On Salvation and such

I became an uncle for the first time this week.  I only have one sibling and we only have two cousins, so a birth in our family is a very big deal.  I planned my stateside travels to correspond to this momentous occasion, but obviously my plans didn't line up with reality.  I'm glad though.  Because I won't have much time with their new family, I'm glad that I will come after some of the buzz has buzzed out so I can have more time with Hemi and Rebecca and Mike.

But I had a small revelation about salvation while I followed the birth ordeal via Skype.  Next semester Pastor Volodya and I are going to focus on the Kingdom of God with the students.  We want to preach salvation, but we want to preach the full Gospel.  We've got a lot of prayer and study ahead of us, because these are the problems that face most ministries to, with, and for young people.

Rebecca gave birth to Hemi Tucker Miller by C-section.  While his father and grandmother each held him briefly, his mother didn't have that chance.  That day he was flown to a larger hospital for more specialized care.  His father and grandmother went to be with him, while his mom stayed behind at the other hospital.  She was allowed to see him once briefly before the helicopter took off, but she couldn't hold him.  Rebecca was released from the hospital after a couple of days and was driven home and then on to the hospital where her son was getting stronger and breathing deeper.

I heard each of these steps second-hand.  And from our mother I heard, "Rebecca finally held Hemi today.  She just sobbed and sobbed and she spoke to him for a long time."

And I understood something new (or new-to-me) about salvation.  I don't hold to any theological position about how it works.  I'm a United Methodist, so in general I'm Armenian and not Calvinist - but I don't think these divisions amount to a hill of beans because ultimately the Bible isn't clear and we're not going to know on this side of heaven.

But I realized something about God's understanding of our salvation in this encounter between a new mother and her newborn son.  There was nothing about the fact that she hadn't held him in her arms that made Hemi any less real, less alive, less loved, or less hers - but in that moment that she held her son in her arms all of those emotions and feelings came together for Rebecca.

And I wonder if these distinctions of "we choose God" verses "God chooses us" are distractions more than distinctions.  Because other things get in the way.  God wants us.  God chooses all of us.  We want God.  It's exceedingly rare to find someone who would outright reject of despise God if there was certain proof of God's existence.  We would like to choose God.  But other things get in the way.  Life, man's religions and the faith we put in them, sin, the devil, and our selfish pride just to name a few.

Rebecca desperately wanted to hold Hemi.  Hemi certainly wanted to be held by his mother.  But things got in the way for some time, didn't they.

And on Skype mom continued, "and don't you know, that Hemi waited all of that time to open his eyes.  When I held him and when Mike held him he kept his little eyes closed, but as soon as Rebecca held him, he opened his eyes."

And it's in this image of a loving creator finally holding us, that in that moment we may gain the courage and strength to open our eyes and see the one who has loved us since before we were born.      

Go and change the world

Last week we talked about imperfect community.  After preaching it, I started thinking about the most perfect community I knew.  The last time I was in the states I had the best boss ever.  She's just the funniest, most intelligent woman ever.  We were at a big group meeting talking about how to make churches better and someone started talking about how we all need to be perfect communities.  Someone made the point that no community is perfect.  My boss smiled and said, "We do have one church that is pretty close to a perfect community."  She paused for dramatic effect.  Our minds went to the biggest and best churches in our area as we tried to think which church she was thinking of.  She said the name of a church we had never heard of.  "It has six members, and it's about as perfect as a community can get.  It's so perfect that there is no room for anyone else.  They are shutting the doors and selling the property this year.  It was perfect while it lasted."

We stopped having a silly conversation about how to make our communities more perfect, and we started a difficult, joyful, painful, and exciting conversation about how to make our communities more open.

the string and scissors exercise.

In one of my favorite theological books which is packed away somewhere, the theologian writes about churches that missionaries planted in Africa.  And he writes something like, "We preached the Gospel that Jesus saves, and we gathered people into churches - but we didn't preach the rest of the Gospel.  We didn't preach what people are supposed to do with the Gospel, how the Gospel changes people, how the Gospel calls us to change the world - and because of this, our churches in Africa are like holding pens for cattle.  They are filled with Christians just waiting to die and go to heaven."

What a tragedy this is for churches in Africa.  As AIDS destroys millions of families, as human rights abuses continues to lead the way, as dictators gather child armies - our churches are much too often content to sit in silence and wait for the promised paradise of death or at best to wait for foreign aid to come and save the day.  What a tragedy for our fast growing churches, that they often have little good news to share with those around them.

We too often believe that the Gospel is only a Gospel of salvation.  But, salvation from what?  From the devil? From hell?  From ourselves?  From this world?   

We are not a "holding pen" we are not waiting to die so that we can experience heaven.  As a Christian community, we actively work to make the world better.  We pray "on earth as it is in heaven" and we act to make that so.

Let's go out into the world today.

Imperfect Community

The title logo from the show Community ... written in Ukrainian.  

When the Methodist church started in America, the country was so big and there were very few pastors - so the pastors rode on horseback from church to church.  The local group would lead themselves, but at least once a month the pastor would come by to serve communion and encourage the community.  Bishop Asbury was one of those circuit riders.  The story goes that he went to the home of a man who believed in God, but didn't think he needed to go to church.  They sat in front of the fire and the man explained why he didn't need to be part of a Christian community.  He explained that he could worship better in nature, and that he could read the Bible for himself, and that he prayed at night.  He was tired of the way that people at church fought - he didn't think that should ever happen: and as long as he didn't talk to any of the church people he didn't fight with any of the church people.    

Bishop Asbury took the metal stick from the fireplace and moved one burning coal away from the fire.  They watched as the fire quickly extinguished, and as the glow began to fade.  They watched as it cooled down and became like a rock.  They sat in silence for probably 15 minutes - while the fire raged on in the fireplace, that one piece of coal lost all of its heat and burned out.  The man looked at Bishop Asbury and said, "I'll be at Church from now on."  

Today we begin a three part sermon series on community.  We want to look at community, we want to talk about it, we want to talk about how we can make our community stronger, and we want to live this out.  We're going to do some scary things, and some fun things.  

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When I think of the idea of church - I tend to think of a perfect community.

That's the idea, isn't it?  That we as Christians should always live in peace and harmony.  

And yet, as we search the scriptures - this isn't necessarily the image we get.  Oh, Jesus and the disciples are certainly a model of community - but Judas betrayed and the others fought for who would be in the highest position.  They often didn't understand what their leader was saying.  The women were just as dedicated as the men, but given almost no respect or responsibilities.  One disciple was called James the Great and another James the Less. The first community of Jesus followers was pretty broken.

But that was before the resurrection - maybe after the resurrection things were different.  And there are verses that certainly show how wonderful the community was - that all lived together, that all shared with one another and gave according to what they had and filled the needs of those around them.  But, as we read the book of Acts, we see story after story of deceit and betrayal and challenges and difficulties.  

And if we get to the letters - well, why were these letters written?  To encourage, to build up the church, yes - but many of these letters were written to convince and argue one side of a disagreement.  A lot of the New Testament is based on the huge disagreement between Peter and Paul about how Jewish new Christians had to be.  Did you know that most of the New Testament is one giant disagreement?  And some of the rest was written by the same people about different arguments they were having.  Is this news to you?  The next time you have an argument with a friend, and you get ready to send an email - just imagine if people two thousand years from now were basing their religious views on what you wrote.  Would you change what you wrote?  

These were open and public letters that Paul wrote - but they were written to defend a very unique theological viewpoint.  It's the viewpoint that ultimately won - and what we believe today.  But the people in these new Christian communities - they heard both sides of the argument, and they made their decision based on what was written.  

And in Revelation, John mentions a few of the Christian communities - and then explains what their biggest problems are.  So, it's hard to hold on to this idea of the perfect first century church.  I mean, they did things better than we do now, but they did some things exactly like we do. 

And - we have this idea that there must be a perfect church, or a perfect community, or a perfect group of Christian friends.  But the harsh reality is that if there is a perfect place like that, it wouldn't be perfect after you join it.  We are broken people.        

So what is a Christian community?  What does that mean?  Well ... let's start with a Greek lesson about the word for church -

When I say "church" what do you think of?  It's a loaded word, it's a word that when you hear it - you have lots of thoughts, and usually specific thoughts.

When I was in India, we told the story of Zacheus who climbed the tree - and we all drew a picture of that.  Every American on our team drew a big leafy oak tree - and every Indian child drew a coconut tree.  When I say "church" you probably think of a different type of building than I or a british person, or a Korean, or an Indian would think of.  You probably think of the church that you grew up in or the church that you attend.  I would never call us a church, because I have lots of ideas in my head about what a church should be and we don't fit those ideas.  I call us a Christian community.  We come from different churches, and together we make a community.

But the early Christians, they gathered in communities and the word used to describe this was Ekklesia.  And Ekklesia had really one meaning.

Have you seen in old movies, when the newspaper boy would cry out the news?  You know: extra, extra, read all about it!  In the first century, this was how news was spread.  Someone would go through the streets crying out the news for all to hear - and the group of people who gathered to hear the news called out to them ... this group was known as Ekklesia.  The called out ones.

And this ... this doesn't fit most of our understandings of what it means to be the church.  Of what it means to be a Christian community.  The called out ones where the ones who gathered to hear the good news of Jesus Christ - and I guess they were the ones who stuck around and kept hearing and telling others that good news.  The word for church has nothing to do with a building, nothing to do with membership or denominations, and nothing to do with many of our ideas.  It is about hearing the Good News - and it is about responding to that Good News.

What is a Christian community - it's a group of people who gather to hear the good news ... but it's so much more.  If you come once a week and listen to something, that doesn't make you part of a community.  You are part of a community when you choose to be part of that community.  When you choose to make that community part of who you are.    

Community is broken.  Christian Community is, really by definition, a group of broken people being broken together.  It's not that we all have everything perfectly under control - it's that we are all broken and hurting, but we choose to live into this together in community.  What does that mean?  It means that when you choose to share your joys and your struggles with a group of people, they are your community.

They are your imperfect community.   

We are an imperfect community.  Every church and Christian group is imperfect. This is just a fact. If you came to this place to be with these people because you saw something perfect - well, I hate to disappoint you, but we are not perfect.  I am not perfect.  Volodya isn't perfect.  And we as a community are not perfect.     But, we're getting better.  

This is the power of community.  It is in this brokeness that God is able to use us.  Together we are stronger and better than we could ever be on our own.  God is able to do so much through us, and through our brokeness as well.    

We come from different cultures and backgrounds - and somehow it works.  Every time Vitya begins telling me some anecdote in Russian, I just smile and wait until the end to laugh ... because even when I understand every word, my sense of humor is just different.  And I tell jokes all the time that no one laughs at.  We have big cultural differences - but when we gather together to worship God as a community ... all of those differences disappear.  In our brokeness, God is glorified.  

I preached once about the time that I was part of the search team for little Jackson.  I remember telling a very generalized story, rather generic in my memory, to summarize the point - that he had been lost and found.  I remember writing out the whole story, and realizing that I didn't want to cry in public, so I summarized the story instead.

It was Holy Saturday, and they told the large crowd of volunteers that we would make one final sweep.  It was no longer a search and rescue mission, it had become a body recovery operation.  He had been missing for too long, and he was assumed dead.  He was five or six.  His mother was a very large woman.  She sat at the church with her head down as my friend Pastor Marty tried to comfort her.

We took a wide sweep, and returned just before dark.  They called off the search for the night because it would be too dangerous to keep volunteers in the woods in the dark.  It was too dangerous just for recovering a body.  They had dragged the lake without any success.

I looked at Marty and this devastated little town, and I wondered what they would do for Easter.  We started a prayer service, but the boys parents started walking home.  That seemed like what I would do.

It started as a whisper.  I heard the news whispered on either side of me.  They found him.  He is alive.  He is alive.  He IS alive.

A truck driver picked him up on the highway a long way from home and the police brought him home.

I remember being struck by how small the boy was between his mothers massive legs - and I remember being struck by the look on the boys face.  It was this look of, "Why are you surprised?"  It seemed as though he hadn't even realized he was lost.

And I just remember this sense that Jesus probably had the same face.  That "why are you surprised" face.

And I remember this large redneck man, standing behind me as the little boy walked toward us, and this large man's jaw dropped open and his cigarette rolled to the ground and the words "Holy fuck" escaped from his mouth in utter disbelief - and I'm sure that that man still tells this story just like I still tell this story.  When you see the dead brought back to life, you don't keep silent about it.

And we rang the church bells for hours and we sang hymns and the next morning the whole town came out to hear the best Easter sermon ever.

And I think about this story every year.  When I hear about Mary Magdalene at the tomb, too smart to fall for a gardener's trick - in too much pain to see the reality of the risen Lord in front of her.  Mary who didn't bother with whispering the good news.  Mary who ran to tell the others.  Mary who wasn't believed for one second.  Mary, who might have just dropped her cigarette when her jaw dropped open.  Mary who might have let some other words slip before proclaiming the best words ever heard.  Mary who was the first to take the good news to the others.