SENT Week 3: The Coming Messenger

Today we enter into the third week of Advent.  Over the last two weeks we have been exploring our Advent theme of SENT.  We have talked about Jesus being SENT as the coming Lord.  During that first week we looked at the second coming of Jesus, and how he will come back to set this world right again.  That the waiting that Isaiah and the people experienced waiting for the messiah to come and “rend the heavens and come down” is also the waiting that we are in the midst of for Jesus to once again “rend the heavens and come down” and renew, recreation, and redeem not only our lives, but the entire creation that is all around us.  

Last week Matt did a great job of leading us in our second week of SENT talking about the coming Deliverer.   That in the midst of the struggle, strife, and brokenness that we experience (individually, communally, and in the world) that Jesus appeared to deliver his people out of bondage and into hope, peace, joy and love (the traditional advent themes).  That he came to rescue, and redeem.  

Today we are three weeks into the Christian season called Advent.  A time of waiting..a time that a friend of mine says is when “Christians stand on their tippy toes”  A time that we wait for the Christ child to come.  A time that we wait for Jesus, the word made flesh, to incarnate the Kingdom of God in the here and now, and also the not yet.  A time of waiting and watching and hoping for the Kingdom of God to come in its fullness.  

During this advent season it seems like it is even harder to wait for the world to be the way that it should be.  For shalom to break into our world, our world which seems like it is full of violence, hatred, evil, and sin.  It seems like everywhere we look today brokenness abounds.  We hear of more and more violence or violent language in the name of religion..whether that religion be Islam or Christianity.  We hear about the thousands and thousands of people displaced from their homes each day becoming refugees and the largest humanitarian crisis that our world has probably ever faced.  And we hear about hatred, fear, anger, and judgment coming from leaders- whether those leaders are politicians, businessmen, president’s of colleges (even Christian colleges) and even Pastors.  It seems like now more than ever we need the Kingdom of God to break into our world.  We need Jesus to break into our world and we also need those of us who follow Jesus and His Kingdom to work towards justice and shalom, the way things should be.   

Let’s look at our Scriptures today and see what they might have to say to us about waiting, Advent, Jesus and the breaking in of His Kingdom into our world right now.  

Turn with me to Isaiah 61:1-4 which says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy

instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a plantingof the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated;

they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.”

This passage from Isaiah is known as a Messianic passage.  That it looks forward to the coming of the Messiah who would fulfill everything that Isaiah was writing about in this passage.  The Messiah which means anointed one, was expected to come and proclaim good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for captives, and release from darkness for prisoners.  We see this passage predicting the mission and ministry of Jesus 700 years before he walked on the face of this planet.  In fact we see Jesus, when talking about his mission- his platform so to speak- reading these very words from the scroll of Isaiah in Luke 4:16-22- and then saying “Today these words have been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Obviously Jesus is claiming that he is the one.  He is the Messiah that the People of God, the Israelites had been waiting for ever since before Isaiah wrote these words.  Ever since the People of God longed and hoped for and prayed for a deliverer, a Messiah to come.  But the interesting thing about all of this, is that after all the years of waiting for the Messiah to come, when he does come, they don’t recognize him.  And in fact after He basically claims that He is the Messiah, they want to throw him off a cliff.  He isn’t recognized as the Messiah, because he wasn’t doing what the People of God thought that the Messiah should do, or at least do it in the way they would have liked.  They were hoping for a Warrior Messiah- one who would ride in a strong war horse with a sword in hand, vengeance in his eyes, and a pension to make the Romans pay.  And then Jesus shows up not being what they hoped for, and they don’t recognize the Messiah at all.  In fact, I am beginning to wonder if we would recognize Jesus if he showed up here today in the good Ole USA.  Sometimes when I hear things in the news said by Christians, I definitely say…no we wouldn’t recognize him.  

So Isaiah writes these messianic words of what it would be like when the Messiah would come.  So the question that I have is what does it look like when the Kingdom of God shows up and breaks out around us?  Let’s look at the text.

Verse 1 answers this question about the in breaking of the Kingdom this way, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners”  When the Kingdom breaks in it looks like the broken are healed, the mourning find comfort, the prisoner is set free, and the captives leave their chains.  What does it look like when the Kingdom breaks into our reality?  It looks exactly like Jesus and his mission and ministry.   Jesus- the Messiah came to heal the damage that sin has brought into our world.  Sin impoverishes but Jesus the anointed one brings good news to the poor.  Sin breaks hearts but Jesus the Messiah heals the brokenhearted.  Sin makes us captives but Jesus the anointed one proclaims liberty and freedom.  Sin brings grief but Jesus the Messiah brings comfort.  

God didn’t just send another prophet, He SENT his Son, the Kingdom right before our very eyes.  The Kingdom is here and now and not yet because of Jesus.  The Kingdom breaks into our world because of Jesus.  He is the one that proclaims good news to the poor, binds up the brokenhearted, proclaims freedom for captives, and release from darkness those bound in chains.  He is the one that the Kingdom is advanced through.  We are receivers of his Kingdom mission and ministry.  

But that doesn’t mean that we just receive it and we then wait around until either we die or he comes back.  No.  We, who have received the Kingdom in our lives have a job to do as well.  What is it?  Look at verse 4 and notice the transition in the words that are used.  “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.”  The ones in verse 1 who have experience the mission and ministry of Jesus the Messiah are now the ones in verse 4 who are seeking to live out the Kingdom in this world.  They are the ones who are rebuilding and restoring, because they have been rebuilt and restored and redeemed.  God loves to restore ruins and he wants to use us to restore and rebuild that which is broken and ruined..whether the ruins are people, or cities or problems like homelessness, hunger, the refugee crisis, etc…He is the true anointed one, the Messiah, but then he anoints us (anoint means to be filled with) to be about the work of His Kingdom.  He anoints us to proclaim good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and release from darkness.  That was his calling and this is also our calling.  

So Isaiah 61 does a great job of giving us a picture of what it looks like when the Kingdom of God touches down on earth…it obviously and first and foremost looks like Jesus and his mission and ministry.  But what else does it look like besides that?  To answer that let’s take a quick glance at the Magnificant found in Luke 1:46b-55 (which Laura read at the beginning of our time together).  Luke 1:46b-55 is Mary’s prayer and her prayer goes like this, “And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.  From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him,

from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”

Based on Mary’s prayer what does it look like when the Kingdom touches down on earth?  First, it looks like worship.  Mary says it herself, “My soul glorifies the Lord.”  If we want to be about the things that we mentioned before found in Isaiah 61, it must start from a heart of worship, because of what the Lord has done for us.  We should glorify and honor God because he has preached good news to us.  We should glorify and honor God because he has bound up our broken heart.  We should glorify and honor God because he has freed us from captivity.  We should glorify and honor God because he has released us from darkness.  We should be like the wise men who came with their gifts and laid them at the feet of the King.   

Secondly, when the Kingdom of God touches down on earth it looks like a reversal of fortune.  Look at verses 51-53, “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty”.  Notice the reversals of fortune.  The proud are scattered.  The rulers are brought down and the humble are lifted up.  The hungry are filled with good things while the rich are sent away empty.  The coming of God’s Kingdom will bring changes that affect every aspect of life.  This prayer is about mercy, hope , fulfillment, reversal, revolution, victory over evil, and of God coming to the rescue at last.  

So I close this part of the message with a thought/scripture and some questions for us to discuss in our discussion time.  

First, John 20:21 puts it this way, As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.  Jesus, the Messiah was sent to our world to embody the Kingdom of God.  He is sending us to do likewise.  

Secondly here are some questions that we can talk about together.  What part of the Kingdom coming to earth in the form of Jesus mission and ministry do you need most in your life at this time (see Isaiah 61)?  How can your life and our life together as a community embody and enact the good news of the Kingdom in this world?  And lastly what is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it and what is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

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

2.  What part of the Kingdom coming to earth in the form of Jesus mission and ministry do you need most in your life at this time (see Isaiah 61)? 

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?

SENT: Week 2: The Coming Deliverer

This morning, we continue “Sent”, our Advent series. Last week - the first week of the series, we talked about The Coming Lord - of Jesus rending the heavens, coming to earth. This week, our focus is on Jesus as The Coming Deliverer. Please open your Bible, or find in your Bible app, Isaiah 40:1-11. It says this:

1 “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

6 A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.

8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

9 Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

10 Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.

11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

I love that last part, which shows that God, Israel’s Deliverer & our Redeemer, is a mighty ruler, but also as a tender shepherd. The part in verses 3 & 4, where it says, “make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” reminds me of the Dukes of Hazzard theme song. Does anyone else remember that? Waylon Jennings sang, “Straightnin' the curves/Flattenin’ the hills/Someday the mountain might get 'em/But the law never will”. But really, what does it mean to make straight a highway for God, to lift up valleys, make the mountains & hills low, & to level out the rough ground? These words were written in a time in which the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed, & the people of Israel had been exiled by the Babylonians, in which a huge portion of them were broken from their families’ ties to what was their Promised Land & relocated in Mesopotamia. One meaning of these phrases would seem to refer to the literal physical return of the people of Israel & Judah, led by Jehovah Himself. This would have been especially meaningful to the original hearers - a nation that had experienced God as Deliverer, with Moses as His agent. They were yet again in need of a Deliverer, in a very tangible way. Babylon was eventually overthrown by Cyrus the Great of Persia, &, according to the record of the Cyrus Cylinder - a Persian historical artifact - the Persian commander took the city of Babylon “without any battle”; the soldiers “strolled along, their weapons stowed away”.

At least one hundred-forty years before Cyrus conquered Babylon, he was prophesied of in Isaiah 44:24-28:

24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and He who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself; 25 Who frustrates the signs of the babblers, and drives diviners mad; Who turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolishness; 26 Who confirms the word of His servant, and performs the counsel of His messengers; Who says to Jerusalem, ‘You shall be inhabited,’ to the cities of Judah, ‘You shall be built,’ and I will raise up her waste places; 27 Who says to the deep, ‘Be dry! And I will dry up your rivers’; 28 Who says of Cyrus, ‘He is My shepherd, and he shall perform all My pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, “You shall be built,”

And to the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.” ended the captivity, & even provided for the Israelites to rebuild the temple.

In fact, Ezra 1:1-4 describes that part of the prophecy coming to fruition:

1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying,

2 Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: “All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me. And He has commanded me to build Him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah. 3 Who is among you of all His people? May his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (He is God), which is in Jerusalem. 4 And whoever is left in any place where he dwells, let the men of his place help him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, besides the freewill offerings for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.”

Lest you think that Isaiah only spoke of how Israel would be delivered from Babylon, consider Malachi. He prophesied after the building of the Second Temple, after the reign of Cyrus had ended. In Malachi 3:1, we read:

3 “Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,” says the Lord of hosts.

This would certainly run contrary to the interpretation of Cyrus as the “Messiah”, even though God, as Deliverer, used Cyrus in a real way by freeing God’s people from Babylon. Malachi suggests that there is another Deliverer to come, to offer a freedom greater than Israel had experienced before. The book of Isaiah contains many prophecies that also point to New Testament times.

Please turn over to Mark 1:1-8. Here, Mark leads off his account of the ministry of Jesus like this:

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the Prophets: “Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You.” [That is a reference to Malachi 3:1] 3 “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’” [That is a reference to Isaiah 40:3]

4 John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. 5 Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And he preached, saying, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. 8 I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John the Baptist is among my favorite characters in the New Testament. He is spoken of in the Gospel of Luke, where we learn about the angel Gabriel telling that Zechariah & Elizabeth (who was barren & past child-bearing age) would miraculously have a child, how he leaped in the womb when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visited. And the next we hear of John, he’s some sort of a Bear Grylls/prophet Elijah mix (Elijah is depicted in 2 Kings 1 in a similar wardrobe, too). John was a descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron, & was also an eccentric dude living out in the sticks. He was humble, but no delicate, withering flower. Let’s take a look at a few artists’ renderings of John the Baptist. (Show slides)

 When Jesus went to see John the Baptist, when they were both adults, “they asked him, saying, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 25 And they asked him, saying, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

26 John answered them, saying, “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. 27 It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.” 28 These things were done in Bethabara [or Bethany] beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

So what does this mean to us, 2,000 years later? There are a number of lessons we can draw here.

1. John the Baptist was in a place of much prominence, but he made certain it wasn’t about him. John lowered Himself & lifted up Jesus, & that made it possible for him to carry out his mission.
2. God has a plan, all of the time. God knew the dilemma that the Israelites were in, & He spoke through His prophets to show that He was in control & had a plan. In times of trouble, we cry out to God for answers, & we may feel aimless. But we can trust that God will give wisdom to those who ask for it, & joy when we can trust Him with results.
3. Endurance is made possible by hope. God may feel distant at times, but He wants us to know that we can trust Him, & He makes Himself known through Scripture, through other people, & through His still-small voice to our hearts.The Israelites could cling to God’s words through Isaiah; we can cling to Jesus’ words & those of the New Testament writers about Jesus’ work to bring the Kingdom of God, now & for eternity. And this hope isn’t only for us. We are to be vessels of Jesus’ love & grace to others, showing & telling them about the deliverance from sin & death that Jesus offers.

I will sum up my message with a few closing items. First, Hebrews 12:1-2:

12 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

In the song “Our Deliverer”, Third Day sang that:

Every burden one day will be lifted

Every broken heart will be redeemed

The Lord Almighty is coming to our rescue

Salvation’s waiting for all who will believe

And in the song “O Holy Night”, we are reminded:

    Truly He taught us to love one another

    His law is love, & His Gospel is peace

    Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother

    And in His Name, all oppression shall cease

“Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come for thee, O Israel.” And He come again. This is all good news for certain, & we can hope in the truth of that.

I’ll end my message with a song, a version of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, mixed with some words by the 15th century Christian Julian of Norwich. (Play “I Heard the Bells [All Will Be Well]”)

Now, let’s discuss this together.

1.  What thoughts, comments, questions, encouragement, or pushback would you offer about     these Scriptures & this topic?

2.  What is God saying to you that you should do about this? What is God saying to you that we as the Veritas community can do about this?

SENT: Week 1- The Coming Lord

Thousands of years ago a prophet of Israel spoke these words on behalf of the people of God.  They have reverberated through the annals of history.  They sum up the people of God’s cry in the midst of pain, brokenness, sin, and the feeling that God is distant and aloof from the world.  In Isaiah 64:1 we read, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down”  Isaiah prays that God would see the pain and brokenness of his people and come down.  Come down and begin to set things right.  

Have you ever prayed that prayer?  Lord, rend the heavens and come down.  Maybe you didn’t say it in those exact words.  Maybe they sounded like, “God would you come down and make it right?  God where are you in the midst of all the brokenness, pain, sin and violence in our world?  Are you even there?  Do you even care that this world seems like it is falling apart?”   When we look around and see all the destruction that is happening currently.  When we see ISIS, and Boko Haramcausing so much pain, devastation, and violence.  The police shootings, the protests, and the violence and racism at home.  When we see people not having enough to provide for their families.  When we see all the things that seem to be wrong in our world.  We all end up praying that prayer.  God just come down and make it right.  God why is there so much suffering in the world.  God do something.  And we wait.  We wait for God to act.  We may stand on the other side of history that Isaiah and the people of God in the Old Testament.  When their cry was for God to actually break into history and begin to set things right.  Their cry was answered 700 years later in the person, work and ministry of Jesus.   And while we stand on the other side of history after the coming of Jesus, we still find the cry of Isaiah on our tongues.  We still cry, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.”  We still wait for God to come and make things right.  To put the world right, the way that it should be.  

Today we begin the season in the Christian church known as Advent.  Advent is derived from the latin word adventus and means coming.  In the church we focus on three different comings.  1.  the birth of Jesus2.  the incarnation.  3.  the second coming of Jesus.  And it is the start of the Christian year.  A writer by the name of Joan Chittister writes: “The liturgical year does not begin at the heart of the Christian enterprise. It does not immediately plunge us into the chaos of the crucifixion or the giddy confusion of the resurrection. Instead, the year opens with Advent, the season which teaches us to wait for what is beyond the obvious. It trains us to see what is behind the apparent. Advent makes us look for God in all those places we have until now ignored.”   And so as we enter Advent today we wait.  We wait the coming of Jesus to set this world to right.  To fully redeem everything.  To bring Shalom (the way things should be) into it’s fullness, that which started when he came the first time.  We wait for his second coming and the recreation of the world.  

Let’s tun to Isaiah 64 and read Isaiah’s prayer on behalf of the remnant that had returned to Jerusalem after the exile.  Their hopes and dreams of how things will be when the returned to Jerusalem wasn’t playing out how they hoped.  Things weren’t perfect or the way they thought they should be.  And so the remanent prayers a prayer of Lament.  

Isaiah 64:1-9 says, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens( and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!  As when fire sets twigs ablaze

and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!  For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right,

who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you;

for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins. Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people.”  

As I mentioned this is a prayer of lament from the people of Israel the remanent returning from exile.  And this is also our prayer in the midst of Advent in the real world where things aren’t going well.  Where the world isn’t perfect and we are disillusioned.  This is the prayer of a pain brought on by the consequence of people’s sins, experienced most deeply as anger and alienation from God.  Their appeal is for God’s intervention- to heal the alienation and to halt the damage of their sins.  

So the prayer of lament begins with the people praying that God would come down.  To come down and engage in the brokenness of the world.  The people of God remembered the stories of God engaging with with their forefathers and mothers.  They recalled the stories of God trembling the mountain (Exodus 19:17-18…Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.  Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.)  They remembered the stories of God delivering the people from the hand of Egypt.  They recalled the amazing stories told to them from their parents.  And they wondered why God wasn’t showing up in that way again.  Why wasn’t God doing amazing things on behalf of his people again?  And so they cried out and waited.  

In verse 4 we read, “Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”  The remanent recall how God revealed himself in days past to those who waited for him.  They recall that God was truly God because of His actions on their behalf.  That no other god was able to hold a candle to Yahweh.  They recalled Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.  (1 Kings 18).  They recalled how Yahweh had just delivered them out of exile.  But when they got back, it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.  It was perfectly how they had imagined it.  And so they cried out and waited.  

This cry and waiting would last 700 years and they couldn’t have imagined how God would choose to reveal himself…in the coming of Jesus.  He shows us himself.  Do you want to know what God is like?  Look at Jesus. Do you want to know how God acts in the world?  Look at Jesus.  In sending Jesus, God reveals himself like never before.  Acts in a way that has never been done.  He reveals himself through the person of Jesus, His son.   

This is what we celebrate in Advent.  The first coming of Jesus…that we look back to.  And the second coming of Jesus…that we look forward to.  Jesus came to begin the process of recreating the world as it should be.  The work begun with his life, death, and resurrection, which continues throughout time and will culminate in his second coming, when this world will be as it should be.  The world as it was in the begin will be the way it is again.  The cries of the people of God for God to show up was answered in Jesus ultimately.  And our cries for God to show up will be answered in Jesus.  

And so they cried out and waited for God to show up.  But in the midst of the waiting they began to wonder a few things.  Why wasn’t God showing up in the way that they expected?  Did he even hear their cry and their longing for his engagement in the world?  Was it something that they did or weren’t doing that was causing God not to show up like he did before? If they did right wouldn’t God show up?  Maybe they were sinning against God and that was the reason He wasn’t showing up.  In verses 5-9 we read their thoughts. “You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you;

for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins. Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people.”  They equate their brokenness and sin to a menstruation cloth.  A garment used and considered defiled.  And because of the people’s sins, God seemed to be hiding himself from the people.  The failure to seek God is attributed to God’s hiding, seeking is futile because God has left the guilty to the consequences of their sin.  And the beg and plead even more, even though they say that God can’t be found.  They beg and plead for God’s hand, his presence and his deliverance.  The cried out and waited.  And, as I mentioned before, they waited 700 years to find the fulfillment of their cries and their longing.  Why we need Advent.  Why we celebrate Advent.  Why we look to Jesus.  Because of our sinful state.  Our brokenness not only on an individual level, but on a corporate and systematic level.  Our cries for deliverance is not just a cry for God to set things right in the world, but also a cry to set things right in ourselves.  We cry out for God to heal the violence, pain, death, and destruction that is going on around us.  But he didn’t just come to heal and restore and redeem the world from it’s sin, he also came to heal and restore and redeem us.  He came to put everything to right, individually, corporately and systematically.  In Jesus, we see that God is set on answering this prayer through restoration and healing. He comes down and He reveals himself, all for the purpose of restoring us and our relationship with Him. This is Advent. Our hearts are weighed down with gratitude. Out of our history of brokenness, Jesus crafts a future of restoration. 

And so we see the people of God in the Old Testament crying out for God to rend the heavens and come down.  To show up and put things to right.  And 700 years later Jesus shows up (why we celebrate Advent) and through his life, death, and resurrection, he redeems, restores, re-creates, and rescues all of creation, which includes us.  But we still wait, we still long, and we still see the effects of sin all around us and inside us.  We still cry out as the people of God for God to come down and set it right once and for all.  And in Mark 13 see Jesus talking about that time when the Son of Man will come back and set the world back the way things should be.  I’d encourage you to go and read that this week on your own.  When Shalom will come in its fullness.  And so we cry out and we wait.  We wait in this advent season for Jesus, his second coming, and for the world and for ourselves to be completely re-created.  

But what do we do in the meantime?  Do we just sit around for Jesus to come back?  What does it mean to “wait” during this advent time?  Where have we seen God show up and begin the process of redemption and recreation?  And how does God want to use you and us to bring about restoration for the people in our lives? How will you and I actively pursue that over this Advent season?  Let’s talk about those things together.  

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

2.  How might God be calling each of us (individually and corporately) to wait during this Advent season?  

3.  When and where have you seen God show up and begin the process of redemption and recreation?  

4.  How does God want to use you (and us together) to bring about restoration for the people in our lives and in the world around us?  How will you and I actively pursue that over this Advent season?

Divine Commodity Week 9: Teaching the World to Sing

So today we come to the conclusion of our Divine Commodity series.  In this series we have been exploring the person of Vincent Van Gogh, his art, consumerism, the church and following Jesus.  We have explored spiritual practices that we can begin to practice which confronts consumerism, and liberates our imaginations to live as Christ’s people in a consumer culture which is directly opposed to the values of the Kingdom of God.  

Over the last nine weeks we have explore spiritual practices like imagination, silence, identity rooted in Jesus and not our performance, communion with God, Christ centered relationships, taking up your cross, unity and last week we looked at the Biblical and missional call to hospitality.  Today we wrap it all up looking at God’s call to be on his mission in the world, to be about the advancement of his Kingdom, where heaven touches down on earth, where Shalom is breaking forth, but with a twist that confronts each and every one of us in our consumer driven culture.  Before we get to our text for the morning, his call to be on his mission, and the twist, let’s explore a little bit about our painting and a little bit more about Van Gogh.  

First, a quote from Van Gogh that I believe will set the stage for further discussion of our topic.  “Christ labored 30 years in a humble carpenter’s shop to fulfill God’s will.  And God’s will that in imitation of Christ, men should live and walk humbly on earth.  No reaching for the sky, but bowing to humble things, learning from the Gospel’s to be meek and humble of heart.”  So often in our consumer driven world we believe that bigger is better, faster is better than slower, and that popularity not only equals success but it also equates with legitimacy.  Continual growth and expending impact are how we’ve come to define success.  

But let’s take a look at Van Gogh’s painting The Sower, obviously based on a parable of Jesus.  Van Gogh painted 30 canvases of sowers throughout his career.  Simple peasants walking in a field scattering seed.  The sower represented, for Van Gogh 3 of his passions converging into one scene, his regard for nature, his respect for peasants, and his love for the Bible.  The Parable of the Sower made a deep impression on Van Gogh.  Not only was The Sower inspired by the Bible it was also inspired by another painter named Millet.  But in Millet’s painting which is a 40 inch piece, the sower dominates the field of vision, he is almost all that you can see.  But in Van Gogh’s painting the Sower neither fills the canvas nor dominates the composition.  No the main thing that draws your attention is the citron-yellow sun.  We have seen over and over and over again Van Gogh’s use of yellow (and his use of the son) to represent God, to represent the presence of the divine.  So Van Gogh, in a very real way, is taking the focus off the sower, the humble servant in the field, and putting the focus squarely on God himself.  It is Christ who dominates the field of vision in Van Gogh’s piece and not the humble servant out to spread the seeds in the field.

Now let’s turn to two of Jesus parables that talk about seeds and the sower and let’s see what they might have to say to us in our 21st century consumer-driven culture and see what spiritual practice that these parables may give us to apply to our life and give us imagination for the future.  

First let’s look at what is called the Parable of the Growing Seed found in Mark 4:26-29.  Mark 4:26-29 says, “He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like.  A man scatters seed on the ground.  Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.  All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.  As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”  In this parable Jesus is trying to give his listeners, and us, a picture or a metaphor for what life in the Kingdom of God is really all about, the Kingdom where he rules and reigns and we submit ourselves, our lives, our community to him and his ways and not our own desires, whims, and wishes.        In this parable the man (the farmer or sower if you will) has two responsibilities.  The first responsibility is to go out and scatter the seed on the ground.  If the farmer doesn’t scatter seed, you can bet 100% that there will be no harvest at all.  The farmer needed to do his part to put the seed in the ground.  The second responsibility is at the very end of the growing process, called harvesting.  The farmer sees that the crop is ready and when it is, he puts a sickle to it and collects it.  

The one huge thing that the farmer is not responsible for is the growth of his seeds.  He has no control over whether the seeds will never grow, grow a little bit, or create a huge harvest.  Yes he can make sure conditions are right.  He can till the ground, plan the seed, help water the seed but in the end he can’t make the seed actually grow.  That is not his responsibility.  In fact, it even says that he doesn’t even know how it grows, it just does.  

It reminds me of a children’s story in the book series Frog and Toad: The Garden.  A summary of the story is that Toad is impressed with the garden Frog has grown and wishes he had one too, so Frog gives him a bag of flower seeds. Once Toad plants the seeds, he shouts at them to start growing, prompting Frog to come up and tell him the seeds are afraid to grow at the moment. Even though Frog tells Toad to leave the seeds alone and let the sun and rain do their work to help the seeds grow, Toad tries every other way (reading a story, singing songs, reading poetry, and playing music), all to no avail. Exhausted, Toad falls asleep one night, and the next morning, Frog wakes up Toad to show him that the seeds are starting to grow. Toad is glad he'll soon have a garden as good as Frog's because what he did was hard work.  He did what he was responsible for..planting the seed.  And then he tried to take responsibility for the growth of the seed, the speed of the growth, and the results, when they were out of his hands the minute the seed left his hands.  

This parable also reminds me about another Scripture later in the New Testament, found in 1 Corinthians 3:6 which says, “I planted the seed,  Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”  Paul is saying that a follower of Jesus’ responsibility is to plant the seed, even water it, but we aren’t the one that makes it grow.  God is ultimately the only one that makes it grow.  God is the one responsible for the results.  Just like Van Gogh’s painting- God is the primary agent of growth.  We aren’t responsible for what happens when the “seed” leaves our hands.  And this isn’t a very appreciated thought in a results oriented culture like our own.  We want to do something big.  We want to see big results.  We want fast results.  And when we don’t see big, fast results we throw in the towel.  We get discouraged, feel like a failure and want to quit…or am I only speaking to myself here?  But let me say this again in a slightly different way…we are NOT responsible for the results, we are only responsible for being faithful to what God calls us to.  

Many years ago during seminary I had one counseling class.  I don’t remember too much about the class to be honest with you.  But I do remember an exercise that the professor gave us each and every week. We had to memorize a statement each week and internalize it.  One of those statements that I memorized is “Success is being faithful to God.”  So there it is.  No more, no less.  Being faithful to what God calls you to is and should be enough. 

Another parable that Jesus tells regarding seeds is found in Matthew 13:3-9 which says, “Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.  Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.  Whoever has ears, let them hear.”  Now Jesus explains this parable to his disciples, so we know that the seed is the message of the Kingdom of God.  Notice something about the farmer.  Notice how we scatters the seed.  This method of distributing the seed is called broadcasting.  Broadcasting is a method that involves scattering seed by hand (in Bible times) or mechanically over a relatively large area.  This is in contrast to the precision method which seeds are placed at precise places and at precise intervals.  Obviously this farmer in the parable is not concerned about precision.  He is trying to get the seeds out there and to see what sticks so to speak.  He wasn’t concerned with the results.  He was playing his part, his role in the growth of the seeds, which was to get them out of his bag and into the ground.  And he was doing that liberally.  

The results he got was that only 1 in 4 seeds actually grew and became a harvest.  Only a 25% success rate.  If that were a business statistic it wouldn’t be a good statistic.  In our Kingdom conversation this morning, it also might mean that for every 4 people that you seek to share the Kingdom of God with only 1 will actually take the seed and let it grow within them.  But that again is only thinking about results.  Of which we aren’t responsible for.  So my call for all of us is to put the burden upon Jesus.  Give it to him.  It is not yours to carry.  Give it up and give it to Jesus.  It is his to hold and to carry, not ours.  Live in the freedom of casting the seed of the Kingdom liberally and trust God to handle the results.  

This parable obviously appears to have been in Van Gogh imagination while painting his sower.  In his painting we see the field, which has a rocky path in it as well as birds to snatch the seed away.  And in the background, closest to the sun (which I am sure is not accident in the painting) is a field of mature grain ready to be harvested.  But look at the sower.  He is undeterred as he sows even though variety of outcomes are possible.  He strides confidently forward- his task is to cast the seed whatever the result.  And isn’t that our task as well to cast the seed of the Kingdom of God by the practices that we have been talking about all along and throughout this series?  To sow the seed of the Kingdom of God through practices such as imagination, though silence, through a Christ-centered identity, through prayer, through Christ-centered relationships, through suffering, through unity, through the Biblical and missional call of hospitality and through allowing God to be God by leaving the results of our sowing his Kingdom seed to him and just faithful casting the Kingdom seed.  

I finish with a quote from one of my favorite authors and a few questions that will drive our discussion.

First the quote from Dallas Willard, “The humble are dependent upon God, not on themselves.  They humble themselves “under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6)….They abandon outcomes entirely to him.  They “cast all their anxieties upon him, because he cares for them” (v. 7)….We do the very best we know, we work hard, and even self-sacrificially.  But we do not carry the load…In our love of Jesus and his Father, we truly have abandoned our life to him.”  

And for the questions….

What if Jesus, Paul, and Van Gogh are actually right?  What if the outcome of our labor is beyond our control?  What if we are not the primary agents behind growth or its absence?  What if we stopped judging ourselves and others based on outcomes which rightly belong to God, and rediscover the humility of the sower- the one who rises day and night, casts the seed upon the ground and marvels as it grows?

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

2.  Where and to whom may God be calling you to sow the seed of the Kingdom of God and giving the results up to Him?  

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?

4.  What one practice, that we looked at during our Divine Commodity series, do you need to develop in your own life?  How can we as Veritas help?

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?