breathing room: Outward Focused Lives // More than Meets the My

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 06/02/2013
video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand
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or via iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/vineyard-church-of-milan/id562567379

Last time we talked, we talked about changing our default setting. From a default setting of “it’s all about me” to one that considers the needs of others above our own. From an inward focus to an outward focus. From one where power is used to advance the interests of the powerful, to one where power is to be used on behalf of the powerless.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something

to be used to his own advantage;

rather he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant...

from Philippians 2:1-11

Paul (formerly Saul) of Tarsus

This is nothing less than a revolutionary way to approach life. This is a revolutionary way to live. It’s inside out. Upside down.

Outward focused lives change the game. They take the old rule book for life and throw it out.

You don’t need to look out for number 1?

You don’t have to live in fear and self-protective anxiety?

The universe isn’t like a lone pizza on a table in front of hungry teenagers?

Beauty and generosity and humility and compassion can be more contagious and longer lasting than the common cold?

The last will be first, and the first will be last?

Small things done with great love can go toe to toe with hulking monsters, and win?

Really?

Really.

It’s a way of living that had, at best, been hinted at, glimpsed in fleeting, whispered about in rumors.

Until Jesus came and actually lived one.

A full on, flat out, jet-fueled outward focused life.

And it turned out that the Jesus’ sort of outward focused life is the kind of life that just keeps on living. Exhibit A, an empty tomb. Exhibit B? Well, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

[“Me Church” video]

“Me Church”

Exaggerated? Perhaps. But not by as much as the founder of the Church might hope. Members of nearly a 1000 churches surveyed: What is the mission of the church? 89% “to take care of my family and my needs.” 89%.

Really?

Really.

But what if you ask somebody outside of the church?

John Wimber taxi cab driver story…

“Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, “That guy’s drunk.” I said, “No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine.” He asked, “Do you know about church?” I said, “Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?”

It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master’s wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know.

I said, “Answer me this one question.” Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. “If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?” He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, “Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book.” I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. “Oh, God.” I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, “Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church.”

Archbishop of England, William Temple provocatively said that “the church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

Swiss reformed theologian Emil Brunner, more poetically, said, “As fire exists for burning, so the church exists for mission.”

Vineyard pastor Steve Sjogren, cutting to the chase: “A church that doesn’t do outreach is a waste of time.”

Where’d they get that idea?

Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

The church is meant be headquarters for the revolution.

Just as Jesus is calling his students to live outward focused lives, Jesus is calling his church to be an outward focused church. There’s more to church than meets the my.

A few thoughts on what that means.

Outward focused churches start by looking to Love, embodied in Jesus. He is, after all, the original revolutionary. As headquarters for the revolution, we shouldn’t look to anyone or anything else, not to anything lesser. Especially not to our desires, our emotions, our agendas, our fears, our anxieties.

So easy for the opposite to be the case. Many of us may share particular desires, even excellent desires. To create a great family environment in which to raise our kids. To have a place where single people can have a healthy environment in which to form lasting friendships and perhaps more. To have a warm supportive atmosphere in which to express our charitable instincts. To gather like-minded people for the purpose of delving into the Holy Scriptures with depth and intensity. Many may share particular fears. Fears of a culture growing less Godly day by day. Fears that our kids may be overwhelmed by the pressures of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Fears that our community may change in ways that we don’t like, physically, socially, politically, economically. Many may share particular anxieties, especially from time to time. Like anxieties about the economy. Or anxieties about social/political issues of the day. Or anxieties about a war, or a disease, or some other crisis.

How easy would it be to fix our eyes together on any number of those desires, fears, or anxieties? But if we did, we would become very quickly an inward focused church, all about us and only as much about Jesus as Jesus may happen to be about us.

No, we are to be an outward focused church, our eyes fixed on Jesus, first, last, and all the time in between. Preoccupied with his beauty, his glory, his power, his wonderful love. Because his beauty is the beauty of humility, the kind of beauty no other beauty can rival. His glory is the elevation of oppressed and the downtrodden, the welcome of the exiled and outcast, the restoration and redemption of the lost and broken, and no other glory gets within spitting distance of that kind of glory. His power is the kind perfected in weakness and refined in the crucible of suffering and surrender. And his love? It’s the love that sets fire to the stars and breathes energy into every atom in the universe.

We are to be so preoccupied that we lose ourselves in him. So lost in him that the only desires of any consequence to our life together are his desires. So lost in him that our fears get swallowed up in his perfect love, and we have every confidence that his love is winning the day. That he will provide what we need, what our children need, what our brothers and sisters in him need. So lost in him that our corporate anxieties are surrendered to his mission in any particular circumstance or time. So lost in him that together we gain his heart for those who are lost apart from him.

People may well come - heck, most of us probably came - concerned for ourselves, our needs, hungry, hurting, hoping. This is where the revolution must start though. We cannot go out the way we came in. We arrive spent, we meet Jesus, and we go out, sent. We arrive, eyes filled with tears and fears, looking to see if love is real, and if love is here, and we go out, eyes peeled for tears and fears, looking to show that love is real, and love is here.

Because the church is the headquarters of the revolution.

We look to Love, and we are pointed towards purpose. Jesus has given us an assignment, a mission, a vision of the future, and it’s not about us. It’s about everyone but us, because we can trust him to take care of us. We can trust that as we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, all these other things will be added to us. [objection? small group study: open groups were healthier, produced closer relationships with God and deeper relationships with each other]

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

It’s to create breathing room for those who are being suffocated by hopelessness, oppression, judgment and the absence of love to find the favor of a God who took all of things upon his shoulders, and was crushed by them himself, in order to bring them forgiveness, and freedom, and fruitfulness. To revolt against judgment by communicating favor is to revolt against the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It’s to create breathing room for those who are being suffocated by insignificance, inadequacy, and indifference to discover the call of God who counts them worthy to take on the mission of his only begotten Son, who counts them capable of even greater things than Jesus did in his earthly ministry, who counts them as his beloved sons and daughters, co-heirs of Christ’s eternal kingdom. This revolution is won by people with nothing left to lose.

It’s to create breathing room for people who are far from God and suffocated by themselves and the pressures of this world to catch the breath of a God who is as near to them as their next breath, longing to connect to them as a Father longs to connect with his long-estranged children. When a revolution is founded on love, it ends with a feast around a family dinner table, and everyone is invited – winners and losers.

We could rephrase our assignment this way. Together we live outward focused lives. Starting here.

Because the church is the headquarters of the revolution.

As we look to Jesus and point towards others, we are to be characterized by humility. We are to take every advantage, every resource, every blessing from the love that has welcomed us, and surrender it in perfect obedience, for the sake and salvation of God’s broken world.

We’re to spend our money as a church not for our comfort, but for our calling.

We’re not to use the Holy Spirit for our wonder and titillation, but we’re to be used by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the wonders of our Savior and for the elevation of his Name.

We’re to take the grace and mercy that God has generously and extravagantly extended to us, and extend it generously and extravagantly not only to one another, but also to our enemies, to those who have wronged us, to those who oppose us, to those who despise us, to those who disrespect us, to those who test us.

We are to exercise Jesus brand humility so that the enemy of all of us will suffer his final humiliating defeat.

Because the church is the headquarters of the revolution.

As a church, as we look with creativity and care to the interests of others, we are to be characterized by compassion. [compassion = moved on the insides]

How, you may ask, can an organization be moved in its guts? The thing about being moved in the gut is that you can’t go about business as usual without attending to it. Business as usual can only proceed if you’re taking care of business, if you know what I mean. Unless you’re ready for some serious intestinal complications. And I have no interest in us becoming a constipated church. Constipated churches stink.

Nearly every time Jesus is moved with compassion, he’s doing something else at the time. Usually something good, something God has called him to do, something connected to his mission. But he stops when compassion hits him in the gut, and does what the Holy Spirit moves him to do. We’ve got to be so sensitive to Jesus’ moving us on the inside with compassion that we can’t go about our normal business without attending to that feeling on the inside. We can never get so caught up in business as usual, even when business is great, that we can’t be moved by compassion. To heal. To touch. To love. To stop and listen. To give. To pray. To feed. [John Wimber flat tire story]

And we are to share our lives and mission together empowered by the Holy Spirit. We are to gather to worship and pray, counting on Jesus to send his Holy Spirit to empower us for following him. We are to gather in small groups and around dinner tables and as we play, trusting that the Holy Spirit will work among us to bring Jesus’ kingdom in and through our lives. We are to boldly say what the Holy Spirit gives us to say, and do what the Holy Spirit gives us to do, and go to wherever and to whomever the Holy Spirit leads us to go. We’re to say, and do, and go with every bit of skill and excellence and care and creativity that we can, but at the end of the day we’ve got to say and do and go risking it all that God will show up through his Holy Spirit or we’ll look like fools.

Because the church is the headquarters of the revolution. But, as Billy Joel sang, we didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning. No we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it. This is a revolution that doesn’t start fires. No, this is a revolution that is set on fire.

We’ve got to be a church that’s ready to be sent and spent by Jesus. We don’t exist for our sake. We exist for His sake. And he’s called us into being for the world’s sake. A world that’s waiting just outside these walls.