for peace and stillness internally and externally.  To experience the quiet within his own head, while being wracked by his disease.  To also experience the still small voice of God externally in the creation that was all around him.  In fact he said, “When all sounds cease, God’s voice is heard under the stars.”  

Now if we look at the painting that riffed off of Starry Night that we looked at earlier, Starry Night, Urban Sprawl, we see a radically different piece where the sky and the sprawl don’t touch at all.  The yellow and blue of the sky that is in movement (like in Starry Night)- signifying divine love and presence- doesn’t come down to the village.  And the light that is emulating from the village comes from the commercial enterprises.  The McDonalds, the Arby’s Big Boy, etc… drown out the light of the divine movement in the sky.  In fact, notice the church building.  The light that is coming out of the church building is not the same type of light of the sacred yellow light of the stars.  No it is the same type of light as the consumer businesses- the restaurants, the franchise stores, etc…In this painting the church doesn’t challenge, differ from, or isn’t set apart from the rest of the consumer light and noise that is all around it, it actually adds to it.  The Church in Starry Night, Urban sprawl reflects the values of the earth, not the values of the heavens.  The Church in Starry Night, Urban sprawl is a business.  They reach out by marketing.  They worship through entertainment.  And God is another commodity just like the commodities that are all around the church.  The din of consumption and the noise of business, production, and busyness (the pale yellow light) crowds out the full rich yellow of the sky.  How often does this happen in our world?  Where the din of consumerism, busyness, and business (even in the church) crowd out the still small voice of God so that we can’t even recognize the voice of God because of the noise that is all around us- even in the church.  

Silence is a rare commodity in our world.  But someone once said that silence is the beginning of all worship, and the spiritual life must find it’s origin in silence.  They both agree with our Scripture from today which is found in Psalm 46:10.

Psalm 46:10 says, He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;( I will be exalted( among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  

The Psalmist here in chapter 46, according to scholars, is writing a celebration piece about the security of Jerusalem as the city of God.  The song points to God’s victorious reign over all the earth.  Over the nature itself.  Over the powers that would set themselves over and above God himself.  It also is about God’s power in the midst of our struggles.  In the midst of nature.  God’s power to bring about shalom.  And at the end of the Psalm, after we hear about God’s power over all.  About God’s hand of protection.  About God being a refuge and ever present help in times of trouble.  After we hear about how he ends wars.  How he sets everything to right.  What is left after hearing about all of these things?  What is the proper response for one who has seen all these things come to pass?  A proper response to God’s power, might, deliverance, and his peace?  A proper response to all that the Psalmist has seen and experienced is nothing but silence.

Have you ever stood in the mountains where there were no human lights around and looked up at the stars?  I went outside the other night to take the dog out and looked up.  Now there were human light arounds but still the amount of stars littered in the sky still took my breath away.  Have you ever stood on the beach with the water rolling under your toes and looked out at the expanse of the ocean?  Have you ever had an experience when you just came face to face with God and his transcendence and you were speechless?  This is what the Psalmist is getting at here.  He experienced the transcendence, the magnitude, the immensity, and the majesty of God himself, and the only proper and real response was one of complete and utter silence.  Skye Jethani in the book from which this series came from says it this way, “When our imaginations are jolted into contemplating our true insignificance, either by a star-filled sky or some other encounter with the transcendent, our response is always the same- silence.”

In the midst of the storms of life and in the silence is where we find out that God is really God.  When the Psalmist slowed down, got silent, that is when he truly knew God.  It is almost saying in this Psalm that to truly know God we must be still/silent.  I’m not saying it’s not possible to experience God at a loud rock concert.  I’m not saying it’s not possible to experience the voice of God in the midst of city streets.  i’m not saying that God doesn’t speak through the noise of music, movies, etc.  I have heard the voice of God (not audibly) in all of those places.  What I am saying is that I believe we can hear the still small voice of God better when we get quiet before God, block out the outside noise, try to block out the inside noise (which is harder to block out than the outside noise), get alone with God, and listen for his voice.  

Look at Jesus, the son of God, who had a direct connection with the Father.  That he said, “I and the Father are one.”  Even he needed to get alone, remove himself from the demands put upon him so that he could hear from his heavenly Father, and slow down and rest in Him.  We find this Luke 5:16 which says, “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”  One of the struggles that we all face with the idea of being still and silent before God is when we say we are too busy.  But if Jesus, who is the Savior of the world, had time to get away, to slow down, to quiet himself before his heavenly Father, how much more should we take the time and do that.  

Besides our busyness, what stands in the way of us being still before God and knowing Him?  Probably another thing has to do with the idea of quieting our souls.  It is one thing to quiet our surroundings but quite another to quiet our souls and the thoughts that run through our own heads.  Even if we get alone in solitude, it is inner solitude that can often elude us.  Henri Nouwen said, “One of the main problems is that in this chatty society, silence has become a fearful thing.  For more people silence creates itchiness and nervousness.”  And because of that itchiness and nervousness we tend to a voice silence at all costs.  We turn the radio on to drown out the silence in our heads.  The voice that tells us that we aren’t good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, have enough money, have the right car, have the right house, have the right job, etc…  Jethani puts it this way, “In our consumer culture silence is the unholy vacuum that must be filled.”  And it isn’t hard to fill that vacuum with noise.  Noise from external sources and also from internal ones.  Noise in the form of sounds, words, images, thoughts, and the noise from voices telling us that to be somebody we need to be a better consumer.  And we can buy our way to happiness, fulfillment, and a better life.  Consumerism is actually just never ending noise.

If we want to hear the still small voice of God like Elijah heard in 1 Kings 19, then we must get silent and still before God.  If we want to know Him, like the Psalmist says, then we must get away and quell the outside and inside noise in order to hear the words of love, truth, grace, forgiveness and mercy that will come.  If we want to rid ourselves of the voice that tells us that we will never measure up, we can’t be good enough, and that to measure up and be good enough we just need to purchase the right things, or even buy into the right belief system where God becomes a commodity himself, we need to slow down, be still, and know God.  Not for what we can get out of him, but just to be in his presence and in relationship with Him.  

Jethani puts it this way, and I’ll close with this thoughts, and few more of my own.  “Our imaginations can throw off the shackles of consumerism if we start to feel the infinite once again.  This requires taking our gaze off the consumable manifestations of God so prevalent today- the music, T-Shirts, jewelry, and yes even books that reduce and confine our perception of the Divine- and replacing them with the silent contemplation of what God himself has created.  In a culture that insists on making God small, we can counteract this trend by focusing our imaginations on what is big.”

Here are some thoughts regarding our perceptions of God, the outer noise that is around us, and the inner noise in our heads.  What if we turn off the radio for a few minutes while driving?  Do we always need the music on?  What if we took a walk in the rain or thunderstorm?  What if we took a trip to the beach, not to go swimming but just to gaze at the ocean?  What if our group would get together some night just to sit outside and gaze at the stars in silence together?  What might we learn about God from that experience that maybe no Bible Study could teach or show us?  What if instead of all this talking in church, we actually took some more time to be still and silent together, and let God speak to us.  

We’ll spend some time in discussion now, but at the end of our time we’ll spend some more time together in silence.  Just listen for the voice of God.  To slow down together, quiet our outside world and our inner world, and be still and know that He is God. 

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

2.  When, before today, was the last time you spent time in silence?  Do you sometimes avoid silence because you’re afraid of what God might actually have to say to you?

3.   What are some things in your daily life you could change to eliminate  some of the noise?

4.   Spend a few more minutes in silence with Him.  Don’t force anything. Just pray and listen. 

 

Divine Commodity Week 1: Slumber of the Imagination

Yesterday we kicked off our new series called The Divine Commodity by looking at the person of Vincent Van Gogh.  Most people when you mention Van Gogh the 4 things that they mention are Starry Night, he went "crazy", cut his ear off, and committed suicide.  

But Van Gogh also had a rocky relationship with the church vacillating between devotion to Jesus and His Kingdom by being a missionary to miners, and fighting the institutional church of his day.  We see this in his words, "“He has sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor”, That God of the clergymen, he is for me  as dead as a doornail,” and called himself “no friend of  present-day Christianity."  And finally, "“When I have a terrible need of-shall I say the word-religion,             then I go out and paint the stars.” 

We talked through two of his paintings together.  Starry Night and the Church at Auvers.  We then read 4 Scriptures (Genesis 12:1-3, Jeremiah 29:1-7, Matthew 28:16-20, and Acts 2:42-47).  We begin to wonder together and use our imagination to ask questions like "What would Van Gogh's art be like if he encountered a church that sought to be a blessing to the world, and sought the peace of the city?  What would his art look like if he encountered a church that sought to make disciples that make disciples?  What would his art look like if he encountered a church that shared life together.  And then we set the community loose to imagine just that, by using crayons and colored pencils, to reimagine Starry Night and Church at Auvers in light of these Scriptures and Core Values.  

Below you'll find some of the reimagined art work that was created as well as other pictures from the day.  


Labor for Lancaster

Yesterday was the 5th Sunday of the month.  Veritas meets on the 5th Sunday of the month for a time of serving the local community.  Yesterday we partnered with Labor 4 Lancaster and worked at Lincoln Middle School.  Below are pictures from our day of being a blessing.  


Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom Week 7

Today we wrap up our 7 week series called Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom looking at the radical, subversive, countercultural, and upside down Kingdom in which those of follow Jesus live.  This Kingdom which may seem backward from how the world lives.  This Kingdom, in which the King of the Kingdom, Jesus, tells us that the way up is actually down and to live humble lives.  The Kingdom that calls us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who mistreat us, and to do good to those who hate us.  This Kingdom which calls the greatest are actually the children and the marginalized, and the pushed aside.  A Kingdom where the first are actually last and the last are first.  A Kingdom where if you want to truly live, to take hold of the life that is truly life (1 Timothy 6:19), then you must die to yourself.  And a Kingdom where the outsiders become the insiders, and a Kingdom where Jesus calls us to say yes to his call and then live yes to his call.  

Today we wrap up our Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom series by looking at A Free Slave through the Scriptural lens of Matthew 20:20-28.

Matthew 20:20-28 says, “Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. “What is it you want?” he asked.She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”“ You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.” When the ten heard about this, they were indignant( with the two brothers.  Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Before the text that we just read we see Jesus again trying to redefine what the people believe the Kingdom is really all about.  In the first half of chapter 20 we read the parable of the worker’s in the vineyard, the one that Rachel unpacked so well for us a few weeks ago.  He reminds them that the first will actually be last and the last first.  Meaning the religious leaders who believe they have it all together will actually enter the Kingdom behind the tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners.  And then Jesus tells his disciples for the third time that he will be tried, crucified, and then three days later he will be resurrected.  But obviously the disciples and others still don’t get what kind of Kingdom revolution Jesus is truly leading.  We see that because of the beginning of the text that we just read.  

So at the beginning of the text that we just read we see the mother of James and John coming to Jesus to ask him a favor.  We don’t know if James and John put her up to it, or this was her way of making sure that her two sons had a prominent place in his government (so to speak).  She asked him a favor, and he asked her what it was.  The words that came off her tongue no doubt show her misunderstanding of what Jesus Kingdom was truly all about.  She asked Jesus, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your Kingdom.”  What she is asking is like asking the President to be the Vice President and Secretary of State.  The two of them were all about power, prestige and position.  The disciples desire for position and status showed they didm not yet know the nature of Jesus in respect to leadership and power.  She believed, along with her sons, that Jesus Kingdom was going come to earth by means of violent overthrow of the Roman Empire.  That Jesus was going to establish this Kingdom in Israel and the glory days of Israel would return.  That he would rule from Jerusalem with no outside government ruling over them.  And that they would be the ones in charge, and anyone getting out of line, would probably face some time of violent retribution.  But Jesus Kingdom is the kind of Kingdom where the King of this Kingdom doesn’t spill the blood of his enemies.  No, the King in this upside down Kingdom actually allows his enemies to spill his blood.  Which takes us to his response to James and John’s mother (and to them as well as they were there as well). 

Jesus responds by saying, “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”  What is Jesus talking about when he means the drink that he will drink?  Jesus is talking about the cup of suffering that he would experience going to his death on a Roman cross.  He again is trying to remind these two disciples that following Jesus is not about power, prestige and position, unless the position is one of being either on your knees with a towel and a basin, or having your arms outstretched on the cross dying to yourself for the sake of others.  

Their response, which was probably way to quick and definitely not thought out, was to answer Jesus with a Yes we can.  And they would drink the same cup of suffering as Jesus. They would both suffer for Jesus in different ways.  James would be one of the first followers of Jesus to die.  And John suffered through imprisonment in various places and forms especially on the isle of Patmos.  But while they would eventually also drink the cup of suffering that Jesus was going to through his trial and his crucifixion, they wouldn’t be granted places on either side of Jesus in his coming Kingdom.  That is because those positions, those places belong to those whom God the Father has appointed them to.  

After Jesus’ response to James, John, and their mother, the rest of the disciples got indignant with them. Why the indignation?  Because no doubt all of the other disciples were also concerned about things like power, prestige, position, and they dreamed of being the group that kicked Rome out of Israel, and they would be the ones to establish, with Jesus of course, their own Kingdom and empire.  They wanted to be hailed as conquering heroes.  They wanted to be admired by all people, as the ones who finally set things right, and got rid of Rome.  They were indignant because James and John and their mother asked Jesus first, and also publicly outed each of their secret motives, and desires.  

Jesus knowing that the disciples had still not truly understood what his Kingdom of Shalom was all about, and that it wasn’t like the Kingdoms and empires of this world, needed to pull them together again in order to again show them what this upside down Kingdom was really all about, especially in relation to leadership, power and position.  So Jesus pulled them together to express to them what the Kingdom that he was bringing into being was all about.  He told them, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

He reminded them of the way that this world, and this Kingdom worked when he said that the rules of the Gentiles lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them.  In this worldly Kingdom it is all about authority, power, might, strength, and position.  The Kingdom of this world’s view of a King is radically different than the Kingdom of God’s view on being a King.  In the pagan world humility was regarded not so much as a virtue, but as a vice.  But in the Kingdom of God leaders should be about humility, service, putting others before themselves, following the lead of the King of this Kingdom.  

What kind of leader, what kind of King, is this king of the Kingdom of God?  He is the one who said to the disciples that if you want to be great, if you truly want to have position in the Kingdom of God, you must be a servant and a slave.  But he didn’t just talk about being a servant and a slave, he actually put it into practice.  He actually lived it.  The King of the world. The Savior of Humanity.  The Lord of all Lords….his model of leadership, which is radically different than the model of leadership found in this world, is best shown in John 13:1-17 during his last supper with his disciples.  In that day and that age, when you would come into a gathering of people there would be a servant, actually the lowest of the lowest servant, would take off your sandals, and take a basin and a towel and would wash your feet before the gathering.  That night no one wanted to be seen as the lowest of the lowest servant.  They all were thinking about which seat they would sit in, how close could they get to the seat of Jesus, their position in the cabinet of the new Kingdom.  So no one stooped down and washed anyone’s feet.  Then Jesus realized this and he was the one to put on a towel, pour some water into a basin, stooped down and washed the feet of every single disciple in the room that night.  

Jesus came to serve and not to be served.  He actually had every right to be served.  He is the King of the Universe, the Lord of Lord, the King of King, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Creator of all things, and he is over all.  If anyone would have the right to be served, and not to serve, it would be Jesus.  But Jesus came to this world to serve and to give his life as a ransom.  To set free those who were enslaved to sin and wickedness, not least of throw who were in the grips of the lust for power and position and prestige like James and John.  The word ransom used here, and in that world, is what someone might pay to give freedom to a slave.  Jesus came to free us from being slaves to the Kingdom and empire of this world, and the ruler of this Kingdom and empire so that we could be freed servants to first serve Him, in return because of what he has done for us, and then to secondly serve in His name the world that is all around us.  To serve our neighbors, our friends, those we work with, our enemies, anyone that we come in contact with.  

If you want to be great, you need to be a servant.  If you want to be a leader in a Christian community, including Veritas, grab a towel and a basin (either figuratively or even literally) and begin to wash other’s feet.  In a Kingdom community status, money, popularity, power, prestige, etc.. should never be a prerequisite for leaders.  Humble service is the great and right prerequisite for leaders in the Kingdom of God, following the lead of our King, King Jesus. Also if our community wants to be great, we also need to follow the model of Jesus.  We should be a community known in the Lancaster community as a group of people who are willing to serve.  (like next week with Labor for Lancaster) Who are willing to jump in and help.  Who are willing to take up the basin and towel and serve the Lancaster community.  

We have just introduced our new Servant’s Team, who will be seeking to lead our community so that we will be a community that blesses the world, grows deeper in our journey with Jesus and shares life together.  This team is called our Servant’s Team because I believe that to be a leader in Veritas, you absolutely need to be a servant.  So today we are going to end our conversation a little differently.  Our leadership wants to follow in the way of Jesus by serving you by washing your feet.  They will be coming around to wash your feet.  If you are okay with them washing your feet, take off your shoes as a sign of being willing to have them serve you in this way.  If you aren’t quite ready for that, that is truly okay.  Just keep your shoes on.

Following the team washing the feet of this community, I’ll pray for us before Laura comes up and ends our time together in musical worship. 

An interview with Veritas Community

The other week I was interviewed by Jeff McLain, a friend who is a driving force in the missional conversation in the Lancaster area.  Here is the text of that interview that can also be found on his website (http://www.jeffmclain.com/2015/08/18/an-interview-with-veritas-community-of-lancaster-pa/)

An Interview With Veritas Community Of Lancaster, PA

As an occasional feature on my blog, I interview various unique and missional expressions of Church. This does not mean I necessarily agree with everything those I am interviewing are about or are doing. However, I am excited to hear about people doing community missionally and hope our conversations together will inspire others to transition into a missional movement of the Kingdom of God.

In this Interview, I interview missional church planter Ryan Braught, about the Vertias Community he’s involved with in downtown Lancaster, PA.

Tell me, how did you end up on mission in Lancaster Pennsylvania?
I moved to Lancaster, PA in 1999 to take a position at Hempfield Church of the Brethren at the Pastor of Youth Ministries and Nurture. During that time a college student that had been in the youth group handed me a book and said, “Every time I read this I can’t stop thinking that you need to read it.” This book was to become a huge catalyst in my life, and honestly changed my life, and change the trajectory of my life. The book was “The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission in the 21st Century” by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. That book led me to look at my life as a missionary and helped me put flesh to thoughts, and brought dreams to reality.

How did the vision for Veritas come about?
During my time at Hempfield I became aware of issues like postmodernity, postChristendom, the emerging church, and the missional church. In my work with the youth of the congregation I began to see a huge divide between the youth of the congregation and the adults. The divide was related to age in that there wasn’t that many young adults in the congregation (18-30) but it also was related to how the world was changing, and what world our youth were living in versus the world that our adults were “living in”.

I began to notice that many youth once they finished youth group were leaving the church, and we also weren’t attracting that many young adults. So back in 2002 I began to experiment with ways of worship that might connect with Young Adults. This first experiment was called EPICenter based off of the concept of EPIC (Experiential, Participatory, Image Based, Connected) put forth by Leonard Sweet. This experiment lasted approximately 6 months and we learned a lot from it.

A year or so later I began talking with people about their faith, their struggles with the church, how they were deconstructing faith, and what they saw as ways of engaging their faith in new ways, and also engaging people outside the four walls of the church building. These conversations then became the catalyst for the first incarnation of Veritas. Veritas launched under the approval of the congregation and we began to develop Veritas. We followed a monthly rhythm of 2 House Churches a month, a Community Gathering once a month, and a worship gathering once a month. These gatherings were mostly at the early stage focused more on deconstruction than construction. It was more like we knew what we didn’t want to be, but we weren’t sure what we wanted to be.

Back when EPICenter was running we focused exclusively on worship. We thought if we would add coffee and candles, and had some more upbeat “rock” worship, that would be enough to draw people to the church. During Veritas we began to work at questions related to what the church was. Toward the end of our time together before we decided to plant Veritas out of Hempfield, we began to discuss and learn about missional church and being missional. So the flow of Veritas could best be described as we started with worship, progressed to ecclesiology, and ended up at missiology. And we began to move into living a missional life as a community and as individuals. We began to hopefully live out this idea shared by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, “Our Christology informs our missiology, which in turn determines our ecclesiology”
In 2007 God began to work on me about taking a risk and planting Veritas as it’s own missional church. So through prayer, time, conversation, scripture, and trust we decided to launch Veritas on September 13, 2009. After 5 years we continue to wrestle with being on mission, discipleship, and being community together. And the journey isn’t finished, we have a long way to go.

Veritas is really a unique and fresh expression of a church community. What does it look like when you guys meet, when and where do you meet?
Our Sunday gatherings take place at the Community Room on King which is an art gallery, music venue, performance arts, and rental space that we are the primary lease holders of. Our Sunday gatherings last around 2 hours starting around 10:30. Our mornings include relational community time where people grab coffee and food and just hang out with each other. We have a time of  musical worship. We also spend time talking through our Core Values by asking questions like: How have you been a blessing in the world this week? What is God teaching you through Scripture, prayer, life, etc…? How are you sharing life with other followers of Jesus? We have a sermon time which is divided into a monologue time and a dialogue time. The teacher/preacher will unpack the text for a bit, and then we’ll all look at what it looks like to live out that particular text in our lives as individuals and as a community. Normally our last question is What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? And what is God saying to us as a community and what should we do about it?

As a growing missional group in Lancaster, where do you tie in for accountability, resourcing and networking?
Our first affiliation that we are tied into for accountability, resourcing and networking is our denominational affiliation, the Church of the Brethren. I have been in the Church of the Brethren since 1996 as a Youth Pastor in two different congregations and I am an ordained Pastor in the Church of the Brethren. Our second affiliation is the Ecclesia Network, which is a network of missional churches, and leaders. We are blessed by both affiliations. The Church of the Brethren as a whole has supported us, even if at times not fully understanding how we are doing and being church together. There have been probably 10-12 different Church of the Brethren congregation along with our Atlantic Northeast District who have supported us financially in one way, shape or form. I’ve gotten to attend our Church Planting conference multiple times and have been able to lead workshops at the last 3 (these happen every other year). We are also really excited about being part of the Ecclesia Network. We started hanging out this group since our founding in 2009 and felt a kindred heart, spirit, and vision. They have supported, encouraged, and helped us in our vision.

What encouragements and challenges have you run into with the Church of the Brethren. What excites you about their partnership with you?
I would say that the encouragement and challenge with the Church of the Brethren relates to the fact that many don’t truly understand how we are seeking to be and to do church. But at the same time, have been truly supportive even in the midst of not really understanding. What excites me about their partnership is the opportunity that we have to show a different way of planting churches. To be a catalyst for change. To help the COB see that the world is radically changing, and we can’t just plant churches the same way that we have in the past. I’m encouraged that I have been given a voice in this conversation. One way that I have been a voice is through the Church Planting Conference that happens every other year. I’ve (as I said before) led workshops at this conference around the themes of missional church, being missional/missionary,and engaging the art and music culture.

What do you define as the mission of Veritas?
Our mission in Veritas is defined as being a community that blesses the world, grows deeper in our journey with Jesus, and shares life together. There are three main components of our mission which if you have done any reading in missional church or communities you’ll instantly recognizing as Mission, Discipleship and Community, or OUT, UP, and IN. W e seek to live out the mission of Veritas in a number of different ways:

Blessing the World– We seek to use our space, the Community Room on King as a hub for mission. We host 1st Friday Art Shows each month. We bring in a local emerging artists and help them create, what for some may be their first, art show. We help promote it, host it, and encourage their gifts. Normal art galleries take between 30-40% commission on every sold piece. We only take 10% because we want the majority of the money to go to support and encourage the artists talent. We also host 3rd Friday Coffeehouses, Open Mic Nights and Concerts. We bring in local musicians and give them a space to promote their work, build their fan base, and grow in their talent. We also use the space to partner with already exists events within the Lancaster community. For the past three years we have been a venue for the Launch Music Conference. The conference is an event for musicians to learn about the music world (recording, touring, etc..) but also to play out at a showcase event. We host a showcase for the two nights of Launch Music Conference. We also partner with the Lancaster Art Walk which is held two times a year and we open our gallery up during Lancaster Art Walk. During the past 2-3 art walks we have also hosted a Before I Die wall where we encourage people to write on a chalkboard wall the answer to the question, “Before I Die i would like to….” Every 5th Sunday of the year, which happens four times a year, we hold our Day of Service, where we partner with a non-profit and serve in some way. The last year we have partnered with Binding Love Scarves, whose mission is to stop Human Trafficking one scarf at a time.

Growing Deeper- Our community gathers currently in two size groups that help us grow deeper in our journey with Jesus. Every week we gather on Sunday mornings for musical worship, prayer, sharing, and looking at Scripture together. Also every week we have 2 Community Groups of 8-15 people who meet together for community, prayer, Bible Study, and to dream about missional engagement together. We also encourage people in their own spiritual journeys through our Facebook page “Veritas Scripture Reading Group” where we post our weekly Scripture readings so that we can all be on the same reading plan.

Sharing Life together- Our community realizes that we can’t do this thing called life, let alone the Christian life, without each other. We seek to spend time doing life together throughout the week and not just on Sundays. We do host 3rd Sunday Community Lunch following our Sunday gathering each month. During the Summer months we hang out every Sunday night at Long’s Park together for a time of relationship building, eating, and listening to the free music concerts. Our people also get together in various ways throughout the week. Many go out for coffee or drinks together. We have several who actually live together. And we encourage people to invite each other to eat together, work out together, and spend time being with each other outside “official” Veritas gatherings.

Through Veritas, what does discipleship look like?
This is one of the hardest questions to answer but also one of the most important ones. Dallas Willard said this about the importance of discipleship and church, “Every church needs to answer two questions. One, do we have a plan for making disciples? Two, does our plan work.” Our discipleship plan, that we are still working and developing (a work in progress), relates to the four spaces of belonging that Joseph Myers talks about in this book “The Search to Belong”. We are trying to develop a discipleship plan that takes into account these 4 spaces. What does this look like practically speaking? Here are my thoughts, and I would love your thoughts, feedback, etc… as well as I continue to flush this out. The first and largest space of belonging is called Public Space and is about larger size gatherings typically over 75 people. It is about sharing a common experience in a larger space. In typical churches this would most likely be a worship gathering. Since our church is smaller than this, this is one area we don’t really address. Some idea of how we might disciple in a Public Space would be bing part of a regional worship gathering, and deeper connections to our Network and Denominational Family. The second space of belonging is called Social Space and is a medium sized group typically between 20-75. This is the size of our current faith community. In this space we hold our weekly worship gathering, as well as seek to do mission together. Our worship gathering isn’t just a one man show. It is a very dialogical time where every person has the opportunity to share, speak, and add their thoughts, opinions, and their experience to our discussion. The third space of belonging is called Personal Space and is a group about 8-15. This space is the perfect space for deeper discipleship to take place. We use Personal Space for our Community Groups which are groups of 8-15 who meet weekly in homes and other spaces for time to build community, study the Bible, pray and do life together. Occasionally these groups will sponsor certain missional activities and invite the rest of the community to take part in it. The fourth space of belonging is called Intimate Space and is groups of 2-3. We are hoping to develop we would call Life Transformation groups where groups of 2-3 people of the same gender would meet together for accountability, prayer, bible reading/sharing, and deeper community. This is still pretty much a work in progress and I hope this will give us direction in moving forward to address the question that Dallas Willard asked. Hopefully we will be able to say Yes we do have a plan for discipleship and yes it is working.

You are a missional practitioner and a missional church planter. They can be very separate identities. How do you find yourself intentionally living out the Kingdom in Lancaster as an individual?
Probably the best way to answer that question relates to how we live our lives as a family in our neighborhood. We try to be a catalyst for community within our neighborhood by hosting events and parties. We give our Hot Apple Cider to parents during Trick or Treat. We have hosted a St. Patrick’s Day Party every year for the last 5 years. During this party we give out Irish Blessings and at the end of the night we read these blessings to each other. We have also thrown Summer BBQ’s, Outdoor movie nights, and other events. Also I try to frequent certain third spaces on a regular basis to build relationships. Being that the Community Room on King is right around the corner from Prince Street Cafe, I tend to frequent Prince Street Cafe 1-3 times per week. I go there to research and write sermons. I go there to meet with people. I go there to meet and engage the Baristas. I’ve developed some relationships with a few of the Baristas there over the last year or two.

As a missional practitioner what influences, inspirations and resources do you draw from?
As I mentioned above probably one of the most significant books that has led me on this journey is the book “Shaping of Things to Come” by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. Obviously, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is hugely inspirational, and influential, as is all of Scripture. Some other resources include the Tangible Kingdom, the Tangible Kingdom primer, AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church, the Power of All, the Gospel Primer, and the Barefoot Primer. Also I have a coach that I meet with on a monthly basis who has planted 3 churches and 1 kingdom
business. He influences me, inspires me, and gives me resources to continue to do what I am doing. I would say that if you are seeking to plant a church, missional or not, that one of the first things that you do is find a coach who will walk alongside of you in this journey. It is, I believe, crucial, to the health and well being of not only the church itself, but you as a leader or planter.

Can you share with us a story of an missional encounter you’ve had recently? 
One of the most recent missional encounters that I have had was with an artist that had her own show in our space in February, but also had one piece in our Emotive 2: A Good Friday Art Show that we held on Good Friday. During her first show in February we talked about the vision of the Community Room on King and the connection to the Veritas community. We shared some ideas of ways that we were hoping to connect with the community and she was excited about the ideas and asked to help and be involved. One of the ideas was an event called Chalk the Block where we would write encouraging messages, and words on the sidewalks around the Community Room on King in sidewalk chalk. She was going to donate disposable cameras for us to use to document the event. She was then going to develop them, frame them and we were going to do an art show. The city however after initially giving us the okay for this event, changed their minds, and nixed the proposal. But this artist still was excited to partner with us on something. She came up with the idea of doing Chalk the Block on a board that was painted with chalkboard paint and set it up during Art Walk to get people to add their own encouraging thoughts and quotes. She is making the boards and bringing them to set up at Art Walk.

She also submitted a hugely personal piece for our Emotive 2: A Good Friday Art Show. This piece shared her journey with pain, struggle and heartache. She shared what this piece meant on a newspaper article that the Lancaster newspaper ran on our art show. This piece has been really received by those who have seen it and our Veritas community. It also helped us to have some significant conversations about life, death, pain and struggle. We have been a blessing to her and she has been a blessing to us. And we are grateful for the relationship that has formed through art.

How would you define missional?
This word Missional has unfortunately become a buzz word, and a word that is in danger of losing all it’s meaning. We just now add the word missional to things in order to sell books, look “relevant”, or try to “reinvent” ourselves without really “reinventing” us. We have missional books, missional lighting, missional discipleship, etc.. But what does missional mean? First and foremost, I define it by saying missional is defined by God. God is a missional God. Theologians call it the Missio Dei, the mission of God. God, since the beginning of time, has been on a mission, a mission of Shalom (wholeness, peace, restoration, healing and redemption). Probably the best understanding and most helpful for the person “in the pews” is that missional means being a missionary. I know there are issues with that word, especially in relation to colonialism. But this word missionary, many people will understand what that means. The struggle then becomes helping people see our own country and our own communities as needing missionaries who are sent into their own communities to be the hands and feet of jesus. These missionaries are disguised as stay-at-home parents, teachers, garbage men, bankers, lawyers, doctors, baristas, etc.. What would happen if we could understand that we are all missionaries and that everywhere we go God calls us to a mission of Shalom. To me being missional is just living into the reality that I am a missionary and that every follower of Jesus is a missionary as well.

What do you hope happens with Veritas in the next few months?
There are many different things that I hope happen with Veritas over the next few months. One thing that we are working on is our leadership structure and figuring out the appropriate size of the structure in relation to the size of our community. We are working on developing a structure that will allow others to get involved, and lead areas of our community in which they feel called and passionate about. I am hoping to get this off the ground by the fall. I am also hoping that we can continue building momentum when it comes to our corporate missional engagement with the city. We need to develop a better and bigger base within our community for the missional side of things. I am also hoping for continued numeric growth, not just numbers for numbers sake, but we do need to continue to grow as a community. I am also hoping for growth in our financial self-sufficiency. We need to have our community increase it’s giving and also increasing the rental side of things in relation to the Community Room on King. But probably the thing that I most hope for is a growing connection to the wider community. That people begin to know about  Veritas/ Community Room on King and know that we want to be a part of the flourishing of the city (Jeremiah 29:7) and see our community as being a blessing.

How can people get involved and find out more information about what you are doing?
There are a number of ways people can get involved and find out more about what we are doing. First they can visit our website.

If you were giving advice to someone just beginning a journey of missional engagement, what you would say to them?
Be very very patient. Living a missional life, and planting a missional church aren’t the silver bullet to explosive church growth. Missional life and ministry is not a sprint, it is a marathon. David Fitch puts it this way, “we shall expect growth but this growth will most probably happen over a very prolonged period of time. This growth will be on God’s terms. It shall be a work of the Spirit not our work. It means we shall be committed to this place for a minimum of ten years.” Prepare. Understand your preconceived notions and throw them out the window. Look hard at how you define success. This has probably been one of the hardest lessons that I have had to learn and am having to learn. What does it mean to be a success in relation to planting a church? Is it really butts, buildings, bucks? Or is there another way of defining success in the missional church. You need to wrestle this to the ground. Missional engagement isn’t as hard as people think it is, or as big as people think it is. It can be quite simple. Invite a neighbor over for dinner. Throw a neighborhood BBQ. Give out Hot Apple Cider at Halloween to the parents. Throw a Holiday Party. Missional engagement can be a lot of fun.

Why do you feel it is so important Church begins to pursue mission over traditional institution?
I heard a statistic the other day regarding the percentage of people who attend church. The national average for people attending church, depending on who you talk to, is anywhere from a high of 40% to a low of around 20%. My coach and some other people have also shared what the average for church attendance is in Lancaster County (the seeming Bible Belt of PA). They have shared with me that the average in Lancaster County is 17%. The reason that I believe the church needs to begin pursue mission has to do with this statistic but also the fact that we are moving from Christendom to post-Christendom. We are no longer in a world where church and state work hand in hand together and work from the same foundation. We are in a time that the church is losing influence, power, and isn’t being invited to the table (so to speak). As an Anabaptist I believe that the church best thrives on the margins anyway. But many are mourning the loss of this influence and power. I believe this gives the church the perfect opportunity to step back from institutional life and work on being a blessing to people. To live a life of a missionary right here in our own neighborhoods and communities. The shift in culture is helping us and challenging us to actually live life how Jesus lived his life, by becoming missional and incarnational, and not waiting for people to come to us, but for us to go to them.

For more information about Veritas, please connect with Ryan Braught.

Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom Week 6

We are winding down our conversation of what it looks like to live an upside down existence.  To live the Kingdom of God in our lives and in the world, which ends up looking very upside down from how the world acts, believes, lives, and operates.  

We’ve explored such upside down concepts such as humility and the way up is actually down, loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you, blessing those who curse you, and praying for those who mistreat you. We’ve also covered the greatest in the Kingdom are actually the children which stand for the marginalized, the needy, and those without power, as well the first being the last and the absolutely radical subversive nature of this amazing upside down thing called grace.  And last week we let God speak through the Scriptures through the Spiritual Discipline of Lectio Divina looking at the fact that to truly live this upside down Kingdom we need to die to ourselves and live for him.  

Next week we’ll wrap up the series by talking about a Free Slave.  But this week our Scripture is Matthew 21:28-32 and we’ll be talking about Inside Outsiders.  

So let’s jump into the text and let’s see what Matthew 21:28-32 has to say to us about the Upside Down Life in the Kingdom of God.

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered.  Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

To understand this parable you need to also look at what is happening before this story in Matthew 21.  In Matthew 21 we see the religious leaders and Jesus squaring off.  At the beginning of chapter 21 we see Jesus riding into Jerusalem as King, followed by his clearing of the temple, and then he curses the fig tree.  All of these acts put him in confrontation with the religious leaders and teachers of his day.  In fact the cursing of the fig tree has some direct connection with the parable.  As we mentioned a few months ago when we looked at this text, that the tree itself represents Israel and it’s religious leaders.  The Fig Tree had leaves but no fruit which is symbolic of Israel’s religious activities- all the trappings of spirituality but no substance.  Israel may have had leaves of activity but not fruit of repentance and obedience to God, which is why Jesus tells them in the parable that we are looking at, that the prostitutes and tax collectors will enter the Kingdom ahead of them, which no doubt did not sit well with them.  

Then the next part of Chapter 21 they again question his authority to clear the temple, and curse the fig tree.  And Jesus, as he is so apt at doing, answers their questions and accusations with another question, this time revolving around John the Baptist.  He asks them if John’s baptism came from heaven or human origin.  They then debate among themselves and they aren’t able to come up with an answer so Jesus tells them that he won’t answer where his authority comes from.  And then this is where Jesus begins to tell the parable of the two sons.  

The parable starts off this way, “There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went”.  In this parable the first son, who said no, but then went, represents the tax collectors and sinners.  Their daily life seems to be saying “no” to God.  It seemed, for all intents and purposes, that they were running away from God and that they didn’t want to follow him.  Just look at their lifestyle, you can almost hear the religious leaders saying.  

But when they heard John, they changed their minds and their lifestyle.  In other words, repentance.  When confronted with their sin, the love of Jesus, and the Spirit of John, they changed their minds and believed.  They began to follow Jesus, even if at first they were going the other way.  Their past lifestyles did not disqualify them from the Kingdom.  Their repentance and faith were demonstrated by their obedience to Jesus, because of the preaching of John the Baptist.  They listen, heard, repented and obeyed.  In the parable terms, they said no to the Father, but then turned around and went out to work.

The parable continues “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.”  If the first son represented the tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners, than the second son represents the religious leaders, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees.  In the parable we see that the Father appealed to both of his kids as Sons.  Knowing they were the son of their faith should have made them willing to do his will.  And we see that one did his will and the other did not.  We see the second son answering His father with the word Sir.  The word for Sir is Kyrie which means Lord.  The Second Son was calling Him Lord but ended up not doing what he was asked.  The second son was one who said the right things but didn’t do the right things.  Very much like the religious leaders, the teachers, and the Pharisees.  They looked like they were doing God’s will but they refused to believe John’s message not only about repentance but about the Messiah as well.  They were keeping up external appearances of religion but their hearts were not right with God.  They had the external form of religion but were missing the heart.  They refused to do what John said even though they looked like God’s chosen ones.  Just like the second son, the religious leaders, teachers of the law, and the Pharisees, seem to be saying yes to the Father, but in actuality didn’t go.  They didn’t obey, didn’t repent, and didn’t follow what God the Father wanted from them.  

Then Jesus gets to the point of the parable as he brings the parable to a close.  He ends the parable with these words, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”  Talk about dropping a bombshell which would not have been accepted very well.  The outcasts of Jewish society, the Tax Collectors and Prostitutes were entering the Kingdom before and ahead of the Religious Leaders, the teachers and the Pharisees.  No doubt this didn’t make Jesus more popular with the religious leaders.  The religious leaders who should most exemplify uprightness, did not believe, while those who are thought to be, unrighteous did believe and so entered the Kingdom.  The “outsiders” became “insiders” while the “insiders” were on the outside looking in, by their own lack of belief and lack of repentance.  With this ending statement Jesus is again confronting the “people of God” and waiting for their reaction to see if they are really the “people of God”.  Someone said, in relation to this ending of the parable that, “Jesus is trying to make the religious leaders “jealous” when the leaders saw ‘these kind of people’ repenting, changing their lifestyle, etc.. “ It should have made them wake up.  It should have led them to their own repentance.  But they weren’t convicted.  They didn’t honestly even feel like they needed to repent.  Because after all, they were the good and right ones.  Those other people only need to repent.  But they also felt threatened by these outsiders and they really didn’t want to be in the same kind of Kingdom that would let these “sinners”, these tax collectors and prostitutes in and on level playing field with the righteous ones who worked hard to earn their own way, or so they thought.  You can almost hear them saying, “But Jesus it isn’t fair that these people are entering the Kingdom before us.  We work hard.  We fast.  We pray.  We wash our hands.  We follow every rule.  Every jot and tittle.  But here are these sinners.  These people who don’t follow and don’t play by the same rules.  These people who live a filthy life.  And yet they get in a head of us.  How is that fair?”  And Jesus probably would have responded, “Of course it isn’t fair.  But all you have to do is not only say you’ll go, like the second son, but actually go.  Say Lord, I will follow you and then actually do it.”,    What matters is living for God, not saying the right words.  The religious leaders were good at talking righteous talk, but their stubborn, unrepentant hearts showed that repentant sinners would enter the Kingdom before them.  

So there are really two points to this whole parable.  First, it spells out the fact that Jesus wants more than just our lip service, and our external obedience.  Jesus wants our hearts and from there our obedience, lived out into the world.  He really wants us to combined the two sons, and when he calls, he wants us to say Yes we’ll go, and then actually go.  Neither son was really in the right.  Obviously one was more in the right than the other but neither was fully in the right.  They both brought dishonor to their Father.  The first by his words, “No.  I won’t go.”  The second by his deeds, “but he did not go.”  If you want to truly follow Jesus, say you’ll follow him by your words, and then put your words into actions and truly follow Jesus, his example, and his life, death and resurrection.  The challenge is to make sure we are responding to Jesus, allowing Him to confront us at any pony where we have been like the second son.  

The second point is that in God’s Kingdom the outsiders can really become insiders, and the insiders can become outsiders.  There is no one who we can write off as being too far outside God’s reach or God’s Kingdom.  The minute we right someone off, we play judge and we become the Pharisees.  And then the outsiders enter into the Kingdom before us.  What is your reaction to an “outsider” who becomes an “insider”?  Do we throw open the doors and say welcome?  Do we get made and say “what are you doing here?”  It reminds me of something Mike Yaconelli, an amazing man who loved teenagers, said in one of his books.  He said, “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).” 

Let me finish by asking a few questions that I believe Jesus may be asking each of us (and our community) this morning.

  1. Are we participating in the Kingdom of God, not yet, but already arrived?
  2. Are we committed to active response and obedience to God and not just lip service?
  3. Are we becoming a member of God’s spiritual family?
  4. Are we showing a commitment to the Lost and the excluded?  The outsiders if you will (which really as Mike Yaconelli said..are really all of us)
  5. Are we willing to sacrifice when necessary, on behalf of the Kingdom?
  6. Which of us is doing the will of God?  

Let’s spend some time talking about the parable, how God is letting the outsiders become insiders, and what God may be saying through the parable to each one of us and our community as a whole. 

1.  What thoughts, insights, questions, comments, etc.. do you have regarding the Parable of the Two Sons, and/or the message?

2.   Put yourself in the shoes of both sons.  Share a time when you have been like the first son, when you said no I won’t go, but then went.  Share a time when you have been like the second son, when you said yes I’ll go but didn’t.  

 3.  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? 

Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom Week 5

This past Sunday we did something a little different when it came to the message time.  Because it was a Sunday where a lot of people were away, we decide that instead of doing a "traditional" message that we would explore our Scripture text for the morning, Luke 9:23-26, using Lectio Divina.  

Below is how you do a group Lectio Divina, though you can use it for your own spiritual practice as well.  In fact, I would encourage you this week to spend some time using this spiritual exercise along with our text for the morning to see what God might be saying to you through it.  And if you do it, I'd be interested in hearing how it went.

Practicing Lectio Divina as a group

Begin by identifying an individual to lead the process. This person will lead the process by reading the selected text three times. Each reading is followed by a period of silence after which each person is given the opportunity to briefly share what they are hearing as they listen to God.

First Reading
During the first reading, read the text aloud twice. Read through slowly. The purpose of the first reading is for each person to hear the text and to listen for a word, phrase or idea that captures their attention. As group members recognize a word, phrase or idea, they are to focus their attention on that word, repeating it.

Second Reading
During the second reading, read the text again. This time, listeners are to focus their attention on how the word, phrase or idea speaks to their life that day.
What does it mean for you today? How is Christ, the Word, speaking to you about your life through this word, phrase or idea? What is Christ, the Word, speaking
to you about your life through this word, phrase, or idea? After the reading, allow a brief period of silence and then invite group members to share briefly what they have heard.

Third Reading
Read the text again. This time, listeners are to focus on what God is calling them to do or to become. Experiencing God’s presence changes us. It calls us to something. During this final reading, what is God calling you to do or to be as a result of this experience? After the third reading, allow a period of silence, and then invite group members to share what they are being called to do or to be. Finish the exercise by having each one pray for the person on his or her right. 

 

Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom Week 4

Matt. 20:1-16

The upside down Kingdom – “The first will be last and the last will be first”

Parables were told by Jesus to answer questions, they were often used for shock value to get us thinking or to expose something in the hearer’s hearts.

Context of where this parable falls in Matthew:

  • Instructing the disciples on the way of life that their soon to be crucified but risen Lord requires in the reign of heaven:

  • Community relationships marked by humility, mutual consideration 18:1-14
    19-
    20 utilize the audience’s knowledge of the four standard elements of the ancient world’s

    hierarchical household structure to propose a different order for households of the reign of God.

  • Jesus resists the unlimited power of the husband over the wife 19:3-12,

  • calls all disciples to live the marginal existence of children 19:13-15,

  • opposes the use of wealth as the means of defining human identity and social

    relationships 19:23, 16-30,

  • Urges all disciples to imitate Jesus’ act of service (his death, 20:17-19, 28 as servants and

    slaves for each other 20: 17-28.
    He offers disciples roles of the marginalized, eunuchs, children, and servants and slaves.

    This parable comes right after the question of Peter “Then Peter said in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?

    Jesus answers with “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.Followed by this parable.

    So what is Jesus getting at here?
    This parable has had many interpretations

    • Historical allegory: Spans Israel’s history

    • Theological eisegesis: To teach that God’s appointed way of salvation is by grace

      and not by works

    • Social: pointing out the care of the landowner for the oppressed

    • Urgency: of the harvest bringing others into the Kingdom

In light of where it falls and who Jesus is speaking to, I believe it is much simpler than these in depth interpretations and that it can affect us in the same way it must have affected the disciples who heard it. It is intended to shock our sensitivities.

I believe it was meant as a heart check and as a warning as well as a message of God’s scandalous grace and to teach us how God’s values are so very different from the values of the world we live in.

Let’s put this in present day context:

You work a job that you love, you work 40 hours a week and get paid $45,000 a year. You are at the annual Christmas party and you are seated next to someone who does the same job as you. In speaking with them you come to know that they only work 15 hours a week. They proceed to tell you they love the job as well and can’t believe that they have a job they love and how gracious the owners are to pay them $45,000 salary and can imagine that you do very well working the 40 hours a week that you do. How do you feel in that moment? Suddenly your perspective shifts and your attitude changes.

Let’s go back to the culture the story was told in and imagine the two perspectives of the day laborers that night when explaining their day to their wives.

Gods value system is scandalous! What a strange merit system regardless of labors expended no one earns either more or less than the other Gods gift is lavish and right.

We like fairness assurance, order, predictability, control, hierarchy. We live in and promote a wage based society.

What happens when divine goodness trumps human fairness? Grace is dangerous. It reverses business as usual.

Grace reveals the goodness of God. Wages reveal human effort. Grace seeks unity and inclusion. Wages make distinctions and separate.

Tragedy of a wage based life blinds us to the presence of grace, can make us resentful of grace, goodness and beauty in the life of another. Separates/isolates us from others, we set up standards and expectations of others and eventually of God.

Neither group owned the vineyard; both groups needed work and were invited to join in the work.

We see this theme throughout Gods word: The sinful woman who wept at Jesus feet neither could pay the debt. The prodigal son (compare perspectives).

Two lessons for me through this passage:

  • Perspective: have I lost the thrill of partnering with God on His mission, how has my love and thrill of him grown cold? (share examples)   Judgement: the judgements I have made on others (share examples). What happens in your heart when you make a judgement?

  • The lavish grace of God in comparison to our human understanding and capacity.

    How do we live from the proper perspective? How do we get there?

    Phil. 2:3-11 the humility (mindset) that is ours in Christ Jesus two different interpretations

    We cry out to God, to break us and change our hearts, to renew our passion and the awe of His grace in our lives, to break our judgmental attitudes.

    So what is the message for each of us and for this community? What areas does the Lord want to address in us?

    May we all be led to a shocking examination of our perspectives and our hearts, leading to humility and unity in the body of Christ! 

Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom Week 3

Today we continue our series Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom looking at teachings of Jesus that seem so upside down from the world in which we live.  Seem so opposite of what we are taught growing up in our world today (and also then as well).  

Two weeks ago Matt, Laura and Eric helped us explore the way up is down and what humility as a follower of Jesus looks like.  Last week we talked about this radical, subversive, countercultural call that Jesus wants his disciples to live out, the call to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those that curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us.  

This week we’ll be exploring a question that always seemed to be on the lips of the disciples….who is the greatest in the Kingdom?  And as is the case in Jesus teaching, it isn’t what the disciples (or you and I) would think.  It is again another upside down Kingdom answer that Jesus gives.  

Let’s explore this question together and see how Jesus answers this question about greatness in the Kingdom.  To do so let’s turn to Matthew 18:1-5.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.  And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

So in this story we see the disciples coming to Jesus and asking him who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.  We know that this question was something that the disciples thought a lot about.  We know that the argued about where to sit when they ate.  They thought a lot about place, power and prestige.  And they dialogued around who was greater than the others.  

Something else that we also need to know is that Matthew talks a lot about the Kingdom of Heaven, which is just another way of saying Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is where the rule and reign of Jesus/heaven touch down on the earth.  So let’s not think in the terms of Kingdom of Heaven meaning this place, where you go when you die, where Jesus is King.  Let’s think of here and now and the not yet, where Jesus rules and reigns right here and right now, where heaven and earth overlap and interlock, but also at the eschaton when Jesus will fully rule and reign.  

When the disciples asked Jesus this question they no doubt had a list of people that they thought would make the Greatest in the Kingdom list.  Each of them thought that they would be on the list.  But no doubt they had people who had done great things for the Jewish people (and by definition for God).  People like Judas Maccabeus, who led the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire (167–160 BCE). The Jewish feast of Hanukkah ("Dedication") commemorates the restoration of Jewish worship at the temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE, after Judah Maccabee removed the Hellenistic statuary.  And so they asked Jesus hoping that they would be on the list and that their own heroes (usually those who took up the sword to defeat the “evil” powers that be) would also be on the list.  But Jesus, as he so often did, flipped the answer upside down, and answered the question in a way that none of the disciples would have ever thought to answer it in.  Jesus took their list and threw it out the window.  

After the disciples asked him the question of who was the greatest in the Kingdom, Jesus finds a child and brought that child in the middle of the conversation.  He answered their question by showing them a child and saying, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  This was a radical, upside-down, countercultural way to answer the question, because no one thought that children would have been on the list.  You see children in the ancient world were frequently seen as only half-human until they had reached puberty, perhaps for the worrying reason that until they were available as sexual partners- adults wouldn’t want to know about them.  Children in the ancient world were property and were to be seen and not heard.  According to commentator R.T. France, “A child was a person of no importance in Jewish society, subject to the authority of His elders, not taken seriously except as a responsibility, one to be looked after, not one to be looked up to.”  Girls, especially bore the brunt of this.  They suffered the most.  Newborn girls were often simply thrown away- left to starve or be eaten by predators or sold for prostitution at an early age.  

When we see the Greek word for child here in this text what we need to know that the word for child in the NT is neither masculine or feminine but neuter.  A child wasn’t a He or She but an it.  While there may be no way to figure out if this child was a boy or a girl, my best guess, and one that would be even more upside down and countercultural from the prevailing culture, would be that this child was a little girl.  A girl would make with special clarity the point Jesus was wanting to get at.  In the disciples minds a girl child would be the weakest, most vulnerable, and least significant human being in their mind.  But to Jesus and in the Kingdom the weakest, most vulnerable, least significant human begin you can think of is the clearest possible signpost to what the Kingdom of God will be like.  In God’s Kingdom, the future time when heaven rules of earth- won’t be about survival of the  fittest.  It won’t be the result of some long evolutionary process in which the strongest, fastest, the loudest, the angriest, people get to the front ahead of everyone else.  

No, when the Kingdom rules and reigns in our lives now, and also when it comes into it’s fullness, it is the humble, the powerless, the marginalized, the poor and oppressed, the pushed aside who are great in the Kingdom.  And in that day and age who more represented the humble, the powerless, the marginalized, the poor and oppressed and the pushed aside then children?  

So Jesus calls his followers then and he calls his followers now to become like little children if they want to enter into his Kingdom.  He is not saying that we are to have childish faith, where we scream to get our own way, where we whine and complain, and where we want to be all about us.  No.  We are to have childlike faith not childish faith.  

But what does it look like to be great in the Kingdom like a little child?  I have a few thoughts about what it means to be great in the Kingdom like a child.  

First, I think about humility.  Most children know that they don’t know it all.  They realize they need to grow and learn and don’t have it all figured out.  That is something those of us who are following Jesus need to remember with our theology.  We don’t have it all figured out.  Author Leonard Sweet puts it this way,  “I warn students that at my very best, 80 percent of my theology is correct, 20 percent is wrong. The problem is, I'm not sure which is the 80 percent and which isn’t.”  I’m not saying that we should keep an open hand with everything regarding God and our theology.  For me, my core and what isn’t up for debate with me revolves around the person, mission and ministry of Jesus.  His teachings, his life, his death and his resurrection and how we redeems all of creation, and sets it all right.  That, for me is my center and I’m willing to explore how to grow deeper into my center but I’m not budging on that.  But there are a ton of other things in my theology that I’m not 100 percent sure of, that I am willing to look at again, and explore some more.  I am saying that if we think we have God in our box and we have him figured out, he will blow apart our box, squirm out of it, and end up somewhere else.  And if we believe God is in our box, that God is a very very small God.  So let’s hold our theology and belief about God with some humility especially in our interactions with those who are seeking and questioning.  After all the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.  

Closely connected to that is the idea that to be great in the Kingdom, and to approach faith like a little child, is to be inquisitive and approach faith with eyes wide open, like you are seeing it for the first time.  If you have ever spent any time at all with young kids you know that one of their favorite words is why.  Why is the sky blue?  What is the grass green?  Why do you have grey hair?  Why do you have a mustache mommy?  I think all too often we get tired of all the why questions, and then we transfer that thought to God and question whether God gets tired of why questions.  But I really truly believe that one of the thing that Jesus was getting at by bringing a child into the disciple’s midst that day, was saying that if we are to be great in the Kingdom, we need to be inquisitive and ask God questions.  We might be afraid of people’s questions and I’ve heard it before, “Why can’t you just believe?” and they frame it in such a way that they quote this text as a way to backup their thoughts about not asking questions…But that is really just childish faith and not childlike faith.  But God is not afraid of our questions…so  ask him.  And I think a community of people who follow after this God should not be afraid of questions either.  One of the dreams that I have for this community is to be the type of community who can have substantial conversations around things that matter most, and be open to questions, and doubt.  So instead of being known as a people who are afraid of questions, let’s be like little kids and ask God and each other a bunch of questions and then let’s work together, let’s dialogue around these questions, and let’s be open to others asking questions as well.  Maybe something that we could do quarterly is to have a night full of questions about faith.  Maybe called Doubt Night or Elephant in the Room or A Night of Questions.  

Lastly, what does it mean to be great in the Kingdom?  Look at what Jesus says himself at the end of our Scripture text.  Verse 5 says, “And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”  Jesus is certainly calling for his disciples, the church, to welcome children into their midst.  To move away from how society in that time saw children- seen and not heard, to seeing children who are following Jesus not as the church of tomorrow, but as the church of today as well.  We are a family here church and part of our family are children (though we could definitely use more children).  So are we welcoming children in his name? Are we helping the children we do have find, experience, and come to know Jesus?  Or do we wish we could just see them but not hear them.  How many of us never engage the children in our midst in conversation, pretending that they aren’t there.  This is wrong.  If you want to be great in the Kingdom of God, then welcome the children that we already have in our midst, and also those who may come in the future.  

But it also goes beyond children.  Jesus is also calling his disciples, his church, to be a people who embrace the broken, the hurting, the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast.  He is calling his disciples not to run after the seats of power.  He is calling his disciples not to fawn over the rich, powerful, beautiful, and the privileged.  We are to discriminate based on power, money, and influence.  We are to be open to all people, all walks and kinds of people.  Rich, poor, white, black, American, European, Japanese, etc…  And we are to welcome them in Jesus name, because according to Him, when we welcome them, we are welcoming him.  Kind of sounds like the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 doesn’t it?  How are we doing church in welcoming children and those who are like children (how they were seen in 1st Century?)

So let’s talk about a little further about what God may be saying to us as individuals and as a community about being great in the Kingdom, about being humble, about asking questions, and about welcoming others into our midst.  Let’s see what God may have for us in our time of unpacking and discussion. 

Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom Week 2

Today we are looking at our second week of our series Upside Down: Life in the Kingdom.  This series is looking at how our lives when they follow Jesus seem to be upside down from the values and norms of culture.  

Last week Matt covered the message of The Way Up is down and looked at Humility and did a great job of it, along with some help from his friends. 

Today we are going to be covering the theme of loving your enemies.  

Before we jump into the Scripture text for the morning, I want to share an experience that I had earlier this week that sheds light on our Scripture and our theme.  This past week I traveled to Tampa, FL to attend the 2015 Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren, of which our community is a part of denominationally speaking.  One of the things that took place during the conference was the participation in the conference of the EYN women’s choir.  EYN stands for Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria and is the largest Church of the Brethren body in the world, larger than us here in the US.  Many of you know what has been happening in Nigeria in relation to Boko Haram. We heard about the Chibook girls who were abducted in April of 2014.  The majority of these girls were EYN members.  

There were two things that happened during conference that truly stood out to me.  The first was when there was a “wall” of victims of Boko Haram in front of the gathered body.  This “wall” stretched from one side of the stage to the other and each section of the “wall” was around 5 feet tall and had names of people killed in the conflict.  It was deeply moving and ripped my heart out to see those thousands of names.  Names of men, women and children massacred in cold blood from 2008 to the present.  And to see those who were holding the sections, knowing that probably every single one of them had lost friends, family, and relatives to the senseless acts of violence perpetrated by Boko Haram.   

The second thing that happened during the conference was that the EYN Women’s Choir sang several times throughout the conference.   One of the first times they sang was during a worship gathering early in the week (it was either Saturday night or Sunday morning).  During one song sang in their native tongue they sang about Christ’s call for those who follow after him to forgiveness.  One of the lines in the song was something like “What kind of person are you if you can’t forgive?”  Here was these women who had suffered so much, who stared at the face of evil, who no doubt had friends and family members murdered, and possibly even been attacked themselves, up on stage singing about God’s call to forgiveness.  God’s call to love our enemies.  Over and over the call was for prayer for Boko Haram.  In those prayers and messages there was no hint of hatred, bitterness or rage.  No, they had a love for Boko Haram and wants them to come to know Jesus and his saving love and forgiveness.  I was so struck with the fact that those dear sisters and brothers understood something that I don’t.  They understood what Jesus meant when he called for his disciples to love their enemies.  

Let’s look at our text today and see what Jesus is calling us to live out in his upside down Kingdom.  Let’s look at Luke 6:27-36.  

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.  Do to others as you would have them do to you. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.  And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.  But love your enemies, do good to them,  and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

From first glance we can obviously see that this text is radical, subversive, and upside down from the world and culture.  This is not how we are taught to live according to the ways and attitudes of the Kingdom of this world.  But Jesus call here is for those of us who would follow after Him, and in following after Him and His Kingdom, we live an upside down existence.  

Jesus spends no time in getting right to this upside down call of loving of enemy.  In fact the first four things he calls his followers to, are so upside down, that in our fleshly state, we can’t see how this call even makes any logical sense.  If we are to follow what Jesus is calling us to, we don’t need to do an external change of behavior, what is truly needed is a change of heart.  And this change of heart can only come from an encounter with Jesus.  One of the questions that came to my mind when hearing the EYN Choir was “where does this kind of love, forgiveness  come from?”  I knew the answer, the only answer that would allow someone who had faced so much hell on earth, to turn around and love the ones who had inflicted so much pain on their lives.  The answer to that question has to be an encounter with the living, resurrected Jesus.  

The first thing we see in verse 27 is Jesus call for us to love our enemies.  If you were sitting there listening to Jesus speaking and you heard his call to love your enemies, your mind no doubt went to the Roman empire.  That was the largest enemy that the people of Israel had.  The empire that taxed them heavily, took over their land, and crucified them if they go out of line.  So when Jesus was calling on them to love their enemy, he no doubt meant that they were supposed to love the Romans.  

But what does it practically look like to love your enemies?  To truly flush out in the every day this upside down call of love for enemy?  The rest of verse 27 and verse 28 give us some clues about loving one’s enemy and what it looks like.  Jesus goes on to say after his call to love our enemy, that we are to, “do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”  Talk about upside down- life in the Kingdom.  What Jesus lays out in this 3 simple to understand, but extremely difficult to live out actions, is what it truly means to live an upside down- Kingdom of God existence.  There are passages in Scripture that can be hard to truly understand what they really mean.  I don’t believe this Scripture is one of those.  It is really easy to understand that we are to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us.  Very very simple to understand, but very very difficult to actually live out and put into practice.  Usually these are the last 3 things we want to do to our enemy.  Instead of doing good we want to get them back for what they did to us.  We want revenge.  When we get cursed we want to curse back.  When we get mistreated, we want to turn around and mistreat them.  The last thing we want to to do is to do good to those who don’t want to do good to us.  The last thing we want to do is to bless those who are cursing us.  The last thing we want to do is to pray for those who are mistreating us.  And when we live in the flesh, these 3 things are next to impossible.  We can't will ourselves enough to live them out.  We can't work enough love up in our lives to respond to evil with good.  No, these kinds of reactions, this kind of love that would rather love and forgive then hate and get revenge can only come into our lives through the power, grace, and love of Jesus.  After all, he isn’t calling us to do anything that he hasn’t already done.  You are to be like this because this what he is like.  He didn’t show love only to his friends, but he also showed love to his enemies, weeping over the city that had rejected his plan for peace, forgiving those who had crucified him while hanging on the cross, etc..

You see Jesus is saying that it really is easy to love those who love you.  It’s easy to do good to those who have been good to you.  It’s easy to loan to someone you know who will repay you.  But it’s really difficult to love your enemy when they want to harm you, curse you, mistreat you, abuse you, and want your downfall.  But that is exactly what Jesus is calling his disciples to then, and that is what he is calling his disciples to today.  This radical, counter-cultural, subversive, upside down, Kingdom of God life that Jesus is calling us to, if we really want to live this out, it will require our death.  No, not in the literal sense (though it has costed others literally to lose their lives by loving their enemy instead of fighting back).  No if we want to love our enemy the way that Jesus wants, we will have to die to ourselves and follow him.  Just a few chapters after our text for the morning, in Luke 9:23, we find these words, and unless we take them to heart, and seek to live them out, our topic about loving our enemies is really moot.  Luke 9:23 says, “Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”  Unless you die to yourself and seek to follow Jesus, all this conversation about loving your enemy, doing good to those who hate you, blessing those who curse you, and praying for those who are mistreating you, makes absolutely no sense.  And not only does it not make any sense, you actually won’t want to follow Jesus into his upside Kingdom life.  So before you can love your enemy, the first thing you really need to do is to get on the cross, die to yourself, and then get off the cross and begin to live His life through your life.  And part of this life living through you is not only the desire to, but also the ability to.  The desire and ability to look at your enemies and to love them.  The desire and ability to pray for those who are or want to mistreat you.  The desire and ability to actually do good to those who are or want to harm you.  The desire to bless those who are cursing you.  And the desire and ability to repay evil not with more evil, but to repay evil with good.  

That is where the EYN women’s choir and the whole EYN church got it from.  That is where they got the desire and ability to love their enemies and to forgive them. They got it from Jesus and that is where we will get it from.  

So let’s flesh this out a little more fully.  Let’s talk about the text, let’s tell stories of when we have seen this passage fleshed out in our world, let’s talk about how we might love our enemies more, and let’s talk about what God might be saying to us through his word, the messages, and our conversation together.