breathing room

Sawdust, Planks, and Triangulation

2012-01-25T10:52:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 01/22/2012

Let’s begin again by looking at Matthew 7.

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5

[recap of last week, first things first, responsible for self, responsible to others / downside of over-responsibility (being responsible for others instead of for self) creates destructive stress, a violation of God-given self, makes us fail our true responsibilities / how this is central to faithfully pursuing our mission…1) Follow 2) Create Breathing Room ]

Today we talk about our responsibility for our own planks. Next week we’ll talk about how we help with sawdust.

And for the moment, let’s not define planks as simply sin (i.e., something bad) but rather more generally as something that we must attend to in order to be able to see and serve more effectively. We might even paraphrase Matthew 7 this way, as members of a centered set church:

Why do you look at someone else’s next step of discipleship and pay no attention to your own? How can you say “Let me help you move forward with your step of discipleship,” when all the time, you are stuck in reverse? You who are playing at being responsible for somebody else, first get your feet moving forward on your own path of discipleship, and then you will be able to come alongside somebody else and help them move forward in discipleship too.

Isn’t understanding and obeying this command critical for fulfilling the great commission? “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…”

How can we make disciples if we aren’t first and foremost disciples ourselves? How can we teach others to obey what we’ve been commanded if we ourselves aren’t first learning to obey?

After all, the most effective form of teaching is modeling. Every one of us learned more from what our parents modeled than from anything they said to us. And when there was a discrepancy between what they said and what they did, what they did won, didn’t it?

And the greatest impediment to our own discipleship – the greatest impediment to being faithful to our responsibilities for ourselves – is taking on an over-responsibility for the discipleship of others. The thing most likely to make us overlook our planks is looking over at other’s sawdust.

[my team loses the big game, and I’m upset. Do I take it out on the coach, the ref, a player, the whole system, who knows!?... Or do I recognize in my pain a plank of discipleship I need to walk…? Because I’ll never be in the posture of a servant until I deal with my plank, will I? I’ll just be a judge over everyone else…]

Consider some other examples.

[share personal example…]

Someone insults you, does or says something disrespectful behind your back. You hear about it from someone who’s pretty reliable.

You feel hurt, a little angry, confused, maybe even a little embarrassed.

Do you…

A) Let yourself be offended, try to figure out whether or not you need to confront this person, address it, fume about the injustice of it all, think about how consistent with this person’s character this kind of attack is, try to decide if you even want to be in relationship with them anymore?

B) Remember that you are first and foremost responsible for yourself and your discipleship to Jesus. Say to Jesus, Jesus, I’m having a hard time remembering that this is just gossip, it’s second hand info, and therefore it’s dangerous, like an open can of gasoline near a flame. Help me recognize it for what it is and not receive it. Teach me what you want to teach me about myself through the way I’m reacting emotionally to it. Teach me to have my security in you and what you say about me to my face. I’m your disciple – what’s my next step in discipleship to you? And then, help me learn how to guard my heart toward this fellow image-bearer so I can love and serve him/her with grace so that I can be faithful to my responsibilities toward him/her.

Why is it the case that so often our answer is closer to A than B?

Because of our instinct for triangulation.

Relationships between two people have an inherent instability in them. Sort of like a two legged stool – it takes a lot of effort to balance them, especially when some kind of tension or unresolved conflict enters the picture. And so we are always looking for some third person or issue to focus on instead of dealing directly with the tension that exists between us and the original person.

[use stuffed animals as props…] The classic example is a husband and wife who have some trouble in their relationship – as all relationships do – and then a child comes along. The child can become like a stabilizing influence in the relationship, because the mother and father triangulate – begin to focus their attentions – on the child. On the challenges, the joys, whatever, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the focus moves from the unresolved things in the relationship between the husband and wife onto the third person, the child.

Now triangulation isn’t in and of itself a negative thing, and all relationships have some triangulation going on in them all the time. Think about how much of any relationship you have with anyone close to you is spent talking about other people, or ideas, or situations. It’s completely natural, and in many ways, healthy.

The problem with triangulation is when we use it to avoid dealing with the real issues that are compromising true intimacy between two people. 2 dangerous things happen. One, the person in the triangulated position – the child in the example we used – absorbs all the stress that is being offloaded, often unintentionally, by the parents. And two, even more importantly for us – as we think about our relationships with God – is that the false sense of intimacy created by triangulation masks the true needs that the original relationship has, and those needs are never dealt with, and in fact grow more and more significant.

One more example, now that triangulation is in view, and then we’ll bring this home to our relationships with God and what Jesus is getting at as he talks about planks and sawdust.

Any of you watch the Bachelor?

[bachelor example…]

Triangulation – especially triangulating somebody out – is a way of gaining a false sense of togetherness. A way of masking or numbing unresolved tensions or discomfort in a relationship.

We can triangulate others out as a way of achieving a false sense of togetherness with God. A way of avoiding uncomfortable things God might be inviting us to engage with him.

Pharisees did this with sinners and tax collectors.

Jonah did this with Nineveh.

We even see Peter attempting to escape the intensity of intimacy with Jesus at the end of John’s gospel, when he struggles to respond to Jesus’ “follow me” invitation, and tries to put the focus on John…

¹⁵When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

¹⁶Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

¹⁷The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. ¹⁸Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” ¹⁹Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

²⁰Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) ²¹When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”

²²Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.”

All the “do you love me?” stuff is heavy, intimate, emotionally charged stuff – especially given the context of Peter’s previous failure in that department. And perhaps even more especially given Peter’s man’s man kind of personality. And then Jesus drops the ‘how Peter’s going to die’ bombshell and says, “Follow me.” Peter’s looking for a way to triangulate somebody or something else into this relationship, ease the discomfort, buy himself some time and space. But Jesus won’t let him. “What is that to you?”

Jesus is the most self-differentiated human being in history, and he is fully capable, in the way that no one else is, of sustaining direct, intimate relationship with his disciples. It’s another topic for another time, but our relationship with God does not need triangulation to be stable. And Jesus is teaching us that if we want be his disciples, if we want to follow in his footsteps, then with respect to our relationships with him, we must let go of the supports and relief valves that focusing on others sometimes provides us, and in faith, deal with him face to face. And then we will be properly positioned to take the posture of a servant and not a judge towards every other image-bearer, and be a true help to one another in our discipleship with him. Once the love relationship between us and God is on solid footing, we can begin to fulfill our responsibilities to feed the other sheep.

Specks & Planks

2012-01-18T07:09:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 01/15/2012

Let’s begin by looking at Matthew 7.

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Matthew 7:1-5

[kids complaining…]

This metaphor of specks and planks and judgment is best understood as a commentary about how we relate to each other with respect to sins and flaws and imperfections and failures and brokenness. Why do you look at someone else’s sin, and pay no attention to your own? It’s a comical, cartoonish, exaggerated image – the plank and the speck of sawdust – but Jesus is using it to make a lasting impression on us, because this really, really matters to Jesus. Because this really, really matters for those of us who want to follow him on his way of love, who want to partner with him in seeing salvation come to this broken world, who want to welcome and embrace the kingdom of God. It really, really matters to us in the Vineyard Church of Milan as well, especially as we try to come to grips with what it means for us to be a centered set church, following the way of Jesus together, creating breathing room for the disfavored to find favor, for the discounted to count, and for the disconnected to connect.

Think about it. Let’s say that you’re curious about Jesus. Something is drawing you to explore him. You haven’t been very religious in your life. Some parts of your life are going great. Some parts have been hard. Something is gnawing at you, whatever the case.

And let’s say, in a moment of crazy hope, you show up at church.

And let’s say the people at this church look at you and say, aha,oooh, er, wow. I see a speck of sawdust there in your eye. Before you go any further, here, you’d better let us help you with that.

If you are desperate, you might let these strangers give it their best shot. Or, more likely, you might not. Because something about the way they are looking at you tells you they are hungry for something different than you are hungry for, and that makes you a little unsettled. It’s not that you think they are wrong about what they see necessarily, it’s just that you are looking hard for God, and they seem to be looking hard for specks of sawdust.

But what if the people at this church look at you and say, aha, you seem hungry for finding out more about Jesus. If you’re like me, you might be wondering if that speck irritating your eye will keep you from finding him. I know what that’s like. I had one just like that, but it was way bigger, more like a log. But God still had favor for me, so much of it. If it’s all that mattered, it may have kept me from finding him, but it didn’t keep him from finding me! And he let me play, he let me count, even before I could see very clearly. And he gave me a big embrace, and put a ring on my finger, and sandals on my feet, and killed a fatted calf and invited his whole household and the whole village to just to welcome me home. Before I even had a chance to get that log taken care of. And I just keep finding more and more logs floating across my vision. But one by one, he’s helping me get rid of them. Come on in; there’s no way that thing can keep you from him any more than my logs have. In fact, when the time is right, he just might take care of it for you, or teach you how to get it out. And we’re all here to help, if help is needed. You just let us know, and in the meantime, get to know us; we’re eager to get to know you. Who knows, you might be able to help us deal with some of our logs.

Now that’s some breathing room, isn’t it? You just might be able to find some favor here, you just might be able to count here, you just might be able to connect to God here. And if you do, well, that sawdust isn’t gonna stand a chance against the river of life that’s going to start welling up within you and the happy tears that will be pouring out of you.

Now this passage about sawdust and planks shows up in Jesus’ sermon on the mount. It’s an epic teaching about the good news of the kingdom of God and what it means to be human in the reality of God’s kingdom.

And at the center of Jesus’ teaching about what it means to be a human being made in the image of God are the twin commands about love and judgment. Love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love each other as I have loved you. And do not judge.

Both commands go hand in hand. If you adopt Jesus’ incarnated way of being human, you cannot help but both love others and not judge. And the reason for that, as we’ve spoken about in various times and various ways, has to do with our posture towards one another.

Jesus shows us that the proper posture for his followers towards other human beings is to be the posture of a servant. One who lowers oneself in order to love and lift up. And in that position, judgment is impossible. Because to judge, one must stand above to condemn. And human beings cannot simultaneously be in both postures. It’s like an on/off switch. We can either love, or we can judge. But not both. And because his command to us is to love, his twin command is to not judge.

Obeying these commands will produce a tension in us. A tension that it is worth acknowledging and becoming conscious of, so that it doesn’t rule us and get us off track.

That tension shows up here in Matthew 7. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye…”

We look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye, often, because we love them and we are concerned for them. I mean, heck, the very reason we notice is because we are looking, and we are looking – assuming we are in a healthy place – because we care.

And yet, Jesus warns us that there is a danger in how we respond to what we see in others as we love them. A danger so serious that we could end up with two tragic consequences. One, we might miss out on some serious problems of our own (the plank in our own eyes). And two, we might do some serious damage to those we are trying to help because we aren’t tuned in to how compromised our own vision is.

So Jesus’ solution is both simple and brilliant. Our attentions must be properly ordered. First things first. When it comes to sin, you are responsible for your own sin. Not for the sins of others. Attend to your responsibility for yourself, and as you succeed, then you might be in a place come alongside others as they attend to that for which they are responsible.

We are a centered-set church. Which means we are directing our eyes towards Jesus, who has invited us to follow him. Which means our primary concern is drawing nearer to him and being shaped by him as we take our next step in discipleship to him, step after step after step.

Each of those steps is a step of faith. A step of surrendering something he’s calling us to let go of so that he can put something new, and better in our hands, perhaps. Or a step of freedom from a particular sin. Or a step in service to others. Or a step in trusting him with some new area of our lives. Or a step in growing in love. Or a step of obedience. Or a step in taking off a mask and being our true self before him or others.

Being a centered-set church requires different kinds of habits and responses in relationship to God and to one another than we might be accustomed to if our formative faith experiences took place in a church where certain kinds of boundary markers defined who was in and who was out. Because, in a centered set church, what defines our participation in the community of faith is motion. What defines our participation is the direction our hearts are moving us – towards Jesus, or away from him. Regardless of how close or how far from him he might find us in any particular area of our lives. So our faith journey isn’t a story of striving to get to some pre-established point and then stay there, but rather a story of continuously being called further up and further in to the heart of God.

In particular, a critical question that is answered differently in a centered set church from a bounded set church is this one: What are the responsibilities of a member of the community of faith?

In a community defined by its boundaries, the answer tends to revolve around the boundaries. Each person is responsible for the boundaries. Responsible for making sure the boundaries are clear, and well maintained, and honored. Responsible for dealing effectively with boundary infractions. Responsible for successfully getting interested people inside the boundaries, and protecting the boundaries from attack. Responsible for maintaining the purity of population within the boundaries.

In a community defined by movement towards the center, the answer takes on a very different shape. For a member of a centered set community, the answer revolves around one’s responsibilities for oneself and towards others. This week we will begin exploring this idea (and we’ll continue next week, at least, as well). In a nutshell, in a church devoted to centering itself on Jesus, each person is responsible for himself – for his or her own next step in discipleship towards Jesus – and each person is responsible to every other person – to love and serve them as Jesus directs through the leading of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of the scriptures. Because after all, Jesus himself places loving one another at the heart of discipleship to him.

This, in fact, is the pattern Jesus sets for us, and the pattern he himself followed as he walked in our skin. Jesus is responsible for himself – for doing what his Father has sent him to do – and responsible to each of his estranged brothers and sisters, his Father’s image-bearing kids, to seek them and save the lost. [examples…]

Jesus lives out a basic truth about our responsibilities. I am only responsible for one person in the universe. And that person is myself. I am only responsible for myself because I am the only one I have any true control over (and truth be told, that control seems tenuous at best, sometimes!). I am responsible for my heart towards God, my heart towards others, I am responsible for the condition of my soul, for what I feed it and how I care for it, I am responsible for how I direct and use and nourish my mind, I am responsible my strength. How I care for it, how I steward it, what I train and prepare it to do.

Both go hand in hand. I am only responsible for myself. But God has given me all sorts of other responsibilities towards others. And in fact, I cannot be faithful in my responsibility for myself without also being faithful in my responsibility towards others. And I cannot be faithful in my responsibility towards others without being faithful in my responsibility for myself.

I am responsible to God.

To Love him. To serve him. To obey him.

In fact, it’s because of my responsibilities toward God that I am responsible to be responsible for myself. Because my life, my very self, is a gift that he has given me to steward.

And in the same vein, my responsibility towards God leads me into responsibilities towards others. If I love the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, I will also find myself loving my neighbor as myself.

I am responsible to my wife, Ronni.

To love her. To be in a posture of service towards her. To be ready to lay down my life for her in whatever way the Lord may so direct me.

I am responsible to my kids.

To love them. To serve them. To be ready to lay down my life for in whatever way the Lord may so direct me.

I am responsible to the church.

To love her. To be in a posture of service towards her. To be ready to lay down my life for her in whatever way the Lord may so direct me.

I am responsible to every other image bearer, friend or enemy. To love them. To be in a posture of service towards them. To be ready to lay down my life for them in whatever way the Lord may so direct me.

I have responsibilities towards all of creation as well, responsibilities to all God’s creatures, great and small, and to the earth itself that is God’s gift to us and an expression of his glory.

And bringing it full circle, as a member of a community of image-bearers and an ecology upon which I and my life have an impact, I have a responsibility to be responsible for myself. And if I am faithful, with God’s help, to my responsibilities, God’s good purposes can be done in me, and through me, in the lives of those around me towards whom God has given me responsibilities.

This, perhaps, seems a little bit like a “No, duh” kind of a thing. But consider how often we substitute our responsibility for ourselves and to others with a sense of responsibility for others.

The parent who is over-responsible for his children. The spouse who is over-responsible for his or her worse half. The coach who is over-responsible for his or her players. The employer who is over-responsible for his or her employees. (Did you ever see Jesus apologize for his disciples?)

Being responsible for others instead of oneself creates destructive stress. [monkeys responsible for getting food for others developing ulcers…] Because we cannot control others’ responses. (We can’t even predict their responses with a high degree of accuracy.) And because it will inevitably create conflict (who is responsible for them, us or them?) [Landis’s and the ice-cream]

Making yourself responsible for someone who is not you is a violation of God-given self. A violation of your own self and a violation of their self. It destroys life-giving boundaries. You lose your identity in the identity of others, and others without well-differentiated senses of self will lose their identities as you over-function in their lives. God made you, you. He made her, her. He made him, him. That was his call, and it’s not ours to override. Every unauthorized judgment is a form of over-responsibility.

Love, on the other hand, allows one to embrace others as one would embrace oneself, without violating either self. Love recognizes one’s self as made to be in communion with other selves, while still being fully one’s unique self. This is the truth of the trinity, is it not?

And being responsible for others will cause us to fail in our primary responsibility to them and to God, which is to love them. Because we will inevitably get frustrated. Or disappointed. And then manipulative. And judgmental. And soon enough we will stand above them as we stand above ourselves, from a place of authority instead of service.

“I was responsible for him!” No, you were responsible to care for him, or to watch out for him, or to teach him, or whatever. And you may have failed at that (or not), but he was responsible for himself. For his choices, or actions. That is a holy thing, territory where even angels fear to tread, a place one can enter only as a helper, and even then, only by invitation.

As a church, we are responsible to one another and to the disconnected and discounted and disfavored.

We are responsible to love.

To create breathing room.

To announce good news. To proclaim the message of salvation. To forgive. To heal. To cast out demons. To serve.

To make disciples.

To baptize.

To encourage, exhort, correct.

To speak truth in love.

All of that under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Which brings us back to ourselves.

We are responsible for ourselves. To bring ourselves under the rule and reign of God’s kingdom. To be trained in the way of love and set free from the enslavement of sin. So our hearts beat as God’s heart beats. So that we listen and hear and obey the Spirit of God. So that we will what God wills.

The implications of this are more significant than we might realize, so we’ll explore more next week. The impact on our intimacy with God. How we help one another follow Jesus. What it means to be a leader. Should be fun. In the meantime…

Practical Tips:

1. Next time someone lets you down, take off your speck specs, and fill out your log log. [someone fails in a responsibility they have to you…do you look first at the spec in their eye – their failure in their responsibilities…? Or the plank in yours – your anger, disappointment, bitterness, your need to forgive, serve, love…?] Write down your responsibilities for yourself that the failure of the other person has created for you. Work through those. When you are satisfied that your slate is clean, then you can put your speck specs back on and see how you might serve them in helping them get better at handling their responsibilities towards you and others.

2. Risk 40 bucks on 20/20 vision. Ask 2 people this week if they can help you identify any logs in your eyes. Assure them that they are not responsible for how you respond to what they say. Give them $10 to answer your question, with the promise of $10 more if you get upset with them. If they won’t answer your question, you might already know one of your logs…

Advent: May It Be (from the womb to the tomb)

2011-12-11T18:53:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 12/11/2011

Scene from “Jesus of Nazareth” where Gabriel speaks to Mary…

²⁶In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. ³¹You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”

³⁴“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

³⁵The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷For no word from God will ever fail.”

³⁸“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me according to your word.” Then the angel left her.

Luke 1

As we said last week, this advent we are reflecting on waiting, and the role it plays in new creation being birthed in our world. Because when God is ready to act to deliver his people, after years and years of waiting, he chooses to begin with pregnancy. Before the kingdom of God comes to the world out there, it must first come to the world inside of us. Spiritual growth, like pregnancy, is a patient unfolding. It requires endurance. Lots of uncertainty. Periods of deliberate waiting. Pain that is embraced and incubated for the sake of the new person who will be born.

Today we want to focus on Mary’s words to the angel.

“Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.”

Luke 1:38

How does holy waiting begin? What is holy waiting like? What comes of holy waiting?

We know how regular waiting begins. It’s almost always forced on us, isn’t it? Something we are powerless to resist. Somebody or something else is making us wait. And so we can either be zen about it all, or angry.

As for what it’s like, well, that kind of depends. Are you Zen about it? Then it’s not so bad. Maybe you find a way to pass the time relatively painlessly. Are you ticked off? Then maybe it’s a little bit of frustration hell as you fume and rage against the machine.

And what comes of regular waiting? There’s really no way to know for sure. Maybe you get what you were waiting for. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just give up and never find out. Maybe you say, enough is enough! And you take matters into your own hands.

Holy waiting is altogether different.

Holy waiting always has a purpose, and that purpose is always new creation. Salvation. Redemption. Rescue. Growth. New life.

As for what it’s like, 9 times out of ten, holy waiting is painful. And although we are welcome to be Zen or to get angry, it will only postpone, not eliminate, the pain of holy waiting.

And most of all, holy waiting begins with Mary’s prayer: “May it be..”

God’s new creation plan, salvation, redemption, rescue – it all hinges on those who are willing to say, “may it be done to me according to your word.” And then who are willing to enter a pregnant period of waiting.

We see this in Mary. But we also see it, perhaps even more profoundly, in Mary’s son.

Jesus entering womb. May it be. Then born. Entering wilderness. May it be. Then beginning ministry. Entering garden of Gethsemane. May it be. Then resurrection.

And we see it in Jesus’ Father, as well…in the parable Jesus tells about the prodigal son. The son who demands his inheritance early, and leaves home to seek his fortune. May it be, says the Father. And then he waits. And waits. Not angry. Not Zen. Just with pain and longing in his heart, until the prodigal returns.

May it be is how true, holy waiting begins.

It sounds so much like surrender, doesn’t it? So passive. So helpless, powerless even.

It is one thing to have the kind of faith to step out on the water.

It is another thing to have the kind of faith to let yourself be thrown out of the boat.

That is the kind of faith it takes to say, “May it be…” That is the kind of faith it takes to see the kingdom come to the deepest places in our souls. That is the kind of faith that leads to new creation being birthed in the world.

Consider Jesus in his last days before his death on the cross. The death that defeated sin and death and evil, and opened the door to resurrection life. In those last days, Jesus is characterized not by a take charge, make it happen kind of attitude, but rather one of surrender. Isaiah even describes him prophetically as a lamb being led to slaughter.

When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ²“As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”

Matthew 26:1-2

paradidomi // to give over into one’s power or use

Sometimes translated “handed over”, sometimes “betrayed”.

Throughout those last days, Judas, and the chief priests, and Pilate, are all described as “handing Jesus over” or “betraying” Jesus.

So, in fact, is God.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up (handed him over, betrayed him) for us all…

Romans 8:32

When you are in a time of holy waiting, it can feel like you are being betrayed. Even by God. [wife in labor… “you did this to me…!”

Nonetheless, neither Mary nor Jesus fight the betrayal. They surrender to it. They allow themselves to be handed over. May it be. Not my will, but yours.

Jesus, extraordinarily, resists the temptation to use his power to escape. In the wilderness, he won’t turn the food into bread. During his arrest, he won’t call in a legion of angels to slay the arresting guards. On trial, he won’t use his words to marshal a defense. He even resists the impulse to nurture anger at the agents of the pain he is experiencing. As he is arrested he says, “All this has taken place to fulfill the scriptures of the prophets…” On the cross he says, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing…”

Is it that we must welcome what seems to be the injustice of God before we can experience his true justice? Is there a purer faith than that? Isn’t that the faith of Abraham when he takes his son Isaac to the mountain to be sacrificed?

Both Mary and Jesus have God’s favor announced to them before enduring humiliation of the deepest kind. Mary the impregnated, unwed teen. Jesus the naked, crucified criminal. What a contrast between the announcement of favor and the experience in holy waiting! Holy waiting is filled with the kinds of doubts only that kind of experience can produce.

So what do you hold on to during the waiting?

The words the Lord has spoken to you. “…for no word from God will ever fail.”

All else may be taken from you. That’s part of the pain of being handed over. That’s part of the may it be done to me according to your word deal.

Do you trust that all the chaos swirling around you can be shaped into God’s good purposes while you fix your eyes on what it means to be handed over? While you allow it to be done to you according to God’s word? Do you trust that God can bring about his good purposes even though forces that God has chosen out of his mysterious purpose not to restrain are at work? That God can speak to whomever he needs to speak to?

In waiting, I imagine the doubts Mary must have experienced. Day after day after day. The drama and gossip and looks. Her previously imagined future slipping away. No wedding shower. No wedding celebration. No baby shower.

In waiting, I imagine the concentrated, birthed in pain joy that Mary experienced in hearing that an angel had spoken to Joseph. The joy at the encouragement from her cousin Elizabeth, the parallels with Elizabeth’s story. The wonder at the shepherds arriving. The way in which the words of Simeon and Anna must have landed at the temple.

She had heard the angel. It was being done to her according to the angel’s words. And yet, the waiting was not over. The pain had not yet completed its new creation work. Not even when Jesus was born. Not even when Jesus was doing miracles. No, not until the tomb was empty. Her waiting, in fact all of humanity’s waiting, was joined together with Jesus’ waiting – or perhaps, better said, Jesus’ waiting was joined to our waiting.

It is in the waiting of the tomb that we have our first true fellowship with Christ. It is in the fellowship of suffering that the work of waiting gives birth to new creation, so that we can share in the fellowship of the resurrection.

Because, in the end…

God’s true justice was worked. Every betrayal gathered up and redeemed. The hands into which the handing over happened finally revealed to be God’s hands.

Is there a more revered woman than Mary in the history of the world? Is there a more royally clothed, more fully alive Judge than Jesus? New creation has come through their “may it be done to me” and subsequent waiting.

Through holy waiting, Salvation has come.

Through holy waiting, Redemption has come.

Through holy waiting, Rescue has come.

Through holy waiting, Resurrection has come.

Behold, we are your bondslaves.

This advent, may it be done to us according to his word.

Practical Tips.

Next time you have to wait, do the following:

1. Practice the “May it be done to me according to your word..” prayer in line or in traffic this week. Let yourself be handed over to it. Don’t try to escape it. Don’t try to hurry it along. Choose to let it be what it’s going to be, whatever the cost.

2. Notice your pain and tell God. Instead of getting Zen – achieving some enlightened and peaceful state to coast through the waiting – or getting angry (at the cashier or other people in line or whomever), fix your attention on the pain you are experiencing and talk with God about it. “This is really ticking me off…” “this is really making me anxious…” “Please help this person get a move on…” “I can’t believe this always happens to me; this is my life…”

3. Find somebody to love. Find some way to love the person right in front of you. Even and especially if they are the one making you wait. If nothing else, pray for their blessing.

And then finally, for those who are in a season of holy waiting:

4. Remind yourself of the Lord’s words to you regularly. Daily even.

Advent 2011: Waiting & Growth

2011-12-07T08:03:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 12/04/2011

2^nd week of advent, season of preparation to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Time in the Christian calendar when we reflect on the experience of the absence of God, on waiting, on anticipation, on longing, on making ourselves ready for God’s incarnational coming into the world.

Did you ever notice in the scriptures how often the people of God are waiting? Noah waits for the floodwaters to recede…

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. ²Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. ³The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, ⁴and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

⁶After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark ⁷and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. ⁹But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. ¹⁰He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. ¹¹When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. ¹²He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

¹³By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

Genesis 8

The king waits as Daniel waits through the night in a den of lions…

¹⁷A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel’s situation might not be changed. ¹⁸Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep.

¹⁹At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. ²⁰When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?”

Daniel 6

Sarah remains barren for decade after decade, waiting for a child.

Jacob waits 14 years to marry Rebecca.

The Israelites wait 400 years in Egypt, then 40 more years in the desert.

Jonah waits in the belly of a fish.

Simeon waits to see the Messiah.

The disciples wait for Pentecost.

Paul waits in prison.

So this advent, we are going to spend this week and next reflecting on waiting, and the role it plays in new creation being birthed in our world.

We begin our reflection with Luke’s account of Mary and Elizabeth, two cousins who become pregnant in extraordinary circumstances.

The story takes place in Israel, a small nation under Roman occupation and oppression. Israel itself has been enduring a long period of waiting and pain and uncertainty. It has been 400 years since the last prophet, Malachi, has spoken. Listen for the threads of waiting woven through this account…

⁵In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. ⁶Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. ⁷But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both well advanced in years.

⁸Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, ⁹he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. ¹⁰And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.

¹¹Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. ¹²When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear.

¹³But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. ¹⁴He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, ¹⁵for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. ¹⁶Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. ¹⁷And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

¹⁸Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

¹⁹The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. ²⁰And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

²¹Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. ²²When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.

²³When his time of service was completed, he returned home. ²⁴After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. ²⁵“The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

²⁶In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

³⁴“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

³⁵The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷For no word from God will ever fail.”

³⁸“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me according to your word.” Then the angel left her.

Luke 1

It is significant that when God is ready to act to deliver his people, after years and years of waiting, he chooses to begin with pregnancy.

Elizabeth’s and Mary’s pregnancies show us that before the kingdom of God comes to the world out there, it must first come to the world inside of us. And that as it comes, we experience periods of deliberate waiting, in which we learn to embrace uncertainty and pain as companions in our waiting.

“To group up spiritually means having growing pains in the darkest part of the night. Some Christians and even some churches have responded to this difficult truth by trying to create shortcuts – promises of easy grace, push button answers to complicated problems, illusions that we can go to church and work to bring in the kingdom out there in the world without entering the fiery process of bringing it into our own soul.”

Sue Monk Kidd, “When the Heart Waits” pg. 25

Pregnancy is a patient unfolding. It requires endurance. Lots of uncertainty. Deliberate waiting. Pain that embraced and incubated for sake of the new person who will be born. [Colin and I playing foosball…]

This is important to us as a centered-set church. Because our faith is defined by our movement towards Jesus, what matters to us is the process of new creation that happens as we take each new step of discipleship towards Jesus. And new creation – although it has many moments that are dramatic and eventful like birth, like the birth of Jesus, or the resurrection from the tomb – also has long periods of waiting where the growth is much more difficult to see from the outside. Periods like Mary’s pregnancy. Or like Jesus’ time on trial and on the cross and in the tomb.

“No aspect of thinking on conversion is more foreign to the American Evangelical experience than this stress on conversion as a process…Evangelicals emphasize emotion and an initial movement. This moment is celebrated, recalled, and when the experience fades, recaptured. But Christian tradition does not agree…Conversion is a continuous and lifelong process. Conversions proceed layer by layer, relationship by relationship, here a little, there a little – until the whole personality, intellect, feeling, and will have been recreated by God.”

John H. Westerhoff, the Spiritual Life, pages 75, 76

Sometimes in our pain, God is a rescuer. But sometimes he is also a midwife.

We have longings for growth. We have deep desires for transformation. For things to fundamentally change in our world, and in our soul, our minds, our hearts, our bodies. Some of those longings come from good visions God gives us of what is possible. Some of those longings come from the pain we know in our current state. The witness of the incarnation of Jesus is that God does desire to rescue us.

But that before the rescue comes, as part of the rescue, God wants to do something deep inside of us that requires patience and waiting and probably pain as well.

And we must not allow our distaste for pain to get in the way of that growth or transformation. Otherwise, things will stay the same.

The natural gradient in us is toward growth. Whatever we use repeatedly and compulsively to stop that growth is our addiction.

Marion Woodman

In our modern world, quick, easy-fix solutions are one of our addictions. We are, many of us, quickaholics and easaholics. [The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking…]

What if Mary had said, Well, I love the idea of the Son of the Most high and all that, but I’m just not sure I have the time and energy for a pregnancy right now. I’m engaged, I’ve got a wedding to plan. Plus, doesn’t that hurt a lot?

At a deeper level, our addiction to quick, easy-fix solutions keep us unaware of what is going on inside of us. It keeps us from growth. As soon as we have pain, our first instinct is to find a way to get rid of it. Preferably with an easy to swallow pill. Worst case, an injection.

How often do we recognize pain as an opportunity to discover some place in us that God might want to bring about new creation? And then trust him with a time and energy-consuming process like a pregnancy to give birth to it?

Perhaps if we could use this advent season to recognize and begin to break our addiction to quick, easy-fix solutions, we could begin to welcome the Kingdom of God within us in new ways, as Mary did.

Sue Monk Kidd identifies 3 rules of our addicted culture that we need to recognize and resist.

1. All lines must keep moving.

To resist entrainment, we must become still.

Pregnancy forces us to become still. Everything else becomes less important than that which is growing within us, preparing to be born.

2. Make life happen.

Mark 4:26 - ...the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain.

Parable of yeast.

Pregnancy reminds us that life is happening all on its own, and our main job is to support it, watch and wait, receive. “Let it be to me as you have said…”

3. Eat Dessert first.

Scott Peck: “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.”

Death always precedes resurrection. You can’t have resurrection life without death.

Pregnancy gives us none of what we’re longing for until the waiting and pain are done. Nothing, that is, except a deep, loving connection with the new life growing within us.

In waiting, it may look like nothing is happening. Like we are doing nothing. The temptation will be to get out of line. To abandon the line. Or to try to rush to the front to make things happen.

Pregnancy won’t let us do either.

Waiting is an essential part of following Jesus. He waits in the womb. He waits in the wilderness. He waits in the garden. He waits in the tomb. Sometimes the next step of discipleship doesn’t look like a step at all. It looks like continuing to face him, not changing course, not rushing forward without permission, even though it seems no movement is happening at all.

Waiting is the most persistently active forms of trust, isn’t it? You can take other steps of trust, and once the step begins it has a momentum all its own. But waiting is constant, moment by moment trust.

Sometimes our job as brothers and sisters to one another is to help each other wait while the Lord does deep and transformative work of spiritual growth. Not to get frustrated with one another, but to give each other breathing room to wait.

This isn’t easy; it requires knowing one another deeply to discern if it is hesitation or avoidance of the next step, or if the next step is in fact a step of waiting.

Holy pain is often the key. Is the lack of movement an avoidance of some holy pain? Or is the lack of movement a form of remaining in some holy pain until a holy work is done?

[Circles of communication/intimacy: cliché, facts, ideas, feelings, needs…you can’t move past ideas until you are willing to accept the pain of conflict…but you can’t have any of the deepest benefits of relationship until you move into those last two circles, either…this has application for our relationship with God. Have you been stuck outside of intimate relationship with God because of your avoidance of pain? It’s time to take a step of trust…]

Practical Tips:

1. Pay attention to your addictions. What pain is it helping you avoid? (If you’re not sure, resist your addiction once; instead, stop, sit down, and ask God to reveal your pain to you.) That pain is centered in the place God wants to bring new creation in your life.

“The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate in it and delight in it.”

Eugene Peterson

2. Make a Christmas list. List three things from which you have been waiting for God’s rescue. Pray this prayer each day of Advent: “God, I want your rescue. While I’m waiting, I welcome whatever new life you want to birth in me. Teach me how to wait well.”

3. Find someone else to wait with. (Mary and Elizabeth waiting together…) Sometimes waiting is very lonely, especially when everyone around us is go, go, go. If you are involved in some holy waiting, find someone else who is, too, and do some of your waiting together. If you’re not, find someone who is, and ask if you can join them as a support in their waiting.

Galatians: Love Rules

2011-11-23T12:20:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 11/20/2011

We know how important rules are for kids.

Don’t hit. Don’t scream. Be respectful. 2 sheets of toilet paper per wipe, max. Be in charge of your emotions. Stay in your bed once we’ve said goodnight, unless you are bleeding or throwing up. Say, OK Dad, when I ask you do something. And then do it. Come put a hand on my shoulder if you want my attention and I’m talking to someone else. And on, and on.

What if, one day, you said to your kids: OK, the rules are gone. The rules were always just temporary, meant to point us toward love. Love is here now, so Love is in charge. Just listen to Love.

What do you imagine it would be like? Planet of the Apes? Animal House?

Lord of the Flies?

If it’s always been rules that have constrained behavior and provided for order and a safe context for healthy growth, what will happen when the rules aren’t in charge anymore?

[15 minute NO RULES! experiment with our kids…]

When we move from an experience of bounded-set community to centered-set community, from Law to Gospel, from rules-based religion to love-based faith, we get nervous in the same sort of way.

Won’t people just use their newfound freedom to get away with murder? Won’t there be all kinds of hitting and screaming and disrespect and whole rolls of toiletpaper clogging the toilet, and temper tantrums and people running through the house all night and the TV set to spongebob 24 hours a day?

First, a reality check. Even with the rules, there was still some hitting. And the occasional outside voice when an inside voice would have been appropriate. And the toilet keeps getting suspiciously plugged far more often than it should, especially in light of how much coaxing you’re having to do to get them to eat anything at dinner, anyway.

Even when our faith communities are rules-based, rules are getting broken all the time. Only, more often than not, it’s being hidden in shame or by malicious deceit. And new ways of misbehaving that the rules haven’t caught up with are more than likely already underway, aren’t they?

But even with that reality check in mind, we still have our yes, buts when we hear Paul describing a faith that places Jesus and his message of good news and his call to love at the center of what it means to be part of the family of God. Especially when he goes ballistic at the most reasonable, Biblically defensible attempt to just add one or two or three things to the Gospel.

OK, we say. We can understand how important it is to have at our center only that which is truly central, and if we add anything to that, that which is truly central will lose its power. That’s what we talked about in more detail as we looked at the book of Galatians last week.

Yes, we say. But…

And most of our buts have to do with all of the questions that come up around the question, “What in the world then is going to get us sinful people to behave, to live in good and right and life-giving ways? What’s going to save us from the seemingly inevitable abuses of freedom that are coming? And what do we do about them when they come?”

Paul’s response begins in chapter 5, where he says in essence:

I hear your concerns. First, no matter what, don’t let your concerns persuade you to go back to rules-based religion.

Second, as to your main concerns: It’s pretty simple. The Love that has come into the world in Jesus Christ is a more reliable guide than any rules, so walk in the way of Love. Along the way, avoid the obvious exit ramps that will send you in an opposing, love-killing direction. And let the Holy Spirit lead you.

Let’s read it:

[quick summary of background first…]

5 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

²Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. ³Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. ⁴You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. ⁵But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. ⁶For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

⁷You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? ⁸That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. ⁹“A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” ¹⁰I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will have to pay the penalty, whoever that may be. ¹¹Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. ¹²As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

Life by the Spirit

¹³You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

¹⁶So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. ¹⁷For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

¹⁹The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Paul begins with this strong re-assertion of the importance of keeping Christ and Christ alone at the center, because he knows things will be a little messy and uncertain on the way to freedom, and he knows the human tendency to want to return to what we’ve always known, even if what we knew wasn’t that great in the first place. Because at least we knew what to expect.

[Remember Israel wandering in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt…?]

But Paul doesn’t leave it at that, thankfully. He does give us something to go on, and it’s first referenced right in the middle of his diatribe, and then expanded on later.

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.

More literally, only faith operating through love is truly powerful.

Rules-based religion may seem powerful, but actually, real power is only present in the kind of trust in Jesus that gets expressed through love.

Do we want to welcome the kingdom of God amongst us? Do we want to participate in the restoration and renewal and redemption of all things? Do we want to be healed and made whole and be filled with God’s Holy Spirit? Do we want the old creation to be re-created and remade into the new creation present for the first time in Jesus’ resurrection body?

I say we do.

Paul says the only way to get there is faith operating through love.

And that will require some significant learning and adjustment on our part.

¹³You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

Mission statement: together we follow the way of Jesus and create breathing room for the disfavored to find favor, the discounted to count, the disconnected to connect.

Each one of us engaged in the mission has at some level found favor, experienced what it means to count in God’s kingdom, and tasted the joy of connecting to God and his family through Jesus. And we found that favor, started counting and tasted connection all because we turned towards Jesus and received what he had for us.

Not because we got any part of our act together.

Surely, the various parts of our acts that we’ve gotten together have increased our capacity to embrace God’s favor, give all of ourselves to God’s purposes for our lives, and dwell securely in the Shalom that comes from connection to Christ. But none of that was required for entry; Jesus – and cooperating brothers and sisters – gave us breathing room to turn and receive and enter into freedom from sin and death and separation. Freedom, freely given and freely received.

But now, it would be insanity to use that freedom to indulge the sinful nature. We’d just be using our freedom to become slaves again.

The warning against indulging the sinful nature goes two ways. We can’t indulge it to enslave in rules-based religion those who are coming after us and need the same breathing room we were given as a gift (Love your neighbor as yourself; if you keep biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other). And we can’t indulge it to stop walking together on the way of Jesus (serving one another humbly in love), taking the next step of discipleship.

All of our energy in the centered set goes to becoming students in Jesus’ school of love. That’s what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. (they’ll know you’re my disciples by your love…)

Not just any kind of love, but Agape love.

STORGE, affection: fondness thru familiarity; PHILEO, friendship; EROS, romance; AGAPE the least celebrated: unconditional love, love that cares for the other regardless of circumstance. Not a single god in the Graeco-Roman pantheon specialized in AGAPE.

Except YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who so agape-ed the world that he sent his one-of-a-kind, unique Son, that whoever trusts in him would have the life of the heavens, eternal life, the kind of zoe-life that flows from God and never runs out and can’t be taken away and doesn’t decay or get blown around by the winds of this world.

[centered-set; God Agape-ing those far, far away, even turned away from him, calling them to receive his love, inviting them to follow him, further and further into it. Demanding that those who follow learn to imitate his Agape towards one another, which makes space for his Agape to make a home in them, welcoming new creation, because it is after all, Agape that made the world in the first place, love that loves the other and invites the other into one’s love, even at great cost, so that love is multiplied.]

With Jesus as our center, The AGAPE that has made a home in us through the Holy Spirit moves us in discipleship from inside and the AGAPE that is our master, Jesus the anointed one, draws us from outside (like 2 magnets drawn to each other).

And because the law and the prophets were always pointing the same direction as AGAPE, AGAPE himself will lead us to Christ-likeness both more reliably, and more powerfully.

Old creation guarded by law, but dying and doomed nonetheless. Law a preservation until turning point in history - explosive good news of Jesus, death, rising, pouring out of Spirit.

No going back. Rules-based religion may be tidy, but it was crucified with Jesus. Along with the rest of the old creation.

Love has come, and love is the train that carries us into new creation.

Love may look like an uncertain guide - it seems so invisible, doesn't it? So up for interpretation? But Agape is personal. God, according to St. John, is Agape.

Jesus himself. The Holy Spirit.

To Paul, AGAPE meant a living, active, life generating, directive, guiding, personal presence living inside of those who follow Jesus!

Paul had encountered AGAPE on the road to Damascus, and knew that AGAPE was WAY more demanding than any law.

Paul said in Philippians, “As to righteousness by the Law—I was perfect.” But AGAPE love is another matter entirely. “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15) In other words, Paul was successful at obeying the law, but AGAPE was pushing and pulling him further than the law had ever demanded. [like the difference between a workout routine and a personal trainer…]

So we are going to walk in the way of AGAPE love instead of rules-based religion because we want more than rules-based religion can give us. We want everything Jesus wants to give us. Which in the end, is life. Abundant life.

Paul knows however, that we aren’t super-well versed in the way of AGAPE yet, that we are still learning the voice of our new Master, so he cautions us to avoid some of the obvious exit ramps.

¹⁹The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

In other words, in the end, the goal is for AGAPE to permeate us entirely, so that we want what God wants, so that our new natural desires lead us on the way of love. That’s walking by the Spirit.

But we still have a sinful nature exerting influence on our desires. So instead of just doing what we want, we need to evaluate our desires and hold them up against AGAPE.

Do our desires lead us to any of those obvious love-killers on the list? Don’t go down that path. If you keep walking on it, it won’t lead you to AGAPE, to the kingdom of God, to life.

Notice Paul’s tone here, though. He’s not shouting, threatening. If he has to raise his voice to get us off those paths, it’s already too late, and won’t do any good, because we’re clearly not trying to take the next step of discipleship.

No, here Paul is using his inside voice. He knows if we’ve chosen Jesus, if we’ve chosen the gospel, if we’ve chosen the way of love, then we want to hear what he’s saying. So he can speak gently to us.

And he continues about the importance of the Holy Spirit in a centered-set faith community.

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Notice how Paul contrasts the “acts” of the sinful nature with the “fruit” of the Spirit. One can choose or not choose to take steps on the way of love or on the various love-killer exit ramps. But one can’t choose to be filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These things come as a natural result – “fruit” – of a discipleship to Jesus characterized by listening to the Holy Spirit and taking each next step of discipleship as Jesus leads.

And that’s why rules-based religion can’t get you there. The fruit of the spirit comes directly from the trusting relationship with Jesus that is nurtured in discipleship. If I’m trusting a system, it will bear in me the fruit that that system bears. But it is limited by the limits of that system. If I’m trusting a living, breathing Savior, it is only limited by the life of that Savior. And this Savior has unlimited life, life eternal. And so the fruit of the Spirit is bursting with that life.

It’s like we’re in a sailboat with one of those little electric motors to get us out of the harbor and into the wind. At a certain point, we have to take our hand off little electric outboard and put our sails to catch the wind. If we don’t know how to sail--how to lower the boom and rig the jib and trim the thingamajig--we’re going to make a royal mess of things. We will sail in circles, or tip the boat over, or sit dead in the water. We’ll be tempted to go back to little outboard motor.

But Paul is in the boat with us. The motor is the Law. The sails are the gospel. And Paul is saying, “Keep your hands off that motor and learn how to sail, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. We’ll live with the mess until you do. There’s no other way across this lake!”

So what does all of this mean for us as a church?

It means we will not let anything but Jesus occupy our center. It means we will not let anything but the gospel be our message. It means we will not let anything but love be our aim. Because the Bible is our book, and this is what the Bible says to us.

Like Paul (and Jesus before him), when necessary, we will use our outside voices to keep Jesus as our center and the gospel as our message and love as our aim.

It’s easy to get into a bounded set and stop moving towards AGAPE once you’re on the inside. But there’s no point to being in a centered set unless you want to keep moving. We are here, together following the way of Jesus, because we don’t want to settle for anything less than everything Jesus has for us.

Which is why we will continuously encourage one another to walk in the way of love, and to avoid the exit ramps that the love-killers provide, and to learn to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit as we seek to take each next step of discipleship

But as we do that, like Paul (and Jesus before him), we will use our inside voices. We will seek to come alongside one another and pay close attention to what the Spirit is saying in preference to what our sinful natures are saying, so that we can truly speak the truth in love to one another. Because while Love is loud when it is announcing good news in the face of opposition, it is gentle and humble when addressing sinners and inviting them into the next steps of discipleship.

[notice how the fruit of the spirit isn’t an exhaustive list of virtues, but it is a list of the virtues that a sinner would love to be surrounded by when learning to follow the way of love? Notice how it’s a list of virtues that would need to be present for a centered-set community to work without anyone becoming conceited, provoking and envying one another?]

A note to those who are newbies to a centered-set community of faith, but veterans of more bounded-set religious expressions: in bounded sets, the leaders’ primary jobs are guarding and enforcing the boundaries. And the non-leaders are there to notice infractions and bring them to the attention of leaders. This is not the case when AGAPE defines a centered-set. The demands of AGAPE on everyone who is part of the faith community centered on AGAPE are that we serve one another in love. Which means we are all on the front lines of helping one another discern the voice of Jesus’ Spirit calling us to the next step of discipleship, and on the front lines of helping one another take those next steps.

No one is exempt.

And the primary role of leaders is helping equip the saints for that work of service to one another. Helping us learn serve one another in love, how to discern the desires of our sinful nature vs. the desires that come from AGAPE, how to listen for the voice of the spirit. Which is where we need the scriptures, and the gift of discernment, and the witness of our fellow believers from the first disciples on until today.

And so if you bring some exit ramp behavior to the attention of a leader, if that exit ramp behavior isn’t something that is keeping us from our mission to follow the way of Jesus together, creating breathing room for the disfavored to find favor and the discounted to count and the disconnected to connect, that leader’s task will not be first to address the exit ramp behavior, but instead to help you discover what it means – as part of your discipleship – to humbly serve your brother or sister in love.

This might be frustrating at first J. But press in – there is life down this road, abundant, overflowing, zoe-life.

Practical Tips:

1. Receive God’s AGAPE love for you. Recognize that God’s love is not contingent on you improving. It is not contingent on you staying within some kind of boundaries. God’s love for you simply is. Trust it.

Every step of discipleship from here on out will not add to his love for you. But each step will open your heart to receive it more deeply and empower you to welcome it’s transforming effects on you and your relationships and your world. And that’s why you’ll keep moving forward.

2. Listen to U2’s “When Love Comes to Town” as a commentary on Galatians.

Galatians: All Bait, No Switch

2011-11-15T11:25:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 11/13/2011

[explain bait and switch…]

So maybe you’ve had this kind of experience:

You want to share the good news of Jesus with someone at work, or a friend, or a family member. You know that Jesus’ good news is good news to you. That Jesus is good news to them. That it contains – for them, and their circumstances – explosive, transformative, life-changing, saving power. But you also know that when they hear it, they are going to have some questions about what else goes along with it.

Like, if I go to your church to find out more about Jesus, will I have to give my money? Will I have to stop partying? Will I have to change something about how I express my sexuality? Will I have to dress differently? Will I have to stop talking the way I normally talk? Will I have to start believing some particular things about the end of the world? Will I have to stop believing some particular things about the beginning of the world? Will I have to change my politics? Will I have to stop smoking? What religious things will I have to start doing? Will something in my past disqualify me from going very far on this journey? Will something central to my identity be a problem pretty soon?

And you’re not sure what to do with those questions. Truthfully, you hope they don’t ask any of those questions until after they meet Jesus. Because you want to be able to say, no, none of that matters, just come, check it out. But you’re also thinking, I hope once they check it out, they fall so in love with Jesus fast enough that once they find out the reality about ____________, they don’t care anymore, and they are ready to change.

And so you feel like you’re sort of doing a bait and switch. Advertising one thing, hoping that once they are in the store and find out it’s not exactly as advertised, they’ll still buy, because after all, it truly is a good deal; they just wouldn’t have come to the store in the first place if you’d told them the whole story.

We are going to start a two week series on the book of Galatians, because Galatians is about the first bait and switch in the history of Christianity. But we won’t get to the scripture itself until nearly the end of the message today. So hang in there.

Let’s begin today by defining the goods we Jesus followers are peddling. Those goods are the good news, the gospel. This is my dad’s 100 word summary of the gospel:

The gospel is good news that our exile from God, others, and ourselves is ending thanks to a great rescue. God has entered the human condition once and for all through his Beloved Son—to reconcile and redeem us by his coming, living, dying, bodily rising, ascending, Spirit-infusing, and promised future coming as judge. Jesus is gathering a community of disciples to bear witness to the future-glorious reign of God breaking into the present, empowering us to work toward the day when heaven and earth are once again fully integrated in a new creation—which through Jesus, has already begun.

It’s that good news that gives us our vision of being a centered-set church. That for us, the one thing we have in common is Jesus and the good news we hear from him and see in him and experience with him. That something about him has gotten our attention, and to one degree or another he is capturing our hearts. So much so that eventually, the only thing of supreme importance in our lives is figuring out our next step in following him. What we might call our next step of discipleship.

We believe that Jesus has announced the good news of the kingdom of God. That God’s kingdom – his good rule and reign that sets us free from everything that might try to enslave us, the rule and reign that brings us life, that makes us secure in his presence – is here now, and it’s coming more and more, and it will one day come all the way, through and through, everywhere, and then everything will be set right: in us, in our relationships, in our world.

Everything.

Everywhere.

Made new.

Set right.

By the rule and reign of God.

And we believe that the kingdom of God comes by Jesus’ authority and the work of his Holy Spirit. Our job, therefore, is simply to receive the grace that lets us see what he’s doing so that we can join in with Jesus as creatively and joyfully and wholeheartedly as possible.

And as tempting as it is to try to authoritatively define exactly what it means to do that [prayer, bible reading, stopping this behavior, starting that behavior, etc.], we know that that responding to that temptation would – despite our best intentions – actually change the good news of Jesus into a religion. And in the end it would cause us to take our eyes off of Jesus and turn them towards things that might be good, but would be less than he is.

So we choose instead to be pilgrims on a pilgrimage toward Jesus, living lives that are responding to Jesus, shaped by his gospel. Sharing what we’ve learned along the way with other pilgrims, but never letting anyone’s response to any particular thing we’ve learned along the way become a criteria for joining together in pilgrimage.

No, instead we will create breathing room for everyone we encounter along our path. Confident that Jesus will work out all of those differences that truly matter along the way.

After all, if Jesus really is who he says he is, and if the kingdom of God really is what Jesus says it is, then all who seek first his kingdom will find that everything else that matters will be added to them.

That’s why we describe our mission this way:

Together we follow the way of Jesus and create breathing room the disfavored to find favor, for the discounted to count, and for the disconnected to connect. Starting here.

And since Jesus is the treasure hidden in the field, since he is the pearl of great price, we simply will not allow ourselves to let anything else – no matter how good and true and right it is – take center stage in our vision.

For example, any one of us might feel sure of what heaven is and how it works, or what hell is and how it works, or how the world started, or how it’s going end, or what behaviors are life-giving and God-honoring, or what actions are destructive and disobedient. Any one of us might feel sure that a particular way of reading the bible, or a particular passage, is the right way and that other ways are the wrong way. But we will not let any of those things we may feel sure about trump the commitment we have to not letting anything get added to the gospel. Because it is the gospel that is the power of salvation for those who trust it. And if we force anyone to trust the gospel, or Jesus, and something else in order to be called brother or sister, than we ourselves do not actually trust the gospel, or Jesus, do we?

Gospel comes from an old English word meaning “good news.” The gospel is good. In fact, it’s the best possible, nothing better anywhere ever. And it’s news. As in new and noteworthy. Unheard of before. Fundamentally unlike the same old same old.

The gospel does what good news does. It drops like an explosive energy into the midst of space and time, and transforms everything about its surroundings and its hearers. [remember Oprah’s favorite things…?]

“favorite things” reaction

Nothing is ever the same again in the wake of good news. The gospel invites us to embrace the new reality that the good news announces and let it work its power on our hearts and minds and bodies and souls.

The gospel is not the same thing as religion.

Religion comes from the root word “lig” which has to do with connecting (as in ligament) and “re” which means again. So religion is a way to connect us again to God and to one another and to all of creation. Religion at its core is as good as people are good and as bad as people are bad. Which means it can be both pretty good and pretty horrible. And religion is most definitely not news. No matter how new the religion, religion is always made out of the same old same old, just in new configurations, for better or for worse.

And so religion does what religion does. It connects and guides and guards and shapes and gathers and defines. Religion can be an agent of blessing people, communities, cultures, or quite the opposite. But because it does its work from the outside in, religion tends not to invite, but rather to usher, with varying levels of forcefulness, and its power is a function of the effectiveness and wisdom of its systems.

Various forms of Christianity, then, are various religious forms wrapped around the gospel.

Thankfully, the gospel is so powerful that it’s possible for huge gaps to exist between the religion it’s wrapped in and the gospel itself, and many people will still buy it, and it will still be a good deal. But sometimes, those gaps between the gospel and the religion it’s wrapped in can be so large that they obscure the gospel. Obscure it thoroughly enough that some people never even glimpse the gospel that lies at the heart of that particular religious form. Or sometimes those gaps are so significant that the gospel sneaks right out of the picture all together, and all you’ve got left is empty religion.

Let’s go back, now, to that hypothetical person with whom you shared the gospel at the start of the message today.

What if you could say, in response to their questions about the religious wrappings:

There is nothing in your past that will disqualify you from getting everything out of this good news that the best person in the world gets out of it – in fact, in a strange way, you may even get more out of it.

There is nothing central to your identity that will ever be a problem as you explore this good news – in fact, you will find that God’s love for you as you are right now is even greater than your own love for yourself right now, and the impact of the good news is always to make us more of who we truly are, rather than less.

What if you could say:

And I honestly don’t know the answers to any of those particular things you are concerned you might have to start or stop because all of that isn’t up to me; in the end it’s up to you and Jesus, and his ideas about all of that might be different than mine.

I can tell you what it’s meant for me, though, if that helps, and how I’ve experienced it. And others can tell you what it’s meant for them.

But none of us knows where your journey is going to start and what it’s going to look like along the way. Because your next step and my next step and his next step and her next step – even though they are all going in the same direction – aren’t necessarily the same at all.

What if you could say:

And if and when the time comes for you to start doing something new, or stop doing something old, you’ll be doing it because you want to, out of some place deep inside of you, out of a conviction that this new way of living is the best possible way to live, that leads to the most joy and satisfaction and blessing, and definitely not because somebody else is forcing you to.

And as to what you’ll have to believe or think, the only thing that is of central importance is the good news of Jesus, and trusting him.

Because Jesus is our center.

And the gospel is our message.

And love is our aim.

And all of that is the case because the Bible is our book, and the Bible is what tells us the story of the gospel, and Jesus, and love.

What if you could say all that?

The truth is, you can say all of that. Because that’s what Jesus says. That’s what the gospel says. That’s what Love says. And, that’s what the Bible says.

In particular, that’s what Paul says in the letter to the Galatians.

The letter to the Galatians revolves around a significant conflict between religion and the gospel. This week and next we’re going to look at it in order understand some of the implications for our church. If the Bible is our book, what does it mean to be a faith community with Jesus as our center, with the gospel as our message, with love as our aim? And how does that shape our mission to follow the way of Jesus together, creating breathing room for the disfavored, the discounted, and the disconnected?

So first, some background on Galatians.

Gospel lands first in Israel, embraced primarily by Jewish people. They continue, most of them, to practice Judaism, but it’s a Judaism that is transformed, fulfilled by the good news of the resurrected Jesus and empowered by the outpouring of Jesus’ Holy Spirit. Some of the main leaders of the church in Jerusalem are Jesus’ original disciples like Peter, and Jesus’ brother, James.

Then the message of Jesus begins to spread, and communities of faith begin to form in non-Jewish parts of the Roman empire. These non-Jewish people are called Gentiles, and their primary religious forms are not Judaism, but various forms of paganism, having previously worshiped Greek and Roman gods. Paul, a Jewish Pharisee who had previously tried to kill followers of the way of Jesus until he had a dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus, is one of the main announcers of Jesus’ good news among the gentiles. He starts lots of Gentile churches, including a church in Galatia.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, an uprising against the Roman occupiers is brewing among the oppressed Jews living there. Since Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem are primarily Jews, there is a lot of pressure from the Jewish religious leaders for them to cooperate. And one of the keys to the rebellion’s success, according to the Jewish leaders, is for the Jewish people to be extra-faithful to the tenants of Judaism, things like circumcision, and keeping kosher, and observing the holy feasts. Which is no problem for the church in Jerusalem, since the Jewish followers of Jesus were continuing to practice Judaism faithfully, just as Jesus – who was also a Jew - had.

By this time, there are a number of Pharisees who have also received Jesus’ message of good news and joined the Jerusalem church. Since they are more educated than the original disciples, they begin to exert influence on Peter and James. They notice what’s happening with all of these gentiles around the Roman empire becoming followers of Jesus and forming communities of faith, and they know it is going to have an impact on the Jerusalem church’s reputation. So a movement starts to convince the Gentiles that they need to be circumcised just as Jewish people are circumcised (not to mention keeping kosher and all the rest).

And they’ve got the Bible to back them up. After all, Abraham, who had been a pagan until he heard God’s invitation to follow him, was circumcised when he became part of the family of God. And these new gentile followers of Jesus were joining the family of God through faith in Jesus, being grafted onto Abraham’s family, so a very strong case could be made that they should be circumcised as well.

It would be tough to make a biblical case, in fact, that they shouldn’t.

But when Paul hears that the gentiles in Galatia are being pressured to be circumcised, and keep kosher, and celebrate the feasts in order to be true members of the family of God in Christ Jesus, and when he hears that they might go along with it, he goes ballistic. And writes a letter to the Galatians.

⁶I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— ⁷which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. ⁸But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let that person be under God’s curse! ⁹As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let that person be under God’s curse!

Galatians 1:6-9

¹¹When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. ¹²For before certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. ¹³The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

¹⁴When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

¹⁵“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶know that a person is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

¹⁷“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!...

²¹I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Galatians 2:11-21

²³Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. ²⁴So the law was put in charge of us until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

²⁶So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, ²⁷for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Galatians 3:23-29

¹²Those who want to impress others by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh. ¹⁴May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. ¹⁶Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God.

Galatians 6:12-16

What counts is the new creation. Amen. And Amen.

Next week we are going to look at Galatians, chapter 5 to see what Paul has to say to us about how a law-free gospel helps sinners behave. Because, when it comes down to it, that’s part of what is so uncomfortable about all of this for us. It’s the “yes, buts…” Yes, but what if somebody is doing such or such? Or doesn’t believe such and such? Or won’t do such and such? Or still believes such and such? Yes, but, doesn’t that mean anyone can do anything they want, and there is nothing to stop them? Yes, but…, yes, but…

For now, a couple of practical tips:

1. Read the whole letter to the Galatians, out loud. Better yet, listen to it on audio.

2. Offer Jesus your Yes Buts. Write your “Yes, but…” down on paper. And give Jesus permission to answer your “Yes, but..” After all, discipleship starts between us and Jesus, doesn’t it? So theoretically, if him answering your “Yes, but…” is important to your next step of discipleship, he just might have something to say to you.

3. Sign up to get baptized. Baptism is saying, “Jesus, I’m yours.” Not, I’ve got all this religion business worked out. Or that I’ve got myself all worked out. Just, I see who you are. I hear what you’re saying. I love what you’re doing. I’m yours. Lead on.

1st John: Santa, Lightsabers, Joyful Asking, and Idols

2011-11-09T07:31:00.001-08:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 11/06/2011

¹³I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. ¹⁴This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

¹⁶If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. ¹⁷All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

¹⁸We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them. ¹⁹We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. ²⁰We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

²¹Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

1 John 5:13-21

Our vision of G-d shapes our relationship with G-d.

Competing visions of nature of relationship between human beings and God…

The God who sets things in motion and has a set of rules for us to follow; reward for obedience, punishment for disobedience. Alternatively, a God who is experienced primarily as a mysterious, powerful force for us to figure out how to use to our advantage; learning the right way to interact with him to get what we want. [Watchmaker Santa vs. Force Baby]

The vision Jesus gives us is neither of these.

What we see in Jesus is a God whose primary desire is intimate, cooperative, creative relationship with us. A God who is covering the distance between us by running toward us and by inviting us to turn and embrace him. A God who is up to incredibly powerful redemptive, restorative work in our world, but who has chosen to include us as joint participants, co-laborers with him in his new creation. And so the idea is that there are all sorts of things God desires to do, but he generally only acts when he can do so in cooperation his kids. [Father, Mother, Brother, Friend]

Because fundamentally, the universe the triune God has created is relational. In other words, at the center of everything is relationship.

God, after all, says John, is Love.

By this, says Jesus, everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.

The greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And Love your neighbor as yourself.

After all, what was humanity’s first encounter with God? Not an instruction. Not a pointing finger.

A kiss.

⁴This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have [echo/hold] what we asked of him.

Ask anything. Start there. It’s a good rule of thumb in relationship with God. Because after all, if you’re asking, your relating. And that always pleases God.

Perhaps you are concerned you are asking about trivial things.

God is not like a frazzled parent who gets overwhelmed by the small requests and doesn’t have time to deal with the big stuff that really needs attention.

Or perhaps you are concerned that you are asking for “wrong” things.

When in doubt, ask away. People in the bible are always asking for the “wrong” things. God is self-differentiated enough, and loves us enough, not to give us what won’t give us life. And again, coming to him with our desires, even our broken desires, is the starting place for relationship.

So ask anything. Start there. But where relationship really hits its stride is when we start asking “according to his will.” Because when we do that, we see God at work in our world and in our lives in all kinds of unmistakable ways. We get the joy of firsthand experience of his power, the joy of partnering with him in the most significant work happening anywhere in the world.

For some of us, the idea of asking “according to God’s will” seems like a religious technicality, the fine print that makes room for unanswered prayers. That’s not the sense here.

The sense here is that as we follow Jesus, our hearts, our desires begin to shift, transform, and become like God’s desires. And so we start to want the same things God is wanting, and we naturally start to ask him to do things that he’s been waiting since the dawn of time to do, and then, wow! Look out! We are in the middle of new creation, in the middle of resurrection life bursting forth in our lives and our world.

The word for God’s will here, is after all, “thelema.” The Greek word that means pleasure, or desire, rather than a set-in-stone plan.

So imagine it’s the Lord’s desire, his pleasure to heal someone. To set someone free from demonic oppression. To release someone from an addiction. To deliver you from some brokenness that has afflicted you for a long time in your life. To help a child find a lost toy. To keep a car running despite the fact that the gas is gone. To miraculously multiply some resources. Imagine that he’s just bursting with anticipation to do that.

And imagine you’re wanting the same thing, just in that moment. And so you ask him – Lord, here’s my request.

What John is saying is that God will do it, he’ll give you your request. Not because it’s magic. Not because you got the formula right. Not because you lived a sinless life that day. But because you had faith – which is just another word for trusting relationship - and in faith you expressed your desire, your pleasure, your thelema will, to God. And for God, this is what he’s been waiting for since the dawn of time itself. You and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, co-operating in love. Dancing the kingdom dance. Singing the shalom song.

[Basketball season on brink of being cancelled / a last ditch prayer…]

How cool to find out that that not only did God answer the prayer – which means we got to play ball, but also that God wanted me to play ball. Life’s different when you know it gives God pleasure, isn’t it? [Lexi and the presents…]

[Jericho prayer experience / I will shout for you…]

You can bet I’m continuing to pray for those things, with such anticipation that God desires them, too. The only thing that stands between now and having the request in my hands is his timing, and, as always, the free will of others. But that’s the place from which Jesus lived his life, wasn’t it? I’ll take it.

[Turning 40 / and the 3 requests…]

Turns out I’ve been completely reluctant to embrace God’s way of answering, but beginning to discover the joy of realizing that these requests are his pleasure, his desire, his thelema.

It’s at this point that the letter gets a little intriguing, as John gives a specific example of the kind of request we might make “according to God’s thelema will”

¹⁶If you see any brother or sister commit a sin (sinning a sin) that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them [zoe] life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. ¹⁷All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

Lots of scholarly discussion and debate on this passage. Is there a particular sin that John is speaking about, for example, that leads to death? One that everyone reading this letter would have known about? Murder, maybe? Speeding? Letting your dog poop on your neighbor’s lawn and not cleaning it up? Judging your neighbor for letting their dog poop on their lawn and letting bitterness build up instead of either forbearing it or talking to your neighbor about it? Driving on the shoulder during a traffic backup? Using your mobile phone during a movie? Sadly, we’ll never know.

I’ll give you my take on what’s going on here.

Centered set / Consider someone on a zoe-life trajectory – a settled, repentant decision to trust the gospel, to follow Jesus. Ask for life for a brother or sister who is on the way of Jesus but sinning; it’s always God’s pleasure/desire to give it. We all sin all the time, even as our next steps take us stumblingly after Jesus. But those sins aren’t going to have their way, not in the end. The zoe-life within us, the Spirit within us, is going to win the day.

(Ever felt reluctant to pray for life for our brothers and sisters who are sinning? Especially if they are sinning against us… We are afraid that it will encourage them, somehow. We are afraid to support, pray for, celebrate fellow disciples if their sin is noticeable enough. Don’t be anxious about inadvertently condoning their sin, John is saying; invest your energies in praying for an increase of the zoe-life within them. Interesting wisdom at work here. Notice the impact on our capacity to love instead of judge with this approach…)

But on a death trajectory, the free-willed person’s hands are closed to the gift. Yes, it’s still God’s thelema pleasure/desire to give them life, but something else has to happen before they can receive it. John’s not saying don’t pray for them, simply that the particular picture he’s painting of relational cooperation doesn’t apply here.

[side note: 1 John 5 seems to me to have all kinds of connections to John 5, where the story is told of the invalid at the Bethesda pool. There we have a picture of a man whose sin is leading to death. 38 years of complaining that no one will help him into this pool with superstitious healing powers. Jesus challenges him as to whether or not he even wants to get well. And then tells him to pick up his mat and walk. For this man heading towards death, the door opens to life when he hears Jesus’ voice, recognizes the truth and authority of it, and responds. By picking up his mat and walking, he is repenting of his helplessness and trusting the voice of Jesus, and the kingdom of God breaks through and brings him freedom/healing. Now he’s on a zoe-life trajectory. Stop sinning, Jesus tells him, or something worse may happen to you. In other words, that sin – the sin of not owning his life and going after what God has for him – was the sin that was leading him to death.]

We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

²¹Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

True, true, true v idols.

True / Alethinos – that which has not only the name and resemblance, but the real nature corresponding to the name, in every respect corresponding to the idea signified by the name, real, true, genuine.

Idol / Eidolon – image, or likeness.

Anything (or anyone) we attempt to draw life from that is not the one true God made known in Jesus. Something (or someone) we count on to have power over that before which we feel powerless.

An idol has nothing behind it. No Zoe-life in it. No power. Don’t let either hand grasp one. The Lord will take your hands off of it.

Even good things can become idols to us. Even and especially things that the Lord uses to bring life to us. As soon as we let go of Jesus to hold those good things in our hands in his place. [sibling tug of war strategy…the enemy does the same to us]

And so sometimes what Jesus has to do – as we follow him – is teach us to let go of our idols so that we can embrace him afresh, and hold tightly. And then those good things (people) can be restored to their proper place as glory vessels and image-bearers, instead of being images, eidolon.

(that’s why the people of Israel were so careful about not even having images / idols of the one true God. God wants us to know him and have relationship with him unmediated by our own creations. He has made a creation that points to him and image-bearers to reflect his glory, but he is jealous for us, and sometimes that jealousy can feel furious, just like his love.)

Healing of cripple by the pool / pool is an idol. Jesus wills, the man wills, the Father wills, holds his healing in his hands and walks toward life…

Practical Tips:

1. Make 3 big asks of God – requests that come from your heart, your deep desires - write them down, and make some sort of reminder to revisit them at least once a quarter for a year. Adjust them if your heart has changed, ask again if they are still your desire.

2. Be a Coal-less Santa. Pick somebody (a follower of Jesus) you’ve been judging because of what you perceive to be their sin (or somebody you’ve just been anxious about because of their sin) and begin to pray that God would give them more of the zoe-life of the heavens. See what happens to them. See what happens to your heart towards them.

3. De-Idolize . Ask Jesus to reveal to you, in your mind right now, something or someone that has become for you an idol.

Don’t rashly quit your job or cut off relationship – your particular idol may in fact be a holy and good thing meant to be used by God as a source of true blessing – but do tell Jesus you want him to be what you have in both hands instead of that other thing or person. And give him permission to lead you in the next steps of discipleship that will bring that about.

1st John: Echo Jesus

2011-11-02T08:11:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/30/2011

This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for the testimony of God is this, that He has testified concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

1 John 5:6-12 (NASB)

What this passage is getting at is the answer to the question, “How can we enjoy real, deep, rich, satisfying life?” We who live in a chaotic, insecure world. We who have so much hurt and brokenness in our lives. We who have this ache inside for something more, who get tastes of it from time to time. Is there a way for us to drink deep from a river of life that doesn’t change with changing circumstances and moods, that isn’t subject to forces beyond our control, that isn’t fickle and fleeting?

And what John writes in this passage, which is what he’s been writing throughout the letter, is that the answer is YES! Those who “have the Son” have that kind of life.

Which is good to know, but which also brings up a few other questions, doesn’t it? Such as, “What does it mean to ‘have the Son’?” and “What’s up with all the water and the blood and the testifying and what does that have to do with all this?”

So here’s what we’ll do today:

1. Explore what the water and the blood and the spirit stuff is all about. At least as much as we can.

2. Try to understand the testifying stuff.

3. Describe what it means to say that he who has the son has life.

4. Practical Tips

Traditional Water & Blood interpretations, in reverse chronological order:

· Luther & Calvin: baptism & communion; we should be baptized and take communion.

· Augustine: water and blood flow out from Jesus’ side after being pierced in side by spear (eternal life flowing from Jesus).

· Tertullian: water and blood a reference to the beginning and end of Jesus’ ministry (baptism & crucifixion)

My take? Tertullian’s explanation brings us nearest to understanding what John is up to. Especially in light of what more modern archaeological findings have revealed about the gnostic heresy (“a different opinion”) that was probably a divisive influence in the church to which first John was written.

If you’re unfamiliar with Gnosticism, a very brief primer is in order (this will be very brief, and therefore oversimplified, but nonetheless, helpful). One, the gnostics taught that spiritual things were good and true and trustworthy, and that material things were fundamentally evil and false and unreliable. And secondly, as a result, the way to eternal life was through attaining rarified spiritual knowledge and insights. And thirdly, because material things were fundamentally evil, Jesus the Christ and Jesus the human being were separate and distinct from one another. The divine Christ had come upon Jesus of Nazareth at his baptism – which is why Jesus was able to do all the amazing things he did - and then left to go back to the heavens sometime before his crucifixion, because death is only something evil material things experience, but never something experienced by the divine Christ.

You see where this is going?

John is saying Jesus the anointed one (which is what “Christ” means) was anointed by water at his baptism (when the Spirit came from heaven and landed on him, and a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased.” And John is saying, not with the water only, but with the water and the blood. In other words, the blood of his crucifixion was also an anointing. Blood ran down his body when the crown of thorns was placed on his head, just as water had run down when he was baptized by John the Baptist. And when the crucified Jesus bowed his head – just as he might have in baptism – he gave up his spirit. Only to have the Father re-animate his body with the Spirit on Resurrection Sunday. The same Spirit that Jesus breathed on his disciples that same day when he anointed them to carry out the mission that had begun with Jesus’ baptism.

In other words, John is saying that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ – the anointed one – through and through: fully human, and fully God. That the Spirit of God was joined to the stuff of the old creation so that the stuff of the old creation could be joined to God and made new again. John is saying that the good news is that the life of the heavens – eternal life – is through Jesus, getting all mixed up with the life of the earth. That the end, when the heavens and the earth are made new and unified again, has already begun in Jesus’ resurrection. And so eternal life is not something we have to wait for the future to enjoy, and then only if we’ve achieved the right level of rarified spiritual knowledge, but instead is something already present among us through Jesus the anointed one.

But maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s slow down then.

It is the Spirit who testifies…

The Greek word for testify is the word martyr. Martyr just means “to bear witness.” So for example, when Jesus was baptized, the Spirit (wind, breath) bore witness that Jesus was God’s son when the voice (breath) from heaven said: “This is my son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased.”

This is always what the Spirit is bearing witness to, no matter when we encounter him/her/it. The Spirit is always bearing witness to Jesus as the author of life. And John knows that the gnostics trust the Spirit, because the Spirit is good and true in their view. So he’s saying, “Listen to what the Spirit is bearing witness to in Jesus. Not just in his baptism, but always, everywhere we look.”

Some of you have the Spirit of God bearing witness to that in your soul right now. It’s an invitation from the God to trust Jesus. Listen to that invitation.

And John says that the water and the blood are also bearing witness to the same truth.

This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who [bears witness], because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that [bear witness]: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in [one/unity; i.e., unified in their witness]. If we receive the [witness] of men, the [witness] of God is greater; for the [witness] of God is this, that He has [borne witness] concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the [witness] in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar [made him out to be a false witness], because he has not believed in the [witness] that God has [borne witness to] concerning His Son.

At a deep level, what John is getting at is that all of the life in the universe bears witness to the truth of who Jesus is. The eternal life-filled Son of God, through whom all things were created and who has come that we might have life and have it to the full, if we will only hold on to him in faith.

Water is the life-blood of the natural creation. Every living thing depends on water for life, flora and fauna, from the largest mammals to the smallest microbes. No water, and life ceases. It’s no surprise that God would use a moment when Jesus was immersed in water to bear witness to Jesus as the Life from whom all life comes.

Blood too, is at the heart of the human organism, bringing life-giving nutrients to every cell and oxygenating the furthest reaches of our bodies. No blood, and life ceases. It’s no surprise that God would use Jesus’ bloody death to bear witness to Jesus as the Life from whom all life comes.

And Spirit, which means equally breath and wind, is central to what it means to be alive. Winds blow on a living planet, and breath courses through our living bodies. No breath, and we die. The water and the blood and the spirit are all bearing witness in one accord. With Jesus, there is life. Without him, there is none.

[additional note for the blog version: notice the courtroom image of witnesses. Multiple witnesses make everything more reliable; here we have 3. Also, notice how those who trust Jesus (…believes in the Son of God…) bear witness in their lives to the truth of the life of the ages. We don’t just have to go on faith, as it were – we can see this truth at work in some people’s lives. And beyond that, there is this exhortation to the gnostics that if you don’t believe what God himself has said about Jesus through the Spirit after Jesus’ resurrection, you are in essence making him out to be a false witness. Which would be a sobering thought in that culture.]

And then John brings it all home, all down to earth, all rubber meets the road. Let translate in way that helps us see a little more clearly what John is getting at specifically for us.

And the [reality borne witness to] is this, that God has given us [the zoe-life of the heavens], and this [zoe-life] is in His Son. He who [echo/holds (keeps hold of in his hands)] the Son [echo/holds] the [zoe-life]; he who does not [echo/hold] the Son of God does not [echo/hold] the [zoe-life].

This is what the gospel, the good news, boils down to. God has given us this incredible gift of aionios zoe, the life of the heavens, eternal life, life all life flows from, life that’s deep and undisturbable and overflowing and insistent and joyful. Not he will give it to us someday in the future or that he might but that he has. It’s here now. Here among us. As close to us as our next drink of water, our next heartbeat, our next breath. And this zoe-life is in Jesus. The gift of Jesus and the gift of life are one and the same. You can’t separate them. You can’t have one without the other. The good news is all wrapped up in Jesus.

And so, for those who want this life that God has given us as a gift, John says it’s very simple. It’s not about a complicated ladder of ever more elusive knowledge and learning. It’s about keeping hold of Jesus. Like the way a student driver keeps hold of the steering wheel the first time she gets on the freeway. Like the way a toddler keeps hold of their first helium balloon. Like the way a best man keeps hold of the rings before the wedding. Like the way a special teams player keeps hold of the football when the onside kick comes his way at the end of the game. Like the way a pit bull keeps hold of a tennis shoe. Like the way a mother keeps hold of child in a riotous crowd.

[on stage illustration…?]

Keep hold of Jesus, John tells us. Which means the same thing as seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. The path to life is in giving our focused energy to Jesus. Where is he today, in this circumstance, in this situation? What is he saying to us? Inviting us to? Desiring for us? Desiring from us? Commanding us to do? Teaching us? Showing us?

Which has implications for the whole of our lives, work, relationships, body, money, and so on… [examples]

And also for our lives of faith, what it means for us to be religious (religion coming from the word for “ligament” – our connection to God.)

One of the ways we think about this here at the Vineyard Church of Milan is in this centered set model…

(diagram, show how focus is on the center, on Jesus, on the next step in discipleship…)

Life is in keeping hold of Jesus, not in fixing our eyes on the boundaries, or on others’ relationship to the boundaries… (we can’t know from the outside looking in what is keeping someone from their next step of discipleship with Jesus….)

Because he who keeps hold of the Son has life; he who does not keep hold of the Son of God does not have life.

Practical Tips:

1. Fill in the blank. I don’t have time or energy to look for/listen for/talk to/pay attention to/take the next step in discipleship towards/hold on to Jesus because of _________________.

2. Go Dr. Phil on yourself. “And how’s that working for me?”

3. Put Blank in your Blank. Make a settled decision to move whatever you put into the blank out of the blank, to be replaced by nothing.

Prayer of surrender…

Jesus of Nazareth,

I acknowledge before you my thirst for what you have to give.

I surrender myself, whole and entire — what was, and is, and is to come — to you.

Plunge the wrongs I have done and the wrongs done to me into your fathomless mercy.

Receive me as I am today.

Make of me what I am meant to be, and let me walk in the path of your new creation.

Amen.

1st John: Not Burdensome

2011-10-26T12:24:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/23/2011

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5:1-5 NASB

Here’s the plan today:

1. Zero in on one key verse.

2. Unload its baggage.

3. Unpack its meaning for us.

4. Practical tips.

So many themes in 1^st John are tangled up: Jesus commands about loving God, loving one another, trusting Jesus as the one-of-a-kind incarnation of God’s love in the world, trusting that we are born of God, that we know God, that he lives in us and we live in him, that we have already overcome evil through Jesus, that God is love, that he loves us and our love is a response to that love, living with confidence in the good news of his love, freedom from fear, the experience of God’s zoe-life that never changes even as our circumstances and perceptions and emotions and bodies change, and so on. John just keeps grabbing one strand after another, wrapping them around us, tying each one together with other strands, weaving them together, letting the colors and textures of one strand play off the colors and textures of the other.

The breathlessness with which he began is still present, even though his pace has slowed. It’s like a freestyle rap rather than a classical hymn.

[rap at Pastor’s Sabbath Retreat…]

The other day I took the Sabbath

It’s kinda like one of my favorite practices

I can go in and I try to do it but

It doesn’t flow right it’s not like fluid I

try to pause

I try to pray I try to play I

try to reflect but

It doesn’t go my way

It’s the way of the culture they surround me

They swoop on me like vultures

And they use busy

I get dizzy

I got a go off into a tizzy

I can’t keep going; I try to stop

But it doesn’t work; it’s like

hip hop to the beat

I don’t stop

I gotta be complete

With new wine and living in the spirit

I try to do the Sabbath I try to rest but

Somehow it doesn’t seem quite blessed but

that’s OK

I’ll rest in him: Jesus

J-e-s-u-s and he is Jesus

He with everything that he showers upon me

And it’s gonna keep going like it’s on me

Hip hop to the beat keep flowing in rest

It’s like alright, C’mon, I’m Sabbath takin’ and I’m

blessed.

Today, we’ll zero in on one verse in the middle of this freestyle rap we call 1^st John. Just one verse that brings this whole section to life.

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

Some comments about language that should help us unload some baggage we often bring to this passage.

We almost never use the word “command” in day to day life, do we? We don’t command waiters or accountants or lawyers or doctors other people who serve us, even for pay. We don’t command employees. We don’t command our kids (unless we’re angry or stressed out, etc. or are named Georg Ludwig Von Trapp).

“Command” used almost exclusively in military and computer settings. A set of orders or instructions. Generally impersonal.

If you’re not a programmer or in the military, the only time you speak about commands on a day to basis is if you are religious, and you talk about being obedient to God’s commands. Which is unfortunate, because it means we come to this kind of text with a whole set of emotions and assumptions that weren’t necessarily present with the people to whom this letter was written.

Two things to note:

First, the language of command permeated the culture in which this text was written. Parents commanded their children. Masters commanded their servants. Employers commanded their employees. Teachers commanded their students. The masses were having to follow the commands of the Roman authorities. Almost everyone was being commanded by someone.

Which means it wouldn’t have felt like exclusively religious or military language to talk about keeping commands. Emotionally, it might have felt more like we feel when we describe someone telling us they “wanted” something. My dad wants me to get my homework done before I go out to play. My teacher wants me to turn in that report on Monday. My boss wants me to go to Atlanta to meet with a client next week. The newlyweds at table 6 want their check now, and from the eyes they keep giving each other, I think the sooner I get it to them, the bigger my tip might be.

And the second thing has to do with the actual Greek words that are translated “keep his commandments.” The word for commands has a range of meanings from “commandment” to “teaching.” And the word for keep, which we spoke about at length several weeks ago, means more literally to keep an eye on, to guard, to pay close attention to.

So perhaps we’ll understand the heart of this part of the passage in a fresh way if we translate it:

For this is the love of God, that we devote our attention and energy to what he is teaching us; and what he is teaching us isn’t burdensome.

That said, let’s get to the unpacking so we can hear what the Spirit of God might be saying to us through this passage.

God’s teachings aren’t burdensome. Remember Jesus’ statement: My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

“Yoke” is a rabbinic phrase referring to a list of rules for living, a way of interpreting the Torah for a particular Rabbi’s talmidin, his disciples.

One way to determine the heart of a particular Rabbi’s yoke was to ask, “What is the greatest mitzvah, or commandment?” To which Jesus replied, essentially, Love God and love your neighbor. All of the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments…

So, for example, when it came to the command about observing the Sabbath and keeping it holy, there was a conflict between Jesus’ yoke and the Pharisaic Rabbis’ yokes. The Pharisees had a strict, legalistic view of what that mitzvah meant. So strict and legalistic that they considered healing somebody on the Sabbath to be a violation of God’s commands or teaching.

That’s a hard and burdensome yoke.

Jesus’ yoke said every other mitzvah should be interpreted through the lens of loving God and loving neighbors as one loved oneself. So his disciples could see that the Sabbath was meant to be a day rooted in creation, and rooted in deliverance, and therefore to love God and love one’s neighbors meant that one would only be obedient to the Sabbath command if one cooperated with God’s love by healing on the Sabbath when one was led by God to do so.

That’s an easy yoke. It’s not burdensome; it lifts burdens.

Which isn’t to say life in pursuit of God isn’t burdensome, of course. Life in this world is burdensome. There is the burden of suffering. Of hard work with sometimes little immediate reward. The burden of broken, sinful, wounded selves. The burden of only being able to see God’s good future through a glass darkly. The burden of so many lies and falseness permeating our thoughts. The burdens of loss and conflict and physical illness and injury and shalom-shattered relationships. The burden of seeing the suffering of others and not always being able to alleviate it. The burden of regret and guilt and shame and emotional pain.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “All you who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest…” All of us who come to Jesus start out with heavy burdens, and even though his promise is rest, we know that we will not fully enter that rest until our new creation is complete in Christ, and that is still some time coming.

Yes, there are burdens to bear.

But God’s teachings aren’t one of them.

God’s teaching, God’s commands, point us to a way of life and love that cooperates with him in lifting burdens off the heavy burdened, and in which we experience increasing freedom and joy and lightness of being. We may have to join him in the fight for it. But better to join him in the fight for our freedom than to unwittingly join the enemy in the fight for our destruction, eh?

[fighting for rest at the PSR: arranging to go, not doing work there, etc. God’s invitation / teaching / command was not burdensome. But wading through everything that stood between me and obedience, between me and accepting the invitation, between me and devoting myself and my energy to his teaching presented itself as burden until I was on the other side of it. And then I could see the difference – burdens crush you. Responsiveness to God gives you life.]

For the thirsty in the desert, it may be a burden to get to water, but the sign pointing to the oasis is no burden, and the invitation to drink is no burden. Conversely, sitting in the sun and dying may feel like no burden compared to summoning one’s remaining strength and pressing on, but the truth is that resignation to hopeless death is the heaviest burden of all. And exhausting one’s strength to drink the water doesn’t leave you weary, but refreshed.

Jesus in Gethsemane…

He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” ⁴³ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. ⁴⁴ And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22)

The burden isn’t God’s commands to Jesus; the burden is the weight of sin, the brokenness of creation that Jesus carries to the cross…but God’s commands lead to resurrection life and new creation, the lifting of all burdens.

God’s teachings, his commands to love him with the whole of our being, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, aren’t burdensome. They are the way to life. They are his love present to us as signs pointing to the oasis; his love present to us as invitations to drink. To drink freedom and joy and true rest from his stream of living water.

You don’t experience it that way? Perhaps you are obeying not God’s commands, but something else’s commands in the guise of God’s. Guilt’s commands, perhaps. Or shame’s.

If God’s teaching is burdensome to anyone, it’s not because they aren’t cut out for following God. It’s not because they are extra messed up. It’s because it’s not God’s teaching. Somewhere, somehow, their perception of God’s teaching has gotten twisted along the way.

[examples…]

Consider the way a child experiences a good parent’s teaching. Burdensome? If it is good teaching, if it is the parent’s love expressed in sign pointing to life, in invitation to drink from a stream the parent knows of that the child knows nothing of, and not something else, then it is truly not burdensome. No matter how much it looks like it before it is embraced, engaged, entered into, experienced, guarded, kept, followed…. [cleaning room example.]

Take something simple in the realm of God’s teaching/commands about loving one another. Not judging one another, for example. The prospect of not judging could seem quite burdensome, especially if it’s a way of life for you and yours. The vigilance about your own speech and thoughts. The way it seems to distance you from others around you who are participating in it. The guilt you feel for all the judgmental thoughts you never paid attention to before. And so on…

But begin to devote yourself and your energies to God’s invitation, and what do you actually discover? You discover that judging others is the source of the truly heavy burden.

Of having to weigh the actions and motives of every other human being on planet earth. And as you stop – even though it takes effort – the burden lifts.

Of having to make the right call, all the time, and figure out how you are going to respond. Which usually involves pushing them out of your heart in one way or another. And as you stop – even though it takes effort – the burden lifts.

Of having to choose between one person and another in conflict after conflict. And as you stop – even though it takes effort – the burden lifts.

And then you notice that what you thought was intimacy between you and others who shared your judgments wasn’t intimacy at all, but in fact a false intimacy with its own excruciating double burden. The burden of making sure you never got on the wrong side of their judgments, and your own, which you’ve come to know so well. And the burden of isolation in a crowd, of not having any true friendships, because no one will let themselves be truly known by others when they know judgment is in the air.

And as you stop – even though it takes effort – the burden lifts. Because they start to come to you with their real selves, safe in the awareness that you don’t judge like the others they know. And because you are free to reveal your true self to them, because there is no hypocrisy in your brokenness.

And eventually, your only concern for others is discovering what ways the Spirit might be leading you to love them, and that – even though it is filled with effort - is adventure and life. And the only actions and motives you are weighing are your own – and even that you are doing not out of fear, but out of anticipation that if the Lord has something to teach and correct in you, it is because he wants you to have more life, not because he wants to judge you. And although that is filled with effort, it always leads to a greater lightness of being, not the heaviness of guilt.

And you will find yourself welcoming others into your life who you might previously have kept out because of judgments. And you will discover that although relationships with them take effort, the payoff is that you become more than you were before, and not less, and there is no burden in that.

And you will find that as you are no longer choosing sides between people in conflict, you begin to experience God’s love in a new way and with a fresh perspective, as a love that he gives freely to you; not because he has chosen your side, but because he has chosen you.

It is this way with all of God’s teaching. All of it. Everything he says to us. Every invitation he makes to us. God’s commands are not burdensome. They are the love of God in signs pointing the way to life, the love of God in invitations to drink from streams of living water.

Which is why John links it all up, bookends it all, with trusting Jesus. With believing in Jesus. Jesus is the one who invites us to follow him. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. He invites those of us who are heavy- burdened to come to him so that he can give us rest. Rest for our souls. Which means so, so much more than simply not worrying about death because we are going to heaven. It means knowing fullness of life because in him heaven has come rushing to meet us right in the middle of our heavily burdened lives and is beginning to work its way through everything as we cooperate with him.

For this is the love of God, that we devote our attention and energy to what he is teaching us; and what he is teaching us isn’t burdensome.

Practical Tips:

1. Examen yourself. Try out the spiritual discipline of the Examen (consolations and desolations) to identify something God might be teaching you. (notes posted online at the end of the sermon.)

2. Burdened down? Get help. Talk with your small group or a spiritual mentor about any commands of God that feel burdensome to you. See if you can identify what’s been twisted.

// The Examen

Drawing from Ignatius’s (1491-1556) Spiritual Exercises, in which Ignatius described the Examen, a daily examination of consolations and desolations, Charles Bello outlines 3 simple steps:

TO BEGIN, find a place where you can relax and be quiet. Acknowledge God’s love for you and His involvement in your life.

// STEP ONE: (consolations) Ask God to bring to your awareness the moment today for which you are most grateful, gave you strength, where you felt the most energized and alive, etc.

After you locate the moment or event, step back into it and let yourself relive the joy of that moment. Thank God for the consolation you experienced.

Discernment: Ask God to show you what it was about that event that gave you life. What was said and done that made that moment so life-giving?

Sit still and wait for Him to respond. If you journal, you might want to write your dialogue down.

// STEP TWO: (desolations) Ask God to bring to your awareness the moment today for which you are least grateful, where you experienced sadness, shame, failure, anger, where you felt life and energy being drained, etc.

After you locate that moment or event, step back into it and relive the feelings without trying to change or fix it in anyway.

Discernment: Ask God what is was about the desolation that made you so mad, angry, sad…

Ask God to comfort you and fill you with his love and sit in silence for a few moments. Again, if you journal, you might want to write down your insights and conversation with God.

// STEP THREE: Give thanks for whatever you have experienced during the day.

1st John: God is Love

2011-10-10T06:40:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/09/2011

⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1. Big picture.

2. Look at some key ingredients.

3. What’s it mean for us?

4. Practical Tips

So big picture…Gnosticism…The anxiety of secret knowledge. Am I one of the select few, the privileged elite? Do I have what it takes to attain salvation? How do I even know, because it seems like there is always someone ahead of me?

John’s message is simple. It’s not about secret knowledge; it’s about loving one another.

Are you doing that? Then you’re born of God. Salvation is yours as a gift. You know God. Keep learning to love, keep practicing; keep pressing into love (into God!). It’s not a level to achieve; it’s a wondrous, staggeringly beautiful landscape to explore, with more glorious treasures to find at every turn.

Are you not loving one another? Well, then you have lost the plot entirely. You don’t even know God at all – despite whatever “knowledge” you’ve attained. You may think you’re on the path to enlightenment, but you’re living in darkness, unseeing.

Let’s say you meet this woman. She’s beautiful, interesting, intriguing, challenging, inspiring. And she’s also a mystery. A mystery unlike any you’ve ever known. Just when you think you’re making sense of her, what makes her tick, what’s going on deep behind the scenes, she surprises you. Shows you something new. Proves your previous assumptions about her wrong.

Falling in love with her, you decide to ask for her hand in marriage, and she says yes.

Why do you want to spend the rest of your life with her?

Is it because you have determined to figure out the mystery? So that one day, she will make sense to you? So that one day, you can say, Aha, I have apprehended this mystery, and made her mine? And in that moment, somehow, you will have arrived…?

No, of course not. Because, for one, that will never happen. Anytime you think that that has happened, you will be wrong. And secondly, if that is your goal, you will have already missed the point. The point of you and her. The point of marriage. The point of exploring her mystery.

The point of exploring the mystery of her is so that you will be able to love her better; every bit of the mystery that you come to understand will give you new ways to love her. The point of marriage is to create a context in which the mystery can be freely explored and love can be freely expressed. The point of you and her is that by entrusting yourselves to the mystery that the other is, love would make you something more than you were before.

It is the same with every relationship. Including, and especially, our relationship with Jesus. The point of exploring the mystery of Jesus, John is saying, is love. The point of discipleship is to create a context in which the mystery can be freely explored and love can be freely expressed. The point of you and him is that by entrusting yourselves to the mystery that the other is, love would make you something more than you were before.

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God…God is love.

Everyone who loves. From a Greek phrase meaning “everyone who loves.” Everyone who loves God? Yes, this includes that meaning. Everyone who loves people? Yes, this includes that meaning too. Everyone who loves fish and animals and lizards and insects? Yes. Everyone who loves the earth and flowers and trees? Yes. All those people have been born of God? Yes, that’s what this passage says. Yes, but! We say. Of course we do. We always say that when we hear things that challenge our preconceptions. But nonetheless, that’s what this passage says.

What are we to think or do in response to it?

Perhaps we should ask, what does it mean to be born of God? [gegennetai] = born of, fathered by, are sons and daughters of, have a genetic inheritance from. It doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t estranged from him, or are in good relationship with him, or are full partners in the family business, or even that we aren’t actively working against his purposes in various respects. But it does mean we are his kids. That our love bears witness – in a way nothing else can – to our true identity as his children.

And it says that everyone who loves knows God. Ginosko knows him – in the sense of knowing that goes deeper than head knowledge, the kind of knowing that goes deep down.

Does that mean that everyone who loves has an intellectual understanding of God? That everyone who loves would encounter God in one way or another and say, Ah – I know you, you are the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. You are YHWH who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt and came among us in flesh and blood through Jesus of Nazareth? No, not necessarily. But it does mean that everyone who loves knows God deep down as much as the most enlightened, religious religion expert in the world. And if God were to reveal himself to them, they would, just as authentically as anyone else on planet earth, regardless of religious background and training, be able to say, “Ah, you I know. I have known you my whole life, even though perhaps, I haven’t been aware of it.”

Because, John says, God is love.

Not God is like love, or God is a big fan of love, or a proponent of love. Not God recommends love, or commands love, or even has a lot of love.

God is love.

Where you see the word love in noun form the scriptures, you see God. Where you see it in verb form, you see the activity of God. Where you see love manifesting itself in the world, you see God manifesting himself. Where you see God at work in the world, you see love at work. Where God is present, love is present. Where love is present, God is present.

If we have trouble wrapping our minds around this, it’s for one of several possible reasons. Maybe we’ve got misconceptions about God. Or maybe we’ve got misconceptions about love. Or maybe our capacity to conceive just isn’t well developed enough.

In any event, when John says God is love, it’s an invitation to further explore the mystery.

What we learn about God will teach us about love.

If it doesn’t, we haven’t truly learned anything about God.

What we learn about love will teach us about God.

If it doesn’t, we haven’t truly learned anything about love.

Our experiences of God will be experiences of love.

If they aren’t, perhaps it wasn’t actually God we were experiencing.

Our experiences of love will be experiences of God.

If they aren’t, perhaps it wasn’t actually love we were experiencing.

When we hear the voice of God, it will be the voice of love.

When we hear the voice of love, it will be the voice of God.

And on and on. Each encounter deeper exploration of the mystery of a God who is love.

And almost as if John anticipates the momentary stationary panic our brains might go into trying to mesh what we know of God and what we know of love to make sense of what he’s saying (since John knows we have a limited understanding of both), John gives us a starting point.

This is how God showed his love among us… [this is how the love of God (ephanerothe) is made visible, made actual, realized among us…] he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

In other words, when John is talking about love, he’s talking about Jesus humbling himself and coming into our world – with all the pain and sacrifice that entailed – so that we might live through him. That’s what the love that God is looks like when we get to see it up close and personal. That’s what love made actual becomes when it materializes. That’s what love in its fully realized form is.

It’s as if we were told that God was gold, and we’ve got all these flecks of material that we think might be gold, and we’re wondering if what John means is that God is this stuff we are holding in our hands. So John says, here, here’s a bar of genuine God/Gold. Go ahead, examine it, and compare what you’ve got in your hands. If it’s made of the same stuff, then yes, that’s what I’m talking about. If it’s not, well, then you’ve probably got fool’s gold in your hand, and no, that’s not God.

Notice this phrase “his one and only Son” (sometimes translated “only begotten Son”). Which is a little confusing, isn’t it, since he just said that everyone who loves is born of God. The confusion is a function of translation.

The word translated one and only in Greek is monogene. Mono meaning one, and gene meaning kind (genetic, genus, etc.). All of us who love are children of God, are fathered by God, have our genetic inheritance from God, but Jesus is God’s one of a kind son. He’s unique among all of God’s children.

As those who’ve become Jesus’ disciples have come to understand it, Jesus and his Father are different persons but one and the same God. Jesus is God himself incarnated in now resurrected human flesh. An equal member with the Father in the three-personed triune God, Father/Son/Holy Spirit who has been with God from the beginning, long before his incarnation in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, who was present before creation itself, through whom and for whom all things were created, and whom all of creation will one day recognize as Lord and Savior.

At the risk of inappropriately deifying someone, it’s a little like the technology company, Apple. There are all kinds of people who work for Apple. Who make and design Apple products. But there has only ever been one person who is Apple. Steve Jobs. He has uniquely personified Apple, hasn’t he? It’s an open question as to whether or not he has deposited enough of his DNA into his company for it be what it always has been (or more) now that he has passed away.

It’s similar with those of us who love as God loved us. We are all children of God who love and bear his image in this world. But there is only one unique Son – Jesus – who is love, who is the image of the invisible God. And none of us can take his place. (He is, in fact, the one who has taken our place so that we might share in his place…but that’s another sermon).

So what do we do with all this?

Remember, 1^st John is in some ways a commentary on the gospel of John. And this passage is specifically referencing a scene from John chapters 13 and 14, which takes place after Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, but before he has gone to the cross.

It’s during that conversation that Jesus says to his disciples, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this you everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Which sounds a lot like that last line in our passage today, doesn’t it: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

A little bit later, when Jesus tells his disciples essentially that he is going to be leaving them (because he knows he’s going to be crucified), Thomas asks him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Thomas’s impulse behind this question is the same impulse driving Gnosticism, the heresy that said salvation comes from attaining secret knowledge, the heresy the people in this church John is writing to are wrestling with.

“What’s the way? Where are you going?” What are the secret truths we need to get where you are going, Jesus, to have the life you have?”

Jesus’ answer in John 14 is straightforward. I’m the way. I’m the truth. I’m the life. You can only get there (to the Father) through me.

Which is the same answer John gives here when he talks about God sending his son so that we can live through him.

The “life” in John 14 is zoe life. And the “live” in John 4 is zoe living. The life that runs underneath life, in other words. The life of God. The life that doesn’t change when circumstances change. The life that can’t be taken from us, even if we lose our biological life. The life of the ages that gives birth to all life. The life we can hold onto even when everything else is falling apart. Jesus came so that we might, through him, have it. Know it. Experience it. Be infused by it.

We can’t have it through learning secret truths. By getting our minds around the secret plan and executing it. The only way is by putting our trust personally in Jesus, God’s one of a kind son. The son who is showing us what love is, teaching us how to love, pouring out his love on us, inviting us to participate in his love, inviting us to enjoy the Father’s love for him as if it is for us, because it is.

Jesus is the way to get where he’s going. Follow him, not some complicated plan, no matter how detailed and well thought out it might be.

Jesus is the truth. Invest your energies in knowing him, not mastering some complicated theological system.

Jesus is the life. Trust him and him alone for everything you need, not some well-intentioned but ultimately inadequate strategy for successful life.

And along the way, let the growth of your love of others, and nothing less, be the measure of your discipleship.

Practical Tips:

1. Get specific with Jesus about your needs and desires. For 3 days, don’t express any needs or desires to anyone else, unless they ask you.

2. Try to do one thing a day for 3 days that Jesus leads you to do. You don’t have to be sure; just ask, and do what comes to mind if it seems reasonable, or even if doesn’t, do it if it’s likely to be at least harmless.

3. Commit yourself. Commit all of your life to Jesus. More than your work. More than your pleasure. More than your stuff. More than your money. More than your family. More than yourself. Entrust all of it to the monogene Son of God. And while your at it, entrust him with your sins, too.

1st John: Pneumalyzer

2011-10-02T17:33:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/02/2011

4 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ²This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

⁴You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. ⁵They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

If you’re irreligious, this passage sounds pretty much like religious mumbo jumbo. Totally useless for the real world.

If you’re especially religious, you’re already thinking of how this helps you have evidence as to why so and so is obviously heretical or of the devil, and reassures you why you are right in your beliefs. (Obama Heckler…)

Or maybe, if you’re both especially religious and especially practical, you’re taking notes for the next time you have to do an exorcism and need to test what kind of spirits are talking to you from the demonized person you’re trying to help.

Let’s set all of our preconceptions aside for a bit, and come at this passage with a clean slate, so that it can say what it means to say to us, nothing more and nothing less.

Here’s what we’ll do.

1. Define some terms, explore some of the original language so that we have a clearer picture of what this passage is actually talking about.

2. Look at the context of what was happening in the lives of the people to whom this was written, so that we can understand what it meant to them.

3. Talk about what it means to us today.

4. Finish up with some practical tips.

pneuma – wind / breath / spirit

Not distinct meanings, but a spectrum of meanings where the different senses merge into each other; Mysterious, dynamic, animating force of the world; mysterious, dynamic, animating force within a person, mysterious, dynamic, animating force within or emanating from God.

Sarx – flesh; material, earthly substance.

Heart of Christian faith is the good news of a God who didn’t abandon his creation in its brokenness and pain, but entered into the heart of it, inhabiting it, clothing himself in it, gathering all of it back to himself, becoming mysteriously and inseparably united with it in such a way that he could redeem, renew, and restore the whole of it so that it would share in his glory just as he shared in its shame.

Homologeo – “say the same thing as, confess.”

Kosmos – a word that can mean different things depending on context, ranging from the staggeringly beautiful creation that flowed from God’s generous, overflowing love to the disordered and ugly mess that has been corrupted by sin and death.

The world here is the sticky web of the systems and structures whose mysterious, dynamic, animating force isn’t love, but rather “not-love” – judgment, fear, anger, hate. The tar-ball of systems and structures that cause division and oppression and destruction, rather than intimate fellowship, freedom, and restoration.

Context of gnostic heresy / controversy.

Gnostic coming from a Greek word for “knowledge” (from that word, ginosko, that we spoke about last week). Basically that only a select, privileged few could attain salvation through attaining extraordinary knowledge and insight, especially self-knowledge. Included the idea of dualism: that because God was pure spirit, matter itself was fundamentally evil, and all truly good things were purely spiritual. And therefore there was a difference between Jesus – the man from Nazareth – and the Christ (the anointed one). That at Jesus’ baptism, the divine spirit of the Christ had come from heaven and descended on Jesus. But at the garden of Gethsemane, before his crucifixion, it had departed back to heaven. Because there was no way the divine could suffer as Jesus of Nazareth did on the cross. No way the evil material world could claim God’s life. And so salvation came by what Jesus illuminated or revealed, by not by his suffering.

So throughout this letter, John is speaking to people who are wrestling with this gnostic controversy. John tells them about eternal life, but he’s also saying it’s something he heard, saw, touched. It’s spiritual, but it’s also firmly connected to our sensory, material reality. John tells them about Jesus helping us see things as they really are, but that when we do, we will see both ourselves as we really are, and God as he really is, and the result will be that we know God. John talks about how we see love most powerfully in Christ Jesus dying for us on the cross, and that that is where true illumination comes from. John talks about how knowledge isn’t just for the select, privileged few, but for all of us anointed ones. That our goal isn’t some guru-esque, spiritual existence, but rather an existence firmly planted in the day to day earthly reality of loving one another as Jesus loved us, exemplified in Jesus washing our dirty feet.

At the heart of the gospel is an announcement that God is inhabiting, redeeming, renewing, and restoring his beloved creation. At the heart of the gospel is a sacred affirmation of God's joyous delight in people of all sorts and sizes and colors and political persuasions and languages and nationalities and hairstyles and athletic abilities and intellectual capacities, his joyous delight in trees and sunsets and oceans and animals and insects and mountains and rivers and floppy eared dogs and Giant Pandas and lizards and even mangy, arrogant cats. His joyous delight in Beethoven and Jay-Z and Ella Fitzgerald and dancing (even with the stars) and Ewoks and Michelangelo's David and snow boarding and basketball and 18 speed bikes and Dodge Chargers and Belgian chocolate and whatever that secret sauce is that makes PF Chang’s lettuce wraps taste so good.

That's why John writes that the way to tell if the mysterious, dynamic force animating a person or group or organization or philosophical system or even the voices inside your head is from God or not is to determine if it's saying the same thing as Jesus inhabiting sarx is saying. Is it telling the same story about who God is and who we are and what God is up to that Jesus tells? If it is, that spirit is from him. If it's not, it isn't.

Think about the impact of gospel when you first receive it... the fundamental goodness of the universe affirmed. God is good and God loves you, smack dab in the middle of your sin and brokenness. Things are going to be OK because God is saving the world and you are caught up in his grace, too. You see everything with new eyes. New beauty at every turn, your heart full of God’s grace towards others.

Compare to what you sometimes learn along the way... The complexities of trying to get everything right, understand everything, new things that you always thought were good that now you’re finding out are actually bad, new guilt about things you never felt guilty about before, new fears about this threat and that threat and new enemies who are conspiring to destroy the world, and so be cautious about this and cautious about that, and look out for this and look out for that because it’ll mess you up if you’re not careful.

Since when is the gospel a new set of things to be alarmed about?

What does any of that have to do with affirming that Jesus inhabits sarx? What does any of that have to do with the joyous, jubilant announcement that God so loves this world that he has gone to the greatest length possible to begin restoring, renewing, redeeming, and rescuing it? What does that have to do with a God who isn’t afraid of anything, not even the most horrible suffering, because of the joy set before him?

Nothing. It has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with the spirits that are from this world.

That all happens because we sometimes listen to the spirits from this world – the mysterious, dynamic forces animating the systems and structures of this world, instead of listening to the Spirit of truth. (Isn’t it ironic that the spirit that makes us fearful about the antichrist is in fact the spirit of the antichrist?)

You, dear children, are from God, and have overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

What John was saying to these completely ordinary people was essentially, “You can do it.” You can tell the difference between the spirits that animate this world, and the Spirit of God that animates Jesus and now animates you. [Greek word translated “test” is the word used for examining a coin to tell if it was real or counterfeit. Like when someone pays with a 50 or 100 dollar bill.] We have everything we need to test them. One says the same thing as Jesus coming in the flesh says. One doesn’t. You can tell the difference. And if you encounter the fake one, no need to be afraid, because the real one is in you, so it can’t hurt you – in fact, you’ve already overcome it.

And John’s saying the same thing to us today.

Consider something like slavery or racism. Animated by the spirits of this world. By the ideas that some are superior to others in any number of ways, and the inferior out to serve the superior. That without the labor of the lower classes the whole economy would collapse. That some things just can’t or won’t change. Those are the spirits of the anti-christ.

Because the spirits that say the same thing as Jesus coming in the flesh say that The Superior one came to serve and dwell among the Inferior ones, in order to lift them up. That in the quest to set things right, no sacrifice is too great, not even death, because on the other side of sacrifice is resurrection life. That everything, even sin and death and evil, is subject to the redemptive purposes of God and will one day bend its knees to him and be transformed in welcoming his presence or be separated forever from his good creation. That is the Spirit of truth.

And the abolitionists and civil rights workers weren’t afraid of the spirit of the anti-christ. Rather, they listened to the Spirit of truth and allowed that spirit to animate their actions. Without fear, without hate, without paranoia. In fact, with extraordinary love. Because they knew that they were from God and in Jesus had already overcome the spirits of this world, and that the one who was in them was greater than the one that is in the world.

We hear whispers in our heads all the time, every day. Whispers about who we are, about who God is, about what God’s thinking or doing or not doing, about who this person or that person really is, about what the future holds, about what kind of hold the past has on us.

Where are those whispers coming from? Are they reliable, true? Or unreliable, deceptive, false? Which whispers say the same thing that Jesus coming in the flesh says? Listen to those. Dismiss the rest. [what would you do if someone gave you a counterfeit bill? Yell and scream, run in panic? No. You just wouldn’t accept it. Sorry, this isn’t real. Try again.]

We’ve got groups and organizations and companies and systems to join our energies and resources with. What spirit animates them? What’s the wind beneath their wings? What kind of air are they breathing? Is it a spirit / wind / breath that says the same thing Jesus coming in the flesh says? If so, join in. If not, move along.

We’ve got ideas and books and thoughts and philosophies and art and entertainment competing for our time and consideration. What animates them, what dynamic, mysterious force breathes life into them? Does that spirit say the same thing as Jesus coming in the flesh says? Then turn your face into that wind and breathe deep. But if it doesn’t, if it says the same things that the spirit that animates the systems and structures of this world says, well then maybe hold your breath in their presence, or wear a good HEPA rated filter at least, and if you start to develop asthma, maybe move to Arizona.

Practical Tips:

1. Take a hike. Pick a day to go for a walk or a drive in the midst of the fall color change, maybe at sunset or sunrise. As you soak in the beauty, thank God for filling the earth with his presence.

2. Soak in a song. Purchase the song “Brother Moon” from Gungor’s “Ghosts Upon the Earth” album and listen to it several times, writing down the lyrics by hand until you’ve got them all written out. Read through it and consider whether it is a song animated by the Spirit of truth or a spirit from this world. Consider how it might say the same thing as Jesus coming in the flesh says.

3. Take a Pneumalyzer test. Consider what spirit animates your life. Is your pursuit of Jesus preoccupied with attaining secret knowledge, or preoccupied with joining Jesus in the joyful, jubilant announcement that God has come right into the thick of things to gather all things to himself, to rescue, redeem, restore, and renew all of his good creation. Do some gardening as worship. Take your family and clean up a public space. Or serve the poor at compassion ministry. Or join the children’s ministry team. Or join the youth team as a relational youth leader.

1st John: Persuading Our Hearts

2011-09-29T08:40:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/25/2011

¹⁹This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²²and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴Those who keep his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

1 John 3:19–24

Letter written to a church in crisis. The chaos of division, relational strife, theological debate. They’d had a mission and a purpose, new life was springing up, the Spirit of God at work in heartwarming ways, new friendship bonds being formed, hope in a hopeless world. And then some kind of conflict. Some people believing one thing and others another. Harsh words said. Relationships breaking down. Trust leaking out ever widening and fraying seams. Accusations flying. Mission on hold because anxiety and anger and fear has gotten in the way. Some starting to question what the point of all of this had ever been, anyway, because the baby has started to drown in all the murky bathwater.

John’s purpose seems to be less about sorting out the crisis and weighing in on the debates (although he does make his position clear), and mostly about helping his brothers and sisters keep on keeping on. Reminding them of what has not changed, of what they have lost sight of that is of far greater importance than all of the sensational chaos that has been preoccupying them, so that they will be faithful to Jesus’ first call: “Follow me.”

Because that’s what’s most at risk in the face of crises of every kind, isn’t it? That we might quit trusting Jesus and the good news of his kingdom. That we might just stop putting one foot in front of the other on the way of Jesus, giving in to despair. Or, Lord have mercy, that we might start putting our feet on a different path, giving in to anger and hatred and bitterness.

We know what that’s like, even if we’ve never experienced the things the people in this particular church experienced. Each of us knows what it’s like to be a human being when, seemingly out of nowhere, the chaos of things going wrong appears. When, just when things seemed to be looking good going forward, the sky between here and the future is suddenly cloudy and dark, threatening lightning and thunder and torrential downpours. When circumstances seem to be conspiring against us, nothing coming together in our favor. When the things we’ve come to rely on are suddenly shaky and unreliable. When even some of the people we love seem to be against us.

How easy it is to despair. To want to throw in the towel. To want to crawl into a safe dry cave and hibernate until it’s all done.

How tempting it is to try to exert some measure of control over the uncontrollable by embracing anger, contempt, frustration. Even if we know it’s fruitless, it feels good to feel the sense of power that comes from those powerful emotions. [Sort of like getting off the highway in a traffic jam and taking winding and treacherous back roads, even though you know you’d probably get there faster and more reliably waiting for the jam to clear. At least you’re moving! Except this is like exiting the highway and taking back roads to nowhere, driving until you run out of gas.]

John writes deep deep encouragement to this church, and he writes it to us. Trust Jesus! Love one another! We’ve tasted a life that run deeper than the chaos, like a subterranean well beneath the desert. It comes from Jesus – he’s bigger than all of this that’s going on. And he hasn’t left you. You’re strong. You know God. The word of God lives in you. Your sins are forgiven. You’ve overcome the evil one. You’re anointed with God’s Spirit, just as Jesus is. Keep loving one another! Do that, and you will know the life God has for you. Don’t stop, and you will abide with God. And God will abide with you.

This paragraph at the end of chapter 3 brings all of this together, and adds an important wrinkle in light of what John knows about what happens inside of us as we resolve to stay on the way of Jesus, despite the chaos around us.

Remember last week we talked about how the key to the life of the ages – the aeon zoe, eternal life – is for the good news of God’s kingdom to move beyond our skulls and brains and thoughts and beliefs and into the deepest parts of us, into our guts. So that we don’t just “know” the gospel, but we know it.

Let’s remind ourselves briefly about this idea of “knowing” something, which shows up throughout this paragraph, and indeed throughout this letter. Ginosko is the Greek root translated know in this passage, and it’s the kind of knowing that’s way deeper than head knowledge. It’s experiential, participatory knowing. Like the way you know your mother’s voice, or how you know how to speak or ride a bike or swim. Or how you know you love someone. Or how you know if you drop something it will fall to the ground, unassisted.

¹⁹This is how we ginosko that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he ginoskos everything. ²¹Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²²and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴Those who keep his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we ginosko that he lives in us: We ginosko it by the Spirit he gave us.

John understands that when chaos is swirling, one of the first things that happens is that we lose confidence in who we are and what God is up to in us, through us, in our lives, in our world. The first areas that come under assault from the enemy are the parts of us that don’t yet know what we are just learning about the good news of God’s kingdom and its implications. And so John says, look, here’s how we come to know deep down all the things I’ve been reminding you about who you are and who Jesus is and what he’s doing in your life and in our world: keep trusting Jesus, and keep loving one another. Do that, and you will increasingly come to know in an experiential and participatory way everything that I’ve been telling you is true. You will know it know it. It takes time, and patience, and practice. But keep trusting Jesus, practice loving one another, and God’s spirit, which you are anointed with, will take the good news and plant it deep, deep within you.

Now here’s where we come to the interesting wrinkle. It has to do with our hearts. Kardia, in Greek, the word from which we get cardiac, as in cardiac arrest or cardiac care or cardiaology. Meaning the part of us where our feelings and will swirl together, out of which we decide and intend and resolve and experience strong emotional responses and even process anxieties and fear.

So we might say we decided in our hearts to do such and such. We talk about someone’s heart being pure. Or that our heart was gripped with fear. Or that so and so was heartless. Or that our hearts were torn. Or that our heart felt peace. Or that our hearts were broken. Or that something was heartwrenching. Or that we gave our hearts to someone. Or that we let someone into our hearts.

This is how we ginosko that we belong to the truth and “set our hearts at rest” in his presence. If our hearts “condemn” us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he ginoskos everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not “condemn” us, we have confidence before God…

We’ll talk about some of those “quote marks” in a moment, but first, consider how our hearts sit between our thoughts and our guts. Which of course they do literally (head / heart / bowels), but also in this process of God working deeply in us, so that we can have peace and confidence in the midst of chaos, so that the good news of God’s kingdom is completely integrated with our selves and actions.

Haven’t we all had the experience of “knowing” something in our heads, even feeling it in our guts, and yet our hearts get in the way of graceful action?

For example, maybe you know in your head God is going to provide for you, because you’ve read the scriptures and heard what Jesus has to say about it, and it makes sense to you. And you know it in your gut, too. Deep, deep down, if you had to bet money on it, you’d bank on the fact that God was going to provide for you. But your heart is doing cartwheels. It’s not peaceful at all. It’s churning with anxiety. It’s getting your brain going with worry in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, setting your brain to the task of finding new sources of money, tempting you to abandon the things you’ve felt God call you to, distracting you from the promises you’ve heard God say. It’s checking your gut when you’re moved with compassion to be generous towards someone hurting more than you, because it’s saying, “hey, wait a minute, I’m not feeling very restful about all God provision stuff. And are you so sure God’s going to provide? After all, you haven’t been tithing like you should. And you know you did this wrong and that wrong – he may have provided if you’d gotten everything right, but why would he reward your behavior.” This is the same heart that surrendered to Jesus. The same heart that decided to follow him, to trust him. It’s like your heart has gone crazy. What’s going on!?

What’s going on is that our hearts need to be set at rest in God’s presence, and although they are the first part of us to embrace his presence, they might also be the last part of us to become fully his. The Greek word that gets translated “set at rest” is more literally translated “persuaded.” Our hearts need to be persuaded in God’s presence before all this ginosko knowing business is completed, through and through.

And it takes a lot of experience before our hearts are persuaded of anything, doesn’t it? You can come to the conclusion in your brain that someone is trustworthy. You can feel it in your gut that you can trust someone. You can even make the decision in your heart to trust them. But your heart is going to keep on needing persuading, for quite some time, before it’s truly at rest in their presence. Especially in the midst of chaos or fear or confusing circumstances. [Taylor Dayne, “Tell It To My Heart” - “tell it to my heart, tell me I’m the only one. Is this love or just a game?”]

It’s the same with the good news of God’s kingdom. Which is why John says, trust Jesus. Love one another. In other words, keep on keeping on the way of Jesus, the way of love. Your hearts will come to be fully persuaded and at rest with enough experience and with enough opportunity for God’s spirit within you to do his work. Just don’t quit. And don’t take a fork in the road.

Now there’s another fold to this wrinkle. And that has to do with this word “condemn”. The Greek word is kataginosko. Kata – against, or opposed to and ginosko – knowing.

If our hearts kataginosko us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he ginoskos everything…

It’s translated “condemn” or sometimes “blame” because our hearts know something that goes against us. Our hearts know, ginosko – at an experiential, participatory level – all sorts of stuff that goes against us. Our hearts know how sinful we are. They know how weak and broken we are. They know how much hate and bitterness and fear and mistrust and lust and selfishness and all other kinds of ugliness we have inside of us.

And so no matter what we know in our heads or know in our guts, our hearts can short circuit graceful living by bringing that kataginosko into the mix. We might even think of kataginosko as our hearts being confused. Don’t our hearts feel that way sometimes? Like we know how God wants us to act, and how he wants us to experience trials, and we know how he feels about us, and who we are in him, and yet our hearts don’t ginosko it yet, and so we are perpetually right on the borders of despair or anger.

Take heart, John says to our hearts. Don’t be discouraged. God is greater (mega!) than our hearts, and he knows everything. Our hearts may know some things against us. But God knows all of those things against us, and he knows them better and more truly than our hearts, and he knows everything else. Everything about what Jesus has done on the cross, and about the resurrection, and about the good news, and about grace and about mercy and about what true justice and the setting right of all things actually looks like. God is in the process of persuading our hearts the truth that is deeper than the mostly true but not true enough things our hearts think they know.

After all, isn’t that the truth about the new and fully complete humanity we see present in Jesus of Nazareth? A man who knew the good news of God’s kingdom in his head. Who knew the good news in his guts. And who knew the good news in his heart. A man whose heart was never confused, but rested in God’s presence, no matter the chaos surrounding him. A man who had confidence to ask God whatever he desired – because his desires and God’s desires were in unity with one another – and who received anything he asked, because he kept God’s commands and did what pleased him.

This is also the truth that is becoming true about all of us anointed ones, in whom the Spirit of God is at work, as we take John’s encouragement to continue trusting Jesus and loving one another.

Final note before practical tips. Notice John’s simple instruction – to believe in the name of Jesus. Believe vs. know (believe about 100 times in gospel of John, but in 1^st John the emphasis is knowing) – the journey to knowing starts with believing (trust, faith). But the destination is knowing. That’s where God is taking us. He’ll even let things get difficult enough that we are forced to flex our belief until it becomes knowing. Faith becomes actions which open the door to experiences of God’s kingdom which leads to experiential, participatory knowing of the things (and God himself) that before we only believed by faith.

Practical Tips… (for the not quite quitters)

1. Don’t quit. Don’t quit when your heart is confused and/or has knowledge against you persevering. Especially when what you know in your head and in your gut about the good news says that the story isn’t done being written yet. Don’t despair. And don’t embrace anger.

2. Tell it to your heart. You don’t know enough. God’s bigger than you, and he knows everything. Say it out loud sometime. To your heart.

3. Try a little TLC. Trust, Love, Continue. Trust Jesus, keep loving one another and continue doing that unitl you’ve made space for your heart to be persuaded. Do something loving for someone else. Almost anything will do. And then do something else. Keep doing that until your heart’s kataginoskoing gets quieter and God’s ginoskoing gets louder. It will be a sign that God lives in you as the Spirit he gave you quiets your heart.

1st John: A Gutsy Life

2011-09-20T17:46:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/18/2011

²⁸And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

²⁹If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

⁴Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ⁵But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ⁶No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

⁷Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ⁹Those who are born of God will not continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. ¹⁰This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Those who do not do what is right are not God’s children; nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.

¹¹For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹²Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. ¹³Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. ¹⁴We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵Anyone who hates a fellow believer is a murderer, and you know that no murderers have eternal life in them.

¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. ¹⁷If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? ¹⁸Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 2:28–3:18

Language of seed, has no pity (closes his bowels), word of God lives in you, abide in him, love of God is in him, etc. Language about words vs. actions, lies vs. truth. All getting at the same basic idea.

There are two ways of looking at what drives our lives. What’s up here (head) or what’s in here (heart). Our heads, minds, thoughts, beliefs. Or our gut, our insides, what we know deep down. (Sometimes we might call this our hearts, but that can be confusing because we also use heart language to talk about our emotions or desires, but John is talking about something even deeper than that.)

[Dakota Meyer… “It might sound crazy, but it was just, you don’t really think about it, you don’t comprehend it, you don’t really comprehend what you did until looking back on it”…]

And at the end of the day, what’s truest about us is what’s deep inside of us. Because eventually, what’s deep inside of us will shape our actions, and the quality of our lives, more powerfully than those things that have only gotten into our heads.

And what the writer of this letter wants to communicate is that what God has done, and is doing, and wants to do more of, is going past the surface with us. Something that first touches our senses – our ears, our eyes, our skin, our noses, our tastebuds – and finds a home in the frontal cortex of our brains, where we consider it and test it and evaluate it and decide to trust it and pursue it and begin to understand, and then eventually it works its way all the way down to our bowels, to our soul, to our hearts, transforming us from the inside out. And the writer wants us to realize this because we’ve got a role to play in allowing this to happen. It doesn’t happen auto-magically; it happens as we invite God in, and make room for him, and cooperate with him and the work of his Spirit, deeper and deeper into the central place in us. More on that in a bit.

John writes this letter not in a vacuum, but in the context of a big story that shapes all of history, a story that has taken an extraordinary turn with the death and resurrection of Jesus, a story that is writing a whole new ending in the lives of these gathered disciples of Jesus. And so when John writes about seeds and sin and Cain murdering his brother Abel, he’s wanting us to see how what he’s writing fits in with the big picture story, because only then will what he’s writing have its full impact.

Big picture story of the scriptures is a story of 2 seeds, mistrust vs. love.

A corrupting seed of mistrust planted in us, leading to sin, leading to no longer abiding in God, leading to murder, jealousy, hatred, enmity, etc.

Insidiousness of the evil seed is that it’s invasive, coercive, deceptive, a violation of our inmost being. Makes us less than we were before, since it’s a destructive seed. Doesn’t take much effort to move from external to internal.

But the ray of hope is that that malevolent seed of mistrust is illegitimate, subject to a higher authority, only has a temporary residency visa, can be deported, extracted, crushed, burned in the fire.

Jesus arriving with good news, a new seed to plant in us, a seed of love, the words of God who is love, meant to grow into a harvest of righteousness, leading to us abiding in God, God abiding in us, joy, peace, love abounding.

Graciousness of God’s seed is that it only comes in as much as we choose to allow it. And only comes in deeply when welcomed whole-heartedly, intentionally, thankfully, with faith. It’s there on the highest authority in the universe, and is capable of displacing every illegal alien, as a result of the fact that the seed comes from the Word of God made flesh, Jesus the anointed one, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and as a result of the fact that it only enters by our holy, God-breathed permission.

Now, it takes effort on our part for this seed to move from external to internal, because part of its purpose is to turn us from people who are enslaved by sin to people who are set free by love, and since love is the realest thing in existence, it never takes shortcuts. But once it’s inside of us it becomes integrated with us, makes us more of who we are, not less. And it cannot be taken from us, threatened, deported. This seed is more unstoppable than zucchini, its root system more robust than an oak’s.

That’s what “passing from death to life” is all about. The enemy’s seed of mistrust, hate, fear, judgment replaced by God’s seed of love. With the seed of mistrust, even if we are physically alive, we experience death. With God’s seed of love in us, no matter the state of our physical life, we experience God’s zoe life, the deeper kind of life that never ends and doesn’t run out or fade away.

So back to this idea of two ways of looking at what drives us. Our heads, minds, thoughts, beliefs. Or our gut, our insides, our hearts, what we know deep down.

That’s what the part of the passage that talks about seeing someone in need and having pity on them is all about. The phrase “have pity,” in translated from greek phrase meaning literally “not closing one’s bowels.” In other words, when the love of God is in us, we see someone in need, we are aware of the provision God has given us, and something deep inside of us is moved to help. Something that goes beyond us just thinking: “I have been given great blessing by God. This person doesn’t seem to be experiencing the same blessing. Aha, I have been given this blessing precisely so that I might be an agent of God’s blessing to this person. If I don’t, then the blessing I have been given loses its capacity even to bless me, because then it becomes all about me, and not about the generous God who never stops giving blessings away. But if I do, I will be learning to imitate a God who is always generously giving, which will enable me to trust him even more deeply in my own life, because I will see how naturally that fits with how the world actually works, which in the end will allow me to know more peace. Plus, this person will be blessed by my generosity, which will in turn have an impact on how they can see the truth of God’s generosity in the universe, which, if they start to live in that truth will only encourage me to live more deeply in it, which will also increase my capacity to trust this good news. Wow, it’s a win – win. I’m in!”

All of that is in fact true, but it’s not truly how we actually live, is it?

Because it’s entirely possible to go through that whole thought process and then say, “yeah, but I’m kind of tired.” Or, “Yeah, but I don’t feel like it.” Or, “yeah, but I can’t help everybody, can I?” And so on.

And it’s entirely possible to see somebody in need and never go through that thought process, because the first thing we think is, “sheesh, what a loser, I’m not helping them” Or, “Oops, I just remembered I have to order Tigers playoff tickets – when do they go on sale again?” And so on.

We like to imagine that we live from this place of consciousness and intentionality. But we don’t. Not over the long haul. And not when it gets hard. Or when we are run down. Or distracted.

Try this…

Memorize: “Dear children, let us love not with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Distract.

Have them try it.

Distract.

Now try this…

“Hail to the victors…”

“Amazing grace…”

“2 all beef patties…”

Etc…

What we know by heart is part of us much more deeply than what we know in our head. And it’s what’s deep in us, in our guts, that moves us, for example, to love in action and in truth.

We may know all that truth about generosity, needs, etc. in our heads. But until it gets deep inside of us, into our hearts, we won’t be moved in our guts with compassion when see someone in need.

[frontal cortex vs. amygdala – under stress and anxiety, our amagdyla, the part of our brain directly connected to our guts, takes over and uses the frontal cortex for its own purposes…uses it to justify its desires, execute its wishes, etc.]

We may know in our head that it’s good to forgive everyone. Or trust God for provision. Or serve the poor. Or speak well of those whom we dislike. We might affirm those truths. Heck, even be able to quote passages about it. We could even teach and preach about it.

But unless we know it deep in our hearts, we won’t live it out in actions and in truth. Unless we know it deep in our hearts, we won’t be moved in our guts to do it.

Good news gets in our head by knocking on our door, and we open the door. Good news gets in our guts from our invitation to stay, from welcoming, from rearranging and making room.

Which leads us to the singular thing I want to encourage us about today. Let’s invite God to go deeper in us. Let’s give him permission to bury his seeds of love all the way in the pit of our stomachs. Let’s ask him to do it. Let’s not be satisfied with anything short of having hearts and guts that are moved by his love.

We’ll talk next week about what we can do to cooperate as he answers that prayer – it’s not super complicated – but it all begins with that heartfelt prayer, that surrender of the deepest parts of our selves to him.

[my story of this prayer and the shaping up of an answer…]

Practical Tips:

1. Find out where you’re top heavy. What do you know that you don’t know? Identify one thing you “know” in your head that you’re not sure you “know” in your heart. Something about the God who is love.

2. Give Permission (for God to make you a Weeble). Very simply, tell God you want that to change in you. Invite him to do whatever it takes.

3. Make a gutsy move. Get your body and emotions and soul involved in the invitation. Come up for prayer. Talk to a trusted friend / mentor. Make a reminder to ask God weekly. Out loud.

9-11 Compassion

2011-09-14T10:00:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/11/2011

Our world is full of overwhelming floods, chaotic, furious, indiscriminate, devastating. The world around us shaken to its very foundations.

10^th anniversary of 9/11.

This past month, earthquakes. Hurricanes. Wildfires. Floods that sometimes seem to come from God or at least be allowed by God.

Some floods are much more personal: job loss, health crisis, tragedy strikes, relationship breakdown with someone important in your life.

Our natural responses tend to range from despair on one end of the continuum to anger on the other. But as students of Jesus, we have a new work of God at work within us, compassion’s rising tide. [tide as water’s response to the gravitational pull of moon, etc.] The world within us responding to the pull of Jesus’ Spirit on our hearts. It’s beautiful, furiously intent on love, deeply personal, and in God’s grand scheme, unstoppably engaged in the restoration of all things.

So, today we are going to talk about how we join in with God’s response to overwhelming floods in our world.

One thing the scripture teaches over and over is that God himself enters our floods. In particular we see this in Jesus, crucified on the cross. Through Jesus, God himself becomes the victim of the flood with us.

Which means that it’s often in floods in which Jesus meets us, or it’s into floods that we can go to join with him. Floods in which mercy and justice are resolved as salvation emerges victorious over judgment.

So whenever there is a flood, if we are students of Jesus, our job is to look for God, to develop eyes to see him coming, or eyes to see him inviting us to come join him. To find him running compassionately into the flood to meet us, or to wade ourselves into compassion’s rising tide, so that others can find him present in the flood through us.

To explore this, let’s look at one of Jesus’ simple but brilliant stories, in Luke 10, starting in verse 25.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

The thing about the half dead is they appear to be dead but you can only tell if they are half or whole dead by touching them. The priest and the Levite (someone who was from the priestly tribe of Levi but not a direct descendant of Aaron – someone who would have had lower level responsibilities in the Temple) knew that by touching the dead, they would be incurring a condition called “ritual uncleanness” meaning they would have to go through the inconvenience and expense of a cleansing ritual before being able to resume their priestly or Levitical duties. So they played it safe, as the wrong kind of religion always advises—safety first! Don’t take any risks!—and walked on by.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that if you’re the half-dead man, or even an outside observer, it might be tempting to think that the priest and the Levite represent God’s response to the flood. After all, they are meant to be God’s representatives, aren’t they?

But the true God never plays it safe, does he? Think about Jesus hanging out with the tax collectors and sinners. Think about Jesus touching the lepers, receiving the worship of the prostitute, spending time alone with the Samaritan woman at the well, healing the centurion’s son. Jesus arrested, beaten, nailed to the cross.

So take heart, if you’re in a flood, and you see people not taking any risks to come close, those people aren’t where God is in relation to your flood. Keep looking, maybe in less likely places. Because he’s coming.

And here’s where Jesus throws in a twist. The third guy to come by is a Samaritan.

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

The Samaritans to the Jews were like the Mormons are to historically orthodox Christians. They took the basics of the faith, added a twist here and there that just threw the whole thing out of whack. The Jews reserved special contempt for the Samaritans; the same contempt we reserve for people who claim to be what we are, but aren’t so far as we can tell.

In fact, earlier on this same road trip, Jesus’ own disciples had wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy some Samaritans who weren’t being hospitable to Jesus; only to be rebuked by Jesus [isn’t that so like us? Someone doesn’t want the love we offer, and we want to say “to hell with you, then.” Not Jesus, thankfully. How often have we been inhospitable to his love? Thank God we haven’t gotten a “to hell with you, then” from Jesus]

The Samaritan “came where the man was” –he approached the half dead man to see how dead he really was. When he saw him, he took pity on him. The Greek for “took pity” means “moved in the gut with compassion” (the Greek word being related to our word for the spleen). In English, take pity implies “there, there”: a patronizing, distancing response. But compassion is “here, here” as in “Here, here, let me get close and help.” Compassion begins as a passion, a feeling in the gut. An emotion, like all emotions, designed to cause “motion”, action.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

The Samaritan dipped into his own resources, supplies he needed for the journey and bandaged the man’s wounds, pouring oil and wine (used to soothe and cleanse wounds). He didn’t just draw from his rainy day fund but his traveling necessities—his suitcase and carry on. [Didn’t as a habit carry extra money – no travelers checks, credit cards. Extra cash was just more money that could be stolen on a journey. Any first aid supplies he might have had were packed for his own potential use – not like there was a Rite Aid to stop at to replenish it on the rest of his journey.] Put him on his own donkey, slowing his progress through dangerous country. Then he made sure the man had enough to recover, working together with the innkeeper.

He did what he could, not what he couldn’t. But he did do what he could.

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Do you see it costing somebody something to be with you in your flood? Do you see somebody having mercy on you? You’ve found the first signs of God present with you.

Do we satisfy ourselves that we have all the right answers to the floods that we encounter, or do we “go and do likewise,” joining with the Answer and wading into the floods along with Him, transforming them into Compassion’s tide?

Have we made homes for ourselves close enough to the gravity of God’s compassion that it pulls on the tender parts inside of us when we come across Jesus in one of his disguises? Will we respond to the tidal pull of compassion that we feel in our guts when we see the suffering along our journey? Will we get close enough to feel the shallow breath of the half dead, the faint pulse, to see the smallest of movements? Will we slow our pace and give up our donkey for a time, dip into our traveling funds and carry on luggage?

Do you notice that floods always seem to come at the worst time? Of course when the floods hit us it’s always bad timing – no one is ever ready for a flood. But also when they hit someone else God wants to move us to have compassion towards. It seems that so often it happens just when we feel like we have the least to give.

[can’t think of the last time I thought, ah, perfect – this is happening just when I had some extra time, some extra resources, etc. I often discover later that the timing was perfect, but it hardly ever feels like that in the moment – Joe’s motorcycle accident story…]

I imagine the Samaritan in the story had similar thoughts as he approached his half-dead neighbor. Bad timing! I was making good progress on the journey, and now this. What if the guy is still alive? The kind of shape he’s in, it’s going to take a lot to just give him a shot to live. Maybe if I don’t get too close, I won’t know for sure, and I can move on without my conscience bothering me too much.

But those stingy thoughts were just that, thoughts. He put one foot in front of another and approached his neighbor. When he saw the man, it didn’t matter that he was Jew, it only mattered that he was a fellow sufferer, and he was moved with compassion. And that compassion moved him to go back to his own provisions and draw down his supply of necessities.

Later, Jesus’ students could remember this story and see Jesus in it. The Samaritan as a picture of Jesus—an outcast who gives of himself to restore the half dead to full life. We can do the same, and recognize that every time we come across people who have been tossed about by overwhelming floods, we have a chance to join with Jesus to become part of Compassion’s rising tide. A tide that is sweeping over the whole of the earth, eventually to overwhelm every overwhelming flood, eventually to create breathing room for every fellow sufferer who has been beneath the waters of the overwhelming flood. Let’s surrender ourselves to Love, and discover who love leads us to carry, and discover most of all where love carries us together.

Practical Tips:

1. Don’t buy anything for 3 days.

2. Travel on roads where half-dead people sometimes lay. Compassion Ministry. Children’s Ministry. Youth Ministry.

3. Do a daily gut check.

4. And then do what you can. Something. Anything.

1st John: Catch Fire

2011-09-07T12:03:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/04/2011

¹⁸Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. ¹⁹They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

²⁰But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. ²¹I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. ²²Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Messiah. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. ²³No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

²⁴As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. ²⁵And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

²⁶I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. ²⁷As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him

Memories of Papa taking me to my first Detroit Tigers’ game. Getting in car that smelled a little like cigarette smoke. Singing “Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet” on the way. The concrete overpasses as we headed into the city. The looming buildings and dirty streets. The parking lots and attendants trying to flag us down. The guys scalping tickets outside, people hawking pennants and programs. The stadium itself, epic, staggering in size and legend. Going out from the bright sun into the dark hallways, bustling with tall people, stopping in the bathroom, overwhelmed by the trough-style urinals, then the smells of hotdogs and nachos, Jerseys, caps, bats. (It’s even more enticing now, with Ferris wheels and carousels and pitching contests and shops and restaurants.) I had nearly forgotten why we were there, when my Grandpa, said, OK, enough of that Jesse, come with me. And he took me through the tunnel to our seats. It got bright again, and quieter, calmer. Not much seemed to be happening out there. But we sat down, and opened the program he’d bought, and he began to point the players out to me, and explain the game, and soon enough, what we’d passed through to get there didn’t matter any more. Nothing mattered except what was happening on that field. Well, that, and the hot dogs.

This passage is a little like that.

It starts with so much excitement and drama. Anti-Christs and last hours. Deniers and liars. But once you get past that to heart of it all, the real excitement, the real drama, is in the last couple of sentences about anointing. Which at first glance seems a lot quieter, and calmer. But once we begin to appreciate it, all the rest seems to matter less and less.

Some explanation is in order.

1^st John is a pastoral letter to a church in crisis. A couple of decades earlier, this group of people had heard the gospel of John and become students of Jesus, disciples who gave their allegiance to the Jesus the Christ over the Roman Caesar. They’d formed a community together, an ecclesia, a church. And as happens with people in community, some kind of crisis was brewing – in this case it seems to be centered around some theological debate about who Jesus is and why he matters. So John writes this letter to this church to say to them what he wants them to hear in the midst of this crisis. And it’s at this point in the letter that he begins to address that crisis specifically.

However, given our distance from the particulars of the crises, it’s a little difficult to sort out exactly what was going on. We only have this one perspective on it, and, as we’ll see, John doesn’t take a point by point approach to sorting it all out. He’s got a different strategy.

And it’s extra confusing because we’ve got all these ideas about phrases like “the last hour” – we assume John is talking about the end of the world – and “the antichrist,” – again, language we associate in our popular Christian imagination with the end of the world.

But is he really? Probably not. Our assumptions are actually pretty far off.

The phrase “last hour” – “eschate hora” – is only used here. Nowhere else in the Bible. And clearly, the world doesn’t end just then. So maybe John is saying, this is an extreme, or climactic, moment for this church. It would be an equally valid translation.

And “anti-christ” doesn’t show up anywhere else either, except in here and in 2^nd John. Nope, not even in Revelation. (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) So we aren’t sure exactly what John was getting on about, except that there were people either in opposition to Jesus himself, or more specifically to the idea of Jesus as the Christ, or anointed one.

And that’s why I want to zero in on to this idea of anointing. Because everything in this passage is pointing there. Anointing is where the ballgame is at, it’s the true reason for all the commotion.

¹⁸Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichristos (anti-annointed one) is coming, even now many antichristoi (anti-annointed ones) have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. ¹⁹They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

²⁰But you have a chrisma (anointing) from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. ²¹I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. ²²Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christos (Anointed One). Such a person is the antichristos (anti-anointed one)—denying the Father and the Son. ²³No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

²⁴As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. ²⁵And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

²⁶I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. ²⁷As for you, the chrisma (anointing) you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his chrisma (anointing) teaches you about all things and as that chrisma (anointing) is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

Something epic and disruptive is happening here. But it might totally pass us by if we miss the context.

There has been a central question throughout the Bible that the scriptures are speaking to, in various ways, at various times. Where is God? Where can you find him?

Exodus 25v8

⁸“Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.

Exodus 28v41

⁴¹After you put these clothes on your brother Aaron and his sons, anoint and ordain them. Consecrate them so they may serve me as priests.

1 Samuel 16v12-13

Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”

¹³So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came on David in power.

Luke 4v18

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me…

John 14v15-17

¹⁵“If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

V25-26

²⁵“All this I have spoken while still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you

15v26

²⁶“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.

16v8

¹³But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

20v22

²²And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Where is God? Temple, Priests, Kings and prophets, in Jesus, and in you…

²⁷As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

So what does this mean? It means everything has changed.

One night in the spring of 1990, while I was living in Belfast, the shockwave from a bomb blast shook our house, rattling windows, knocking things off of walls and shelves. Never found out where, why, who, what happened. Nothing on the news, in the papers. Unless you knew someone personally in the know, if the media didn’t cover it, it’s as if it didn’t happen.

Flash forward to a week ago Tuesday and the earthquake that happened in Virginia. My sister was practicing with her field hockey team at American University in D.C. when they were all fell to the ground for 30 seconds while the earth shook. My sister grabbed her cell phone from the bench and texted the whole family: THERE WAS AN EARTHQUAKE DURING PRATICE!!!

People throughout the area were grabbing phones and tweeting, snapping photos of damage and uploading them to facebook, calling, texting. News organizations were among the last to have the story. [show Twitter QuakeMap] Between 1990 and 2011, a seismic shift has happened because everyone has a camera phone connected to the internet. Imagine that bomb going off in Belfast today. Twitter and facebook would be flooded with reports while the TV stations were still sending news crews to the scene.

Think about Egypt. Iran. Libya. Yemen. This new power in people’s hands is disruptive. It makes the existing power structures and powerful interests quake. The Arab spring, people clamoring for freedom, for democracy. Everything is changing.

Anointing changes everything. Where is God? Not just in the temple. Not just in the priests. Not just in the kings and the powerful and the prophets. Not just in Jesus, the Messiah. But in you, and you, and you, and you…

An Arab spring is nothing compared to Humanity’s spring, where resurrection life is spreading like wildfire.

Any John Legend fans? [Play John Legend’s “Our Generation”…] We can go to a concert. Put him on our MP3 players. Maybe subscribe to his twitter feed. What if you were a friend, a family member, part of his band? You’d be closer and closer to his presence. Which would be cool.

But I played John Legend because I think, forget being near John Legend; what if I could sing like he sings? What if, when I opened up my mouth to sing, it was as if I were inhabited by John Legend’s voice, as if his voice was in me….? How cool would that be?

Jesus’ disciples have been in his presence, but now he says he is leaving, so that his presence will be in them. And they will then do what he does.

Jesus is telling them, everything you saw me do while in my presence, you will do with my presence in you.

But more than that, even.

John 14v12

Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

The anointing of the Holy Spirit opens the door to even more resurrection life, even more of God’s Kingdom, than if the Anointed One walks the earth doing it himself.

The anointing changes everything.

When Christianity feels dead, boring, unalive, it’s because we are not living as anointed ones. It’s like we are a body lying a in a coffin. It looks like a person. But there is no lifegiving spirit within it, and so maybe mourning is the proper response.

We can go to church, and tithe, and listen to sermons, and have the right doctrine but we are like a lifeless body. Like a wax figurine.

There is spiritual power available from all sorts of sources. But this is different. It is God himself in you, and God is not something to be used, but someone with whom we cooperate. He is untamed and untamable. There is a wildness to life with the Spirit of God alive in us. He’s got his own agenda – his own desires, thelema will. And so it is a completely different dance. But it is filled with the joy and exhilaration that the best dances are filled with.

Perhaps we need a reminder. Perhaps we need a refill. Perhaps we need to receive for the first time.

Practical Tips:

1. Don’t get worked up until it’s working out. Stop investing all kinds of energy in other debates that should be going to learning to live as an anointed student of Jesus, set on a course of doing the things he did. Make a promise to not get worked up about an issue until you’ve seen Jesus use you to heal someone or cast out a demon or forgive someone or welcome someone who has been in exile from you in his name. And then see if you even care about the issue after that.

2. It starts with Mouth to Mouth. Use your mouth to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, the anointed one. Our anointing starts by recognizing in Jesus the anointing of God, and then he breathes on us his Holy Spirit. Because discipleship is essentially saying to Jesus, I want whatever you’ve got, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get it. And him saying, I want you to have everything I’ve got, and I’ll take whatever you’ve got to give it to you. And everything follows from there.

3. Loosen Your Lips. Practice praying in tongues regularly. It can be a helpful reminder that you aren’t alone. Ask for the gift of a prayer language if you don’t have one.

4. Catch Fire. Open your hands to receive…

1st John: Unstuck / Plastic Couch Covers

2011-09-01T07:37:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 08/28/2011

Just so I know who I am about to unintentionally offend: Does anyone have plastic covers on their couches…?

¹⁵Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you. ¹⁶For everything in the world—the cravings of ~~sinful people~~ the flesh, the lust of ~~their~~ the eyes and ~~their~~ boasting about what ~~they have and do~~ one has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God ~~lives forever~~ abides in eternity.

Two ways to live – enslaved by desires that spring from our “love” for the “world” and the things of this world, or with the freedom and confidence that comes from practicing God’s desires.

One attaches you to things that pass away, and prevents you from being attached to the one who is eternal.

The other attaches you to God, and causes you to abide/rest/remain in eternity.

[the tale of Colin and his Nintendo DS…]

Do not love the world…if you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you…

All three “loves” are the same Greek word, agape. Note that there is a continuum of meanings of the word “agape,” just as there is for our English word “love”… we use the word “love” to describe all sorts of good feelings about all sorts of things. From pizza to iphones to Survivor to dual zone climate control to string theory to the beautiful game to late summer / early fall weather to JJ Abrams to MLK, jr. to our mothers. [car like a toddler / annoys you constantly, but you’d kill anyone who tried to take it from you]

[Show Lindt chocolate bar…confession of love exercise with volunteer… ]

We “love” things to different degrees, and all is well and good as long as it’s proportionate, but it’s possible for us to love some things to a disproportionate degree, isn’t it? John is getting at something related to that, which we’ll explore further in a bit.

Similarly, there is a continuum of meanings of the word translated “world” here. Kosmos in Greek. And the only way to get clarity is by looking at the context.

For example, consider how John uses it in the gospel of John, the third chapter, 16^th verse.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Clearly speaking of the world as his whole creation, with his image-bearers first in mind. We join with God, as his image-bearers, in loving his creation. Caring for it. Giving thanks for it. Enjoying it as an expression of his provision and love and beauty. Setting aside our momentary desires for the sake of its blessing. This, of course, is especially true when it comes to loving our fellow image-bearers, as John has been talking about, powerfully and pointedly, at length.

But here in the letter of 1^st John, “world” is clearly getting at a different sense. World as the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments (talents, gifts, lands, resources), riches, advantages, pleasures, etc. Everything, in other words, whose value is a function of how we relate to it and use it, as opposed to those things which have inherent value because of God’s love for them.

Let’s take a piece of chocolate cake baked by a mother for her child’s birthday. How do we know its value? It depends. To the mother that made it out love for her child’s birthday, it is a holy and good vessel of love. To the child who takes it for granted, or has decided that he or she doesn’t like the size of the piece he or she has been given, its true value as a vessel of love has been lost. To the hungry guest who loves chocolate cake, its value is a function of its taste and moistness and whether or not it has butter-cream frosting. To the mother-in-law who wasn’t invited to make the cake again this year, it’s slap in her face.

Compare the value of the cake to the value of the aforementioned mother and child. The mother, and the child, regardless of whether they are loved or unloved, regardless of how talented or emotionally healthy or rich or beautiful or strong they are, have inestimable value, inherently, because of God’s love for them.

To love the mother, or to love the child is always a holy response. It is doing God’s will. However, to love the cake the same way one loves the mother or the child is never a holy response.

Think if you are a brother-in-law to the mother and see the cake that afternoon, and love it in such a way that you decide to have just one small piece, because no one will mind, will they? Now your love for the cake has gotten in your way of your love for both the mother and the child, has it not?

Think if the mother loves it to such a degree that she allows no one to eat it, or gets offended if someone decides they don’t like it very much. It might lose its capacity to bring blessing to others, might it not? And in truth, it might lose its capacity to bring blessing to the mother; it instead becomes a source of anxiety.

Like plastic covers on the couches, right?

This world, and the things of this world, are sticky, and as a result, we must be careful not to love it, and them, or we will get stuck to this world and the things of this world. (Plastic couch covers, again!)

And this world and its desires are passing away.

Heaven help us if we are stuck to things passing away, or they must might take us with them.

Let’s unpack this idea of the stickiness of the cravings of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boasting of what we have and do.

Cravings of the flesh:

physiological cravings for a specific food or some other physical pleasure.

For adrenaline or endorphin rush from competition or athletic activity.

For a good emotional feeling that comes from a relationship.

Those things are sticky.

Lust of the eyes:

A thing that looks good to you, and even produces pleasure just by you looking at it and lusting after it.

Something you see and want, not for the blessing it can be to you or others, but because of how it makes you feel to look at it.

Pornography, of course, is the elephant in the room.

But what about our love of shopping, not to actually buy things, but just for the feeling we get?

Or magazines filled with your particular brand of eye candy (food, houses, fit bodies, cars, you name it). You escape the here and now and your brain can’t stop thinking about them.

Sticky.

Boasting of what we have and do:

The feeling that comes from having more things

or having better things

or having more tasteful things

or being better

or being more significant

or talented or successful or refined or whatever.

Sticky.

It’s only natural, right?

Or is it?

None of this experience of this world or the things of this world comes from our Father in the heavens. It's not our birthright, not our inheritance, not in our image-bearing genes. God is not stuck to any of these things.

We know this because we saw Jesus live in this world without getting stuck…

No, getting stuck comes from our broken relationship to this world, not from our heavenly father.

The pleasures of our flesh are meant to serve us, not master us. They help point us to God’s goodness and provision, which leads us to love and trust him. It is the same with our eyes capacity to appreciate and dream. It’s the same with our desire to build and accomplish and create and grow. They help point us to the good things God is calling us to work towards.

But once we start getting stuck to any of these things, we become mastered, enslaved by them.

So right on the heels of this idea, John tells us that the path to freedom is in doing God’s will.

¹⁷The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

Boule vs. thelema. Two Greek Words for Will.

Boule is the capital W Will of God – the kind of thing that cannot be resisted, where he will do what he says he is going to do. Like creating the world. Like setting Israel free from slavery in Egypt. Like defeating sin, death, evil on the cross. And so on. That is not the word used here.

Here, John is talking about the thelema of God. Thelema is more like the lowercase will. Like the things God desires for us, but that are also connected to our cooperation and receiving them. Like he desires for us to know his love and forgiveness, but he will not force it on us. Like he desires for us to love one another, but he will not force us to do it. Like he desires us to trust him in all things so that we can know freedom from worry and anxiety. He may invite us, he may strongly suggest to us, he may command us, he may conspire to ratchet up the heat when we resist, out of his love for us. But his thelema will won’t be done ultimately, apart from our willing participation in it.

And us doing his thelema looks a lot more like a soccer game than it does a chess match...

I tend towards the idea that often what God's thelema will for us is not primarily option A, B, or C, but rather that we learn how to choose option A,B, or C in creative cooperation with him, and that often he would rather have us learn what his desires for us and the world are like, than to be pre-occupied with figuring out the details of the grand plan.

To put it another way, I tend towards the idea that God is as much jazz improviser as he is classical composer.

(Incidentally, that’s where this idea of God’s blueprint for our lives isn’t such a theologically solid thing. The idea that every aspect of our lives is mapped out in advance, and any deviation from the blueprint is sinful. The idea that God has a particular will for when we brush our teeth, and how long, and so on. And that if we get it wrong, we’ll pay the price. What a nervous, and non-biblical way to live! Another topic, for another time – but for now, know at least that this is not what John is talking about here when he says to “do God’s will”.)

All that to say, when John juxtaposes our desires for the things of this world with doing God’s will, he’s suggesting there is an important relationship between our love for things and stuff and pleasures with God’s desire for us to love him and one another.

Remember when we spoke a couple of weeks ago about the demands of love? How love isn’t a fluffy weak thing, but a thing that placed demands on us? Well, it turns out that Love is always demanding that we get unstuck from the things of this world…

Here’s how it works:

We get attached to something in this world – a thing, a pleasure, a feeling, an achievement or social standing, hard earned respect, whatever – and then, because all that stuff is passing away – something threatens it. We get sick, or old. Someone decides to stop giving us what they were giving us before, for whatever reason. Someone takes something from us, or hurts us, or disrespects us, or is more successful than us. Whatever.

The particulars don’t matter, the result is the same. We get distressed. We get angry at God, or bitter, or resentful, or depressed because the thing we loved of this world is passing away. Or we get angry or bitter or resentful or desperately clingy toward the person who isn’t giving us what they once did. Or we begin to hate the person who takes something we’ve gotten too attached to from us, or who hurts us, or who disrespects us, or is more successful than us, and we can’t see straight anymore. We can’t see the good news anymore. The world is a dangerous place, and we’ve got to protect ourselves, or we just plain old want to give up.

How are we going to do God’s thelema will? How are we going to love and trust him? How are we going to love the people who have disappointed us or rejected us or just can’t or won’t give us what we want from them anymore? How are we going to forgive and bless those that appear to be our enemies?

We’ve got to get repent and get unstuck. We’ve got to get stuck to God and doing his thelema will. We’ve got to be much wiser going forward about the degrees of love that we give to things, and be careful to nurture the loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

To bring it all home, look at those last three words:

¹⁷The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God abides in eternity

Aion (the word translated “eternity” is a qualitative word, generally speaking, rather than quantitative). Aion zoe the kind of life experienced by God in the heavens. So abiding in eternity means an experience of life where we are rooted solidly, living from, the place of security and grace and goodness that God dwells in.

If we do the desires of God (loving, forgiving, healing, serving, giving generously, etc.) we abide / dwell / remain / rest in the unchanging, incorruptible experience of God’s kingdom. Present with his presence and favor. A world apart from the uncertainty and haphazardness and passing-awayness of this world.

[image of child with Father at a carnival, holding his hand, riding on his shoulders, clinging in his arms…then running away do this or that, and then panicking when they realize they’ve lost him…and then trying it all again, this time asking, Dad, can we go do that together?]

Practical tips (just try 1 or 2):

The Give It Up Test: are you suspicious about whether or not you love something of this world, whether you have gotten stuck to something? Give it up for one week and see what happens.

The Demand of Love Test: Identify one person you are having difficulty loving, and not just because you don't like their personality. What of this world might you be stuck to that they threaten that love is demanding you get unstuck from?

The Time Test: Imagine giving 2-5 hours in service to God a week. What would you have to get unstuck from to do that?

The Money Test: Imagine tithing, if you don't yet, or adding 10% to your giving if you do. What emotions do you feel? "oh, I'd love to - how can I make that happen?". Or, "keep your hands off my money..." What are you stuck to that keeps you from being more generous with your money? Craving of flesh? Lust of eyes? Boasting of what you have and do? Get unstuck and get generous.

1st John: The Word of God Lives in You

2011-08-25T13:19:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 08/21/2011

[Play video: 1 John 2v12-14…]

¹²I am writing to you, dear children,

because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.

¹³I am writing to you, fathers,

because you know him who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you, young people,

because you have overcome the evil one.

¹⁴I write to you, dear children,

because you know the Father.

I write to you, fathers,

because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young people,

because you are strong,

the word of God lives in you,

and you have overcome the evil one.

1 John 2:12-14

Plagiarizing from Mars Hill, and Rob Bell today. Started our series before they did, but Rob spoke about this text in a way that spoke to my heart. I want you to have the best that I can give you. And much of what he said, and even some of the ways he said it, is the best that I can give you. Send complaints to me, and props to him…

A reminder of where we find ourselves in this letter…

It began with:

Witness

(breathless excitement, the encounter with and experience of eternal zoe life)

Invitation

(have fellowship with us, this is for you, join us)

Instruction/teaching

(light and darkness, sin, confession, forgiveness)

Comfort

(my dear children, the pause that refreshes)

Correction/Rebuke/Reminder

(no room for hate, it all boils down to love)

Like a teacher, at a key moment, who knows that the learning now depends on something else, something beyond the material, beyond the classroom and the work. You need to know why I am saying this to you. You need to know something about yourselves that you might not know, but I do. I see something in you. Because I believe in you.

So why is John pouring himself into this community of Jesus’ followers? Because it’s his job? Is it because he wants to leave a legacy? Is it even because God told him too? Or is it because he can see something of what God has done in them, because he believes in them, because by being a part of what is happening in them, he gets to be part of something awesome.

Because your sins have been forgiven

Because You know God

Because You are strong

Because the word of God lives in you

And because you have overcome the evil one.

Your sins have been forgiven

You know God

You are strong

The word of God lives in you

And you have overcome the evil one

I write because your sins have been forgiven,

apheontai, sent away. Gone, not here any more, dismissed.

I write because you know,

gnosko - first hand personal experience, a knowing that is deeper than head knowledge, heart knowledge, the way you know your favorite voice.

I write to you because you are strong

Ischuros, powerful, mighty, like the wind in a storm, like Jesus’ weeping in the garden of gestemene, like an angel casting boulders in the sea, like a fully armed man guarding his dwelling.

I write to you because the word of God lives in you

ho logos ho theos, the word that created the universe, that speaks light into being, that healed the blind, that sustains every living thing, Jesus himself who holds all things together, the song that undergirds the universe.

I write because you have overcome,

neNikekate, a battle that’s already been won, victory in the past whose effects spill into the present and the future.

I write because you have overcome the evil one,

poneros, the evil one, or evil, but also the pain sweat and sorrow that come with evil

[Volunteers / 3 to speak and 3 to hear]

___________________,

Your sins have been sent away

You know God

You are strong

The word of God lives in you

And you have overcome the evil one

The good news is the disruptive announcement of who you really are, in Christ, what has really happened, in Christ, what is true about reality, in Christ, whether or not it feels true [Thanks, Rob!]. The announcement itself disrupts the darkness, unravels it.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes…” Romans 1:16

Who believes. Not assents to it in their head, but who acts in trust of it.

It may not be true, but it’s True.

In receiving it, the good news takes root in you.

The word takes on flesh and blood and comes to us.

And more often than we realize, we are the flesh and blood the word takes on to come to others.

Set up Blood diamond clip…

Child kidnapped from African village, turn him into child soldier, brainwash him, train him to be a killing machine. Father, Solomon Vandy, sets out to find his boy. While the searching continues, the boy is corrupted further and further. At the end, the father finally reaches this boy, holding a gun, and realizes it is his son, Dia.

[Play Blood Diamond clip…]

“You are Dia Vendy, of the proud Mende tribe.

You are a good boy who loves soccer and school.

I know they made you do bad things,

but you are not a bad boy.

I am your father who loves you.

And you will come home with me

and be my son again.”

Gospel of John full of “believe”, 86 times. Believe in Jesus, believe in his good news of the kingdom. Believe as in trust, as in act in confidence that it’s true.

Some of us are being called to announce the good news in this very practical, simple way John does, with new clarity and confidence, towards others.

How would that change the way you raise your kids? Serve in children’s ministry? Youth ministry? Compassion Ministry? Lead your small group? Love your spouse? Your friends?

What basis does John have for saying it? He loves, and he abides in the light. That’s it. That’s enough. This is what we can see to be true about reality, about those we love, when we see in the light of the Gospel.

Your sins have been sent away

You know God

You are strong

The word of God lives in you

And you have overcome the evil one

[this is why I pastor the Vineyard Church of Milan…]

Some of us are being invited today to receive this good news, in a very simple, practical way, with new clarity and confidence, from others.

Your sins have been sent away

You know God

You are strong

The word of God lives in you

And you have overcome the evil one

[Invitation to come forward and have these words spoken to you as you receive communion…]

1st John: Unblinded by Love

2011-08-16T07:59:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 08/14/2011

MLK, jr. “We believe as Christians that the end is pre-existent in the means.”

Kindness to kids vs. harshness, Sabbath rhythms vs. crazy schedules, love vs. hate especially.

³By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. ⁴ The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; ⁵ but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: ⁶ the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

⁷Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. ⁸On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining. ⁹ The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. ¹⁰ The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. ¹¹But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

1 John 2:1-11 NASB

Recap “guarding the commandments” with respect to Jesus’ command to love one another…

By this we know that we have come to know him, if we guard his commandments to love each other. ³ By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we guard His commandments to love one another. ⁴ The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not guard His commandments to love one another as he has loved us, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; ⁵ but whoever keeps His word to love each other, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: ⁶ the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to wash others’ dirty feet and lay down his life for his friends in the same manner as Jesus washed our dirty feet and laid down his life for us.

Today unpacking the next paragraph. Why is loving one another so important? Why does hate blind us so effectively?

Love is what we do when we can see reality clearly, as it really is, and when we love, our eyes are kept bright and clear. Hate, on the other hand, is a natural byproduct of living in shadow, and when we hate, we develop blinding cataracts.

[native American grandfather parable / two wolves…]

Before we explore those ideas in more explicitly, let’s just work through this paragraph to get a sense of what it’s basically saying.

⁷Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.

In other words, when John commands us to guard Jesus’ command to love one another, to never let the Love stop placing her demands on us, to attend carefully to Jesus’ instructions to love each other as he first loved us, John isn’t saying something we’ve never heard before. John is saying that we’ve been under instruction to do this for a long, long time – from the beginning, in fact.

The word “heard” here perhaps is a hint to us as to what John is driving at. The word “heard” brings to mind the “Shema,” a prayer prayed daily by every Jewish person. The word “Shema” means “Hear” and it comes from the first word of the prayer, a prayer based on Deuteronomy 6. The people of Israel, when they first were rescued from slavery and were being formed into a nation of free people, were commanded this by Moses:

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

On your hearts, impressed on your children, talk about them at home, when you walk, when you lie down, when you wake up, tie them on your hands, put them on your foreheads, doorframes, gates…? This is a picture of guarding these commandments, isn’t it?

In fact, this is the commandment referenced by Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus says that the first and greatest commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” Which Jesus then follows with, “And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the new commandment that John writes about when he says:

On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.

In other words, Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, although it’s very old commandment, has been cast in a whole new light by Jesus. When Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, to love one another as he has loved us, he’s showing us that loving God and loving others are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other, and they are in fact, the same commandments seen in fresh, resurrection light. Because God is love, and because God’s image is stamped on every human being on the planet.

John is saying that this commandment to love others is being truly expressed in Jesus, and his church – that’s the “in you” bit. Because the way Jesus kept the command to love God was by becoming our brother and loving us. Because Jesus said that others will know we are his students, his disciples, by our love for each other.

And then John goes on this riff about light and darkness and loving and hating, because he wants to flesh out what he’s saying in the most practical and powerful of terms.

Remember, John uses light and darkness as a way of talking about seeing reality as it really it vs. living under illusion, because he understands Jesus as someone who came to shine a light in dark places, to help us see the world and the kingdom of God as it really is, so that we wouldn’t be living in a false illusion that comes from the enemy of our souls about how the world works, about who God is, about who we are.

So we might paraphrase the paragraph this way:

⁷Beloved, this isn’t anything new, but the same thing you’ve been trying to live out and understand your whole lives, even though maybe you couldn’t see it as clearly as you can now. ⁸On the other hand, now that Jesus has shown us what loving God really looks like in action, and now that we’re starting to gets hints of it in our relationships with each other, it’s as if a brand new thing is happening. Because the false illusions about the world being a place where only the strong and powerful and religious superstars succeed, where evil wins in the end, and the false illusions about God being aloof and distant, or only loving the ones who have what it takes to impress him, and the false illusions about us being worthless unless we can achieve something valuable have been shattered by Jesus – God’s own Son – coming into the world announcing good news about how the world is really a place where blessings are poured out on rich and poor, strong and weak alike, where humility and vulnerability and love defeat evil in the end, the good news that God loves even his enemies and is pouring out forgiveness like it’s going out of style, the good news that God is getting involved in our mess because he cares about us so much, overcoming evil not with stronger evil, but with good, and with kindness, and with mercy, and by sacrificing himself, the good news that the only thing that gives us worth is that he loves us because we are his children, and there is no way to earn his love, but rather simply something to be received and generously given away. ⁹ The one who says that he sees the world, and God, and people as they really are and yet hates his brother is still living in the grip of false illusions. ¹⁰ The one who loves everyone he sees has his feet firmly planted in the reality of the world as it really is, and is seeing God as he truly is, and is seeing himself the way God sees him and others the way God sees them, and there are no invisible stumbling blocks about to catch his feet unawares and make him come crashing down to unreality. ¹¹But the one who hates anyone for any reason is somehow stuck in a false illusion about how the world works, or who God is, or who people are, himself included, and lives as if that illusion is true, and can’t see where his steps are going to lead because straining his eyes trying to see in those illusions has caused them to be filled with blinding cataracts.

Consider for a moment what’s going on when you hate someone.

Usually they have done, or are doing, or you expect they might someday do something that threatens your well-being. Anything from making you feel less than to working against your goals to injuring you to taking something valuable from you.

As a result, you lose all goodwill toward them. In hate’s embryonic form, you lose the desire to participate in blessing them. And hate has two full-grown forms. The most obvious is when you are filled with the desire to participate in cursing them. And the second, and slightly less obvious, is to become indifferent. What we might call disdain, scorn, or contempt. Perhaps saying, “You’re dead to me.”

Why does John say that if you hate anyone in any of these ways that you are walking in darkness, that darkness has blinded your eyes?

Because, for one, our well-being can only be threatened if we accept the illusion that the way the world works is that success and blessing only come to those who can secure it for themselves. If we accept the illusion that God is distant and aloof, unconcerned with or incompetent to provide for our well-being. If we accept the illusion that there is some possibility evil will win out in the end.

And secondly, because every form of hate towards a person requires us to stand in judgment above another person. And as soon as we stand up above another person – determining whether or not they deserve blessing – we have taken God’s place in the world. And we only try to take God’s place when we accept the illusion that this world needs a new god to work properly, the illusion that God’s throne is empty, the illusion that some of us human beings are fit to sit in it.

And the danger is that if we accept any of these illusions and embrace hate towards even one other person – even if we love everybody else really well – a cataract begins to form in our eyes. And soon enough, because we are blinded to reality as it really is, our love starts to be based in illusion as well, and it ceases to be connected to God’s love. Our love becomes conditional; everyone at risk of our hate…

On the other hand…

¹⁰ The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

The Greek word that gets translated “cause for stumbling” is skandalon, the word from which we get “scandal.” It’s more literal meaning is the moveable stick or trigger of a trap or a snare, and it was often used to refer to a rock that would cause someone to stumble – a stumbling block.

In other words, when you have unconditional goodwill towards others, you are seeing reality as it really is, and you can walk forward with confidence, knowing that if anything comes in your path to trip you up, you’ll be able to see it. When you love others, you are firmly grounded in reality. You can see that this world is a place in which no one can threaten your well-being, because Jesus has shown us that the world is God-breathed and God-drenched, and forgiveness and favor are flooding over the face of the earth, and with God’s coming kingdom is coming justice and the setting right of all things, and every person is a brother or sister, an image-bearer of the loving God waiting to be rescued and revealed. You can see God’s goodwill toward you, and see that the goodwill he has toward you is the same as the goodwill he has towards the people you were hating, and you can see that the only way to welcome the love he has towards you is to welcome the love he has towards them, too.

Practical Tips:

With respect to a person you hate:

1. Admit that you are blind to some aspect of reality and ask Jesus to show you what that is. Maybe you feel threatened. Maybe you think God hates them too. Maybe you can’t see anything good in them.

2. FROM MLK, JR: A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points… That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

3. FROM MLK, JR: Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must not do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.

With respect to those you are loving:

1. Guard your love against becoming conditional… Your love for your family, your friends, the people you serve in ministry. Conditional love is the beginning of the cataract. Ask yourself this question: what could they do or not do to cause me to no longer desire to rejoice if they rejoice, or to mourn if they mourn?

2. Guard your loving actions against becoming disconnected from your love for God or your love for people.

1st John: Guard the Goal

2011-08-09T10:40:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 08/07/2011

1 John 2:1-11 NASB

We will spend a couple of weeks in this passage, just getting our feet wet today.

Chose this translation (New American Standard Bible) over the one in your seats because it’s a little more word for word faithful to the original Greek in which these words were first written, and with respect to one key word in particular, preserves an important nuance. The word that the NASB keeps that I want to highlight today is “keep.” It shows up 3 times in the first paragraph, always connected to Jesus’ commandments.

“Keep” comes from the Greek word “tereo” [tay-reh-o]. It means to attend to carefully, to take care of, to guard.

Like in the movies when someone finally catches someone important, and they give someone a gun and say, keep an eye on him. Don’t let him escape. And you know the plot is going to turn on whether or not this person with the gun is going to be able to stay vigilant and guard them effectively or not. Will they get distracted? Fall asleep? Succumb to the charms of the prisoner?

Or like when the baby gets dropped off with the bachelor by the desperate single mom on the run, with instructions to take care of the baby. And you know the plot is going to hinge on how carefully this bachelor can attend to this baby, how well he can take care of it. Will he know what do when she cries? Will he know how to change the diaper, what kind of food to give it, how to talk to it, get it to sleep, on and on and on.

Or maybe like a goalie.

[volunteer to guard the aisle throughout the sermon; don’t let anything get past!...]

This idea of keeping, of attending to carefully, of taking care of, of guarding Jesus’ commandments is central to what the author of 1^st John wants this outpost of Jesus’ followers to do. If you want to know God, if you want to be filled with truth, if you want his love to be made perfect in you, if you want to be deeply connected to Jesus like a branch is to a vine, you’ve got to tereo / keep / guard his commandments.

So hold that thought, and we’ll come back to it a little later.

This is the kind of passage that, when you first read it, makes you want to say, “Yes!” followed by, “Um, what exactly is that all about?”

Ever have a conversation with someone where you felt like you were with them all the way along, nodding your head in agreement, etc. and then you get to the end and you say, wait a minute, what exactly were you talking about this whole time?

[Ronni and the Collie…]

This passage is a little like that. It doesn’t get specific until verse 9, does it?

Maybe we hear verse 3, and we nod because we insert our own understanding of commandments that indicate that we know Jesus, an understanding that makes the best sense to us.

And same with verse 4. We know what makes people liars, empty of truth.

And in verse 5 we’ve got a pretty good idea of what word we are supposed to keep to demonstrate that God’s love is perfected in us.

And in verse 6 we’ve got ideas about how we are supposed to walk like Jesus’ walked.

But then in verses 7 & 8, things get a little muddy and our minds are scrambling to keep up, to keep it all coherent. Not new, old? Not old, new? Huh?

And then, all of sudden, the author of 1^st John seems to change gears, throws a wrench in the works. You say you’re in the light, but you hate your brother? You’re really in darkness. But love your brother, and you are living in Light and walking tall. Seriously, if you hate your brother, you are blind and confused.

It makes us a do a double take on everything we read before. Which commandments were you talking about at the beginning? Did they have something to do with love and hate? What word was I supposed to keep? What manner of walking is required of me to abide in God? What command is not new but very old and new at the same time, true in Jesus and true in us?

It would almost be helpful to be a brand new Christian reading the bible for the first time. Because then you’d be asking these questions immediately, making no assumptions, and you’d get to verses 9-11 and recognize, aha! verses 9-11 give you the interpretive key to everything that comes before.

Aha! The author is saying that loving and not hating is related to true knowledge of God. That hating and not loving goes against what it means be intimate with truth. That loving and not hating is what happens when God’s love is made complete in someone. That to be connected to Jesus is to be loving people the way Jesus loved people. That loving and not hating isn’t a new idea; it’s something God’s been saying for a long, long time – from the beginning, really, in a thousand different ways. But it’s also something that seems completely fresh and new because of what we can now see clearly in and through Jesus, and that the world can see in and through us in a brand new way.

Remember, 1^st John is written to a community of Jesus’ followers shaped by the account of the life and ministry of Jesus contained in the gospel of John, and 1^st John serves as a commentary on that gospel.

Look at John’s gospel, chapter 13. This is what Jesus says at the last supper before he is arrested and taken away to be crucified. Shortly after he has washed the disciples’ feet for them.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

John 13:34

And then, later that same night:

⁹“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹²My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷This is my command: Love each other.

John 15:9-17

Now 1^st John 2 begins to come together, doesn’t it?

By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments to love each other. ³ By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments to love one another. ⁴ The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments to love one another as he has loved us, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; ⁵ but whoever keeps His word to love each other, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: ⁶ the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to wash others’ dirty feet and lay down his life for his friends in the same manner as Jesus washed our dirty feet and laid down his life for us.

I can anticipate one common objection to this reading of the text.

And that is that it is just a little too vague, and therefore a little too easy. After all, what does it really mean to love one another? Couldn’t people just say, chill man, I love everybody. It’s all good. I’ll just live and let love. Love, love, love everywhere. Cool. I mean, after all, the Dude abides, right?

In response to that objection, allow me to quote my dad.

“Love is the most ruthlessly demanding thing.”

If we think loving one another is too vague, and potentially the easy way out, it’s either because we misunderstand love, or because we haven’t thought enough about the ruthless demands of love.

Look at what love demanded of Jesus. Letting go of his seat on the throne of heaven. Inhabiting skin and bones. Having parents. Fickle, thick-headed, headstrong, disloyal friends. Persecution. Death.

Ask Mother Teresa about the demands of love. Ask the parent of a child with a disability. Heck, ask the parent of a child in travel sports. Ask the child of a parent with a degenerative illness. Heck, ask the child of a parent with a new computer or trying to use facebook for the first time. Ask a missionary living far from home. Ask a married couple trying to make things work in the aftermath of alcoholism or infidelity or the death of child. Ask anyone trying to forgive someone who has hurt them deeply.

You set out on the way of love, and love will demand everything of you in the end. Your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength.

Love

Demands trusting the good news.

Demands not embracing anger.

Demands forgiveness.

Demands generosity.

Demands a willingness to endure pain, discomfort.

Demands waiting and patience.

Demands growth.

Demands ever increasing definition of “us” or “family.”

Demands depending on God for strength and help.

Demands listening to the Holy Spirit for what now and how.

Demands refraining from judgment.

Demands our time,

our money,

our energies,

the whole of our lives.

It’s not so much about perfect fidelity; it’s about carefully attending / guarding the command to love one another. To love your neighbor as yourself. To love your enemy.

Not letting the command slip away, or be forgotten, or silenced, or ignored, or lost in the shuffle of other important things.

Looking at the command, always keeping it in view, living with it as a daily companion. Always listening to it, letting it speak to you, interrupt you. Making your life revolve around it.

[ask a few questions of the “goalie” about his/her experience guarding the aisle…]

Guarding Jesus’ command to love one another allows it to continue making demands on you.

Because otherwise, we will abandon it and substitute other things for it. Things that are less demanding. Like a religion of rules, for example. Do this and this and this and this, and as long as you do those things and not these things, you’re good and can go about your life.

But if we guard Jesus’ command to love one another, we will know God. Our lives will tell fewer and fewer lies about who God is and who we are, and we will become true image bearers again, as Jesus is. The truth will be in us. The love of God will be made complete. We will abide in the vine. We will be a Vineyard church.

Practical Tips:

1. Invite Love’s demands. Invite love to make a demand on you this week. Every morning, a simple prayer. Jesus, I want to know what love demands of me today. Every night, a simple reflection. What demand did love put in front of me today?

2. Make this passage specific. Read this passage once a day, substituting specific people in the appropriate places, starting with those closest to you on day one, and further out each day. For example, on Monday: “By this we know we have come to know Jesus, by guarding his commands to love Ronni and Colin and Elle and Micah. The one who says, I have come to know Jesus, but does not guard his commands to love Ronni and Colin and Elle and Micah is a liar, and the truth is not in him….” Then Tuesday, maybe Mom and Dad and Maja and Amy and Judy and Grace. Then Wednesday maybe my friends. Then maybe others in the church. Then maybe other pastors or colleagues. Then maybe my neighbors. And so on. Until I’ve included the people in Texas, and China, and Russia, and Iraq, and Ghana, and Turkey, and Jordan, and Columbus, Ohio.

3. Confess a breach. This command is under constant attack in our lives, from every angle and with every weapon. If we aren’t vigilant in guarding the Lord’s command to love one another (and sometimes, even when we are but our best efforts are good enough), our hearts will grow cold towards certain people, or maybe even hot with hate, and we will cease to listen to the demands of love toward them. They may be close (a friend, a spouse, a child, a parent) or more distant (a co-worker, a boss, an old acquaintance, someone else in the church who you just don’t care for, for one reason or another, an enemy, certain kinds of strangers – democrats, republicans, rich people, poor people, gays, teenagers, foreign car drivers, buckeye fans). Simply name them out loud before God (and if you’re brave enough, a trusted friend) and recite this passage, but putting that person’s name in the appropriate places: “By this we know we have come to know Jesus, by guarding his commands to love Bob. The one who says, I have come to know Jesus, but does not guard his commands to love Bob is a liar, and the truth is not in him….”

1st John: Light

2011-06-14T10:17:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the vineyard church of milan 06/12/2011

⁵This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

⁸If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

John 1v5-10

The invitation of Jesus is to live lives grounded in true reality, in the good news of God’s kingdom, the good news of eternal life, the life of the ages, the aionios zoe. This is the reality in which God lives. All who experience this kind of life live in fellowship with one another. That is, there is a profound sharing of life happening.

Sharing implies three things. One, we are connected to the same reality. [people growing up in completely different family systems, or playing for different coaches, connected to different realities…] And two, we are in common relationship to that reality, co-owners of it you might say. [Captiva Island…] And sharing implies that we are openhanded towards the other. Life isn’t being hoarded, defended, grabbed – it’s being generously shared, multiplied, given away, growing, vibrating, echoing, resonating. [some workplaces vs. church…]

At the center of this text is “Light.” Both here in 1^st John, as well as in the gospel of John. Light is one of the prominent themes in the gospel of John, and it’s always connected to Jesus, and always connected to Zoe-life, the life of the ages, the deep, joy-filled, inextinguishable, outside-of-time and present now life that comes from God.

In Him was life, and that life was the Light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1v4-5

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

John 8v12

Those who walk in the dark do not know where they are going. ³⁶Put your trust in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.”

John 12v35-36

Light lights things up. Allows you to see them as they really are. Light reveals reality. Light uncovers lies.

God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. No darkness in God.

Which means he sees everything clearly as it really is. Which means there isn’t anything he doesn’t see clearly.

And Reality apparently, according to 1^st John, and to Jesus, is the kind of thing where love – and the life that flows from it – thrives / prevails / has its way / wins.

Everything that suggests anything to the contrary is a lie…

[magic trick illustration…]

John is constantly describing the miraculous works of Jesus as signs. Signs that point to the truth Jesus is trying to shed light on. The seven signs in John’s gospel, starting with turning water into wine and ending with Lazarus being raised from the dead, are leading up to the ultimate sign of true reality at the end of his gospel. And that sign is, of course, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

For the first Christians, and for all who follow in their footsteps, the resurrection is the ultimate sign of true reality, the light of Jesus shining most brightly on the truth of the kingdom of God. In fact, shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus says to Pilate, the Roman Governor who sentences him to death: “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to bear witness to the truth.” Everything about Jesus’ life, and most especially his resurrection, is light shining on the reality of the world, on the reality of the Kingdom of God, that has been shrouded by a web of darkness and illusions.

People walking in darkness murder the son of man. The sin of the world on his shoulders, piercing his hands and feet, its weight pressing the psuche life out of him. The illusion that darkness has produced is that this is where love gets you. This is where obedience to God gets you. This is where a life of service and humility lead. The empire will always win. The love of power always defeats the power of love. The effects of this illusion perfectly illustrated by the community formed around Jesus (his disciples) grieving, hiding in fear, cowering in the days after his death.

But what the crucifixion is doing is bearing witness to a lie. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad lie. A lie that has shaped the world we live in up until now. The lie might be summarized this way: You can’t trust Love.

Every fear except the fear of the Lord is rooted in this lie and the illusions that spring from it.

The fear that you will not have enough. (you can’t trust love…)

The fear that something bad will happen. (you can’t trust love…)

The fear that it is too late for you. (you can’t trust love…)

The fear that your past has too strong a grip on you. (you can’t trust love…)

Illusions, every one of them. Psuedo-reality. (psuedomai / deception / lie)

In part because our conception of the future is an illusion.

[tell me about tomorrow…? Tomorrow I am taking the day off… everything I say about tomorrow as if it is real is a well-intentioned lie…I can say things about my present intentions with regard to my imagined tomorrow, I can say things based on my best estimates of certain variables, but Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle suggests that even if I knew every variable, at best I can know the probability of a certain outcome…]

Even if our imagined futures are right as far as they go, they can never go far enough. Because none of us will ever experience “tomorrow.” By the time it gets here, it will no longer be the future, but instead will be now. This may sound like semantics, but it’s more than that. It matters. When we experience what we call in the present moment “tomorrow,” it may resemble what we imagined it would be, but it will nonetheless be fundamentally different as a present reality than it was as an imagined future.

Different specifically in that God is present with us in every now. Because all of reality is always now to a God who created time itself. His power is available to us now, in this moment, for this moment. But his power is not available to us in our hypothetical futures. Nor is his power that is available now something we can store up for our hypothetical futures. Because God is the God of reality, and our hypothetical futures are not reality. And so God is, by definition, absent from them. Leaving all sorts of room for fear. We cannot experience his real presence in our imagined futures. [pain imagination exercise…] All we can have is faith now that when tomorrow becomes now, he will remain present to us. As Jesus promised, “And I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

And the future from which our fears spring is also an illusion in that the unknown future is the domain of the enemy. In our imagined futures, in which God is, by definition, fundamentally absent, the evil one can make himself look to be powerfully present. He can inhabit our innocent and unknowing lies with his malevolent lies. And if we accept the picture the father of lies gives to us, we, like so many before us, will walk in darkness. We will live and act and hoard and defend and cower and grab and move with tentative, halting steps at best, because that’s the way it makes sense to live in the illusion. And we get dirty with sin living that way. And the world gets dirty with sin.

This too, is why every judgment that comes from anywhere but God gives rise to fear. Judgment always tells a fundamentally false story about our present reality, heightening the darkness of our illusion. Even if at some level our judgments are technically accurate. Because any time we place ourselves above another person to judge them, we have already been blinded to the reality of who they are and who we are in relation to them, and so our judgment comes out of that blindness, telling a false story about who we are and who they are. And those false stories are the devil’s playground, the illusions he multiplies to weave a blinding web of illusions. We get dirty with sin living as if those false stories are true, walking in a darkness shrouded world.

And then resurrection happens. And resurrection speaks the truth like the sun rising on Sunday morning sheds light on a dark night. It says God’s love has overcome death. It says forgiveness of sins is the order of the day. It says this is where the way of love leads – incorruptible, eternal, resurrection zoe life. It says this is where obedience to God gets you. This is where a life of service and humility lead. The power of sin decimated, the wind knocked out of death’s belly, the evil one foiled and made to look the fool. The resurrection says the only power that matters in the new creation is love. The resurrection says you can trust love.

The resurrection is vindication for every one of Jesus’ signs. It says water becoming wine, psuche-life transformed into zoe-life, the best being saved for last tells a true story about the world. It says the fish and loaves being multiplied to feed the crowd with plenty left over tells a true story about the world. It says the blind man’s sight being restored after Jesus rubbed spit-soaked mud in his eyes tells a true story about the world. It says Jesus’ friend Lazarus being brought back to life after being left in a tomb to rot tells a true story about the world.

The resurrection is vindication for everything Jesus has told us. About himself as the light of the world, about us as beloved children of God, about the promise of life eternal that death cannot take away from us, about the way of love. About not worrying about our provisions, or how others perceive us, but seeking first the kingdom and righteousness and everything else being added to us.

The resurrected Jesus is the light of our world now. He is the truth that shows us how things really are, no deception, no shadow, no ugly underbelly. Jesus. Fix your eyes on him. That’s what every true thing in the new creation really looks like. See everything in his light. His light will show you what your neighbor looks like (hint: someone worth Jesus dying for). What the future looks like (hint: it looks like resurrection). What you look like (hint: you look like Jesus, the firstborn from among the dead). Walk in the light, as he is in the light.

Which means, very simply, live, act, speak, make decisions in the way that makes sense based on Jesus, the light of the world. Live, act, speak, make decisions like Jesus lived, acted, spoke, made decisions in the way that made sense based on what he knew about the good news of God’s kingdom. Live, act, speak, make decisions in the way that makes sense based on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, based on everything Jesus taught us and teaches us through his Holy Spirit.

If we practice living this way, we will be increasingly sharing in God’s reality with him, experiencing reality as he experiences it, complete with the full complement of joy and compassionate, redemptive suffering that leads to new creation life. And along the way all of the sinful dirt and dirty sin we’ve accumulated from knocking around in the darkness and illusions of non-reality will be washed away.

[explain aspect of sacrificial system that the blood of the sacrifice showed viscerally the violent nature of our sin, brought it into the light and before God, so that we were no longer under the dark power of sin but under God’s mercy…Jesus death on the cross was understood by the first Christians to a symbol of this happening once and for all, shining such a bright and powerful light on our sin that we have been cleansed (purified) now once and for all of all our sin, past, present, and future.]

Practical Tips:

1. Lose Your Illusion. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you one way in which you are living, acting, speaking in response to an illusion instead of the good news of Jesus. One way in which you are not practicing the truth. Working without rest… Harboring unforgiveness… Taking for yourself (out of fear) instead of giving generously… Judging someone else or a group of others instead of looking for ways to love and serve them… Embracing fear about the future as if it is true instead of embracing the God who is present to you now and learning how to trust him… Nurturing angry or lustful fantasies instead of learning to embrace what God has given you today as a gift, trusting that he is a giver without limit instead of trusting in yourself as one who must take what you want or need…

2. Confess (say the same thing as) your sin. Write it down to make it concrete before God and say it out loud in his presence. If you have someone you trust to be your confessor (someone who will kneel as your servant to receive your confession instead of standing over you in judgment), say it out loud to them. This will bring the part of your life that has been subject to darkness and illusion into light and God’s reality, and mercy will triumph over judgment, and you will share in the forgiveness and cleanness of the children of the light. It will be part of setting you free to walk in reality, to practice the truth.

3. Invite the Light. For those who have a specific fear about themselves or another person, especially fear of abandonment or horrible suffering or death: Confess to God that you have welcomed a pseudo-reality into a place in your heart that is holy and meant to be occupied by the Lord, and invite the Light of God to take its place.

That thing – abandonment, horrible suffering, death – may come someday, maybe even in a manner similar to what you imagine. Or it may not at all. No matter. The truth is that the resurrected Jesus is with you in reality now. And he isn’t going anywhere. And no matter what comes, he is bigger than it is and he loves you. And the truth is, the only sure thing about the future is resurrection, because we’ve already seen that aspect of the future in the resurrected Jesus. So if you are looking forward at your life, and you are not seeing resurrection, you are looking at an illusion born of the enemy. Don’t welcome it as reality! If you are looking forward at your kid’s life, or a spouse’s life, and you are not seeing resurrection, you are looking at an illusion. Don’t welcome it as reality!

But if you have, confess it. Say the same thing as it. God, I have welcomed an illusion into my heart in place of you. Shine your light on that illusion, so that I would be cleansed of this sin. You are with me, always, to the end of the age. You are with _________, always, to the end of the age. You I trust above all else. Because you are the light of the world, and I am a child of light.

Zoe Awaits

2011-06-11T08:59:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/29/2011

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ²The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴We write this to make our joy complete.

1 John 1v1-4

The life described in this passage – the life that was from the beginning, the life they have experienced with their senses, hearing, seeing, touching, the life they have a message about, the life that was revealed and that they are now proclaiming, the life that is eternal, the life that when we share in it together is something we share together with God, the life that makes joy complete – this life is the particular kind of life indicated by the Greek word “zoe”. [dzo-ay] Which is different from the other kind of life indicated by the Greek word “psuche.”

As you may remember from a couple of weeks ago, when we first looked at this passage, psuche life is the kind of life we all experience on a daily basis. Breathing, eating, working, playing, suffering, celebrating, striving, struggling, winning, losing. It can be threatened, thrown away, taken from us, defended, destroyed; it has a beginning, and it has an end. [Chris Webber timeout…]

Zoe life is larger and more potent than psuche life. It’s the life that gives life to life, the life that gives life, life. It’s the life of God, the life of the age to come, the life that all other life flows from. Zoe can give life to dead things. It doesn’t have a beginning, and it doesn’t have an end. It can’t be threatened, thrown away, taken from us, doesn’t need to be defended or striven after, it can’t be destroyed. It is the life at the heart of joy, and it is life with joy at its heart. [Jesus on cross…]

As you may also remember, when the letter of first John is talking about zoe, it’s talking about zoe in light of what the gospel of John teaches us about it; so we’ve been exploring what John’s gospel has to say in order to help us understand 1^st John.

But before we dive back into the gospel of John to look at a few stories about Zoe, let’s briefly consider this word John uses all the time in conjunction with it: eternal. In Greek, “aionios.” [ahee-o-nee-os] We hear eternal and we tend to think forever. So when we hear “eternal life,” we think about life forever in heaven after we die. But “aionios zoe” means something richer, and more nuanced than that. It might better be translated in this context “the life of the age to come” or “the life that comes the place where God dwells” or “the life that has the same qualities as God’s life.” There’s no need to be a Greek scholar to get the main point though, and that is this: “aionios zoe” or “eternal life” is life that we are invited to experience now, right in the midst of our psuche lives; it’s not just for the future if we are good enough boys and girls.

So, three stories to help us to understand “aionios zoe” or “the life of the ages”. Each story a story filled with surprise, intrigue, and the unexpected, opening our hearts to receive aionios zoe from the one who came that we might have zoe, and have it to the full.

The first never mentions zoe specifically, but it is profoundly important for understanding it.

John 2: the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine.

2 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, ²and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

⁴“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

⁶Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

⁷Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

⁸Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, ⁹and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside ¹⁰and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

¹¹What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples put their faith in him.

The water, and the inferior wine that was served earlier, are like psuche-life. They weren’t enough for the party. The guests were going to go home unsatisfied, and the host was going to be ashamed. But Jesus takes water, liquid like wine, but inert, flavorless in comparison, and transforms it into the best wine anyone has ever had. This new wine is like Aionios zoe-life. It gets better with age. It takes the joy of the party to another level. It is experienced with the senses – touch, smell, taste, sight, sound, and lifts the spirits. It comes straight from God, like a miracle, and unknowingly the guests are enjoying the drink of the feast of the age to come during a wedding in the age already here.

The second story comes in the next chapter, John 3. It’s about a Pharisee (in almost every other case, a group of people in direct opposition to Jesus) coming to Jesus in the middle of the night to talk.

3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. ²He 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.”

³Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”

⁴“How can anyone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. ⁶Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸The 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.”

⁹“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

¹⁰“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? ¹¹Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹²I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. ¹⁴Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

¹⁶For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

The conversation is a theologically and philosophically intricate one, but that’s no surprise, considering Nicodemus’s background as a highly educated Pharisee. The surprise, of course, is that Jesus tells Nicodemus if he wants the aionios zoe, he’s got to let go of the complex system of answers he’s spent a life-time mastering, and be “born again” – start all over, like a baby, and put his trust in Jesus to show him the way.

The third story comes from – can anyone guess? – the next chapter, chapter 4. The story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well.

4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ²although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

After this, the conversation takes a turn not unlike the one Jesus had with Nicodemus. The woman asks for this new kind of water, and Jesus reveals himself to be more than meets the eye, and reveals to this woman that he knows her better than she could ever have expected, and she leaves her water jar at the well, runs back to the town, and brings the whole town out to meet Jesus. And in the end, it seems likely, becomes one of the first church planters in the history of Christianity. She, the one with the least psuche, becomes a vessel of zoe.

What do these stories tell us about zoe-life?

It’s never too late for Zoe.

The party has run out of wine. Nicodemus is an expert. The Samaritan woman is the wrong religion and an outcast in her own village because of her disreputable life.

It doesn’t matter what the course of our psuche life has been, or how much of its course our psuche life seems to have run, or how little psuche we seem to have left. Zoe is here, and there is more of it than we can fathom. Zoe is here and it’s as if the past was just prelude, and everything starts again now that it’s arrived.

This is what Jesus is saying to some of us today. It’s not too late for zoe. Ask him to do something about your life that has run out of wine. Set aside your pride and come to him in the middle of the night for help. Ask Jesus for what he’s offering to you, even if you aren’t sure exactly what it is, even if you don’t think you’re the kind of person qualified to receive it from him.

Also, these stories tell us Zoe’s source is always Jesus.

Sometimes we don’t know it came from him [the guests and the master of the banquet…]. Sometimes we don’t know how to get it [Nicodemus…]. Sometimes we don’t know that he has anything for us [Samaritan woman…]

This is what the Spirit is saying to some of us today. For some, the zoe you’ve seen and tasted in your life has a source, and that source is Jesus. If you want more, you’ve got to come to him (like his disciples, who after seeing what he did, put their faith in him.). For some, the zoe you’ve seen in Jesus isn’t something you can get by learning the secret from him; it’s only something you can get by believing in him and starting over as his disciple. For others, you’ve only seen Jesus as someone asking you for something you feel unworthy to give him; the Spirit wants you to recognize that he has come to where you are in order to give you something that will change you from the inside out, and allow you to give away what he has given you to everyone in your life. Maybe Jesus is asking you for your psuche-life so that you will ask him for his zoe-life.

And finally, these stories tell us there is a connection between receiving zoe-life and a willingness to cross lines that are sacred to our psuche-life.

Jars used for holding water for ceremonial washing, defiled by storing wine.

Pharisee coming to Jesus at night, risking his reputation with the powerful in-crowd. Samaritan Woman crossing social taboos, leaving water jar behind, summoning the very people who ostracized her.

Come to church for ceremonial washing? But does it contain the life it’s meant to hold if it’s only ceremonial washing? What if you allowed it to defiled with the wine of the Spirit? What if you came up for prayer? What if you allowed yourself to be vulnerable to God in worship in different ways? What if you prayed before the sermon, “God, I’m listening for your voice, and if you speak, I will do what you tell me.” Maybe this is how the zoe-party starts for you. Cross the line. Zoe awaits.

Have you got your theology and way of practicing Christianity all worked out, and now you just listen for what you agree with, because someone you respect might not respect you if you surrendered your expertise in favor of coming to Jesus saying, “I’m willing to be born again if that’s what it takes to have aionios zoe.” Cross the line. Zoe awaits.

Have you counted yourself out from having transforming encounter with Jesus because you’ve listened to the voices that tell you you aren’t worthy? Have you hidden your transforming experiences with Jesus from others who knew you in your past life because you didn’t think they would believe something has happened to you? Jesus is counting you in. He wants to give you water that becomes a stream of living water others can drink from, welling up to aionios zoe. Cross the line. Zoe awaits.

1st John: Perfect Love Drives Out Fear

2011-05-26T11:30:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/22/2011

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with (holds on to) punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Fear is what gets our attention here, isn’t it…?

Love, favor (at the heart of the idea of living in God, and God in us), judgment, fear. Four related concepts all coming together in this passage. Let’s explore them for a bit to get started.

First, judgment and love.

Judgment involves standing above another, to evaluate… (examples)

Love involves kneeling under, to serve… (examples)

Connections start to emerge, don’t they?

When you are above, you are unable to love.

When you are below, judgment just can’t flow.

The world has taught us to judge, even for sport. Shared judgments are so often what bind us together. But as students of Jesus, love is our calling. And it’s the only thing we are authorized to do.

Next, fear and favor.

Fear comes when you perceive the absence of loving presence and power, and is multiplied when you perceive the presence of danger… (examples)

Favor is making your loving presence and power available to another… (examples)

The connections between fear and favor are as profound as the connections between judgment and love, aren’t they?

When you encounter favor, you are protected from fear by the loving presence and power of whomever’s favor you are enjoying (examples…).

On the other hand, a lack of confidence in favor leads to fear. And when you are in fear, it is difficult to show favor towards others, difficult to make your presence and power available to another. Mainly because fear causes you to withdraw, retreat into whatever circle of favor you do have confidence in, and devote your power to protecting the interests of that circle; and this ultimately becomes a withdrawal into one’s self and a devotion of one’s power to protecting one’s self. (examples…)

Now we can begin to explore how the twin ideas of judgment & love, and fear & favor relate to each other.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment…

The word translated “has to do with” is “echo” in Greek. It more literally means to “hold,” as in to hold in one’s hand. As if fear, no matter where you find it, carries a form of punishment, or torment, with it.

Consider this. We are vulnerable to fear when we are unable to perceive favor. When we perceive the absence of loving presence and power. Is this not the fundamental form of punishment we exercise towards one another when someone falls out of favor? Someone displeases us – which sows the seeds of fear in us – we feel unsafe having the posture of a servant towards them, we start to judge them as not having goodwill towards us or sufficient power to meet our desires, and we withhold our loving presence. We stop making our power available to them. We stop smiling at them, stop talking to them, stop helping them. Eventually stop being near them at all. Of course, if they continue to displease us (which they will, because our fearful response causes them to perceive an absence of our loving presence and power, starting the same fear / withdrawal cycle in them that is started in us), we may move even beyond that form of punishment to a more severe form. We take our presence and power and use it to actively punish them. We try to use fear as a tool against them. We get in their face, lash out with hateful words, swing our fists. All the while hoping that the fear of us punishing them will put an end to whatever they are doing to displease us, and the pain they are causing us.

This is a vicious cycle. Truly vicious. Fear “echoing” punishment. And it has been wreaking havoc on the earth.

And it gets worse. Fear holds punishment in its hand. Fear anticipates judgment and all that comes with it, causing us to experience judgment’s effects as soon as the fear arrives, even before any actual punishment has arrived.

Think about Adam and Eve. They sin, and then, in fear of God’s judgment, they hide. In their fear, they experience the absence of his loving presence and power, even though he hasn’t yet withheld it.

This is the horrible destructive power of fear. It causes us to be unable to receive love from anyone from whom we even anticipate judgment. (catching a ball illustration…) And we anticipate judgment from almost everyone, eventually, because we will, in our sinfulness or because of the sinfulness of others, displease nearly everyone we ever meet, somehow, sometime, someway.

Then, horror of horrors, fear inclines us to judge those whose judgment we anticipate. And what we judge them for, out of our fear, is not their actual judgments towards us – which could potentially be repented of, sorted out, forgiven – but only imagined judgments. About which we can do absolutely nothing. Causing us to be reluctant to love them, or show favor to them.

The further fear drives us into ourselves, the stronger fears grip gets on us, life becomes a living hell. Fear punishing us mercilessly. (The one who fears is not made perfect in love.)

God have mercy!

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides and God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence [freedom] in the day of judgment; because, as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear… (NASB)

Our only hope is that the God who is love would visit us with his perfect love, pouring out healing favor on us. And visit us he does, in Jesus of Nazareth, plunging into the heart of our withdrawal into ourselves, becoming one of us, meeting us in our hell and meting out God’s favor: announcing, demonstrating, and embodying the favor of God, the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news of eternal Zoe life. In Jesus, we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us. And in following Jesus, we join him in his love, allowing us to abide in God and God to abide us. And through our discipleship to Jesus, learning and practicing the way of love, love is perfected (telios, made complete, brought to maturity) with us, so that we may have freedom in the day of judgment. So that we may be free of the fear the presence of judgment usually inspires. [ people coming to church for the first time… ] Because as Jesus’ students, we enter into the same freedom from fear in this world that freed Jesus to not be afraid of the judgment of the Pharisees or the ridicule of the crowds or the brokenness of the sinful or the illnesses of the sick or even of death itself.

More on that in a few minutes. First, let’s examine the specific relationship between fear and love.

There is no fear in love. This is true because of the nature of fear and love, and true in a profound way as well, because of the nature of God.

Let’s start with the nature of God. God is love, John writes. God has no fear within him. Therefore, there is no fear in love. What could possibly cause God to not have confidence in favor? He is full of favor. The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit continuously making their abundantly loving presence and infinitely powerful power available to one another. No one can intrude on that exchange of favor; at the same time, God invites everyone into it. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as my Dad likes to say.) There is no fear in this love that is God.

This reality extends to love as we experience and participate in it as well.

Whoever lives in love, lives in God… To love, to place yourself below another to serve, is a defeat for fear, since you have not withdrawn into yourself, and since you have made your presence and power available for another. To love that way requires trusting in God. There is no fear in love in this sense.

And more than that, when we love, we are joining the God who is love in placing himself below another. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in them. So when we love, we are living in God – in that eternal exchange of favor between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – and God, in whom there is no fear, is living in us. Put that in your glass and drink it!

But wait, as the commercials say, there’s more! When love is received by someone, it is similarly a defeat for fear. Perfect love drives out (casts out) fear.

We can understand this in two ways.

The first has to do with the idea that love and fear are like presence and absence. When presence arrives, absence must go elsewhere. When enough love is received by someone, there isn’t room any more for fear. Love completely displaces the fear. Getting rid of fear on its own is like trying to get rid of a hole by shoveling the hole away. Useless and frustrating. Fill the fear hole in with love, however, and pretty soon the hole is gone.

The second, and more powerful way of understanding this has to do with authority. Same language as Jesus driving out (casting out) evil spirits.

Perfect love drives out fear because love has authority over fear. Fear ruled the old creation from the moment of Adam and Eve’s first sin. Love rules the new creation from the moment of Jesus’ incarnation.

Whenever Jesus drove out demons, he did it with a word of authority. Be gone! Because Jesus is the author of life. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that has been made, John writes in his gospel. In every situation, the creator has primary authority over his creation, over and against the pretend authority of the destroyer. Love is a creative power; fear is destructive.

Fear has this grip over all of humanity. A grip that pretends to the throne. A grip that defends its authority with lies. “You must bow to me because of your sin.” “You must bow to me because of your weakness.” “You must bow to me because of my strength.”

And then along comes Jesus, who is perfect love inhabiting human flesh. And he comes to us, in perfect love, humbly, below us, serving. Ultimately facing down fear with confidence in his Father’s favor. And the creator exalts him, giving him authority over all of creation that has truth as its only defense.

Fear tells you that you must bow to it because of your sin; Jesus says to that fear, “Because of the Father’s favor to me, her sins are forgiven. Be gone.” And fear flees. Fear tells you that you must bow to it because of your weakness; Jesus says to that fear, “My favor is sufficient for him, for power is perfected in his weakness. Be gone.” And fear flees. Fear tells you that you must bow to it because of its strength; Jesus says to that fear, “Your strength has all the power and substance of a shadow and I am here to bathe the world in light. Be gone.” And fear flees.

With all of that in mind, what do we do about the fear in our lives and in our world?

Many of us are probably familiar with that passage from a letter in the Bible to the Corinthians, 1^st Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind, etc.”

If we are in the grip of fear, 1^st Corinthians 13 is a picture of the love that Jesus is that is driving out fear in our lives. If we are Jesus’ students, it’s a picture of the kind of love Jesus calls us to join him in as he delivers the world from fear. In truth, for most of us, we need both of those pictures.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails.

Fear will say all sorts of things to you about God, about the absence of his loving presence or power. Fear is lying. Here is the truth.

God is patient. God is kind. He does not envy. He does not boast. He is not proud. God does not dishonor others, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered. God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails.

Fear will say all sorts of things to you about how you should respond to others when you are afraid, or when they, under the influence of fear, withhold their favor from you. Fear is lying.

Jesus invites you to respond by joining him in his love. By joining him in patience. In kindness. By rejecting the temptation to be envious. Or to boast. Or to be proud. By honoring them. By seeking their blessing. By resisting anger with every fiber of your being. By keeping no record of other’s wrongs. By not delighting in evil but rejoicing with the truth. By covering them with prayer, by trusting that good news will prevail, by hoping for restoration and reconciliation, by remaining even when it’s painful, so that we can be present and active participants when love wins.

(a word about healthy boundaries: there will be occasions when the way to participate in God’s love is to withdraw, not in fear, but as a participation in God’s love for you…this is especially the case when fear has moved the other into a place of active aggression towards you and it is no longer safe for you be near, or when your capacity to love those for whom you have a primary call to love is compromised…)

No one of us will do this perfectly. Every one of us will fail along the way. This is a “we” exercise. Love is made complete among us as we, the body of Christ, participate with him in driving fear out of this world. As we come to know and believe the love which God has for us, giving us a freedom to be in this world as Jesus is in this world. (As he is, so also are we in this world.) Full of love and favor.

Practical Tips:

1. Welcome perfect love. Identify a fear you feel relatively frequently, and deeply. Death, harm (for yourself, people close to you), relational rejection or abandonment, social embarrassment, financial ruin, etc. Recognize that God desires to set you free from that fear, not simply by removing the fear and leaving a vacuum behind, but by arriving with his loving presence and power and authoritatively driving it away. Because somewhere along the line, the enemy whispered or shouted an accusation about God or about you that you embraced, and that lie has become the basis for that fear’s influence in your life. In prayer, invite Jesus to make you aware of his loving presence and power in that area of your life. Let him know you are willing to stop trusting whatever that lie is, and begin trusting his truth.

2. Be part of the solution. Identify somebody you have judged and as a result have stopped loving and serving like you once did. Somebody that you have put yourself above, in a position to evaluate the rightness or wrongness of their actions. Somebody that you have since withheld your loving presence and power from, because of the judgment you reached. Repent of that judgment and prayerfully commit to join Jesus in 1st Corinthians 13 love.

3. Enter the mission field. Ask Jesus to show you somebody under the influence of fear to whom you can be an expression of his perfect love, in order to join with him in driving out fear. Adoption. Compassion International. Compassion Ministry. Alcoholics Anonymous Sponsor. Youth or children’s ministry. Ushering. A family member.

1st John: The Life That Gives Life to Life

2011-05-18T08:14:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/15/2011

(thanks to Shane Hipps at Mars Hill Bible Church for the inspiration – and some key ideas! - for this message)

1 John 1v1-4

Here’s the basic idea in this passage. There is something that always has been and always will be. And even though it is powerful and ever present, it is easy to miss, to be ignorant of; and in our ignorance, to never ever truly experience it. Nonetheless, some people have heard of it, seen it, inspected it, and held its weight in their hands, felt its texture, its temperature, its strength. And these people have made it their mission to bring others into this same awareness of this now uncovered reality, so that they and we and God can share together in it. Because it is in the sharing in it that joy finds fulfillment among us.

What is this something? It is life. Not just any kind of life. The greek word for it in 1 John is “zoe.” A particular kind of life that we will talk about in more detail. Eternal life, as it’s described here, a life that has been revealed in Jesus, a life that Jesus shows us and makes possible for us and offers to us and gives us, a life that isn’t just for later, but for right now, a life that is meant to be known and experienced even today.

In fact, there is so much to discover about this life, so many implications of it for our present lives and hurting world – that we will spend a few weeks exploring it together.

Let’s begin by setting some context. The book of 1^st John is written to a particular community of Jesus followers some time after the death and resurrection of Jesus (perhaps in what is now modern day turkey / explain spread of Christianity). And this particular community has particular ways of understanding and talking about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him and what it is he has done to fling wide the doors to a new kind of life, life that can transform the world.

To understand this, especially if you are new to the Bible, it may help to realize that the Bible you hold in your hands is not in fact a single book, but a collection of books compiled and organized many years after the letter of 1^st John was written. Some of these “books” were more like history accounts, some were more like collections of poems or songs, some were more like biographies, some were books of law or instruction, some were letters, and so on. Some of these books were written many, many years before 1^st John, some were written after, some were written around the same time, but to different groups of people.

In the early church, not every community of Jesus’ followers scattered throughout the Roman empire would have had access to all of the same writings. It took years and years for things written to one part of the world to make their way to other parts of the world. So it wasn’t uncommon for any individual church or local community of churches to have access to only a very limited selection of the books we have today.

The community to whom the letter of 1^st John was written may have never read or heard some of the books that we have in our Bibles. The community of disciples to whom 1^st John was written, in fact, was probably a community whose faith, and way of talking about Jesus and faith and way of understanding Jesus and faith, was shaped primarily by just one book from what we call the New Testament, the gospel of John.

There are four books in our Bibles – the gospels - that describe the life of Jesus and explain who he is and what he is up to in the world. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the “synoptic” gospels because they all take a similar approach to telling the good news about Jesus. “syn” means together, and “optic” has seen, because these three accounts of the good news, the gospel, can be “seen together.” They contain many of the same stories, parables, even word for word phrasings in certain passages. They have a strong emphasis, each of them in their own way, on Jesus’ message of “the Kingdom of God” or as it’s described in Matthew’s gospel, “the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The gospel of John, though, is very different. It tells the same story of the same Jesus, but it does it in a very different way, using different kinds of language and structure. There are no parables in the gospel of John, for example. It uses much more poetic, abstract language than some of the other gospels, even a more sophisticated Greek vocabulary. And, it rarely speaks about Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God. Instead, it talks over and over about Jesus’ message of eternal life.

This gospel, the gospel of John, is the gospel that shaped the community to whom the letter of 1^st John is written. In fact, the letters of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd John can be seen as commentaries to the gospel of John. Pastoral letters to people in the churches who came to faith in Jesus through the witness of John’s gospels, helping them to understand and clarify and apply what they had heard through the gospel of John.

To make a little clearer what we’re talking about, listen again to how this letter starts.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

1 John 1v1-5

Now listen to how the gospel of John starts, and a couple of other statements from it…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning. ³Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1v1-5

Then later, John quotes Jesus as saying:

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

John 15v11

These [words] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20v31

Beginning, word, life, light, life, darkness, joy, son, fellowship (in), life... This matters to us because the gospel of John will help us understand John’s first letter, and John’s first letter will help us understand the gospel of John. This matters to us because we are hungry for life - aren’t we? - and both John’s first letter and the gospel of John are all about Jesus’ message, or word, of life.

Practical Tip 1:

Go on a life hunt. [Go through the gospel of John and underline or note down or highlight every reference to “life” or “eternal life” and then read through 1^st John 1v1-4 again to see what God might help you understand.]

So let’s dig in and start to see what’s going on here as 1^st John gets the party started…

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

Sometimes it is assumed that John is talking about Jesus here when he talks about that which was from the beginning, what we’ve heard, touched, etc. And in a way, surely he is. But if we leave that assumption unexamined, we’ll miss something really important.

You’ll notice that your Bible capitalizes “Word.” This is because John’s gospel talks about Jesus as the “Word” or “logos” of God, and so the translators make the determination that John is doing the same thing here. Which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself; it’s just that it makes the passage lose some of it’s poetic punch, and may get our noses sniffing down the wrong trail. Because there is no capitalization in the Greek that John uses to write this letter, so it isn’t necessarily the case that the logos of life here couldn’t also be translated “the message of life,” or the “message about life.” Similarly, in the next sentence the translators say “The life appeared…” which would make sense if they are talking about a person, Jesus. But the word they translate “appeared” might better be translated “was revealed.”

In other words, this life that John is talking about, this life that he has heard, seen, touched, this life he wants to proclaim a message about, this life was revealed to him – in and through Jesus, no doubt – but it’s the message of this life that he wants us to know and understand.

It may seem that we’re splitting hairs here that don’t need to be split, so let me tell you why I think this might really matter to us.

First, we need to understand that there is only one word for life in English, but there are two words for life used by John when he is writing his letters and his gospel. And they mean related, but fundamentally different things.

Take John 12v25, for example.

Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

The word for life in the first two instances is “psuche”. Which literally means breath, and is connected to the physical, embodied, biological life we all know and love – or don’t love, depending on how things are going. It can also be translated soul, to encompass the whole of our natural and spiritual lives. It is a general term for life that gets at the life all of us experience in varying quality. Psuche has a beginning – it starts when start breathing (at least in the ancient world view; a modern world-view might suggest that it starts at conception) - and ends when we stop breathing. Psuche can be threatened, thrown away, taken from us, defended, striven after, destroyed. It can be really great, and it can really be a struggle. It can have ups and it can have downs. (We can be psyched about psuche, and psuche can be sucky…)

Well, psuche’s like a road that you travel on

There's one day here and the next day gone

Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand

Sometimes you turn your back to the wind

Psuche’s a highway, and I wanna ride it all night long…

So psuche life is one kind of life. But it’s not the only kind.

The word for life at the end of the sentence, preceded by the word “eternal”, is not “psuche”. It’s “zoe.” Zoe life, as John uses the term, often in connection with the adjective eternal, is something bigger than, and more powerful than, psuche life. You might call it the life that gives life to life, that gives life, life. Zoe life is the life of God, the life of the age to come, the life that all other life flows from.

Zoe life is life that doesn’t have a beginning and doesn’t have an end. Zoe life can intersect with time and space, but it’s not bound by it. Time and space is not where it has its home, because it’s outside of time. In the past, zoe life is. In the future, zoe life is. In the present, zoe life is. You might say zoe life is all is-ness.

Zoe can’t be threatened, can’t be thrown away, can’t be taken from us, doesn’t need to be defended or striven after, it can’t be destroyed.

And because zoe is the life of God, the life of his kingdom, the life of the age to come, it is the life at the heart of joy. It is life with joy at its heart.

[perhaps you’ve seen someone with zoe life at work within them…? Perhaps you’ve felt the limitations and insufficiency of psuche life…?]

And so when Jesus says:

Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

…what he’s getting at is that if you hold your psuche life, your breath, the concerns of this present life as your highest value, you will lose it. But if you hate (which doesn’t mean, for our purposes in this context, “dislike intensely,” but rather something more like “are willing to part with in preference for something better”) your psuche life, you’ll discover the zoe life underneath it, sustaining it.

When Jesus says the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep in John 10, he’s referring to psuche life. But when he says he came that we might have life, and have it in abundance, or to the full, he’s referring to zoe life.

Practical Tip 2:

Choose zoe-life over psuche-life. [Our lives are full of day to day concerns. Going to work. Raising kids. Taking care of relationships. Houses. Cars. Paying bills. Dealing with injuries, sickness, problems of all sorts. These are our psuche lives. We can attempt to protect them and preserve them and defend them at all costs. In so doing we will surely become anxious, fearful, selfish, and eventually even willing to hurt others. To such an extent that all the joy will be drained of our psuche lives. Or, we can reorient our focus on the zoe life Jesus reveals to us, trusting Jesus that if we seek first his kingdom (which is just another way of speaking of eternal zoe), all of these psuche life things will cared for by God himself.

So work is no longer a matter of “how can I make the most money and get ahead the furthest and make my life better” but rather “how can I do this work in a way that pleases the God who will reward me with more zoe than I can possibly imagine.” Raising kids is no longer a matter of “how can I give my kids the best possible psuche life and/or at the same time maximize my experience of psuche life while raising them” but rather “how can I help my kids know and experience zoe life while I trust God to provide for their psuche life.” Taking care of relationships is no longer a matter of “how can make sure I am making everyone around me happy” but rather “how can I go to Jesus for living water so that I have a stream of living water welling up to eternal zoe in me for others to drink from.” Or perhaps it’s no longer a matter of “how can I protect myself from harm in this relationship or that relationship” but rather “how can I repent or forgive or offer favor to repair damage that’s been done, knowing it might cost me psuche life, but gain me zoe life.” And on and on.]

The thing about Jesus is that he is God himself born into a human body. Zoe life, the life of the ages, life without beginning and end, life that cannot be threatened, life filled with joy and joy filled with life took on flesh and blood and lived the same psuche life that we live. Breathed the same air, had all the same up and down experiences. But all the while, he was shining light for us on a deeper kind of life, on the kind of life that was within him, shaping and sustaining and transforming his psuche life. Zoe life.

Zoe that he said he came to give us.

Zoe that he said he desired for us to know and enjoy and be shaped by and sustained by and transformed by.

Zoe that was from the beginning and was near and at hand and yet was still coming in its fullness.

Zoe that is a gift from our loving Father, and the birthright of the children of God.

Zoe - that even when his psuche was taken from him, offered as a sacrifice on the cross for our sake - Zoe gave birth to resurrection, to zoe and resurrected psuche married together, inseparable, incorruptible.

So, now, back to our text:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the message of zoe. ²The zoe was revealed; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal zoe, which was with the Father and has been revealed to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴We write this to make our joy complete.

Do you see how this matters? John isn’t just saying he’s seen zoe life in Jesus, and so he knows it’s a possibility for human beings. Nor is John telling us zoe life is just an abstract concept off in the distance. No, John is saying they’ve experienced it already (heard! Seen! Looked at! Touched!), and they are telling us about it so that we can experience it too.

[like a baby…]

Zoe can vibrate the air around us so that our ears can hear it. Light can reflect off of it so that our eyes can perceive its quality and characteristics. It will even present itself for inspection, for examination, allowing us to consider it, contemplate it, attend to it with our eyes. And then, yes, we can also hold it in our hands. Cradle it, embrace it, welcome it, possess it, perhaps even join Jesus in giving it away to others.

This is the zoe we will explore more next week.

Practical Tip 3:

Go all CSI on some ZOE. Identify somebody who seems to have zoe life fueling their psuche life. Talk to other people about them. Watch them. Ask them questions, if they’ll let you. See what you can unearth about the sources of zoe life within them, the ways in which they’ve loosened their grip on psuche life to touch zoe life. See what you can imitate, try on for size.

This Is How We Know What Love Is

2011-05-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/08/2011

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-20, TNIV

There is something I've noticed about many of the moms I know; something that is present in them to a degree that that it isn't present in me. And that is an awesome capacity to be moved, to lay down their lives for others.

Certainly, this capacity is present in all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. It isn't unique to Moms; not at all. But there seems to be something about being a mom that especially demands and develops this capacity. Consider, from the start, mothers are:

Moved from within their wombs...

Moved by cries in the night...

Moved by cries in the day...

Moved by needs...

Moved by desires...

They aren't just moved, either.

They are ready to be moved...

They move first and ask questions later...

And they seem to be moved not from without, but from within.

Deeply moved...

This movement has purpose and power.

Moms give life through their movement.

Moms find life in their movement.

Even though every movement is, at heart, a laying down of life.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-20, TNIV

This Mothers' day, let's talk about knowing love. The love we see most profoundly in Jesus, who one time compares himself to a mother, saying "how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings."

We are made to know Love. Love is as important to human life as oxygen, as food, as water.

With Love, we will have life in abundance, overflowing, everlasting, imperishable. But without it our lives fall apart and death is imminent.

So when John writes, “This is how we know what love is…” we have every motivation to pay attention to what he says next.

Will it be the kind of feeling it generates? We feel alive inside and corny pop songs all of a sudden have deep meaning to us? We get weak in the knees? We feel secure, cared for? We feel emotionally affirmed?

No, John doesn’t say anything like this next. And for good reason; way too many things can produce the same kinds of feelings love sometimes produces, at least at first, and not be love at all.

But before we consider what he says next, it’s important to realize that when the Bible talks about knowing something, especially something like real love, it almost always means a deeper knowledge than head knowledge. Biblical knowing is experiential, participatory knowing.

[singing in Spanish, 30 hour famine, new year’s resolution…]

[Juggling example. I can tell you what juggling is. Better, I can show you juggling. Better yet, you can try to juggle yourself. But Biblical knowledge is deeper still. It’s more like being captivated by watching a master juggler. And then learning how to do it yourself. And coming up with your own techniques. And then seeing the look in kids’ eyes as you juggle for them. And seeing the satisfaction it brings them when you teach them to juggle too.

“This is how we know what Juggling is: Jesus juggled for us, and now we ought to juggle for one another. If any one of you knows how to juggle, and sees a child with downcast eyes and isn’t moved to juggle for them, how can juggling truly be in you? Dear children, let us not juggle with words or pantomime, but with actions and in truth.”]

So let’s dig in to what John is trying to say to us…

This is how we know what love is: Jesus the Anointed King laid down his life for us.

This is how our knowledge of love begins. We see it enacted before our very eyes. That’s love. You can see it, tell it, remember it, experience its effects on history.

And look at what we see! The one with all the power and prestige and resources and riches lays down his life for us. He looks on us, and out of his love for us, sees our needs and is moved. The one with the power to move us is instead moved by us.

[Jesus Christ / Jesus the Anointed King / language that sets up a contrast with the Kings of the day… the corrupt king sees our hungers and figures out how to exploit them for his gain, how to use them to move us for his purposes…]

When Jesus sees our hunger, he offers himself to us as the bread of life. When he sees our thirst, he offers himself to us as living water. When he sees our debt, he becomes our ransom.

Jesus voluntarily displaces his life so that we might have life. Jesus, “Who, in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being formed in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross!”

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. That’s the beginning of the love story. But it is not the end. There is also an And.

And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

The love story continues in our lives. The Jesus love story becomes the Jesus/Sharon love story, the Jesus/Vern love story, the Jesus/Roxie love story. When the story Jesus writes becomes the pattern for the story we are writing, this is how we know what love is.

The love of God cannot be in us, cannot be truly known by us, until we too are moved, until our self is displaced for the sake of another.

“If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need, but has no pity on them…” or KJV, “…but shutteth up his bowels of compassion…” “then how can the love of God be in you?”

In other words, if the love of God doesn’t move us to be moved out of love for others, then the love we think we know isn’t in fact the true love of God. Love is dynamic, creative, alive, expanding…if we cannot be moved, there is no room in us for love. And without love we are without God. And without God we are without life.

We are made in the image of God. We are, in fact, made to be moved, for our selves to be displaced for the sake of another. Just as he is moved by us.

The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.

Romans 8:29 The Message

Love lays down His life for others.

Love is moved by others as they are.

willing to allow the desire of his heart to become that others can have the desires of their heart,

willing to join others in their misery that others might taste true joy,

willing to live in others' skin and walk in others' Nikes in order that he could point the way to freedom.

Why is it so easy for us, dear children, to love with words and tongue and not with actions and truth?

Rut Stories vs. River Stories...

Rut stories limit us, lock us in place; river stories move us forward.

It's easy to love with words and tongue, but not actions and in truth because we've adopted a rut story. Jesus wants to change that by inviting us into his river story.

Our World’s Rut Story: Real love is the experience of self through the approval of others. [the teenager who experiences self by "winning" the "love" of others who are ultimately using them...S/O, clique, fans, parents living vicariously through him/her...]

If attractiveness "moves" others, what do we pursue? If talent "moves" others, what do we pursue? If money "moves" others, what do we pursue? If power "moves" others, what do we pursue?

This puts us in a serious rut.

If we accept this story, our capacity for love is equal to our capacity to "move" others in this way. And it's ultimately all "movement" that shrinks our capacity to know real love, because all of it has strings attached. All of it is conditional. It's moving people closer to us so they can eat us or so that we can eat them. And pretty soon everyone is devoured or starving.

Look at the world around us…do you see this rut story at work? Look at our lives…do we see this rut story at work?

Loving talk reinforces our experience of self as the kind of people others would approve of, but it’s still part of the rut story.

We need a new story, a river story. Because river stories move us forward.

When the stories of scripture become “our” stories, when biblical images and metaphors become “our” images and metaphors, when we structure “our” lives around the cornerstone Jesus story, a new architecture for our souls is constructed.

Leonard Sweet, Aqua Church

Here’s the story of Jesus’ life: He laid down his life for us, while calling us to lay down our lives for others.

That’s a river story.

Real love is the experience of God through self-displacing love for another. Loving actions move us out of our comfort zones, into a place where the only one who can provide for us is God.

If this becomes our story, our capacity for love is has unlimited growth potential. We fix our eyes on the love of Jesus, which opens our hearts to be moved for others as he was moved by us. And as we allow ourselves to be moved by the needs of others, more of the love that first moved us makes a home in us.

John is pointing the way forward, into this river story.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we should do the same for others.

Is this the love story you are living? Is this the love story your life is telling? What the world needs now is love. What the world needs now is men and women willing to be mothers to a new creation.

This is the powerful beauty of love. God is moved by us, and moves to lay down his life for us. We are moved by his sacrifice for us, and we move to lay down our lives for one another. Our laying down of our lives for one another becomes a picture of his laying down of his life for us that those we are moved to serve can see up close and personal. Causing them to be moved by his initial movement.

And now we have movement all around. Now love is the order of the day, and love is ordering the day. Now the kingdom of God is arriving in its fullness.

[good Sam ministry story]

Practical Tips…

1. Try the 15 Minute Challenge. Spend 15 minutes a day this week just looking for needs to be moved in action to meet. Then do whatever you can to help. If money, give money. If time and energy give time. If prayer, give prayer. (can I pray for you right now?). Ask Jesus to help you with this each time.

2. Take a Laxative (you know, so you can be regular for the rest of your life). Make a 2 column list. Column 1: regular things you do that you would do even if no one else needed you to do them. Column 2: regular things that you do because you have been moved by someone else's needs. Do you feel constipated when you look at this list (are your bowels of compassion shuttethed up?) If so, find one thing you can take off Column 1 so that you can add something to Column 2.

3. Ask 3 questions. Ask yourself if you are too busy moving to be moved by others. Or too tired from moving to actually move when you want to be moved. Ask Jesus, are you OK with this? If not, repent, and go from there.

This is how Milan will know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for The Vineyard Church of Milan. And Vineyard lays down their lives for one another, and for their neighbors. And when the people of Vineyard see brothers and sisters in need and are moved by compassion for them, then the Love of God has made a home in them, and their imitation of the Master speaks louder than the loudest words!

Easter 2011: Life After Life After Death

2011-04-28T12:51:00.001-07:00

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/24/2011

[new things that change what comes after, vs. a new kind of new thing…]

Paul’s letter to the Colossians describes Jesus this way: “He is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead.”

The phrase, the firstborn from among the dead, is a reference to Jesus’ resurrection, the turning point in history that we celebrate on Easter. The resurrection story is a story that still speaks to us today. Words we are longing to hear. Words that we need to hear. Words that we’ve never heard before we heard of the resurrection, except perhaps in dreams and whispers and hints and suggestions. Words that resurrection speaks loudly and clearly, for the whole earth to hear, past, present, and future.

This morning, I believe Jesus wants his resurrection to shape our imaginations beyond the popular imagination.

The popular imagination says one of two things.

One version of the popular imagination says there is no more to life than this life.

[Bon Jovi: “It’s My Life”

This ain't a song for the broken-hearted
No silent prayer for the faith-departed
I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd
You're gonna hear my voice
When I shout it out loud
It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
(It's my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive
It's my life ]

This perspective says that the joys and goodness you experience are joys and goodness that only go as far as they go. Which for some of us is pretty far, and for others not so far at all. And that the struggle and pain you experience, in the end, one way or the other have their final say, and then there is nothing to be said after that. Except, of course, for what those who go on after you say about you.

If this version of the popular imagination is what shapes your life, then the best you can hope for beyond death is that those who go on after you discover that the way you lived adds more to the joys and goodness they experience than it does to the struggle and pain. Which is certainly not the worst thing to hope for. But is it really the best?

The other version of the popular imagination says that there is life after death. Life that may take all sorts of forms: perhaps reincarnation, paradise in the company of virgins, some kind of disembodied ethereal existence of the kind enjoyed by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and Yoda at the end of Return of the Jedi, or in the case of the most popular Christian imagination, blissful existence with God and angels and redeemed loved ones in some kind of heavenly other dimension. Sometimes this is a deeply comforting hope; other times it is a bit, well, less than exciting:

[Talking Heads, “Heaven”

Everyone is trying to get to the bar.
The name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven.
The band in Heaven plays my favorite song.
They play it once again, they play it all night long.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
There is a party, everyone is there.
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time.
Its hard to imagine that nothing at all
could be so exciting, and so much fun.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
When this kiss is over it will start again.
It will not be any different; it will be exactly
the same.
It's hard to imagine that nothing at all
could be so exciting, could be so much fun.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.]

Resurrection wants to shake our imaginations out of both of these daydreams, and inhabit our vision of the future with a concrete reality upon which whole new kinds of lives can be built.

Resurrection says there is more to life than this life. That the joys and goodness we know, sweet as they are, are just the beginning. That the pain and suffering we know, horrible as they can be, will eventually give way to joys and goodness previously unknown.

Resurrection says there is more to life than life after death. That life after death is a stop along the way to a substantially better destination. That life after death, colorful as it may be in our imaginations - especially when our world is overcast and grey - pales in comparison to the vibrant, saturated life that succeeds it.

Because Life after death isn’t enough for God’s good creation.

Life after death doesn’t take away death’s power.

Life after death alone

Says death still has all kinds of power

Says death has power to end life as we know it.

Power to fundamentally separate.

Us from one another.

Us from our God-given bodies.

Us from our God-given purpose.

Us from our God-given dreams.

Says death has power to keep the future at a distance.

Says death has power to turn our labors of love into labors in vain.

Resurrection speaks the words all of creation has been dying to hear.

Resurrection says No! to the terror of death.

Resurrection says Yes! to the laughter of Love.

Resurrection says there is Life-After-Life-After-Death.

And that that life – Life-After-Life-After-Death - is the life of the ages, life incorruptible, imperishable, glorious, powerful, undying.

Life-After-Life-After-Death? Yes, indeed.

[timeline: life / death / life after death / life-after-life-after-death…]

Easter morning brings concrete, startling evidence that there is more to life than what we’ve experienced so far, and more to life than even our best hopes of life after death. The resurrection is the world’s first evidence of life-after-life-after-death. And it’s the promise that the life-after-life-after-death has come to life in our present reality now, bringing a hope that can absolutely transform the lives we live before death as well.

Read John 20v1-20…

The gospels are very clear that the resurrected Jesus wasn’t a ghost, an apparition. He had a real deal physical body, one that could eat and be touched and seen and heard. And it was still recognizably his body – it had the marks of the crucifixion on it still, for example, and when people did recognize it, they recognized it as Jesus. But it was also more, different, transformed, new. Transformed enough that some didn’t recognize him at first, perhaps in the way a bride will have such a radiance that even those who know her well may take another glance to be sure it’s actually her. It was a body that death, illness, pain, suffering could no longer touch. A body that was equally at home on earth and in the heavens, and mysteriously capable of slipping back and forth at will, until doing so one final time at the ascension, to remain in God’s dimension until the final joining of the heavens and the earth, God’s dimension fused with our earthly dimension, at his second coming. Jesus’ resurrection body, in other words, is a body that belongs to the life after life after death part of the time line.

Life-after-life-after-death is life that takes all that is holy and good and God-breathed about our present mixed up lives, and present mixed up world, and remakes us, and this world, as fully holy and fully good and fully God-breathed, fully reflecting the glorious image of our creator. The resurrected Jesus is our first glimpse of this kind of life, the source of our hope for something more than life after death.

Don’t get me wrong, life after death is part of the picture for those of us who die before Jesus returns to set everything right, to complete God’s new creation that began with his resurrection (like the rebel crucified next to Jesus, to whom Jesus said, “surely today you’ll be with me in paradise”). Jesus himself must have experienced some kind of life after death during the time his body rested in the tomb. It’s just that the Bible doesn’t say a whole lot to us about life after death; probably because life after death doesn’t say much to us either.

But life-after-life-after death? Well, you might say you just can’t shut it up.

Life-After-Life-After-Death

Says that death isn’t the end of life as we know it.

Says that there is so much to know of life as we know it that the knowing has only just begun.

Every good thing I’ve ever experienced, I’ve experienced with my body: through my senses, interpreted by my brain. [examples…]

Sure, it’d be nice to free from pain, to have some rest. But I can only get excited about that as much as I can get excited about sleeping. Which is exactly how the Bible describes life after death – “those who have fallen asleep in Christ.”

No, what gets me excited, what gives me hope, is the idea that the good parts of my life today, the waking, wakeful parts – the elements of who I am, the things I do, that are lined up with the love and goodness of God – might actually still matter tomorrow, that they might actually be around tomorrow, they might turn into what they’re really meant to be tomorrow. [training for sports, music, reading…]

Life-After-Life-After-Death

Says Love has robbed death of all its power.

Says Love now has power to undo every barrier death can throw at life.

Says Love now calls all the shots.

Because our lives are shaped now by our anticipation of life-after-life-after death. That’s what it means for us to love. And our world is shaped by life-after-life-after death blowing over it like a rainstorm over the desert. That’s Love’s prerogative, now that Love himself has come to life (life-after-life-after death life!) in the midst of our broken world.

Death, in other words, isn’t shaping anything anymore. Not anything that will last, anyway.

Because Life-After-Life-After-Death

Says that hope beyond hope has surprised us, and keeps on surprising us.

Says that since it’s already happened once with Jesus, now every mundane moment is pregnant with the possibility of encountering something new, something that comes forward from God’s good future and changes everything about the present.

We can be out one morning, going through the motions, doing our loving duty (like Mary going to finish the burial process) and the Gardener of a New Creation can show up and send us on a new mission. We can be in a locked room without hope (like the gathered disciples), and Peace that passes understanding (and apparently, passes through walls, too) can show up and breathe new life into us. We can be filled with doubts (like Thomas), hanging onto our own low expectations, and our hidden Hope can materialize and present Himself for inspection.

Life-After-Life-After-Death

Says that we can practice resurrection, practice living tomorrow’s life today, practice living Life-After-Life-After-Death while we yet await the life to come.

Just as soon as we die to this life.

Just as soon as we die to lives that have been shaped by a deference to death’s power.

Just as soon as we defer to Love’s invitation.

Because resurrection life is only found on the other side of death.

²¹Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” ²²And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of anyone, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

This is where the resurrection rubber meets the resurrection road. Forgiveness in all its forms involve a death. The forgiveness Jesus won for us involved his physical death on the cross. We too, must die, in order to forgive. Not the death he died, no – he did that once and for all. In order to forgive, though, we must die to our pride. We must die to our desire for revenge, for repayment. We must die to our habit of looking out for our interests over the interests of others. We be willing to lose our lives as we know them in order to find the life that we know in the resurrected Jesus. The Life-After-Life-After-Death.

Life-After-Life-After-Death

Says our labors of love are not in vain.

Says that everything surrendered to Love’s purposes and animated by God’s Spirit finds incorruptible completion in God’s new creation.

As the Father has sent me, I am sending you, Jesus says as he breathes new creation life onto us, into us – Receive my Holy Spirit!

Every single thing we do in response to that sending, everything we do empowered by that breath – everything we do in Christ, by his Spirit, in other words – every single thing will find its completion in the life-after-life-after-death new creation. Just as everything Jesus did found its completion in his resurrection. Every act of love, every act of justice, every effort towards peace, towards forgiveness, towards reconciliation, towards healing, towards freedom, towards holiness. All of it part of the new reality that will come in fullness when Jesus appears again, when God’s perfect future fully encompasses the present, when the Father’s will is done on earth just as it is in heaven. Not a single thing done will be a waste. It will all have full and vibrant expression in the fullness of the kingdom of God.

God’s new world has arrived in Jesus, and now his students are laying the groundwork –with him, by the Spirit – for it to arrive fully everywhere else.

Practical Tips:

1. Change your tune. Get in the habit of talking with your kids about Life-After-Life-After-Death as much or more than Life-After-Death.

2. Sentence something to death. Identify one thing about your current life-before-life-after-life-after death that you need to die to in order to make way for resurrection life in your life.

3. Play Make Believe. Imagine what Life-After-Life-After-Death might look like in a difficult relationship or situation. Ask yourself if there was one way you would act differently today if you knew that Life-After-Life-After-Death was on its way for that relationship or situation, and your job was to be ready to live in that new reality by the time it came.

“Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.