What Joseph Bazalgette Teaches Us About Grace

(This message is one in a series titled "20 Questions With Jesus.")

John 21:15-17

We’ve all played some variation of 20 Questions before. One person thinks of a person or a thing and the rest have 20 questions to guess what it is. It’s usually a game we play to kill time on a long journey.

Jesus asked a lot of questions, too. We talk a lot about the sermons of Jesus, or his parables, or the conversations he had with his disciples. This is different from that. Jesus often used questions to help people understand what he was about—or to get people to wrestle with something he taught—or to prompt some kind of action that would show that his followers were learning how to live out what he was teaching.

We’re almost done with this series—just a few more weeks to go. This hasn’t been a game we play just to kill time on a long drive. The goal has been to give us some insight into who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from us…as we are each on our own journey of faith and growth and discovery.

Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are theological—they get at something we’re supposed to know about him and his purposes.

Sometimes the questions are ethical—they get at what we’re supposed to do or how we’re called to live.

Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are confrontational—they force us to see something to change or confess or leave behind. That’s the kind of question we have in front of us today.

But before we get to the text…

If you love history, living in London is like a smorgasbord. Everywhere you look you see some monument, some detail about this amazing place, some story that inspires curiosity and study. OK, maybe that’s just me.

The other day I was flipping through a book about London when I came across an event called “The Great Stink of 1858.” Since there is a part of me that is an unreconstructed middle school boy, I had to read what this was about.

Basically, the growth of London during the 19th century led to a massive sewage problem that cause several outbreaks of cholera. Most scientists back then believed that cholera was spread through the air—through the smell they called “miasma.” In an attempt to get rid of the odor the government required all cesspits to be drained and allowed to run into the River Thames. Needless to say, this not only killed anything in the river that wasn’t already dead, but it also created an enormous problem of, well, a great stink.

Worse, the resulting outbreaks of disease killed tens of thousands of Londoners, and threatened to make the city unlivable.

Enter Joseph Bazalgette. He was an engineer who had worked on London’s train system, and he was chosen to solve the problem. His plan, based on the idea that cholera was spread by smell, was to build a sewer system that would carry London’s crud far beyond the city limits so they wouldn’t have to smell it anymore.

When planning the network he took the densest estimated population, gave every person the most generous allowance of sewage production and came up with a diameter of pipe needed. He then said 'Well, we're only going to do this once and there's always the unforeseen.' and doubled the diameter to be used. As a result, the massive pipes he build in the mid-1800s are still in use today—still big enough to take every bit of London’s waste product and deliver it to where it can be treated.

Now what Bazalgette and his partners didn’t know was that cholera wasn’t spread through odor at all, but through contaminated water supply. But by taking London’s sewage away from the sources of drinking water, he was able to eradicate cholera from the entire region.

When 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.”
Again 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.”
The 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.

This is such a powerful moment in Jesus’ ministry. Peter, who had denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion, is cornered by his master and forced to re-commit himself to the gospel. John the gospel writer knows exactly what he’s doing here. His readers know about Peter’s denial, but they also would know him later as the leader of the church. It was crucial to include this event in order to show that Peter had been restored to his place as a leader in the early church.

But those are just the details. This is also an enormously emotional story. Peter, in front of his friends and partners, has to confront his sin and answer the resurrected Christ. He answers the first time, but Jesus keeps going. You have to wonder at this point if Peter thought Jesus was going to ask him this question all day. In the end it’s just the three times—one for each denial—and by the third time Peter was feeling uncomfortable and wounded by the questions.

This is really a story about grace, about God’s freedom to forgive anyone for anything—about his power to clean up any mess no matter what kind of smell it gives off.

Maybe that’s what Joseph Bazalgette and the London sewerage system teaches us about the grace of Jesus Christ. The real achievement of Bazalgette’s design is that it was big enough to dispose of whatever crap London could throw at it for more than 150 years…and counting.

God’s grace is like that, too. What Jesus reveals to us in his interrogation of Peter is the depths and lengths and limitless nature of his grace toward us.

This passage helps us understand the capacity of God’s grace to get rid of the junk in our lives—the waste product that keeps us from becoming healthy people—whatever it is that keeps us from functioning sometimes as a healthy church.

Jesus looks Peter in the eye and asks “Do you love me?” over and over again. “Do you love me?”

It sounds so simple, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is one of the easy questions in our series.

Jesus looks Peter in the eye and asks “Do you love me?”, and in one single question he makes Peter decide if he wants to give his life as a disciple or if he wants to remain broken and lukewarm on the outside.

The key to these questions is found in the answers Peter gives.

Yes, Lord, you know that I do.

Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

Lord you know everything—you know that I love you.

It’s Peter’s answers that open the door for Christ’s cleansing, restoring grace. It’s Peter’s confession that he loves Jesus with all his heart that makes his reconciliation and restoration possible.

In the end, Jesus looks at each one of us and asks us if we love him. He asks us again and again, even when it makes us uncomfortable—even if it hurts our feelings.

Jesus asks us if we love him, and if we do then we answer as Peter did: Yes, Lord, you know that we do. Yes, Lord, you know that we love you. Lord you know everything—you know that we love you.

And if that’s true, then Christ’s grace is sufficient to handle anything we need to get rid of in order to move ahead.

And if that’s true, then we enter into a new way of living—a life of answering God’s invitation to serve and love and sacrifice as he calls us to do. That’s what we’re celebrating on this very special Sunday. [Note: On this Sunday we celebrated four baptisms, welcomed a group of new members, and commissioned a short-term mission team for trip to Israel.]

Some have heard the call to be baptized and commit themselves to becoming disciples of Jesus Christ.

Others have taken the next step and come for membership, publicly professing their faith in Christ and their commitment to this church.

In a moment a group of people will stand up here and ask for your prayers as they hear God’s call to serve on a short-term mission project in Israel.

All of these are examples of an answer to the “Do you love me?” question that Jesus asks all of us.

But the power of the question isn’t really just the asking of it. The real power of this question is unleashed when we answer as Peter did: Yes, Lord, you know that we love you. Lord you know everything—you know that we love you.

That simple response of acknowledging that we know who we are and whose we are releases a power that we can barely begin to understand.

The grace that God offers through Jesus Christ is the lifeblood of this church and of every person who wants to live as a disciple. It is through that grace that we are transformed into the people who will accomplish God’s work in this place.

Chris Wright, the worldwide director of John Stott Ministries, said: “I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.”

We become the people God wants for his mission when we decide to live differently because of our love for Jesus Christ.

The question is on the table: Do you love him? All that’s left is to give your answer.

Our hymn of response today is the song of people who have answered Jesus as Peter did. As we prepare to commission our Holy Land team, let’s stand and sing together, “Here I Am, Lord.”

Lent Day 31

I’m having a hard time with Lent this year.

I want to be reflective and repentant—I want to prepare myself to experience the full joy and power of the Easter miracle—but instead I am anxious and tired and distracted. Some of that is for good reason. There are some challenging and important decisions to make, and some difficult processes to lead right now, and so I’m feeling the weight of my role these days.

But in other areas I’m surrounded by joyful and encouraging events in the ministries at our church. Kids are learning about Jesus in a meaningful way in our Sunday School, our men’s fellowship is growing together as we study and build friendships, three teams from our congregation are going out in service to Israel, Haiti and Romania, and this spring we have as many as 18 men and women coming for membership. I’m surrounded by these affirmations of our work, and yet it’s too easy to forget to pause and be thankful...or even simply to enjoy them.

Without trying to turn it into just another commodity or product, I’m aware that I what I want is to experience the full Lent moment right now. Maybe that’s what feels depleted or absent to me.

Henri Nouwen's reading for today says: "Life in the Spirit of Jesus is therefore a life in which Jesus' coming into the world—his incarnation, his death, and his resurrection—is lived out by those who have entered into the same obedient relationship to the Father which marked Jesus' own life."

Maybe the point is that I could not possibly feel less obedient right now.

I want to listen for God. I want to conform my life to the life of Christ (and not the other way around). I want to live in that “same obedient relationship to the Father which marked Jesus' own life.”

Maybe Lent is supposed to be this hard, and it just took me this long to realize it. What if the reflection and repentance that mark the season of Lent are meant to remind us that this life is not our own, that we are a purchased people, free and enslaved at the same time? What if these feelings are exactly the reminder I need—that we all need—of who we are and whose we are?

Nouwen’s prayer at the end of today’s reading includes these words:

Help me, Lord, to life a truthful life,
A life in which I am guided
Not by popularity, public opinion,
Current fashion, or convenient formulations,
But by a knowledge that comes from knowing you.

I want to live that truthful life. My prayer for myself and for you is that our lives will be guided by the knowledge that comes from being in the presence of God—knowledge that comes from knowing and being known by Jesus himself.

Just 11 days until Easter. God help us.

Radio2 Spot #2

Here's a link to today's Pause for Thought on The Vanessa Feltz program on BBC Radio2. I'm on at about the 46th minute, happily sandwiched between The Pretenders and Van Halen. The topic, given to me by the BBC, is spiritual health, in recognition of World Health Day this week. Enjoy!

On the Radio...

I was asked a while back to prepare some brief Christian reflections for the early morning drive-time program on BBC Radio2. They gave me topics, like the one for British Mothers' Day this week, and I recorded them about a month ago. The pieces will broadcast on six consecutive Tuesday mornings at 5:45am (UK time), and the first one went out yesterday.

If you missed it (I did. Please, 6:30 is early enough!), there's a link to the program here. In the time bar just drag the little doohicky to the 45-minute mark. I'm on just after Billy Joel sings "My Life."

Useful Junk

(This message is one in a series titled “20 Questions With Jesus.”)

Luke 14:34

We were in New York last Sunday and had a great time roaming around the Upper West Side—checking out the shops and enjoying a sunny day. We spent some time in a flea market on Columbus Avenue at 76th Street—it had great shops: everything from furniture to vintage photographs to clothes. My son Ian and I spent some time looking at a collection of artworks made from “found objects.” There were pieces of discarded things in box frames, arranged because they were similar or to tell some story or make a point. They were beautiful. Thimbles, toy soldiers, colored glass.

Now we know that “found objects” is another way of saying “junk,” right? The discarded junk Ian and I were looking at had been picked up and rearranged—the pieces had been redeemed and made into something new. You can’t do that with everything, but when it happens it’s a beautiful thing. That thought will help us wrestle with our text this morning.

We continue our series, 20 Questions with Jesus. We’ve all played some variation of 20 Questions before. One person thinks of a person or a thing and the rest have 20 questions to guess what it is. It’s usually a game we play to kill time on a long journey.

Jesus asked a lot of questions, too. We talk a lot about the sermons of Jesus, or his parables, or the conversations he had with his disciples. This is different from that. Jesus often used questions to help people understand what he was about—or to get people to wrestle with something he taught—or to prompt some kind of action that would show that his followers were learning how to live out what he was teaching.

Between now and Pentecost we’re playing 20 Questions with Jesus. This won’t be a game we play just to kill time on a long drive. The goal is to give us some insight into who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from us…as we are each on our own journey of faith and growth and discovery.

Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are theological—they get at something we’re supposed to know about him and his purposes.

Sometimes the questions are ethical—they get at what we’re supposed to do or how we’re called to live.

Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are confrontational—they force us to see something in our lives to change or confess or leave behind. That’s the kind of question we have in front of us today.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

I’ll confess that I don’t like this text very much—this isn’t one of my favorite questions that Jesus asks. It seems snarky and mean—maybe what I don’t like is that it seems so graceless and final.

The context helps a little. In Luke’s gospel this comes right after Jesus told a large crowd of people what it would cost them to be faithful disciples. It’s a hard passage. It talks about carrying the cross and being willing to leave our own families behind to follow Christ. It talks about counting the cost—about making sure we can finish what we start. It has a section that sounds like it comes from Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War, about considering the strength of your enemy before entering into battle.

See what I mean? This isn’t the easy stuff here. It’s about the hard choices—the total demands of Christian discipleship. And then it gets to our passage: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.”

It looks just slightly different in the way Matthew writes Jesus’ teaching about salt. In the Sermon on the Mount he talks about bad salt being trampled, which isn’t as violent as it sounds. Some salt in ancient times was so unstable as a compound that it would spoil. When it did it was used for paving—people walked on it or trampled it. It was still useful, even if it wasn’t useful as salt anymore.

Our passage starts with: “Salt is good.” We’ve talked before about how useful salt has been though history. It’s been a preservative and an antiseptic. It’s been an aphrodisiac and a rust-remover (there’s a joke there somewhere). In Roman times soldiers were paid in salt, which where we get the word: salary. Mostly, though, we know it as a flavoring. Serving salted vegetables is where we get the word “salad” from.

The rabbis in Jesus’ day talked about Israel as flavorless salt, meaning that it wasn’t fulfilling its end of the covenant God made with Abraham—Israel was meant to be a source of blessing to all the nations. Ancient rabbis, when they wanted to be critical of the way God’s people failed in their calling, described Israel as “insipid salt,” salt which had lost or given up its ability to be salt.

That’s part of the background for our text today. Salt is good, Jesus says, but if it loses its flavor how can you make it salty again? The simple answer is that you don’t –it just gets tossed out. That’s the part that sounds hopeless to me—it sounds like everything is somehow disposable when it fails us or disappoints us. It’s hopeless on its own, if we read it outside what we know about the rest of Jesus’ teaching—outside of the promise Jesus offers to make “all things new.”

Because we all know that things wear out. We buy clothes and shoes and other things, and enjoy them while they’re useful, and then they get replaced. Sometimes we can find new uses for things—we can reshape them or remake them into something different or beautiful—we can make them useful again in some way.

Sometimes that process can be miraculous.

It’s hard to imagine, but there are over 3.5 billion mobile phones in active use today. 290 million in the US and 75 million in the UK—in this country there are more mobile phones in use than there are people. That doesn’t account for the billion and a half unused phones sitting in drawers or tossed in the trash. Those phones have been set aside—they’re essentially high-tech junk.

Hold that thought for a moment.

According to the World Health Organization, each year 300 to 500 million people develop malaria and 1.5 to 3 million–mostly children–die. A simple lab test of blood could diagnose and lead to treatment for many of these patients, but many have no access to health facilities with the right lab equipment. Measuring the shape of blood cells is a key way to diagnose anemia, tuberculosis and malaria—three killers in the developing world. Part of the problem is that there aren’t nearly enough microscopes to handle all the tests.

Aydogan Ozcan is a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. He developed a little tool that can take a blood sample and send its image—in the form of a hologram—to a hospital or a lab…using the camera function in old mobile phones. They take the shapes of the blood cells and reconstruct them for doctors into images they would see in a microscope.

The potential for lifesaving is staggering. Remember that there are a billion or more phones that have been set aside as junk, and that each year 300 to 500 million people develop malaria and 1.5 to 3 million–mostly children–die.

The best part of the story—the miraculous part, really—is that it costs about 10 dollars per phone—about six quid—10 dollars to turn an unused, junked mobile phone into a lifesaving diagnostic tool.

The good news in the hard question Jesus asks us today is that it’s not the end of the story. This passage has to be read alongside God’s redeeming work that begins in the Garden and continues through to today. This text has to be read with the Cross in our sights—Christ’s transforming work for his creation and all people. The good news is that whatever happens—whatever changes come our way—God is working and reshaping and creating, even in the midst of our deepest losses.

Maybe we’re all in the process of becoming useful junk. Maybe we’re all “found objects” like the ones I saw with Ian last week. Maybe the point of the gospel is that all of us can be reclaimed and redeemed and transformed into something useful and beautiful. The key isn’t to focus on what might be lost. The key is to rejoice when we’re found and remade by the one who loves us and calls us to love and serve in his name.

The hope in this hopeless question that Jesus asks is found in the rest of the gospel. I’ve been reading through Henri Nouwen’s devotional during this season of Lent, and in yesterday’s pages he talked about the Prodigal Son, and how happy the father was when he came home. Remember how the dad kissed his son and told him that he loved him over and over again? Nouwen writes:

“This is the voice that Jesus wants us to hear. It is the voice that calls us always to return to the one who has created us in love, and wants to re-create us in his mercy.”

My prayer for all of us is that we’ll listen for God’s voice and his mercy, as he re-creates us into the people and the church he calls us to be. Amen.

Lent: An Invitation to Prayer?

So the first week of Lent comes to a close. How is it going for you?

We’re on vacation this week, visiting Washington, DC and some friends around this part of the country—more on that in a later post. The season of Lent, with its reflection and repentance and refocus on the life of discipleship—everything that makes up this time of the church year is meant to turn our eyes toward God. How is that going?

Part of how we connect to God is through prayer. Now I know it’s part of my calling to help people in their life of prayer, but it’s one area in my ministry where I feel particularly unskilled and, well, out of my depth. I’ve prayed—I’ve prayed a lot in my time as a Christian. Some of the prayers were regular daily sort of check-ins, and others were those prayers of desperation that we’ve all shouted at one time or another. Most of my prayers loitered somewhere in between those two extremes, and so here we are.

Rodney Clapp draws a distinction in a recent article in Christian Century, between two kinds of prayer, faithful and superstitious. When we link certain kinds or quantities of prayer somehow with God’s ability to act, we’re in the realm of superstition and magic. Faithful prayer differs from that, Clapp writes, saying that it “differs from superstition in that it does not presume control. It petitions God, the power at the center of all that is, while it does not presume on God’s answer or response. Faithful prayer is habitual prayer, prayer that does not only occur in crisis and does not end when a crisis is resolved. Faithful prayer is part and parcel of an ongoing relationship, a lifelong conversation, a prolonged attempt not to control God but to discern God’s presence and activity in all that befalls us.”

In Henri Nouwen’s Show Me the Way, he writes this as a part of today’s meditation: “The crisis of our prayer life is that our mind may be filled with ideas of God while our heart remains far from him.”

Is that helpful to you or just another way of saying we don’t do this very well?

I’m going to choose to be encouraged by this. In the spirit of the Lent season I want to be a part of that ongoing relationship Clapp talks about—that conversation that God is inviting me into. I want my heart to warm with the experience of God, even as I study and learn and reflect on what I try to know.

As we move into a second week of this beautiful, challenging season, let me invite you to start your own conversation with God. Not as a shopping list of needs and wants, and not as an act of superstition—this invitation is to a lifelong relationship, a process of learning to discern God’s presence and activity in everything we do.

One way to get started is to take what we call the Lent Challenge. Say the Lord's Prayer five times each day between now and Easter. If your prayer life is stuck or cold, this is a great way to remember why and how we connect to God. Try it...you won't be sorry.

Amen?

Lent Blues (Already?)

Here I am at the first day after Ash Wednesday, and already I’m feeling as though I’ve lost any momentum for Lent. There are challenges at work that make me feel less than spiritually switched on, my family is preparing for a vacation even though I can’t imagine being away right now, and then there’s my own heart, which feels a little bruised and resistant to introspection.

How do I slow down and take hold what Lent is offering?

Each year I struggle to read through Henri Nouwen’s Lent reader, Show Me the Way. Today’s entry is forcing me to re-think my expectations of what this time of the year means and teaches. I hear the words “reflection” and “repentance” and I promptly give in to the temptation to make Lent about me—about my sin, my needs, my struggle to live a life of hope. I step into Lent and feel as though I’ve simply given my self-absorption a new, fancier name…a spiritual, church-sanctioned name, no less.

See what I mean about losing steam for Lent on the very first day?

The first sentence of Nouwen’s reading for today says: “A life of faith is a life of gratitude—it means a life in which I am willing to experience my complete dependence upon God and to praise and think him unceasingly for the gift of being.”

Oh, boy.

The very first line pierces me to the heart. Is my life of faith a life of gratitude? In my living and praying and studying and working and loving—in all of that, am I aware that it all revolves around being thankful to God?

The rest of the sentence helps me make sense out of where I want to be this season. I really am grateful to God for my life. I’m thankful for my wife and my step-daughter and my son. I'm amazed at the friends and colleagues God has given me. I still wake up most mornings a little surprised that I get to be the pastor of a church, a place that I love with people who are teaching me far more than I’ll ever be able to give back. I really am thankful, when I take the time to think about it, that God’s grace reaches into the darkest parts of my life, turns the light on and says, “I think we can do something with this mess.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

The reminder today, as we look ahead to the Lenten season, is to be grateful to God for the gift of our very being. Whatever prompts you to “praise and thank him unceasingly,” I encourage you to make that the focus of the time between now and Easter. Whatever else you might do during this season of Lent, remember to pause and be thankful as often as you can.

We might just survive these 40 days after all.

Welcome to Lent

This is my favorite introduction to the season of Lent, taken from a book by Henri Nouwen called Show me the Way. Lent is a hard season for us because it represents a call to repentance, reflection and a handful of other things we’re not so good at. Still, taking 40 days or so to think about Christ’s work in our lives before we dive into the happy hymns and chocolate bunnies of Easter can’t be a bad thing. Here’s the quote:

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“God’s mercy is greater than our sins.

There is an awareness of sin that does not lead to God but to self-preoccupation. Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and failures and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt. It is the guilt that says: ‘I am too sinful to deserve God’s mercy.’ It is the guilt that leads to introspection instead of directing our eyes to God. It is the guilt that has become an idol and therefore a form of pride.

Lent is the time to break down this idol and to direct our attention to our loving Lord. The question is: ‘Are we like Judas, who was so overcome by his sin that he could not believe in God’s mercy any longer and hanged himself, or are we like Peter who returned to his Lord with repentance and cried bitterly for his sins?’

The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God’s mercy.”
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Isn’t that beautiful and haunting and challenging all at the same time? I tend to think so much of my own failures that I forget that my sin is not the point. God’s grace, given to us through Jesus Christ, is the true point of my life’s story, and yours...and yours...and yours.

We live out that struggle between the seasons on a daily basis, between the cold and death of winter and the restored and rediscovered life of spring. Between the awareness of just how far we stray from God, and the shock at what he has accomplished in order to draw us near. Lent is our time to pause and take notice of what is happening around us and in us. It’s not just for self-reflection, though that’s a key part of it. Lent is a time to sharpen our focus on Christ and his world, on the needs of people around us, on the gifts we’ve been given to meet those needs, and to discover all over again the hope that we have because of the Easter miracle.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Easter will come, but for now we try to re-create the sense of conviction that being in God’s presence prompts in each one of us. To repent and ask for forgiveness. And to anticipate that day when life wins the battle once and for all. Welcome to Lent.

A Question on the Table

(This is the first in a series of messages titled "Twenty Questions With Jesus.")

Mark 8:27-30

When I was a kid we used to play Twenty Questions on road trips. You know how the game goes—one person thinks of something, usually animal, mineral or vegetable, and the rest have twenty yes or no questions to try to figure out what the thing is. My sisters and I used to play it (in-between choruses of "You Are My Sunshine"), and now we play it with Ian.

Twenty Questions is usually a game we play to pass the time on a long journey. Today we’re going to turn that around a little and begin a long journey together. We’re going to spend the next twenty weeks looking at selected questions that Jesus asked during his ministry—there are actually hundreds of them recorded in the Bible.

We talk a lot about the sermons of Jesus, or his parables, or the conversations he had with his disciples. This is a little different from that. Jesus often used questions to help people understand what he was about—or to get people to wrestle with something he taught—or to prompt some kind of action that would show that his followers were learning how to live out what he was teaching.

Between now and Pentecost we’re going to play Twenty Questions with Jesus. But this won’t be a game we play just to kill time on a long drive. The goal is to give us some insight into who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from us…as we are each on our own journey of faith and growth and discovery.

Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are theological—they get at something we’re supposed to know about him and his purposes.

Sometimes the questions are ethical—they get at what we’re supposed to do or how we’re called to live.

Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are confrontational—they force us to see something to change or confess or leave behind.

The most important of the questions do all of the above, like the one we’re starting with today.

27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

This story appears in almost the exact same form in Matthew, Mark and Luke—the gospels that tell the story of Jesus as a story without very much interpretation. First Jesus asks the disciples who the crowds say that he is, and then he turns the question on the Twelve. Jesus asks them this question to see where they are in understanding his ministry, and then almost immediately he tells them that he’s going to have to die to make his point—to accomplish the mission that he came to do. He's not ready for this story to be spread just yet, so he asks them to keep it secret for just a little while longer.

The point of the passage rests on these questions. “Who do the people say that I am?” “Who do you say that I am?”

Questions are crucial to growing into mature faith. Questions are the ways we learn and struggle and come to understand things. I have all kinds of questions. They’re the same ones we all have.

Why is there so much suffering in the world?
What about other religions?
What really happens when we die?

I have all kinds of questions.

But in the end my ability to understand the responses God might offer to any of my questions—my ability to understand God’s answers is dependent on my answer to this big fat enchilada of a question that Jesus asks all of us:

“Who do you say that I am?”

Two things to notice about this question:

Part of this is theological: Who is Jesus? There are the textbook answers: Son of God; Savior of the world; prince of peace—you’ve probably heard those before. Jesus himself said “I am the way, the truth and the life—no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Lots of people don’t want to wrestle with that one—with what Jesus actually says about himself, and so they rely completely on their own feelings about who Jesus is…to them. The danger in relying only on our feelings or thoughts about Jesus is that he becomes a savior in our own image, instead of the other way around.

I have a Jesus Action Figure with me this morning. Have you seen one of these? It comes with “poseable arms and a gliding action.” I can do a lot of things with this little toy, but it doesn’t ask anything of me—it doesn’t ask me any questions—it doesn’t demand anything from my life. As a matter of fact this Jesus Action Figure is completely dependent on me for it to do anything. That’s not the Jesus of the Scriptures.

When Jesus asks us “Who do you say that I am,” he’s asking “Just how much of my teaching are you willing accept—to wrestle with and believe. And so part of this question is theological.

But I think that the biggest part of this question is missional: Notice that he doesn’t say: “Who do you think that I am…when no one’s looking—when you’re hidden away?” This is not just a question about belief—this is a question about our habits and practices as followers of Christ. Who do you say that I am? Who do you say that to? Maybe the better question is: Do you ever say anything about who I am to people? Do you say anything about me?

I’ve been reading Stan Guthrie’s new book called All That Jesus Asks. It’s the new addition to the recommended reading list in the bulletin. In one chapter he’s talking about the miracles of Jesus—the healings and battles with the spiritual realm—and he says this:

“In these events we see that Jesus, unlike the religious action figures sold at Wal-Mart, is not infinitely bendable, able to assume whatever postmodern pose we give him. He’s not the pious, otherworldly, slightly effeminate savior we see in so much religious art. No, his hands are rough, even cracked, from hard work. He’s stared evil and suffering in the face, seized them by the scruff of the neck, and lived to tell about it.”

As we celebrate Communion together today, we have the usual bread and cup, but today there’s also a question on that Table. Jesus invites us to come and share in this meal and to remember who he is and what he’s done for us. Jesus invites us to be together with him, but he also asks this question: “Who do you say that I am?”

We may have different answers to that question right now, but we can’t really get anywhere unless we’re willing to face it honestly, with all our doubts and struggles and questions.

As we come to the Table, my prayer for us is that we’ll commit ourselves to this journey of twenty questions—that we’ll enter into a time of prayer and study and reflection—that we’ll be ready when someone else asks us who we say Jesus is—that we’ll have an answer that introduces that person to the one who came and lived and loved and stared evil and suffering in the face and lived to tell the tale.

Let’s pray together.

A Big Hiatus!

Hi All,

It's not your imagination! This page has been dormant for a few months now. I've been working a lot through the holidays, and when I get a chance to go online it's usually to update my Facebook page. I'm not giving up on the blog, just taking some time away to rethink what this page ought to be. Stay tuned.

John

More Than We Can Imagine

(This message is one in a series on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians titled, 'Growing Together'.)

Stewardship Sunday

Ephesians 3:14-21

We continue our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’ Why Ephesians? I’ll put the quote we’ve been reading into my own words: Ephesians gives us a peek at the way God’s Spirit takes lives like ours and turns them into his church. That sums it up pretty well.

So I’ve been telling the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile, but now I can’t do that anymore. Someone was poking fun at me this week, saying that the whole structure of this series is obsolete now that the miners have been rescued. Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I can’t keep using the story.

The images we saw late Tuesday night and all day Wednesday into early Thursday morning—I caught myself laughing and crying and wondering how it all went so well. As we watched those men come out of that capsule, so many of them prayed and thanked God for making it back to the surface. And I know, everyone would say that if they’d been through the same ordeal. But did you notice that most of these guys talked about their prayers—talked about their relationships to Jesus Christ as if they’d known him before they went in the hole.

That’s important, because otherwise it would be too easy to discount the faith of the miners as foxhole faith. You know the saying: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Well the miners we watched on our TV screens this week were buried a lot deeper than any foxhole, and their faith was deeper, too.

We’re studying Paul’s letter to the Ephesians because it’s designed to help churches grow—to helm them grow in depth of faith and in service to each other and the world. We’re talking about growing together, and this journey through Ephesians is one of the ways we can do that.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Last week Stephanie talked about the first half of this chapter. Paul starts in the first verse sounding like he’s about to pray, then he interrupts himself with a description of how God has spoken through him and worked through him to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the world. In our passage this morning Paul picks up the prayer right where he left off.

And how does Paul, leading apostle of the early church, writer of most of the letters in the New Testament, rabbi of rabbis, Pharisee of Pharisee—how does big time Paul start his description of how he prays for the Ephesians?

On his knees.

Paul kneels and begins to pray one of the richest, most generous prayers in the entire Bible.

He prays for God to strengthen his church. That’s a good reminder for us: this is God’s church, not ours; God is our source of power.

He prays that Christ will live in and through the people of the church. Churches can easily slide into functioning as just another kind of human organization, like a school or charity or social club. The point here is that Christ—and all that that name means for us—Christ is who we follow, and it’s in Christ’s name that we serve.

He prays that the Ephesians will begin to grasp how much Christ loves them. This can be an incredibly difficult thing to swallow. After working in different kinds of ministries for 25 years or so, one of the hardest things I’ve seen people wrestle with is truly believing that God loves them no matter what, warts and all.

He prays that they’ll never forget that Christ’s love is the most important thing they’ll ever know. Now that one is a challenge, too. This is a pretty well-educated and successful crowd. I look out there and I can see some Harvards and Princetons and Penns—I can see folks who studied at great public universities, and people with advanced degrees in all kinds of subjects from business to science to the humanities.

No matter what you may think you know, Paul says here, it’s dwarfed by this one single thing—this one crucial data point: Jesus loves you. Jesus the Messiah, loves you.

Karl Barth was one of the giants in the world of theology in the 20th century. Late in his career he was giving a lecture and one of the students there asked him to describe his most important conclusion from a lifetime of studying the Scriptures. He paused for a moment, then sang the song: ‘Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.’

Allowing ourselves to be embraced fully by the love of Jesus is the most important thing any of us will ever know.

In the end Paul prays that the Ephesians—that the church—will be filled to the very top with the fullness of God. That everything we do or say or give or create will somehow reflect the God who made us and redeems us and loves us in spite of what we might do—who loves us often times in spite of who we’ve become.

This is an extravagant prayer—it’s a prayer that’s meant to show us and remind us of how mind-blowingly generous God has been to us—how generous he wants to be to his church.

Eugene Peterson tells the story of an American family that adopted a Haitian girl who had been orphaned in an accident. They brought her to their home—there were already two teenage boys in the family—they brought her home and when they sat down to their first dinner together, the parents noticed something crucial. As the boys tore through their meals and devoured seconds and thirds of everything on the table, the little girl looked sad and worried.

The mother guessed correctly that the new addition to the family thought that this might be all the food there was, and so she took her by the hand and led her around the kitchen. She opened the fridge to show her that there would be plenty of food for the next day. She opened the bread drawer to show that there were more loaves. She showed her the pantry where there were mounds of food for the coming days and weeks.

What the mom did was show her little girl the abundance of what was available to her—that she would never be hungry again, even if she did have to share meals with her growing brothers.

When God adopts us into his family through Jesus Christ, and when the Holy Spirit steps in to shape us into his church—as all of that happens, Paul takes us by the hand in this prayer—he takes us around to show us how much great stuff is there for us to enjoy. He shows us the abundance of God’s grace and provision, of love and mercy for us. “I pray that you would be able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”

But we know that prayer can be a challenge for us sometimes. The day after the miners came out of that hole in Chile, Mark Galli, the editor of Christianity Today, wrote a challenging article on prayer that got right to the heart of what bothers us most about bringing our concerns before God. Mark’s problem is what to make of all the times we pray for things—for healing, for peace, for good to win over evil once in a while—we pray for things that don’t go the way we ask. What does that mean for us as we pray?

“First, we are to ask God for things that are important to us, no matter how we feel about God or prayer or the thing being prayed for. Second, once we announce our desire to God, it’s his job to deal with it. Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires. It’s putting what we desire into the hands of a loving God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.”

Our passage today ends with a benediction. This one might be familiar to many of you—in the church where I grew up this was the benediction almost every Sunday.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

It’s a challenge to us to open our eyes and see that to aim too low is to miss what God has in store for us—what God is prepared to give us—what God wants to do in us and through us.

C.S. Lewis wrote about this tendency that people have of underestimating what God has to share with us. He writes:

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

It’s this benediction that informs our giving and pledging as we move into our season of talking about stewardship. It’s the benediction that reminds us that our participation is not about fueling God’s work in this church and in the world. Our giving is our way of joining into the work that God is already doing—the places where God’s spirit is already active. As generous as this congregation can be, if it all depended on our giving we’d be in serious trouble.

But that’s not how the story goes. What we do here is part of God’s work that is more than we could ever imagine. We join in as a privilege, not a chore—as a gift and not just another bill to pay. As we continue to talk about how Paul’s letter to the Ephesians helps us grow together, and as we add to that our own conversation about the ministry of this church, keep this last verse in your mind:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!

Amen.

Radical Reassembly

(This message is one in a series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians titled, 'Growing Together'.)

Ephesians 2:14-22

We continue our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’ Why Ephesians? When we started we read this quote: “We immerse ourselves in Ephesians to acquire a clean, uncluttered imagination of the ways and means by which the Holy Spirit forms church out of just such lives as ours.” That sums it up pretty well.

I’ve been telling the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile. They’ve been there for 60 days now, trapped 2300 feet underground, and it looks as though they won’t be rescued for another month. Remember that when the miners were found they’d already organized themselves into teams—they were sharing regular rations, they sleep and exercise and keep watch over each other in shifts. Most of this wasn’t part of their standard procedures. Most of this was handed down informally from grandfather to father to son—they’ve gone through so many tragic mining events that they’ve learned how to be ready—how to take care of each other and live.

That’s how we want to be here in this church.

What we learn from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a lot like what we can learn from those miners in Chile. Their skill and commitment, their willingness to stay together and trust each other—none of that happened by accident. It worked because they studied and remembered and practiced what to do when disasters strike. When that mine caved in no one had to tell them that they needed to look out for one another—to take care of each other. They’d been getting ready all along.

That’s what we’re going to do.

As we work our way through Ephesians we’re going to be honest about life and faith and the world, and we’re going to see how this important book of the Bible helps us become more a more mature church—a church family that’s ready for anything. Too often churches forget that part of our job is to help people express and share and live their faith beyond the walls of this place—in the other 167 hours of the week.

I want to take that part of the church’s job more seriously.

Ephesians is going to provide road map for us as we grow individually and as a church family. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus has a lot to say about life and faith and how to live in a world that doesn’t always understand who we are. Today’s passage is an important part of that.

14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Some things to know about this text:

Look how active Jesus is in this passage. There are nine verbs to describe all that God has done through Jesus to grow us into a faithful church. Jesus is our peace, he made us one, he broke down the wall of hostility, he abolished the law, he created a new humanity, he made peace, he reconciled, he put hostility to death, and he proclaimed peace. Whatever else we learn from this passage about the way God interacts with us, we should at least be aware that he is active, that he’s busy, that he isn’t just sitting back and watching what his people do without getting involved.

Paul says that Christ ‘himself is our peace.’ Last year we spent a lot of time talking about the idea of shalom. In the Old Testament shalom has a broad range of meanings. It can refer to the communal well-being of the nation, or physical health, or a sense of contentedness or happiness in relationships. It often describes a state of completion and wholeness. One writer called it ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ But most often it gets translated simply as ‘peace.’

When Paul calls Jesus our peace, he’s saying that in his life and ministry, through his teachings and healings, in his death and resurrection—through the work of Christ we’ve been offered a chance to experience the shalom we were meant to know—to live the life we were meant to live.

Paul says as much in the next lines: ‘Christ’s purpose was to create one person out of two—unity out of division—by reconciling us through his cross. That’s the core of the good news of the gospel right there—that whatever separates us from God or from each other or from the earth—that everything that divides us is somehow healed and reconciled through Jesus Christ.

But we’re still kept apart by what Paul calls hostility—the ‘dividing wall of hostility.’ Now that phrase in itself packs a pretty good punch. The dividing wall of hostility could describe all kinds of things—racial hatreds, the grudges that keep some countries fighting forever or at least ready to go to war. It could describe the way that different kinds of abuse make trusting another person seem impossible. A dividing wall of hostility could describe the way we interact with anyone who’s wounded us in some way.

Paul’s readers might have thought of those things, but more likely they knew about the wall in the Temple in Jerusalem that was meant to separate Jews from Gentiles. The Temple was the holiest place in the world for Jews. It represented their history, their present faithfulness, and also their hope for a Messiah and a restored kingdom. The Temple was one place where even the Romans didn’t intrude, and where the priests and leaders were allowed to make the rules.

On the wall in the Temple separating Jews from Gentiles there was an inscription that read:

“Let no foreigner enter within the partition and enclosure surrounding the temple. Whoever is arrested will himself be responsible for his death which will [soon] follow”

This was known as the ‘dividing wall of hostility.’ This is what was torn down through the ministry of Jesus the Messiah.

Listen to how Eugene Peterson translated this in The Message:

“Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to you insiders. He treated us as equals, and [in doing] so made us equals. Through his we both share the same Spirit, and have equal access to the Father.”

The point of all this is that we’ve been reassembled. We come to Christ with every single kind of brokenness—we come in pieces, but we’ve been put back together. It’s a radical form or reassembly—of being reconciled to God and to each other in ways that we didn’t think were possible—ways that aren’t humanly possible. We come in pieces, but we go with the peace that only Christ can offer.

What does all of this mean for us as we grow together as a church family?

First, part of growing together means focusing on what God has done for us individually. Whatever we’ve done that separated us from God—whatever sins we’ve committed or guilt that we carried—whatever brokenness we bring to him, he promises to heal and cleanse and restore. When people talk about coming to faith, this is what they mean: accepting the forgiveness and restoration that God offers us through Jesus Christ.

Second, growing together means just that: growing as a community that loves and sharpens and serves each other in peace and unity. Notice I said unity here and not uniformity. There’s a pretty important difference between those two. We don’t have to do all of this in the same way, by the same set pattern. But we are called to work and grow together as people who have been taught and empowered to live in community by God’s Holy Spirit.

And finally, growing together means that we take how we’ve been restored and made into a community—we take the way God has worked in our lives and we turn it outward, sharing it with our neighbors, strangers on the street, and the rest of the world. Growing together as a church community means going into those places where walls of hostility still separate and oppress people, and working to tear those walls down.

We come to Communion with the same expectations that brought faithful Jews to the Temple in Jerusalem. We come remembering what God has done in our lives through Jesus the Messiah, and how our lives have been transformed and restored to the shalom we were made for. We also come with our eyes open to what God is doing today—to the blessings we receive and the work we’re called to do together as his church.

Finally, we come because God has made promises to us. We come as people of hope—not some pie-in-the-sky dreaming about clouds and wings and harps, but a real-world hope based on the promises Jesus made to come back and make all things new. In Communion we share the past, present and future of our faith. We invite you to come to the Table this morning.

Grace Changes Everything

(This message is one in a series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians titled, 'Growing Together.')

Ephesians 2:1-10

We continue our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’

Why Ephesians? When we started we read this quote: “We immerse ourselves in Ephesians to acquire a clean, uncluttered imagination of the ways and means by which the Holy Spirit forms church out of just such lives as ours.” That about sums it up.

Last week I told the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile. Their part of the mine caved in and for the last 50 days or so they’ve been trapped a half-mile underground. It took 17 days for the rescue teams to locate where they were trapped, and the task of bringing them to the surface is expected to go into November.

Remember that when the miners were found they’d already organized themselves into teams—they were sharing regular rations, they sleep and exercise and keep watch over each other in shifts. Most of this isn’t part of their standard procedures. Most of this is handed down informally from grandfather to father to son—they’ve gone through so many tragic mining events that they’ve learned how to be ready—how to take care of each other and live.

That’s how we want to be here in this church.

What we learn from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a lot like what we can learn from those miners in Chile. Their skill and commitment, their willingness to stay together and trust each other—none of that happened by accident. It worked because they studied and remembered and practiced what to do when disasters strike. When that mine caved in no one had to tell them that they needed to look out for one another—to take care of each other. They’d been getting ready all along.

That’s what we’re going to do.

As we work our way through Ephesians we’re going to be honest about life and faith and the world, and we’re going to see how this important book of the Bible helps us become more a more mature church—a church family that’s ready for anything.

Because we know that hard things are going to happen even as we grow in our lives as disciples. We also know that we struggle with believing that we can trust God at his word. And finally, we wonder where being a follower of Jesus fits in this crazy world. Too often churches forget that part of our job is to help people express and share and live their faith beyond the walls of this place—in the other 167 hours of the week.

I want to take that part of the church’s job more seriously.

Ephesians is going to provide road map for us as we grow individually and as a church family. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus has a lot to say about life and faith and how to live in a world that doesn’t always understand who we are. Today’s passage is an important part of that.

For years, every time I sat down to watch an American football game on TV, I saw the same thing. After a touchdown, the special teams would come out for the extra point. The offense and defense would get ready and the net would go up behind the goalposts to make it easier get the ball back after the kick. That’s when you’d see it. There was always some guy in the stands holding up a bright yellow sign that said Eph. 2:8.

I always wondered about that guy. What did he do for a living? Did any of his family or friends know that that’s how he spent his Sunday afternoons? What made him get a season ticket just so that he could have these few moments in each game when he might be seen on television holding up a Scripture reference that no one knew?

Our passage today includes that text of Scripture. Listen for God’s word to you.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

First, that is one abrupt start to a passage. We go from some pretty flowery theological language—even for Paul—in the first chapter to this. In the first chapter we hear “praise be to our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms,” and “I pray that your heart may be enlightened in order that you may experience the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” We go directly from that to ‘As for you’. Now when you hear a sentence that starts with As for you, you know it’s not going to go well for you. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…”

I remember reading this and thinking: “I’m going back to the first chapter…it was a lot more fun.” But that would be missing the point. We can’t get to the important idea of God’s grace unless we get a reminder of just how much we need that grace in our lives.

The crucial truth to take from this text is that our sin isn’t the end of our story.

In the very next breath Paul writes: “But because of his great love for us…” God’s love and mercy are the starting point of our new lives, and he gives us that gift before we even understand that we need it. We saw in Romans last year that “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us…” It’s like having a friend who starts to make up with you before you’ve even said you’re sorry.

And then we get to Grace.

“It is by grace you have been saved.” What is this grace we keep hearing about? The pastor I grew up with talked about it as ‘undeserved favor’, something we can’t earn or make for ourselves—something we have to receive from someone else.

Eugene Peterson puts it this way: “Grace originates in an act of God that is absolutely without precedent, the generous, sacrificial self-giving of Jesus that makes it possible for us to participate in resurrection maturity. But we can’t participate apart from a willed passivity, entering into and giving ourselves up to what has gone before us…Such passivity does not come easy to us. It must be acquired.” Uh-oh.

I’ll bet my lunch money for a week that none of us actively tries to acquire any kind of passivity, that none of us consciously trains our kids to be passive in any way. And yet, without learning how to give ourselves up to the presence and action of God from time to time, we miss a crucial part of the grace he offers us.

The bottom line is this: God’s graces changes our values and methods and priorities. God’s grace changes everything, because when we welcome and make room for God’s grace in our lives, we experience in a deeper way the life that he wants for us—the life that he gives for us. We find that our salvation doesn’t come from how much we earn or what we own or where our kids go to school. Our salvation comes only from God, and only in the form of a gift we don’t deserve.

The whole point of this text is wrapped up in the last three verses, including the one that guy held up on his sign: Ephesians 2:8-10. Listen to how all of that sounds in The Message.

“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”

What should we take away from this part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians?

First: Learning to be ready to take care of each other as a Christian community begins with believing that through Christ God has taken care of us first. Our text today reads chronologically: God acted, so we could become who we were meant to be, so we could go where we were meant to go.

Second: Through Christ we join God in the work he’s doing in this world. Churches tend to think we’re out there, leading the spread of the gospel in the world. But the best advice I ever got for how to become an effective church was this: “Look around and see what God is already doing in the world, and join in.” Being a maturing, growing church is about seeing where God is working, and throwing ourselves into the effort. I said last week that the point isn’t what the church ought to be doing, but what God wants to do through the people of the church.

That’s the best insurance against thinking that we’re the ones behind the good things that happen here. Last week we heard Zena and Natasha talk about their time on a mission trip with Habitat for Humanity. Pretty easy to feel good about that one—we helped pay their expenses, they went and did the work at the site—it would be easy to think that we were behind all of that. We weren’t. What happens in this place isn’t what we do, it’s what God does through us.

And finally: That work is done through the church—through the imperfect, broken, complaining, addicted, abused, jealous, greedy and forgiven people…people just like us. Understanding that grace changes everything begins with acknowledging that there are parts of our lives that we need God to enter in and change.

I could throw a list at you, but seriously, don’t we all know where we wish God would transform us into the people he made us to be? The key here is that we don’t have to be perfect, don’t have to be successful, don’t have to be rich, don’t have to send our kids to elite universities—we don’t have to measure up to have God use us in a meaningful way. The old saying goes like this, and it’s true: God doesn’t care about our ability, what he really wants is our availability.

When I think back on that guy at football games who held up the Eph. 2:8 sign, my first thought is probably similar to yours: ‘What a nut.’

But in the end all he was really trying to do was remind us of something very important, that it is by grace that we’re brought into God’s presence and kingdom—that it’s by grace that we have been saved. It’s by grace alone that we have anything in our lives that matters.

That reminder is the task of the church. That’s how we prepare for hard times—it’s how we learn to take care of each other when those hard times come—it’s how we fellowship and worship and grow in faith and serve the world. It is by grace that we learn to live the way we were meant to live all along.

This passage of Ephesians is the gateway to being a mature disciple of Jesus. Maybe the right response to the guy with the sign wasn’t to dismiss him. Maybe the right move was to buy a season ticket and sit next to him so he could hold a bigger sign.

My prayer for all of us is that we’ll grow into a church that announces to the world the good news that we find in that single verse from Ephesians.

“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

There is just one hymn that will measure up to the power of that passage of Scripture. Let’s stand and sing it together: ‘Amazing Grace.’

The Grand Scheme of Things

(This is the first in a series of messages on Paul's letter to the Ephesians titled 'Growing Together.')

Ephesians 1:1-10, 22-23

Today we begin a series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’ Why Ephesians? Check out the quote on the front of your bulletin.

“We immerse ourselves in Ephesians to acquire a clean, uncluttered imagination of the ways and means by which the Holy Spirit forms church out of just such lives as ours. This is the holy soil in which we have been planted, the conditions that make it possible for us to grow up in Christ, to become mature, ‘healthy in God, robust in love’”

That’s from Eugene Peterson, and it sums up as well as anything why we chose this letter for the autumn series of messages.

Last week I told the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile. If you haven’t heard about it, the men were hit by a cave-in and trapped underground. They survived in a shelter for 17 days before anyone even figured out where they were, and now they’ve been down there more than a month. The problem is that they’re 2,300 feet underground—that’s more than half a mile. They’re drilling new holes to reach them, but it looks like they won’t be rescued until late-November.

But the fascinating part of this story describes what the miners have been doing down there. Chile has a long history of mining—for gold and copper and nitrate and coal. It has a long tradition of mining, but not necessarily of mining safety.

When the miners were located they’d already organized themselves into teams—they have regular rations, they sleep and exercise and keep watch over each other in shifts. Most of this isn’t part of their health and safety procedures. Most of this is handed down informally from grandfather to father to son—they’ve gone through so many tragic mining events that they’ve learned how to be ready—how to take care of each other and live.

That’s how we want to be here in this church.

What we learn from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a lot like what we can learn from those miners in Chile. Their skill and commitment, their willingness to stay together and trust each other—none of that happened by accident. It worked because they studied and remembered and practiced what to do when disasters strike. When that mine caved in no one had to tell them that they needed to look out for one another—to take care of each other. They’d been getting ready all along.

That’s what we’re going to do.

Don’t worry—we’re not going to turn our worship hour into a disaster preparedness class or some kind of first aid training. Not exactly.

What we’re going to do over the next 10 weeks is be honest about life and faith and the world, and we’re going to see how this important book of the Bible helps us become more a more mature church—a church family that’s ready for anything.

Because we know that hard things are going to happen even as we grow in our lives as disciples. If we’re honest with each other we’ll admit that life doesn’t always go the way we planned—accidents happen, wounds happen, disasters can strike. You don’t have to be pessimistic to say that—you just have to be awake. Too often church families are safe places only when things are going well. When a loss or a struggle interrupts our lives we can feel like the church is the last place we want to be.

I want that to change.

We also know that we struggle with believing that we can trust God at his word. Everyone has struggles with faith—seriously, we’d be crazy not to wonder sometimes if this is all true. The problem isn’t doubt. The problem is that sometimes the church is the last place we want to share the doubts that we have, the ones that keep us from believing and worshipping and serving freely and joyfully.

I want that to change, too.

And finally, we wonder where being a follower of Jesus fits in this crazy world. On the one hand we read about the God Delusion, and on the other tens of thousands of faithful Catholics are lining the streets to see the Pope. On the one hand Mother Teresa sets a standard that none of us will ever reach, and then a minister in Florida makes us embarrassed to call ourselves Christian. Where do we fit as people who want to be disciples of Jesus Christ? Too often churches forget that part of our job is to help people express and share and live their faith beyond the walls of this place—in the other 167 hours of the week.

I want to take that part of the church’s job more seriously.

Ephesians is going to provide road map for us as we grow individually and as a church family. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus has a lot to say about life and faith and how to live in a world that doesn’t always understand who we are. Listen to how this letter starts.

Our text this morning is Ephesians 1:1-10.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

That’s a powerful and complicated statement about the grand scheme of things—the unseen reality of being an everyday follower of Christ. It’s an amazing hymn of who Christ is, what God did through him, and who we are because of it. Listen to how another translator brought it into English:

“How blessed is God and what a blessing he is! He’s the father of our master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down the earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love…Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments…And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making…It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we’re living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he’s working out in everything and everyone.”

Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in Ephesus to encourage them and remind them not to forget their first love. The letter is unique in that it’s the only one of Paul’s letters to churches that doesn’t address some serious problem. It’s not that the Ephesians had it all together—Paul is just writing one of his theological letters to a church that he liked.

In the end what we find in this passage and in the rest of Ephesians, is that the church somehow represents and gives shape to the resurrected Jesus. The one we celebrate on Easter Sunday is the one we represent in our lives and in this place every day, every week. In the words of Eugene Peterson, we gather as the church to ‘practice the resurrection’ in our lives and worship and service. He writes:

“Church is an appointed gathering of named people in a world in which death gets all the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilization, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end. Death by war, death by murder, death by accident, death by starvation…The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word—Jesus life.”

Part of how we prepare ourselves and each other for whatever life throws at us is to remember that we are a community that is built on a resurrected Messiah. The engine of the church is the belief that this life isn’t all there is, and that through the resurrection of Jesus, death isn’t the last word. Reminding ourselves and each other that we’re resurrection people, even when it’s hard to grasp or believe, is how we prepare for the hard times that might come our way.

There really can’t be any doubt that Ephesians is written to support the church, or at least gathered groups of believers. The word ‘us’ shows up a half-dozen times just in the 8 verses after the opening greeting.

God blessed us, he chose us, he predestined us, he gave us grace—no, wait a minute, he lavished us with grace, and he made Christ known…to us.

If ‘us’ is the church, then what is it about us that makes us ready to help, ready to love and care and serve in Christ’s name? What is it about us that makes us a Christian community that can grow into a mature experience of life and faith and interaction with the world?

Listen to verses 22 and 23 of the same chapter.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Three things to take away from this passage as we begin our journey through Ephesians.

Christ is the head of the church. That’s not a swipe at the Pope’s visit to London—any good Pope would confess the exact same thing. Christ is the head, the leader, the source of everything true and good and loving that comes out of the church. To forget that is to forget who we are and whose we are, and that’s never a good thing.

The church represents Christ’s fullness to the world. No one of us can do it alone, but as a community of faithful disciples learning how to share our gifts with others we become the body of Christ here, showing what he’s like to a world that needs to know.

And finally, what defines us as church isn’t what we do, it’s what Christ does in us and through us.

This past week a seismologist said that London was overdue for a serious earthquake. They haven’t had a real shaker here since 1580, and the fault line in the Dover Straits has been quietly building up tension for centuries.

The talk of earthquakes took me back to growing up in Southern California, and how much time was spent in school learning how to react when we felt the earth start to shake. We knew how to get under our desks, how to stand where buildings were the strongest, and eventually even how to apply some basic first aid. Then we’d go back to our normal lessons and get on with the task of learning the rest of what we needed to know.

Our walk through Ephesians is going to be a bit like that. We want to be a church, a community of believers, a family that knows how to respond in faith to whatever gets thrown our way. That’s how we’ll make a real and lasting impact on the world God made—the world God loves.

Listen to how those last two verses are translated in The Message:

“At the center of everything Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, and by which he fills everything with his presence.”

My prayer for us as we make our way through the letter to the Ephesians is that we’ll grow more and more into a church like that. One that takes its place, serving from the center of things—a church that Jesus Christ himself will speak through, and will act through. Make that your prayer, too.

Welcome Back to What?

Welcome Back Sunday 2010

Joshua 1:6-9

Our text today is pretty straightforward and clear. Here’s what’s happening: The Israelites have been released from slavery in Egypt, but they were a little weak on the twin ideas of gratitude and obedience, and so God had them wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Even Moses got old and died during that time, and so now Joshua is their leader.

After all the wandering and problems and negotiating with Moses and the people over the years, here’s where we are. God’s people want to know how long they have to wait before they get to the Promised Land, God wants them to trust that he’ll do what he said he would do, and Joshua is taking over for the most important leader in Israel’s history. Everyone wants a straight answer here, and so God says this very clearly to Joshua.

6 “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. 7 Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

There are a few things to know about this passage as we try to find out what it means for us.

First, the book we call Joshua describes the way God fulfills the covenant he made with his people. The first books of the Old Testament are filled with promises that God makes to his people, and in Joshua we see some of those begin to be fulfilled.

Second, our text falls within a time of conflict and danger and fear. There are wars, divisions among God’s people, frustration with the constant wandering, and struggles with how to live the life of faith.

Finally, for us this text is a reminder of the way God calls us to be his people. Notice that God calls Joshua to three tasks or practices or behaviors: to be strong and courageous, which we can interpret as being faithful and hopeful; to read and study and reflect on the Scriptures God gave us; and to live the way he calls us to live.

Whatever else we see in this text, I want us to take it as a wakeup call for the church—for all of us who want to be followers of Jesus Christ.

There are so many news stories competing for our attention, but one of the most compelling for me is the one about those 33 miners stuck in a hole—trapped underground in Chile. If you haven’t seen the story, the men were hit by a cave-in and they survived in a shelter for 17 days before anyone even figured out where they were. Now they’ve been down there more than a month. The problem is that they’re 2,300 feet underground—that’s more than half a mile. They’re drilling new holes to reach them, but it looks like they won’t be rescued until December.
Once they got a communication device down to the men—remember they’d been there for two and a half weeks—most just wanted someone to say clearly and honestly how long it was going to take to get them out of there.

But there’s something else about those miners that you might not know. Chile has a long history of mining—for gold and copper and nitrate and coal. It has a long tradition of mining, but not necessarily of mining safety.

When the miners were located they’d already organized themselves into teams—they have regular rations, they sleep and exercise and keep watch over each other in shifts. Most of this isn’t part of their health and safety procedures. Most of this is handed down informally from grandfather to father to son—they’ve gone through so many tragic mining events that they’ve learned how to be ready—how to take care of each other and live.

There’s something we can learn from these brave miners.

As a church, how do we gather ourselves and prepare to help each other when disasters happen, or just when normal hard times come? We know that bad things happen in the lives of people we know and care about—how do we get ready for that in our church life? How do we make ourselves ready to step in and care for people when they need us the most?

Maybe, on Welcome Back Sunday, a different way to ask that as we reconnect and enjoy our time together today is this:

Welcome back to what?

I’ve been thinking about that over the summer and especially this past week or so as we’ve been preparing for a new church year. I’ve been thinking about how to give a straight answer to that question…welcome back to what?

Welcome to a community where we try to be strong and courageous—to be faithful and hopeful—even when we really feel weak and afraid. To be faithful and hopeful is to believe that God is who he says he is, and that he’ll do what he said he’ll do. That’s not easy—it’s why we do it in community, as a church family. How? That’s the second thing.

Welcome to a church family where we’re going to dive into the Scriptures and wrestle with what they meant when they were written, so we can understand what they mean for us today. We have a year-long adult Bible study on Sunday mornings where we’re going to explore the Psalms. A group of women are going to gather for a 10-week Beth Moore Bible study on the fruit of the Spirit starting in October. Our kids are learning Bible stories as they have fun in Sunday School, and our youth are learning to apply the Scriptures to the questions they’re asking about life and faith. Get the idea? We’re taking the Bible seriously…and faithfully.

And finally, welcome to a place that is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ—a place that wants to show the world who Christ is through Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship and Mission. As we start a new year make sure you check out the different ways we’re going to grow together in this place. The point is that we all develop into the disciples God made us to be.

Those are the same things God told Joshua to do in order to get ready for the road ahead.

Be faithful and hopeful,
Be immersed in the Scriptures,
and make your life a reflection of what you believe.

That’s what we want to do in this place as we live in Christian community.

This time of welcoming and welcoming back is a perfect time to say some other things, too. Whether you’re new here or you’ve been coming for a while, here’s what I want you to know:

No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done or even what you’ve believed before, you’re welcome here.

Whether you feel close to Jesus or lukewarm about him, or if you feel stuck in a very deep hole and you can’t get out, you’re welcome here.

This is a place where you can connect with each other and with God, where you can grow in faith and serve Christ’s Kingdom—this is a church family made up of people who are looking for forgiveness and wholeness, and we want that message to be as clear as possible.

The promise to Joshua was ‘the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’ We believe that here, even when it’s a struggle, and we want to be a place where we practice God’s presence in everything we say, and everything we do. ---

Over the next few months we’re going to focus on what it means to grow in faith together as we look at Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church. It’s such a great book of the Bible, and I hope you’ll join us as we explore what it means for us as a church in London in the 21st century.

For now, though, welcome and welcome back. Let’s pray together.

Getting Back in the Saddle...

OK, so I've been gone for a while.

We spent a month together with our families and friend in Glendale and Burbank this summer. It was a great (and necessary) time of rest and play and connection with people that we miss a lot during the year. I'll get back to writing soon, but here are some pictures from our summer in California.

Chinatown for Dim Sum with some friends.


Ian got to hang out with one of his best buddies from nursery school.

The Griffith Observatory in LA (where the knife fight in 'Rebel Without a Cause' was filmed.

Ian and Ericka

No wonder people find LA confusing...

The pendulum in the atrium (Latin humor)

Yes, there are two starches on my plate. Sue me.

Family dinner in Shell Beach.

I was going to say we played a little chess, but that would be wrong...

Ian and I fished off the pier, and also on one of the half-day deep-sea charters.

This amounts to a 'before and after' set of pictures.