rich’s blog

A Wider Embrace: 

So today is an introductory sermon in our “Wider Embrace” series, which I think will go on in some form or another as long as I’m around, but is the actual plan for the next few weeks.

 

And I hope that out of today, and from these coming weeks, we get ideas about how we might position ourselves to embrace big needs, big things. I hope that we can be positioned for a wider understanding of what the life of faith demands of us is in this brave new world we live in.

 

And remember that time I preached on John 3:16 for an hour?  Let me just say it one more time: I know you were asleep, but the last 10 minutes was the best part. Kidding.

 

I’ve split what was going to be today’s message into two parts; it was just too much.  And you gotta know when to fold ‘em, right?

 

I had planned this morning to talk about how we’re supposed to act with faith locally, on a neighborhood level, even as we’re being flooded with a mess of information about how messed up the whole world is.

 

We’ll hold off until next week for that, though.

 

This morning I want to suggest that we Christians are supposed to pay attention to these messages of terror & hurt & need that we receive from all over the world, and are even supposed to do something about them, act on them. We’ll also take some time to talk language and highlight some terms that we all need to be aware of.

 

I hope that our hearts can be stirred; or maybe shaken; because honestly, sometimes when things are shaken they can settle down better than before, more perfectly in place.

 

You know, familiarity may not breed contempt, but it totally breeds indifference.  And for those of us who have been following the Lord for some long while, time can cause our concerns to narrow, our sense of purpose to shrink, and our ability to even care anymore about great problems to drift away. Our embrace becomes small.

 

And I pray that this series, which we’re introducing today, can help us reclaim some of the inspiration & hope that is tucked just inside Jesus’ promise that through his power and on his behalf, we’ll do greater things than he did.

 

Let’s pray.

 

Prayer: 

Jesus, please help us right now, and in the coming days.  I sleepwalk through life.  We receive a thousand messages that we give a thousandth of our attention to; right now: draw our attention to you.  Claim it, claim me, claim us.  We have great need of you, Lord: only you can save us from . Lord. Protects us against me, and shut me down if I draw us away from you.

 

Pop & Creak: 

You know: When you try to spread your arms wide, as wide as you can, but you haven’t stretched in a while, things can pop & creak.  You can pull a muscle or two.  What we talk about in the coming weeks might be uncomfortable.

 

And if I offend you, it’s not on purpose.  I don’t think I will, but.  If anything I say is simply irrelevant for you, because you have it more together than me, please just pray that it’s relevant for someone else.

 

As I was Thinking: 

And as I was thinking about how small our embrace can be sometimes, how tiny our focus can be, I thought of a single, a song, that was recently released by a musician named Derek Webb.  He’s a Christian; was a part of band called Caedmon’s Call at one point, if that helps anybody.

 

The song is called “What Matters More,”

 

And he’s not singing to us, necessary, to Smoky Row; but he’s singing to a part of us, a portion of the church.  And he’s talking to those with a small embrace, those who are concerned with just a sliver of the whole of our Christian life.

 

I’ve paraphrased a word here and there, but he writes:

 

You say you always treat people like you like to be

I guess you love being hated for your sexuality

You love when people put words in your mouth

‘Bout what you believe, make you sound like a freak

 

‘Cause if you really believe what you say you believe

You wouldn’t be so [darn] reckless with the words you speak

Wouldn’t silently consent when the liars speak

Denyin’ all the dyin’ of the remedy

 

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?

Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

 

If I can tell what’s in your heart by what comes out of your mouth

Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it’s about

It looks like being hated for all the wrong things

Like chasin’ the wind while the pendulum swings

 

‘Cause we can talk and debate until we’re blue in the faceAbout the language and tradition that he’s comin’ to saveMeanwhile we sit just like we don’t give a [rip]

About 50,000 people who are dyin’ today

 

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?

Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

 

I love this song because Derek–we’re friends, Derek & me–Derek’s challenging our small embrace & asking “What matters more to us?”  What’s most important to us?

 

He’s trying to call us to take stock of what it means to be a Christian, what it means to focus so tightly on one or two things when we live in a world where we’re aware of how 50,000 people will die today.

 

But big deal that 50,000 people will die today.

 

Big deal that

one child every 5 seconds dies from hunger; 16,000 a day.

There’s a sexual assault every couple of minutes; 5 or so since I started; 250,000 people a year

5.6 billion people earn less than 4 grand a year, what many of our households earn in a month or two.

22% of the Asian workforce is made up of children

The FBI estimates that 100,000 Americans under 18 live in forced prostitution

These are just numbers right? I could list more or less; whatever.  Donald Messer, the director of the Center for the Church and Global Aids loves to share the African saying that “statistics are numbers without tears.”  It’s just more information, divorced from our souls & disconnected from our own troubles.  We don’t cry over numbers like these.

 

Just More Information: 

And we’ve talked in the past about what our world does with information, how we’re trained to know facts, trained by our society to be well informed, and not the least bit transformed.  We’ve talked about the fact that this world divorces information from action, and invites us to think highly of ourselves because of what we know, not what we do with what we know.

 

And yet, Jesus comes down again and again on those of God’s people who know facts–who are well-informed but in no way transformed into people who please God.

 

And of course we’re not supposed to live surrounding ourselves with piles of knowledge that we only use to play king of the mountain on.  Of course, we’re supposed to take what we know and “Be careful how we live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

 

Messages: 

And the reality is, we aren’t, most of us, going to all of a sudden stop being informed.  We aren’t going to all of a sudden stop being told about tear-less numbers, not hear about wars & rumors of wars, “famine, death & sword.”

 

We are among the best informed Christians the world has known. And it becomes hard to act on any portion of the information that is sent our way when there is simply so much of it.

 

Do this: think of your days. How many messages come your way that should, reasonably, catch your attention. How many bits of information about this terrible thing or that terrible thing that, objectively, you should act on somehow, if in no other way, with a prayer.

 

How many times does another person contact each of us in a day and need us to get back to them?  “Can you do this? Did you do that? Did you hear about this?  Will you notice and act on this thing that I’m sending your way.” Two dozen times? 50 times?

 

And most of us would say that those messages we receive, those bits of information that come our way, even from friends or people we care about–we really aren’t expected to respond to most of them.

 

We could talk about “news,” which claims only to inform us, and expects us to act on nothing much more than weather and traffic reports, right?

 

We could talk about any number of “social networking” sites that we’ve invited to give us a constant feed of information, much of which we don’t care about.

 

We just don’t care about most of the bits of information that come our way, either the big stories of world problems or even basic little ten-times-a-day-updates.

 

We can barely care about all the personal messages that are sent our way, much less the information about the world and it’s troubles, that we Christians should reasonably have some sort of response to.

 

And this is reasonable, this helps us survive. If we were to try and act on everything we’re aware of, our heads would explode.  It would be so messy.  We are too well-informed about what’s going on, and our world is too globalized.

 

We live in an information-saturated, globalized world, don’t we?

 

Here’s a question: What does that even mean? “globalized?” It’s like something from a science fiction war movie: “He’s been globalized, the hyper-threading is down.”

 

Same Paging: 

We need to take a minute to talk about some jargon, some language that inevitably gets tossed around when we’re discussing wide, huge, world problems and a Christian response to them.

 

So I’m going to introduce some phrases that you may or may not be familiar with. But they really aren’t new to those who write about the state of the world & how we engage it.  This is a learning moment.

 

Same Paging: Globalization

So; globalization.  Globalization has a bunch of unique meanings depending on the contexts in which one is talking; economically it means something different than sociologically or psychologically.

 

Of course, like most catch-words, whenever anyone uses it we think they are talking about what we’re talking about when we use the word; which is naive & problematic & 100% human.

 

Let’s use globalization, for our purposes, to talk about the way information gets passed around the world quickly & effectively.  This results in a sort of world-awareness; we’re aware of what is going on in other parts of the world nearly when it happens. And this doesn’t so much shrink the world, make the world accessible, as it does overwhelm us with all the stuff that Christians should respond to.

 

If once we knew village gossip, we know world gossip now. We’ll use globalization to talk about the awareness we have of the events that go on in the “ends of the earth.”

 

Same Paging: Ethics: 

Ethics. We need to remember the three style of ethics we’ve talked about in the past.  This is review.  But Ethics, remember, is about figuring out how to be “good” instead of “bad.” There are three main ways to be ethical, to seek “the good.”

 

There’s Character Ethics, which consists of developing a consistent character, a consistent way of living in the world.  What’s “good” is living a certain virtue-filled life.

 

For Christians, our calling is a life of character ethics modeled after Jesus: we are supposed to be like Jesus in every situation, each moment.  What is good is becoming like Jesus, and acting as Jesus would act, in whatever situation we find ourselves.

 

There are also Rule Ethics: We’re figure out some rules & live by them.   Ten Commandments is a perfect example; here’s the rules, live by them. Okay.  Problem is that sometimes in life rules that are made for general living don’t fit particular situations.  Rule Ethics can only take us so far.

 

After this comes Ends Ethics: the ends justifies the means.  If the ends are “good,” then whatever means gets us there is also “good,” no matter how terrible it may seem. The problem is that you don’t know if the end result is “good” until way after you’ve done all sorts of things to get you there.  If you’re wrong, and it turns out the end result wasn’t all that good; you can’t go back in time.

 

In America, we love Ends Ethics, Rule Ethics are forced on us all over, and Character Ethics are for dweebs.  For Christians this is upside down. Having our character transformed into Jesus’ is what matters.

 

Same Paging: Domination Systems

This might be a little more strange: “Domination Systems.”

 

We’re tossing that phrase around all the time, right?

 

We know what Systems are, right?  They are just connected things–tasks, parts, rules–that together form a whole so that things can get done.

 

There are political systems like American or British Democracy, economic systems like free-market or regulated-market Capitalism, religious systems like the caste system in India or social, philosophical systems.

 

And a “Domination System” is a label that some Christian authors will use to talk about those systems, those structures, that end up oppressing and hurting people–dominating them, making them less human.

 

“Slavery” is a domination system, right?  And there are estimated to be 27 million slaves in the world today: a number without tears, for most of us.

 

But talking about domination systems gets tricky, because there’s always another perspective; if someone is dominated by a system, there’s usually someone else benefiting from it–sure, a pre-teen in laos may be working 20 hours in a factory, but isn’t nice to buy cheap underwear?–and systems by their very nature are complex, and we like to simplify things when we talk about them.

 

Nonetheless, I’ll probably use this phrase now & then, and I’d love to be a part of a church where we’re familiar with the term.

 

Same Paging: Powers & Principalities: 

Powers & Principalities: Have you ever used the phrase “the powers that be?”  Or at least heard it? “The powers that be”–the powers that are, that exist.  It’s not descriptive at all except for the fact that it recognizes that there are “powers,”

 

And Christian or not people use this phrase now and again.  And in using it, there’s a sort of affirmation that there are movers & shakers in the world, isn’t there?  There are “powers” that influence us.

 

And this is nothing new.  Paul uses the phrase, too; He didn’t coin it, but this whole notion of “powers that be,” was something that formed part of the first-century (at least Judean) worldview.  We know what worldview is, right? We’ve talked about it before: that junk drawer in our heads full of principles & religious & philisophical junk drawer.

 

But let me just read a couple of Paul’s quotes:

 

Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

 

In Rom 8 Paul talks about how “neither angels or heavenly rulers…or any powers….[can] separate us from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

And it’s Christ Jesus our Lord who is #1 in Creation. Paul says in Colossians that “…in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.”

 

And what many scholars–i’d say most–would say now is that Paul is talking about spiritual beings here.  When he’s talking about powers & principalities he’s not talking about earthly powers–kings & such–but talking about spiritual beings, the unseen spiritual world that exists right alongside ours, overlayed on top of ours like a transparency.  Some scholars have done research that suggests that the word Paul uses “thrones,” is actually a class of these heavenly beings.

 

And Paul says that it’s these spiritual beings that we are fighting against, not flesh & blood.  The Holy Spirit is like the light that shines through us to help reveal the true spiritual nature of the world, which is that there are “Powers That Be,” that are.

 

And all over the Bible there is language about these “principalities & powers,” these spiritual beings that are, that be.  We see examples in the Old Testament, like in the book of Joshua when Joshua comes face to face with a spiritual being who we learn is the captain of God’s Angelic Army.  In the apocalyptic work of Daniel there’s this scene where Daniel is having visions of angels, and talks with an angel about another angel named Michael, who has been fighting with other angelic beings, “powers” who represent Persia & Greece.

 

And if we take all this interesting biblical language and put it together it really seems like the heavenly realm, this transparency that’s overlaying our world, it’s just filled with spiritual beings who are actually representatives of places & organizations in our world, the same way we’re representatives of Christ to the world around us.

 

There’s this idea that there is really a spiritual conflict going on; and we are involved in that conflict as Christians.  God will win; Death is poisoned & dying because of what Jesus has done.  But there is conflict.  This is why Paul can tell us to

 

    “…be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power…put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

    And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”

 

If we’re going to talk about Christians making a difference in the world, challenging domination systems & helping solve world problems, we can’t forget that our enemies are not flesh and blood, but powers & principalities, and our tools against them are the trappings of our faith.

 

Summary: 

We started this “getting on the same page” thing by highlighting how crippled by information we are.  We’re so informed about the world that honestly, self-protectively, I don’t think we can care about what we hear about the troubles & pains.  It’s just too big…

 

But as Christians, our reach is supposed to be very wide.  We’re supposed to care about the things Jesus cared about.  We’re supposed to become like Jesus.  And this means caring about sin & people’s relationship with God, and it also means figuring out ways to put tears alongside the numbers we learn about.

 

We’re not simply supposed to have some sort of intangible internal feeling inside us that we turn in God’s direction; but we’re supposed to do the things that Jesus did and called us to do: feed the hungry, clothe the homeless, visit the sick & imprisoned, satiate the thirsty, heal & serve: we’re each personally supposed to bring together faith and works.

 

We’re not simply supposed to know information, but we’re supposed to act as Jesus would act on that information as much as we’re able.  But we live in a world of multiple messages, and an ever-increasing pile of information about problems, and pains, and things that need done, and things that need heard, all sorts of information that competes for our attention and calls us to act.

 

And along with this, there is a conflict going on around us that most of us ignore and there are systems?political, religious, philosophical, economic–by which the world has ordered itself that demand that for some to prosper, others must be ground into the earth.

 

Conclusion:

So for today’s conclusion, this weird, sort of introductory message conclusion, I want to ask us to do one thing.

 

Just one thing.

 

This week, pay attention to the radio.  Pay attention to the news.  Pay attention to the messages, the bits of information that are sent your way about what is going on in the world, and first of all see how very many there are, and then, try to care about them.

Really try to care about them.

 

And here’s how you can start caring: When you are informed this week about something going on by someone, anyone, try and ask the Lord, “What is a Christian response to this? What can be my response to this.”

 

What is a Christian response to this?  What can be my response to this?

 

Is that tough?

 

Notice the messages, be surprised at how many, figure out how to care by asking God “What’s a Christian response to this and what should be mine?”

 

Next week we’ll round out this introductory message by talking about certain ways we can engage with the world right in our neighborhoods, but until then:

 

“What’s a Christian response to this?  What can be my response to this?”