(This message is part of a series titled 'Missional People, Missional Church'.)
Gen 32:22-30 and 1 Peter 1:13-20
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
It’s a standard scene in movies about war or life in some kind of a repressive regime. A person is wanting to move from one place to another, or through some passage into another part of a city or country, and someone—usually a menacing looking guy—stands in their way and asks to see their ‘papers’.
Now these ‘papers’ are identity papers—they confirm who the person is and whether or not they have permission to move freely from one place to another. We all have them, even if using them isn’t as dramatic as in the movies. My passport identifies me as an American citizen, and my visa names me as a minister of religion. It also says nice and big that I have ‘no access to public funds’. I am, though, allowed to pay taxes here, even if it doesn’t say so in my passport.
The idea of identity papers gives us a chance to think more broadly about our own identities. It’s such a broad term, but it’s an important one for psychologists and sociologists.
According to my friend Wikipedia, identity formation is the process of the development of the distinct personality of an individual in a particular stage of life, in which individual characteristics are possessed by which a person is recognized or known. This process defines individuals to others and themselves.
An identity crisis happens when an individual loses a sense of their own personality and historical continuity. The term was coined by the psychologist Erik Erikson. According to Erikson, an identity crisis is a time of intensive analysis and exploration of different ways of looking at oneself.
Healing for an identity crisis comes when the process of identity formation is restored or repeated, and individuals reclaim those characteristics that define them to others and to themselves.
In our church family we’ve been talking about the idea of the ‘active ingredient.’ The active ingredient is the substance in medicine that makes the drug work—that makes us feel better. Whatever else makes up the rest of the pill or liquid, it’s the active ingredient that makes it work—the part of a drug that actually heals us, that makes us feel better, the part of the medicine that’s designed to restore our health.
Like a lot of you I’ve been taking hay fever medication this summer. Mine has 8mg of acrivastine in it—that’s the active ingredient in Benadryl—the part of the capsule that helps control my sneezing and itchy throat. I took some this morning so I could get through two services today.
To be an active ingredient is to live our faith in a way that make our communities better, healthier, more shalom-filled places. Active ingredients bring the message of the gospel—the message that heals us and restores health in authentic ways to the places where we live and work and study and shop.
This is a journey through what it means to be missional people in a missional church. We find our missional habits and practices—we find our identities as Christian disciples—at the intersection of what we believe about God, and what we do about that belief.
Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
This passage from Peter’s letter goes hand-in-hand with the text from Genesis that Zena read earlier in the service.
Peter's letter was written to the Christian churches in what is now modern Turkey. This is a general letter—not written to one community with a specific set of problems, but written to all Christian churches with teachings that all of us can relate to. Our text comes at the beginning of a longer section on the responsibilities that go hand in hand with the gifts we’ve received from God. “Shape your priorities”, the writer says, “to the priorities of God.”
The gift that Peter is talking about here, just so that we’re clear, is the redemptive gift of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. It’s the core message of the gospel that calls us to a new way of living—to a new identity as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
That core message, by the way, is the basic structure of why Jesus the Messiah came in the first place. It goes like this: God created us to live in perfect Shalom with him and with the world. Shalom represents the Hebrew idea of wholeness or completeness—“the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.”
But that Shalom was broken by our sin—by our rebellion against God, and human history up to this point has been about God reaching out to us to bring us back into a whole relationship with him—to put the pieces of Shalom back together again. Jesus the Messiah came to bridge that gap in a decisive way—to offer everyone a way to be connected with God again, just as he intended from the start.
The central idea in this letter, as one writer put it, is “the contrast between what the readers had once been and what they have now become because of their obedience to Christ.” In other words, the focus of this letter is the way those who follow Christ experience a radical change in our identities.
But this isn’t anything new. God has been calling his people to a new way of life—to a new identity built on him alone—from the earliest pages of the Scriptures.
Jacob is one of the great characters of the Old Testament. He’s a sort of slippery character with marginal ethics when we see him. He cons his father and cheats his brother out of a blessing that should have gone to him. He gets conned by his father-in-law in one of the great two-for-one deals in the Bible. And when we see him he’s wrestling with an angel and won’t let him go until he gets a blessing from him. (Jacob has bit of a blessing fetish.)
But Jacob gets more than he asked for. As a part of the blessing he gets a new name—Jacob becomes Israel, and plays an important part in bringing God’s covenant to life.
See what I mean? Part of following God means allowing our identities to be transformed as God himself works in us and through us to remake us into the people we were meant to be all along. He might not always change our names, but he always reaches in to help us become the people we were meant to be.
In our staff meetings this year we’ve been reading a book together called ‘God Hides in Plain Sight’, which is on our reading list in the bulletin. The chapter we discussed last week was about the idea of baptism—of being cleansed of our sin and welcomed into the community of faith. But the author made the case that there was a lot more going on, too. He writes:
“Baptism is what occurs when we are shown who we are apart from our roles, our masks, our attachments, and our created selves. It is the means by which we take on the most real roles in our lives. It is when we hear a voice from heaven saying ‘This is my child in whom I am well pleased.’”
Part of becoming missional people in a missional church means recognizing that as we grow in faith our core identities change—they’re transformed—we go from who we thought we were and why we thought we matter, to who God calls us to be and why he loves and cherishes us.
How does this help us become missional people? How does this idea of identity change help us work together as a missional church?
If we look back at the passage from 1st Peter we see three steps toward aligning ourselves to God in a meaningful way—we see three practices we can apply as we seek to be active ingredients in our homes and jobs and schools and neighborhoods.
First, we see ‘prepare your minds’. We can’t get around the need to understand our faith and to be able to articulate it. Reading and reflection—conversation and prayer are the ways we prepare our minds to engage the world as disciples of Jesus.
Next the text calls us to ‘be self-controlled’. This is not just about resisting sin, though that’s a part of it. It’s really about taking responsibility for the way you live your life; this is a direct challenge to the concern I hear sometimes about how hard it can be to let colleagues and friends and neighbors know that you’re a Christian. This is your identity. The rest is secondary.
Finally, ‘set your hope fully on the grace of Jesus Christ’. This is a part of the Christian life that we don’t talk about nearly enough. Hope is supposed to be one of the markers of faith—one of the outward signs of trusting that God is who he says he is, and more importantly, that he’ll do what he promised to do.
This is about developing the discipline of hope—about living lives that are marked by the discipline of hope.
That’s not how we talk about hope most of the time, is it? We think of hope as something that comes and goes—we might wake up some days and feel hopeful. But Christian hope isn’t just a feeling that may or may not hit us on any given day. Christian hope is something that we practice—something that we cultivate as we grow in our knowledge and experience of the way the living God works in our lives.
Hope isn’t just hoping that everything will be OK. Christian hope is trusting that God will come through—it’s living with the knowledge that somehow God will bring his creation to himself, and that in the meantime he loves us and cares for us.
It’s in the rest of our text that we see where this new identity comes from: ‘For you know that it was not with perishable things that you were redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ.’
It’s through Christ’s blood—that symbol of struggle and sacrifice—that we are given our new identities. It’s because we’ve been redeemed and forgiven that we can leave our old lives behind and become something completely new and different: disciples of Jesus Christ.
Identity formation happens as we develop those parts of our personality that define us for others and for ourselves. The question for us is this:
Where does our faith fit into the way we see ourselves?
Where does our faith fit into the way others experience us—not just here at church but in our homes and jobs and schools and neighborhoods.
Being missional people in a missional church means allowing our identity to be transformed. It means that through Christ’s sacrifice we can become the people he made us to be in the first place.
On the front of your bulletin this morning you’ll see a quote from a great little book that the Council is reading over the summer…
“…this presents an amazing opportunity for the church to become the most relevant, most vibrant, most vital part of people’s lives—both to the young and the old. But to pull that off, we need to radically shift our thinking from believing that success means being a safe place for people to catch up and be together for an hour or two on Sunday and maybe hear an entertaining message, to recognizing that we are, first and foremost, a movement of people called to a dangerous mission.”
(Dave Gibbons, The Monkey and the Fish)
My prayer for all of us, as we wrestle with what it means to see our lives and our church in a different way—my prayer is that we’ll prepare our minds for the task, that we’ll take responsibility for allowing our faith to be visible in our lives, and that we’ll live lives marked by the hope that comes from believing that God is exactly who he says he is, and that he’ll do what he said he would do.
Then we’ll be missional people in a church with a mission—people whose identities are reflections of the one who made us, who redeemed us, and who loves us still.
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Amen.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Ready for Anything
(This Farewell Sunday message is a part of our series titled 'Missional People, Missional Church'.)
Romans 15:14
It’s graduation season. Hard to imagine that we’re here again, sending kids off to college, seeing other kids move up to new grades or levels—I can’t believe that my son Ian goes to middle school next year. This is a season when people try to pass along some wisdom to those who are moving on to new things—new places. A lot of that happens in the tried and true literary form we call the graduation speech. Here are some examples.
There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live. -- John Adams
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.---Nelson Mandela
I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught. -- Sir Winston Churchill
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go. -- Dr. Seuss
Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
As we celebrate our own day of transition here, I want to share some biblical wisdom for all of us to wrestle with—whether we’re leaving or staying here in London.
We’ve been talking about the idea of the ‘active ingredient.’ The active ingredient is the substance in medicine that makes the drug work—that makes us feel better. Whatever else makes up the rest of the pill or liquid, it’s the active ingredient that makes it work—the part of a drug that actually heals us, that makes us feel better, the part of the medicine that’s designed to restore our health.
To be an active ingredient is to live our faith in a way that make our communities better, healthier, more shalom-filled places. Active ingredients bring the message of the gospel—the message that heals us and restores health in authentic ways to the places where we live and work and study and shop.
This is a journey through what it means to be missional people in a missional church. We find our missional habits and practices at the intersection of what we believe about God, and what we do about that belief.
I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.
Paul’s letter was written to the new Christian church in Rome. It was mostly Gentile but it had a strong core of Jewish converts in it, too. There were 50,000 Jews in Rome in the 1st century, and many of them converted to the Christian faith. Many of the early Christian churches in Rome were actually converted synagogues, so there was a deep sense of connection between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Roman church. That’s why there’s so much about Judaism and Jewishness in Romans.
This letter was written in the year 55AD—fairly early in the history of Christianity. Remember that the Christian movement was still being persecuted at this point, and it would get worse as the church grew.
By the time we get to this chapter, Paul is starting to talk about his future plans, including a trip to Spain and Turkey, and eventually a visit to Rome. (Sounds a little like listening to people make holiday plans around here.)
Paul is an entrepreneur at heart—part of the reason he’s thinking of moving around is that, as he says later in the chapter: ‘It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on anyone else’s foundation.’ The church was already well-established in Corinth, even if it had some problems, and so Paul was getting restless to take the Christian message someplace where it could have an influence over as many people as possible.
In our text Paul is making plans to visit the young church in Rome to see if he can help them to take the next step. What’s clear is that Paul knows he doesn’t have to go there and start from scratch—there’s a group of leaders there who are ready to take the next step—ready to graduate to a deeper level of leadership and discipleship.
And so our text is Paul’s way of affirming the faith and growth of the Roman church—it’s like a commissioning or a graduation speech. Listen to it again: “I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.”
As we prepare to say goodbye to some good friends today, what should we notice in Paul’s commissioning of the Romans?
‘you yourselves are full of goodness’: This one has two-parts. First, there’s an admission here on Paul’s part that since he hadn’t been their teacher, that they’d reached their maturity largely on their own, or at least without the help of one of the major apostles. Second, we should notice that being ‘full of goodness’ isn’t about perfection or somehow learning to live without sin, but rather about being mature models of Christian kindness and mercy.
‘complete in knowledge’: Again, this doesn’t mean that they knew everything. When Will Durant, one of the great American historians, gave a commencement speech, he said: “Education is a progressive discovery of your own ignorance.” Paul the apostle would have agreed with that. Being complete in knowledge isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about having insight and understanding into God’s purposes and God’s plan. The Roman Christians, who had to overcome serious obstacles every day in order to live out their faith, knew enough of how their stories and God’s story intersected to handle themselves in any situation.
‘competent to instruct or admonish one another’: This is about taking that step from being beginners to being more mature in the life of discipleship. Part of that comes when we take our experiences and share them with others through teaching or exhortation—maybe even warning or correction. Mostly, though, this is about the Roman Christians being ready to be influencers in a city that was the most influential place on earth at the time.
As we mark another graduation season and especially as we celebrate this special anniversary for your church, what can we take from Paul’s commissioning of the Roman Christians? More to the point for all of us, as we talk about what it means to be active ingredients—to be mature Christians in a missional church, how does all of this help us grow as disciples where we live and work and study and shop? We’ll use the same outline Paul used.
Full of goodness: We’re called to be mature models of Christian kindness and mercy. That includes everything from simple hospitality to sacrificial acts on behalf of those in need. But mostly it’s about how our faith guides how we live in our homes and neighborhood and jobs and schools—how we live as active ingredients—how we become missional people.
Complete in knowledge: It’s crucial as we live our faith that we work to understand it, too. This isn’t about knowing everything, this is about understanding the content of the gospel. This is also about understanding how our own lives are being transformed through Jesus Christ. Where does your own story intersect with the gospel story? The answer to that question, however it is unfolding in your life, is about becoming ‘complete in knowledge’.
Competent to share our faith: This isn’t about getting degrees or reading books or passing tests. Being ready to share our faith is just that—growing into an awareness of how we can help others come to their own experience of the transforming with of Christ in their lives. This is about taking responsibility to be influencers for the gospel. Just as Rome was an enormously influential city in the ancient world, there aren’t too many places in the world today with more influence than London.
Where are the influencers for Christ in this city?
A lot of them are in this room right now. The real question is this: Will you step out in faith to influence this city, and the world, with the good news of the gospel?
Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome: “I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.”
I would say the same thing about you.
If you’re rooted here in London or at least staying for a while, being missional people means living our faith, understanding how it works, and sharing it with other people. That’s what this church is going to be talking about and practicing in the coming year.
If you’re leaving this summer then let me give you this challenge. Take how you’ve grown here and share it with the community of faith you settle in wherever you’re going to live next. Take your experiences here and let them become the fuel for how you live your faith in a new city or country.
We say the Charge and Blessing together each week, but it takes on new meaning as we prepare to say goodbye to another group of friends.
When I say ‘You go nowhere by accident’, remember that your response is ‘Wherever we go God is sending us. Wherever we are, God has put us there—he has a purpose for us.’
God can and will work in you and through you wherever you go—whatever you’re doing. Christ who lives in you wants to do something with your life wherever you are.
That’s what we believe, or at least struggle to believe. It’s what the Roman Christians were struggling to live out under terrible persecution and threat. It’s what we live to do each and every day as we grow into missional people in a missional church.
“I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.”
I really am.
Amen
Romans 15:14
It’s graduation season. Hard to imagine that we’re here again, sending kids off to college, seeing other kids move up to new grades or levels—I can’t believe that my son Ian goes to middle school next year. This is a season when people try to pass along some wisdom to those who are moving on to new things—new places. A lot of that happens in the tried and true literary form we call the graduation speech. Here are some examples.
There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live. -- John Adams
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.---Nelson Mandela
I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught. -- Sir Winston Churchill
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go. -- Dr. Seuss
Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
As we celebrate our own day of transition here, I want to share some biblical wisdom for all of us to wrestle with—whether we’re leaving or staying here in London.
We’ve been talking about the idea of the ‘active ingredient.’ The active ingredient is the substance in medicine that makes the drug work—that makes us feel better. Whatever else makes up the rest of the pill or liquid, it’s the active ingredient that makes it work—the part of a drug that actually heals us, that makes us feel better, the part of the medicine that’s designed to restore our health.
To be an active ingredient is to live our faith in a way that make our communities better, healthier, more shalom-filled places. Active ingredients bring the message of the gospel—the message that heals us and restores health in authentic ways to the places where we live and work and study and shop.
This is a journey through what it means to be missional people in a missional church. We find our missional habits and practices at the intersection of what we believe about God, and what we do about that belief.
I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.
Paul’s letter was written to the new Christian church in Rome. It was mostly Gentile but it had a strong core of Jewish converts in it, too. There were 50,000 Jews in Rome in the 1st century, and many of them converted to the Christian faith. Many of the early Christian churches in Rome were actually converted synagogues, so there was a deep sense of connection between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Roman church. That’s why there’s so much about Judaism and Jewishness in Romans.
This letter was written in the year 55AD—fairly early in the history of Christianity. Remember that the Christian movement was still being persecuted at this point, and it would get worse as the church grew.
By the time we get to this chapter, Paul is starting to talk about his future plans, including a trip to Spain and Turkey, and eventually a visit to Rome. (Sounds a little like listening to people make holiday plans around here.)
Paul is an entrepreneur at heart—part of the reason he’s thinking of moving around is that, as he says later in the chapter: ‘It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on anyone else’s foundation.’ The church was already well-established in Corinth, even if it had some problems, and so Paul was getting restless to take the Christian message someplace where it could have an influence over as many people as possible.
In our text Paul is making plans to visit the young church in Rome to see if he can help them to take the next step. What’s clear is that Paul knows he doesn’t have to go there and start from scratch—there’s a group of leaders there who are ready to take the next step—ready to graduate to a deeper level of leadership and discipleship.
And so our text is Paul’s way of affirming the faith and growth of the Roman church—it’s like a commissioning or a graduation speech. Listen to it again: “I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.”
As we prepare to say goodbye to some good friends today, what should we notice in Paul’s commissioning of the Romans?
‘you yourselves are full of goodness’: This one has two-parts. First, there’s an admission here on Paul’s part that since he hadn’t been their teacher, that they’d reached their maturity largely on their own, or at least without the help of one of the major apostles. Second, we should notice that being ‘full of goodness’ isn’t about perfection or somehow learning to live without sin, but rather about being mature models of Christian kindness and mercy.
‘complete in knowledge’: Again, this doesn’t mean that they knew everything. When Will Durant, one of the great American historians, gave a commencement speech, he said: “Education is a progressive discovery of your own ignorance.” Paul the apostle would have agreed with that. Being complete in knowledge isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about having insight and understanding into God’s purposes and God’s plan. The Roman Christians, who had to overcome serious obstacles every day in order to live out their faith, knew enough of how their stories and God’s story intersected to handle themselves in any situation.
‘competent to instruct or admonish one another’: This is about taking that step from being beginners to being more mature in the life of discipleship. Part of that comes when we take our experiences and share them with others through teaching or exhortation—maybe even warning or correction. Mostly, though, this is about the Roman Christians being ready to be influencers in a city that was the most influential place on earth at the time.
As we mark another graduation season and especially as we celebrate this special anniversary for your church, what can we take from Paul’s commissioning of the Roman Christians? More to the point for all of us, as we talk about what it means to be active ingredients—to be mature Christians in a missional church, how does all of this help us grow as disciples where we live and work and study and shop? We’ll use the same outline Paul used.
Full of goodness: We’re called to be mature models of Christian kindness and mercy. That includes everything from simple hospitality to sacrificial acts on behalf of those in need. But mostly it’s about how our faith guides how we live in our homes and neighborhood and jobs and schools—how we live as active ingredients—how we become missional people.
Complete in knowledge: It’s crucial as we live our faith that we work to understand it, too. This isn’t about knowing everything, this is about understanding the content of the gospel. This is also about understanding how our own lives are being transformed through Jesus Christ. Where does your own story intersect with the gospel story? The answer to that question, however it is unfolding in your life, is about becoming ‘complete in knowledge’.
Competent to share our faith: This isn’t about getting degrees or reading books or passing tests. Being ready to share our faith is just that—growing into an awareness of how we can help others come to their own experience of the transforming with of Christ in their lives. This is about taking responsibility to be influencers for the gospel. Just as Rome was an enormously influential city in the ancient world, there aren’t too many places in the world today with more influence than London.
Where are the influencers for Christ in this city?
A lot of them are in this room right now. The real question is this: Will you step out in faith to influence this city, and the world, with the good news of the gospel?
Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome: “I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.”
I would say the same thing about you.
If you’re rooted here in London or at least staying for a while, being missional people means living our faith, understanding how it works, and sharing it with other people. That’s what this church is going to be talking about and practicing in the coming year.
If you’re leaving this summer then let me give you this challenge. Take how you’ve grown here and share it with the community of faith you settle in wherever you’re going to live next. Take your experiences here and let them become the fuel for how you live your faith in a new city or country.
We say the Charge and Blessing together each week, but it takes on new meaning as we prepare to say goodbye to another group of friends.
When I say ‘You go nowhere by accident’, remember that your response is ‘Wherever we go God is sending us. Wherever we are, God has put us there—he has a purpose for us.’
God can and will work in you and through you wherever you go—whatever you’re doing. Christ who lives in you wants to do something with your life wherever you are.
That’s what we believe, or at least struggle to believe. It’s what the Roman Christians were struggling to live out under terrible persecution and threat. It’s what we live to do each and every day as we grow into missional people in a missional church.
“I myself am convinced, my friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another.”
I really am.
Amen
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Where Goes the Neighborhood?
(This message is a part of our series titled, Missional People, Missional Church.)
Jeremiah 32:6-15
We’ve been talking about the idea of the ‘active ingredient.’ The active ingredient is the substance in medicine that makes the drug work—that makes us feel better. Whatever else makes up the rest of the pill or liquid, it’s the active ingredient that makes it work—the part of a drug that actually heals us, that makes us feel better, the part of the medicine that’s designed to restore our health.
To be an active ingredient is to live our faith in a way that make our communities better, healthier, more shalom-filled places. Active ingredients bring the message of the gospel—the message that heals us and restores health in authentic ways to the places where we live and work and study and shop.
This is a journey through what it means to be missional people in a missional church. We find our missional habits and practices at the intersection of what we believe about God, and what we do about that belief. Last week Jim Belcher talked about being resident aliens—people who participate and contribute to the culture, but who aren’t products of the culture.
Jeremiah said, "The word of the LORD came to me: Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, 'Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it.' "Then, just as the LORD had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, 'Buy my field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. Since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.'
"I knew that this was the word of the LORD; so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver. I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales. I took the deed of purchase—the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy, and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard.
"In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: 'This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.'
Some background on Jeremiah: He served under five kings: one good one, Josiah, who found the Torah and renewed Judah’s faithfulness, and four more who were increasingly corrupt or cynical. Jeremiah preached a message of God’s judgment, including the threat of being taken away in exile, which was meant to turn Judah’s behavior back to God. Other prophets, more concerned with keeping their clientele happy than with preaching the word of God, minimized the threat of punishment for sin.
Through all of that, Jeremiah stood firm.
His life was threatened, he was beaten by the kings who were supposed to listen to him, he was ostracized by the people he was sent to serve, and at one point he was imprisoned in a sewer. In the end Jeremiah has to deliver the bad news that God was going to send his people into exile because of their disobedience. That’s where we pick up our story about Jeremiah and the field. The enemy army at the gates, the king was in denial, the other prophets were trying to make it seem like it wouldn’t be that bad, and the people responded by ignoring the whole thing. The culture of Jeremiah’s day was completely against him.
Through all of that, Jeremiah stood firm. Who was this guy?
From the Scriptures we can indentify five character traits of Jeremiah:
First, Jeremiah had a deep sense of integrity—he was honest and, as far as we can tell, impossible to bribe or corrupt. Second, and related to that, Jeremiah’s ministry was built on a foundation of courage in carrying out his convictions, even when he complained (remember that it’s Jeremiah who wrote an entire book called Lamentations.)
Third, Jeremiah was passionate in his opposition both to personal immorality and social injustice. (Both of those are priorities of God’s, too.) Fourth, as harsh as his message could sometimes be, Jeremiah showed a deep sensitivity to people’s sufferings.
Finally, and this is where our text finds us today, Jeremiah had hope for the future. He could complain with the best of them and his message was loaded with the promise of God’s judgment, but that didn’t take away his sense of hope that God would redeem his people just as he had promised.
How do we see that? Jeremiah buys a field in the path of an invading army.
Not exactly a wise investment, right? Jeremiah had the right to buy this plot of land, but no one would have blamed him if he’d passed on the opportunity. On the surface it was a disastrous use of funds—there was no apparent potential for any return on Jeremiah’s investment. And yet through it all, notice how public this transaction was. He paid the money and signed the deeds in the center of the city, where everyone could see. Why? Because God called Jeremiah to buy this field as an act of hope—a demonstration of God’s faithfulness.
Jeremiah stood firm, and bought a piece of property in the path of an invading army. What do we learn from that?
Being a Christian in London…or anywhere else, means keeping the faith—keeping our eyes on the essential truths of our faith—no matter what the culture tells us or how they might threaten us. Sometimes—and let’s be honest here: what I mean is in every waking moment—sometimes we have to stand firm in the path of all kinds of opposition to our faith in Jesus Christ, right?
The model for how we can do that faithfully and hopefully can be found in the life of Jeremiah the prophet.
We’re called to live with the same deep sense of integrity that Jeremiah had.
We’re called to have courage in living by our convictions, even if we don’t like doing it.
Our lives of discipleship should be driven by passionate opposition to both personal immorality and social injustice. I know that makes us uncomfortable, but, well, I just wanted to say that I know that makes us uncomfortable.
But through all of this—in the many ways we can stand in faith against anything the culture can throw our way—through all of this we have to demonstrate a sincere sensitivity to people’s sufferings and feelings. We’re not here to club anyone over the head. We’re here to speak and live the truth as we reach out with the love of Jesus Christ.
Finally, and this may be the hardest one of all, we’re called to have hope for the future—to believe that God will bring his process of redemption to completion just as he promised.
What this mean for how we’re called to live as Christians here in London or anywhere else?
What does this passage teach us about being the active ingredients—in our homes and jobs and schools and neighborhoods—people who live out what we believe not just here in church, but everywhere we go?
First, Jeremiah’s investment strategy teaches us that the culture can’t prevent us from living lives of faith. On the surface it might seem like a bad investment, but if God is who he says he is, then the call on our lives is to live and love and spend and invest as if it’s true.
Second, we’re meant to live our faith publicly—where the culture can see us. This is about getting out in our neighborhoods and living our lives according to the values of the Kingdom. This is not about standing in front of our houses and preaching on a soap box.
This is meant to be much louder than that.
It’s not just words, but how we live our lives—lives of integrity and conviction, lives that model personal morality and a commitment to social justice, lives that our aware and concerned about the sufferings of people less fortunate than we are.
Finally, God calls us to live faithful lives as an act of hope—a demonstration of God’s own faithfulness to his promises. God calls us to this life, even when it feels uncomfortable to us.
I’ve been reading a book called The Monkey and the Fish, about what it means to be faithful Christians in a culture that doesn’t know what to make of us anymore. The author talks about how uncomfortable it can be—and how important that discomfort is as we learn to live as Christ’s disciples. He writes:
‘Living a life of [faithful] discomfort means venturing into places we don’t feel like going, doing things we don’t wish to do, being with people we don’t feel comfortable being with, serving them, loving them, helping them—all of which demonstrates a not-of-this-world brand of love that is irresistible to all people in all places.’
Being active ingredients in our communities isn’t always going to be comfortable, but it’s an effective way to sharing the love and mercy we’ve received from Christ with other people. It’s the best way to share that ‘not-of-this-world brand of love that is irresistible to all people in all places.’
My prayer for us, as we move through this season of learning what it means to be missional people in a missional church—my prayer for us is that we’ll embrace the discomfort of being Jesus followers in a culture that doesn’t always understand what that means—that we’ll invest in our communities wherever we are—however long we’ll be there—as a way of sharing the blessings God has already shared with us. Amen?
Jeremiah 32:6-15
We’ve been talking about the idea of the ‘active ingredient.’ The active ingredient is the substance in medicine that makes the drug work—that makes us feel better. Whatever else makes up the rest of the pill or liquid, it’s the active ingredient that makes it work—the part of a drug that actually heals us, that makes us feel better, the part of the medicine that’s designed to restore our health.
To be an active ingredient is to live our faith in a way that make our communities better, healthier, more shalom-filled places. Active ingredients bring the message of the gospel—the message that heals us and restores health in authentic ways to the places where we live and work and study and shop.
This is a journey through what it means to be missional people in a missional church. We find our missional habits and practices at the intersection of what we believe about God, and what we do about that belief. Last week Jim Belcher talked about being resident aliens—people who participate and contribute to the culture, but who aren’t products of the culture.
Jeremiah said, "The word of the LORD came to me: Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, 'Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it.' "Then, just as the LORD had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, 'Buy my field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. Since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.'
"I knew that this was the word of the LORD; so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver. I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales. I took the deed of purchase—the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy, and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard.
"In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: 'This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.'
Some background on Jeremiah: He served under five kings: one good one, Josiah, who found the Torah and renewed Judah’s faithfulness, and four more who were increasingly corrupt or cynical. Jeremiah preached a message of God’s judgment, including the threat of being taken away in exile, which was meant to turn Judah’s behavior back to God. Other prophets, more concerned with keeping their clientele happy than with preaching the word of God, minimized the threat of punishment for sin.
Through all of that, Jeremiah stood firm.
His life was threatened, he was beaten by the kings who were supposed to listen to him, he was ostracized by the people he was sent to serve, and at one point he was imprisoned in a sewer. In the end Jeremiah has to deliver the bad news that God was going to send his people into exile because of their disobedience. That’s where we pick up our story about Jeremiah and the field. The enemy army at the gates, the king was in denial, the other prophets were trying to make it seem like it wouldn’t be that bad, and the people responded by ignoring the whole thing. The culture of Jeremiah’s day was completely against him.
Through all of that, Jeremiah stood firm. Who was this guy?
From the Scriptures we can indentify five character traits of Jeremiah:
First, Jeremiah had a deep sense of integrity—he was honest and, as far as we can tell, impossible to bribe or corrupt. Second, and related to that, Jeremiah’s ministry was built on a foundation of courage in carrying out his convictions, even when he complained (remember that it’s Jeremiah who wrote an entire book called Lamentations.)
Third, Jeremiah was passionate in his opposition both to personal immorality and social injustice. (Both of those are priorities of God’s, too.) Fourth, as harsh as his message could sometimes be, Jeremiah showed a deep sensitivity to people’s sufferings.
Finally, and this is where our text finds us today, Jeremiah had hope for the future. He could complain with the best of them and his message was loaded with the promise of God’s judgment, but that didn’t take away his sense of hope that God would redeem his people just as he had promised.
How do we see that? Jeremiah buys a field in the path of an invading army.
Not exactly a wise investment, right? Jeremiah had the right to buy this plot of land, but no one would have blamed him if he’d passed on the opportunity. On the surface it was a disastrous use of funds—there was no apparent potential for any return on Jeremiah’s investment. And yet through it all, notice how public this transaction was. He paid the money and signed the deeds in the center of the city, where everyone could see. Why? Because God called Jeremiah to buy this field as an act of hope—a demonstration of God’s faithfulness.
Jeremiah stood firm, and bought a piece of property in the path of an invading army. What do we learn from that?
Being a Christian in London…or anywhere else, means keeping the faith—keeping our eyes on the essential truths of our faith—no matter what the culture tells us or how they might threaten us. Sometimes—and let’s be honest here: what I mean is in every waking moment—sometimes we have to stand firm in the path of all kinds of opposition to our faith in Jesus Christ, right?
The model for how we can do that faithfully and hopefully can be found in the life of Jeremiah the prophet.
We’re called to live with the same deep sense of integrity that Jeremiah had.
We’re called to have courage in living by our convictions, even if we don’t like doing it.
Our lives of discipleship should be driven by passionate opposition to both personal immorality and social injustice. I know that makes us uncomfortable, but, well, I just wanted to say that I know that makes us uncomfortable.
But through all of this—in the many ways we can stand in faith against anything the culture can throw our way—through all of this we have to demonstrate a sincere sensitivity to people’s sufferings and feelings. We’re not here to club anyone over the head. We’re here to speak and live the truth as we reach out with the love of Jesus Christ.
Finally, and this may be the hardest one of all, we’re called to have hope for the future—to believe that God will bring his process of redemption to completion just as he promised.
What this mean for how we’re called to live as Christians here in London or anywhere else?
What does this passage teach us about being the active ingredients—in our homes and jobs and schools and neighborhoods—people who live out what we believe not just here in church, but everywhere we go?
First, Jeremiah’s investment strategy teaches us that the culture can’t prevent us from living lives of faith. On the surface it might seem like a bad investment, but if God is who he says he is, then the call on our lives is to live and love and spend and invest as if it’s true.
Second, we’re meant to live our faith publicly—where the culture can see us. This is about getting out in our neighborhoods and living our lives according to the values of the Kingdom. This is not about standing in front of our houses and preaching on a soap box.
This is meant to be much louder than that.
It’s not just words, but how we live our lives—lives of integrity and conviction, lives that model personal morality and a commitment to social justice, lives that our aware and concerned about the sufferings of people less fortunate than we are.
Finally, God calls us to live faithful lives as an act of hope—a demonstration of God’s own faithfulness to his promises. God calls us to this life, even when it feels uncomfortable to us.
I’ve been reading a book called The Monkey and the Fish, about what it means to be faithful Christians in a culture that doesn’t know what to make of us anymore. The author talks about how uncomfortable it can be—and how important that discomfort is as we learn to live as Christ’s disciples. He writes:
‘Living a life of [faithful] discomfort means venturing into places we don’t feel like going, doing things we don’t wish to do, being with people we don’t feel comfortable being with, serving them, loving them, helping them—all of which demonstrates a not-of-this-world brand of love that is irresistible to all people in all places.’
Being active ingredients in our communities isn’t always going to be comfortable, but it’s an effective way to sharing the love and mercy we’ve received from Christ with other people. It’s the best way to share that ‘not-of-this-world brand of love that is irresistible to all people in all places.’
My prayer for us, as we move through this season of learning what it means to be missional people in a missional church—my prayer for us is that we’ll embrace the discomfort of being Jesus followers in a culture that doesn’t always understand what that means—that we’ll invest in our communities wherever we are—however long we’ll be there—as a way of sharing the blessings God has already shared with us. Amen?
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