8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Serve

John Ortberg, a Presbyterian minister and author, once said, “We’d like to be humble…but what if no one notices?”[i]

James and John were getting tired of the routine. Tired of following Jesus down dusty roads and into backwater towns where their most constant companions were the sick and the poor. Was this what they had left their fishing nets behind for? Sure, this life of humble service was what Jesus had been talking about all along, but they knew there was something more. Jesus might let the little children come to him. Jesus might talk about the difficulties the rich were going to have getting into heaven, but they knew the score. There was glory at the end of this road. There was prestige. They could handle humility for awhile but they wanted to know what the reward was.

So they came to Jesus with a request. “Teacher, we want you to grant us a request.” Everyone else was asking Jesus for something. Why shouldn’t they?

“What is it that you want?”

“We want you to let us have the best seats at the table when you get your kingdom. You know, right next to you. We’ve got dibs.”

“You’ve got dibs, huh?” Jesus asked. “You don’t have any idea what you’re asking. Can you drink the cup I’m going to drink? Can you be baptized with what I’m going to be baptized?” The cup? You know, the one that Jesus asks to be removed from him in the garden as he prays on the night before his crucifixion. The cup of suffering. The baptism? You know the baptism into death so that he can be raised to new life. That baptism.

“Oh, sure, Jesus,” the brothers say. “We’re on it. You name it we’ll do it.” They had no clue.

“Oh, you will drink the cup and you will be baptized with my baptism. But the seating arrangements in the kingdom are not mine to make. You’ll have to do it with no guarantees.”

The other disciples got wind of what was going on and they began to grumble about James and John. Just who did they think they were? Trying to claim the best seats in the house. Trying to be the favorites. Hadn’t they been just as humble? Hadn’t they been just as loyal?

“Stop it!” Jesus said. “Do you really want to be like the rest of the world? You know what you don’t like about the ways things are. In the world when people get high positions they abuse them. They take on airs and start to get condescending. They use their position to make others suffer. It’s got to be different with you. If you want to be great, you have to be a servant. If you want to be first, you have to serve others.”

Now don’t misunderstand this. Jesus wasn’t saying that they should be humble so that they could claim a reward later on. They weren’t supposed to be humble like it was some act they were supposed to do until they could finally be elevated and begin to act different. They weren’t supposed to be humble as a success strategy.

In Charles Dicken’s book David Copperfield, one of the most loathsome characters is a man who has taken this approach to life. Uriah Heep has become synonymous with a kind of fake humility that only serves in order to get ahead. Beneath the surface there is a kind of contempt for the people they serve.

At one point in the book Heep says to his young master, David Copperfield, “When I was quite a young boy…I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, ‘Hard hard!’ When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. ‘People like to be above you,’ says father, ‘keep yourself down.’ I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I've got a little power!”[ii]

A little power. That’s what we want. A little notice. We all want to be humble…but what if no one notices?

Then again maybe we don’t want to be humble. It’s not a very American virtue, is it? It’s not how you get ahead in this world. “Nice guys and gals finish last. You’ve got to look out for Number One. Don’t give them an advantage they can use against you. If they hit you, you’ve got to hit them harder.” You see I know the lingo. I could run a political campaign. But to be a servant? Who aspires to that? What kind of leadership does that show?

Author Graham Standish says that God has an upside down vision of strength. “To be humble actually means to be strong in a wholly different and holy way,” he says. It’s there all the way through the Bible. In the Genesis stories, God chooses the younger child over the older one even though nobody in the society of the day would have handled inheritance that way. God chooses slaves in Egypt rather than their overlords. God chooses Ruth, the foreign woman, to save her destitute Israelite mother-in-law. God chooses David over all of his older brothers to be the king. God chooses Bethlehem out of all the towns and cities of the land as the birthplace of the savior. God chooses Mary, an unwed teenager, to be the mother of Jesus. Jesus chooses fishermen rather than Pharisees. Jesus chooses children over chariot drivers. Jesus chooses the widow with her two mites over the religious leaders with their showy offerings. God chose what was foolish in this world to shame the wise. God chose what was weak to shame the powerful. Given every chance to choose otherwise, God ALWAYS chooses the humble and empowers them for the work that needs doing. God’s just got a thing about that.

So when we start feeling like we don’t have enough power…when we start feeling like we’re out of the loop…when we start feeling like our social standing in school is suffering…when we start feeling like our gifts are not being appreciated in the church the way we think they ought to be appreciated…when we start wondering why no one has called to ask us over for dinner…when we start to think our opinion is not being sought the way that it ought to be…when we start to believe that maybe the rules shouldn’t have to apply to us...when we start to believe we deserve that seat by Jesus’ side at the top of the table…then God’s got news for us – we haven’t arrived yet. We haven’t yet experienced the fullness of what it means to be a servant.

This week we started a new Wonderful Wednesday class on the Reformation and I gave the class members an excerpt from Martin Luther’s treatise called The Freedom of a Christian. It was written almost 500 years ago, but it still rings clear like it was written yesterday.

In it Luther really has just two things to say. On the one hand, he says, Christians are truly free and not subject to anyone. After all, isn’t that what Jesus came to do? To set us free so that we are no longer slaves to sin and death? Didn’t he win for us salvation so that we could look to God with confidence? When we profess our belief in Christ…when we put our trust in God’s saving mercy…when we know Jesus as savior doesn’t that mean that we are free. As Luther says, “All of us who believe in Christ are priests and kings in Christ, as 1 Peter says: ‘You are a chosen race, God’s own people, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.’”[iii]

Isn’t that what should be said about us? That Jesus has come and so now we can live as kings, doing as we please. God’s love is sufficient to cover a multitude of sins.

But no, that is not all that should be said, Luther says, because there is something else that needs saying. Yes, Christians are absolutely free and subject to none, but because of that they are also slaves and subject to all. We are not made free in order to then live like everyone else in the world. We’ve been there. We know that conforming our lives to the world around us is a fruitless exercise. We know how empty that life is. We know how we feel when we give ourselves over to the idols of the world. It is devastation.

In the movie Fight Club, which is a brutal depiction of the emptiness of modern life, the main character, Jack, meets a man who challenges all of his assumptions. Jack’s life is a hollow shell. His greatest joy is imagining a life surrounded by Ikea furniture, but he suffers from insomnia and goes to support groups with people with life-threatening diseases just so he can feel like he’s alive.

He meets Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, on an airplane. Jack thinks he’s going to be someone he can just have a meaningless conversation with as they travel on the plane. He calls the people he meets this way “single-serving friends” because they require no lasting commitment from him. He starts chit-chatting about how single-serving friends are like plastic serving utensils – the sporks. Tyler won’t play along though. He says, “The spork. I get it. You’re very clever.”

“Thank you,” says Jack.

“How’s that working out for you?” Tyler asks. And with that simple question Jack realizes that all of his attempts to be clever and smooth and slick were really not working at all.[iv]

So when Luther says that we are free, he does not mean that we are then free to go and do whatever we want in the world. If we have really found Christ, we have really moved beyond the world. We have really moved into new territory and we are now free to follow Jesus into the strange and wonderful life he offers. And the strange and wonderful life he offers is a life of service. If we are no longer concerned for ourselves…if we are over ourselves and free of the concern for our pride and ego and all of those things that haunt us when we are unsure of ourselves…if we are Christ’s, then we can give ourselves to others. As Luther says, the rule for the life of Christians is that “we should devote all our works to the welfare of others, since each has such abundant riches in his faith that all his other works and his whole life are a surplus with which he can by voluntary benevolence serve and do good to his neighbor.”[v]

This is life, not drudgery. Once we give up concern for our own ego we are then free to learn from the wonders of all the others we will come to serve. How do we know this? Because it is the model that Jesus gives us. We don’t serve merely because Jesus commands it. We serve because Jesus did it. Because Jesus came not as a tyrant but as a servant. Because Jesus came not to be served but to serve. Because Jesus kneeled at the feet of his disciples and washed their feet. Because Jesus went to the place where the sinners and the poor and the wounded and the outcast and the sick and the dead were…he went to them to bring them back home. Because Jesus went to the cross and poured out his life as a ransom for many. Because Jesus emptied himself. And he did it because he knew that life is measured in how much we can make of ourselves but in how much we can give of ourselves to others. “If you love your life you will lose it, but if you hate your life in this world you will have it for eternal life” [John 12:25].

Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic, once had a vision in which she saw Jesus coming to her and saying, “If I had my life to give over again, I would. Over and over until I could show you how much I love you.”

And so what shall we do except follow where Jesus leads? Yes, it’s crazy. Yes, you’ll look different. But what have you got to lose except the empty life you have been living? And what have you got to gain except everything? You’ve tried living your own life. How’s that working out for you? Come give your life to Jesus and be free. And be free to serve the world. Thanks be to God.

Mark 10:35-45
Now James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him saying, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask you."
And he said to them, "What do you want me to do for you?"
They said to him, "Grant us that we may sit, one or your right and one on your left in your glory."
But Jesus said to them, "You don't know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup which I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"
They said to him, "We are able."
So Jesus said to them, "The cup which I drink, you will drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized, but to sit on my right or my left is not mine to give; rather it is for those for whom it has been prepared."
On hearing this, the other ten began to get angry with James and John. Calling them together, Jesus said to them, "You know that those who seem to rule the Gentiles lord it over them and the ones who are great among them tyrannize them. That is not so with you, but rather whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first will be everyone's slave; for the Son of Humanity did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many.”

[i] http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/humilityquotes1.htm
[ii] http://www.novelguide.com/davidcopperfield/toptenquotes.html
[iii] Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” Three Treatises, [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970], p. 289. Referred to hereafter as Luther.
[iv] http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Fight-Club.html
[v] Luther, pp. 302-3.

8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Forgive

For six weeks now we have been talking craziness. We have been talking about what it means to follow Jesus down some roads that in the eyes of others might seem like strange paths. Paths of worship and prayer. Paths of witness and giving. Paths of loving neighbors and loving enemies. These are things we would probably not do if our lives had not come to a crossroads at the foot of the cross. I also suspect that they may be things we don’t do anyway and that is the challenge I lay before myself and you in this series - Will we walk behind Jesus and do what he does? Or not?

So today – forgiveness. This is one of those impossibly grand things that Jesus calls us to. I mean, what was he thinking? Forgive serious wounds? And forget forgetting! How does that happen?

Then we see it happen and it takes our breath away. You remember two years ago when a man in Pennsylvania went into an Amish schoolhouse and sent out the adults and the boys and then shot the ten girls? It was horrific but we remember this not only because it was such a terrible thing, but also because of what the Amish community did in response.

If it had happened in another community with other people it might have looked like all of our other modern America tragedy sites. There would have been televised funeral services with speakers from across the country. There would have been chain-link fences covered in ribbons and teddy bears and reporters trying to wrench every bit of anguish they could from the traumatized survivors.

But that’s not what happened. The Amish had very private religious ceremonies and they buried their dead. They made food to take to those who grieved and when they did they also made food they took some to Marie Roberts, the husband of the man who killed the children before killing himself. They took her food, because they knew she had suffered a loss, too. And they invited her to attend one of the funerals. And they offered their forgiveness because it is what Christians are told to do. Told to do because it doesn’t come naturally. What’s natural is to hate and to strike out and to hold grudges and to close the door. But even in such darkness, when the forces of death threaten to overcome us, God is willing life and we know that because people whose lives are formed by the savior who submitted even to death on a cross brought food and forgiveness instead of bitterness and more darkness. Craziness, yes, but what beautiful craziness.

So here’s what I think – forgiveness is something that has to be seen and done to be believed. That’s why when we talk about it we end up telling stories. That’s what Jesus did. Peter came to him and said, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Jesus responds by saying, “Not seven times but seven times seventy.” Evidently, though, he saw something he didn’t like in Peter’s eyes. He saw Peter starting to multiply seven times seventy and he knew that he still didn’t get it. It wasn’t the number but something more Jesus wanted. He wanted a change of heart. So he told this strange parable about the king and the unforgiving servant. The king forgives the servant a huge debt and then the servant refuses to forgive a fellow slave a much smaller debt. When the king finds out he hauls the servant back in and begins to extract the debt from the unforgiving servant.

It’s a strange story because really nobody is forgiving like Jesus wants Peter to forgive. The king forgives once, but then takes it back. The servant doesn’t even forgive the first time. But what really strikes me about the story is the other servants who see what is going on and are greatly distressed, because they know that a world without forgiveness is a world that is dark and threatening. They point to what humanity really needs – a model of forgiveness that leads to more forgiveness.

So let me offer one more story from the fictional community of Mattaponi Courthouse:
Sunshine Bristow was standing in aisle 7 of the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. To all the other shoppers in aisle 7 it appeared that she was just having difficulty making up her mind between the baked and the fired cheese doodles, but there were far more serious questions on Sunshine’s mind – she was thinking about death, forgiveness and God, all in the middle of the chip and dip section.

“Forgive me, Sunshine, but I just need to get a bag over here if you don’t mind.” Yolanda Perkins brushed past her and grabbed some barbecued pork rinds from the shelf and shuffled on down the aisle. It was enough to make Sunshine come to her senses and head to the check out.
Sunshine was deep in thought because her father was lying in a bed in Mattaponi’s small hospital. She had just gotten word from her sister Benita that he had been admitted with severe chest pains. They seemed to have ruled out a heart attack, but he was being held for observation. For the first time in seven years, Sunshine Bristow was thinking about going to see her father.

You wouldn’t think this, given her name, but Sunshine was generally not a very happy person. She had come to adulthood bearing the scars of a rugged childhood. She had lost a brother in a car accident when she was only eleven. School and friendships were hard for her after that. At sixteen she had run away from home, only to return six months later battered and bruised and with a drug addiction.

Her family had coped with her brother’s death by wrapping his memory in a blanket of silence. Nobody talked about Billy. But his memory remained like a chilly draught that finds its way through the tiniest cracks and which cannot be stopped. Her mother had tried to fill the emptiness with a kind of cheer and blind optimism, but it lingered – especially with her father.
Sunshine could not remember one time that her father had held her or hugged her or offered even a word of affection. He drank too much and grew more abusive to her and everyone in the house. Even now, twenty years later, she felt it – that anger at her father that festered like an open wound. She didn’t like feeling like this. She prayed to a God she hoped was there that she might be forgiven for her dark feelings of resentment and regret.

Now her father was in the hospital, having faced death himself, and she was wondering if she should go. By the time she got to her car she knew that she would. She rushed home to change clothes. For some reason she felt like she needed to dress up, at least a little bit. She found a favorite dress, brushed her hair and then opened the drawer for a hair clip. Her hand brushed across a small object and she paused. It was an ancient black pocketknife with a small brass plate monogrammed with the initials B.B. Sunshine picked it up, felt its weight and then dropped it into her purse.

At the hospital she stood outside the door of her father’s room for a long minute with her hand on the door. Finally she drew a deep breath and walked in. Benita, her sister, was sitting by the bed on the far side next to the window. She was holding her father’s hand and smiling with a smile she had inherited from their mother. Sunshine’s father was propped up uncomfortably, frowning at Wheel of Fortune on the small TV above the bed.

“Sunshine! I’m so glad you came.” That was Benita, not her father. “I think we’ve got some good news. It wasn’t his heart. They’re running some more tests, but they think it’s a gall stone or something.”

Bert Bristow was not so cheerful. “Might as well have been a heart attack. Felt just as bad.” Sunshine noticed the same tight lips and deep wrinkles in his forehead, but he was much paler and thinner. And older. “Well, Sunshine,” Bert said, “it seems like bad news brings out everybody. You’re dressed like you’re ready for my funeral.”

Sunshine’s face flushed red. “Daddy, that’s not fair. You know that.”

“Do I? Seven years I don’t see you and now you show up at my deathbed? What did you come to see?”

“I came to…I came hoping that maybe…” She felt the tears welling in her eyes. “Whatever it was, Daddy, I should have known better.” She ran out of the room.

Benita found her downstairs in the small snack counter off the front lobby. She was sitting on the far stool staring at a cup of coffee. Between her fingers she was playing with the old back pocketknife.

“I’m sorry, Sunshine. I’m sorry he treated you that way. You know how he is.”

“Yes, I know. I know he’s a cold and calloused old cuss and that he never cared a lick for me, but I was just hoping that…you know, with this attack and all…”

“You were hoping that he might have seen a great light and suddenly discovered how lucky he was to be alive and to have two fantastic daughters like you and me?”

“Yes. Exactly.” Sunshine looked at her sister with a half-smile. “Benita, I wanted to believe that he loved me and that he could change. I thought maybe if he could change then I could let go of all of this anger inside of me.”

Benita noticed the object in her hands for the first time. “Sunshine! Where did you get that?”

“Get what?”

“Daddy’s pocketknife. He loved that knife! Don’t you remember how he used to pull it out every night and fiddle with little blocks of wood? He was so upset when it disappeared. Where did you find it?”

“I didn’t find it, Benita. I stole it.”

“You did what?”

“I stole it. And I’ve kept it ever since. Twenty years I’ve kept it.”

“But, Sunshine…why?”

“Because…because when he came to see me at the drug treatment center…I’ll never forget it, Benita. I was so scared and confused and I needed him so much. He came on visiting day and he walked into the lounge and stared at me. Never said a word. He just stared with this cold and disappointed look in his eyes. Then he left. When I needed him the most, he left. So when I got home, I stole his knife.

“Now I look at this knife every day and I know that I hurt Daddy. I know I did. I try to forgive him and I try to forgive myself. But I can’t let go all of hurt and anger. And isn’t that what forgiveness is all about?”

Benita looked down at the counter and flicked away a crumb left by a previous customer. “Sunshine, I don’t know whether having a face-to-face meeting with mercy is going to change Daddy or not. Probably not. There’s too much pain there – the pain of losing Billy – the pain of feeling like a failure at life.

“But I do know that sometimes it’s not so much being forgiven as learning how to forgive that changes people and makes them realize that God is there. It’s not easy. Doesn’t mean that we go around saying ‘let bygones be bygones’ or that we gloss over the pain. God knows I’ve done my share of screaming and yelling because of Dad.

“Look, Sunshine, forgiveness isn’t something you can do all at once and then mark it down on some ‘been there, done that’ list. It’s a process. It takes time. And I’ve changed a lot more than Dad has. But you know what? It’s worth it.” Benita looked up into her sister’s eyes and gave her a smile that no longer seemed forced, but deep and genuine.

A few hours later Bert Bristow woke up from a nap in his stuffy little hospital room. He looked at the TV, which was still on. He stared out the window at the sodium lights in the hospital parking lot. He turned to his nightstand for a drink of water. There, next the pitcher, was an ancient black pocketknife with a small brass plate monogrammed with his initials – B.B.

Jesus said, “Not seven times – not seventy times seven times – but from your heart you must forgive.” And it’s not easy. It’s a process. But the consequences of remaining unforgiving or unforgiven are too great to bear. And we know how to forgive because God has done the forgiving first. For you and for me and for the life of the world. Thanks be to God.

Matthew 18:21-35
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how many times should I forgive when my brother or sister sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “I don’t say to you ‘up to seven times’ but rather seven times seventy times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a ruler who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. Now upon beginning his reckoning, one was brought to him owing ten thousand talents; and since he didn’t have the money to repay, the ruler ordered that he, his wife, his children, and all that he had be sold and repayment to be made.

“So the slave fell down and prostrated himself before the ruler saying, ‘Be patient with me and I will repay you everything.’ And being moved by sympathy, the ruler of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.

“Now that same slave, upon leaving, happened upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Repay what you owe.’

“So his fellow-slave fell down and implored him, ‘Be patient with me and I will repay you.’ But he did not want to and instead went and threw and his fellow-slave into prison until he would repay the debt.

“Upon seeing this, his fellow-slaves were extremely distressed and they went and reported to the ruler himself all that had taken place. Then his ruler summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all of that debt because you implored me. Weren’t you compelled to show mercy to your fellow slave, just as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his ruler handed him over to the extractors until he would repay the debt.

“So also will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not each forgive your brother and sister from your hearts.”

8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Give

Last Monday I was standing next to a field near Sedley, Virginia. It was an ordinary looking field filled with corn stubble. My dad and his brother, my uncle Bill, were there, too, but they saw something different when they looked out at that corn stubble. Where I saw empty space, they saw an old house where they used to live.

It was back in the Depression when both of them were young boys. My dad said, “I remember the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls.” My uncle remembered the comics of the newspaper that was tacked up on the wall as primitive insulation. They both remembered how the snow would filter down into their bedrooms some nights through the slats in the ceiling so that they would wake up with a dusting like powdered sugar on their blanket.

They’d been telling stories like this all day. My uncle was up from Florida, where he lives, and we took the three of us took this opportunity to go on a tour of their boyhood homes. And there were a lot of them. Their father, my grandfather, was often sick. He had tuberculosis and eventually died when my dad was only 9 years old. So my grandmother and the three boys she had spent most of the Depression and the 40s moving from place to place, sometimes staying with family members, sometimes with other friends, sometimes in small rental houses like the one out in that field where they would stay until they couldn’t afford to pay the rent and they moved on. My dad could count about sixteen different places they lived. He also talked about my grandmother walking seven miles one way to go to work, about picking cotton in the fields and milking cows at a dairy farm every day before school. You know these kinds of stories that older generations like to tell younger ones. “You kids have it easy! Back in the day we had to walk twelve miles to school in the snow and it was uphill both ways.” But I think in my dad’s case, it was actually true.

Here’s the amazing thing, though. Even as they were telling all these sad stories of hard times, they also were remembering it as the best times of their lives. We sat in one spot for about twenty minutes as they talked about friends they had known, playing Junior Commando in the woods and selling their dog to a neighbor family for a radio, only to have the family decide that they didn’t like the dog so they ended up with both the dog and the radio. They reckoned it had been the plan all along so that my grandmother wouldn’t have to feel she was getting charity.

What it confirmed for me was that it is possible to live with joy without much stuff. Happiness, as the Bible tells us, is not dependent on our things. “Riches do not last forever,” Proverbs says, “nor a crown for all generations” [Proverbs 27:24]. In fact if we lay up treasures for ourselves here and count ourselves wealthy because of it, Jesus warns, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,” he says, “where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” [Matthew 6:20-21].

I hope your heart wasn’t on Wall Street this week. The stories of the Great Depression were on my mind a lot this week as I watched the stock market plunge and commentators talked about a global economic crisis. Maybe you thought about it, too. It was a good reminder that the whole modern financial system is built, to a large degree, on trust. As long as banks are confident that customers will pay back their loans, they will extend credit. As long as banks are confident that other banks have good lending practices, they will lend to each other. As long as investors are confident that businesses have good potential to make profits, they will keep investing. But take that confidence away and the whole system looks like it is built on nothing more than smoke and mirrors. They tell us $2 trillion dollars in wealth vanished this week on Wall Street. Where did it go?

This leads to dire predictions. Global leaders are meeting in Washington to try anything they can do to restore trust in the markets. What hang in the balance are homes and businesses and jobs and retirement accounts. I picked a heck of a Sunday to talk about giving then, didn’t I?

We don’t know a whole lot about Malachi. In fact even the name Malachi is more of a title than a name. It means ‘my messenger’ and the book that bears this name seems to have been written at a time of great soul-searching for God’s people. They had returned to Jerusalem from exile and they had reestablished a semblance of the kingdom they once had, but they were under the thumb of the Persian Empire.

Some of the old problems the older prophets had complained about were starting to creep into their life, too. They were putting their trust in sorcery instead of God. They were committing adultery and bearing false witness against each other. They were mistreating their hired workers and not offering them the wages they had earned. They were ignoring the plight of the poor and they were shoving to the side the immigrant aliens in their midst. In general, they were once again wandering away from God.

But there was one more way that they were failing to live up to expectations and it was related to their other sins. God says to the people, “You are robbing me?” And the people say to God, “How are we robbing you?” God says, “You are not bringing in your full tithe to the storehouse.”

Now the tithe is a biblical standard for giving. It goes all the way back to Abraham the ancestor of all the Jews who was blessed by the king and priest Melchizedek when he came into the land God promised him. Abraham responded to the blessing by giving the priest a tenth of all he owned. His grandson Jacob, as he was establishing a holy site at Bethel, promised to give a tenth of all that he owned to God. The Israelite people were supposed to bring a tenth of all that they had to the priests and they were supposed to feast with them as recognition of how God had blessed them. Deuteronomy tells us that every third year the people were supposed to bring a tenth of all they had to the town and put it in a storehouse for the priests and widows and orphans and the aliens in their midst. It was one way for them to live out the justice that God was asking of them.

This tenth, or tithe, of all they had is a standard we see throughout the Bible. It was a way for the people to worship God with their ‘stuff’ – with their material goods. It was a way of saying, “Hey, God, I know that I have been blessed and I know that there are others who depend on this gift to experience your blessing, too. I know that all I have, including my life, is to be given to you, and this tithe is just the beginning of what I owe you.”

This is what God chastises the people for not giving. “You have robbed me,” God says. “Put me to the test. Bring the full tithe and see if I won’t open up the windows of heaven so that blessings won’t flow down on you. See if I don’t take care of you. See if you don’t have enough to eat. See if your crops don’t provide for your needs. See if I am not sufficient for you. Will you trust me?”

Now don’t get me wrong. This is not a prosperity gospel. There are preachers out there who will tell you that if you give extravagantly you will prosper beyond your wildest dreams. I saw a preacher on TV last night telling his listeners to give a seed of faith of $2400 and they would get a much larger financial reward. That kind of gospel is no gospel at all because it is not about God, it’s about you. If you are giving in order to be rewarded by God with financial blessing, then you are making God into an investment banker. Tithing is not about you and your financial success. Tithing is about God.

What God says here, though, is that there is blessing in giving. People who tithe routinely say that it is one of the most important spiritual disciplines they have taken on. Tithing creates space for God to do something new in our lives. Tithing connects us to those who benefit from the giving and gives us a stake in the work of God in the world. Tithing allows us to live a life trusting that God really is what we say God is – able…sufficient…trustworthy.

Bishop Robert Schnase, our United Methodist bishop in Missouri, has been writing a lot about the practices of fruitful congregations and one of the key practices is extravagant generosity. He writes:
Every sanctuary and chapel in which we have worshiped, every church organ that has lifted our spirits, every pew where we have sat, every communion rail where we have knelt, every hymnal from which we have sung, every praise band that has touched our hearts, every church classroom where we have gathered with our friends, every church kitchen that has prepared our meals, every church van that has taken us to camp, every church camp cabin where we have slept – all are the fruit of someone's Extravagant Generosity. We have been the recipients of grace upon grace. We are the heirs, the beneficiaries of those who came before us who were touched by the generosity of Christ enough to give graciously so that we could experience the truth of Christ for ourselves.[i]

This extravagant generosity makes no sense at all. It’s like that woman who takes an expensive jar of perfumed ointment and breaks it over Jesus’ head for no good reason except that it was the best gift that she could offer. It’s like that those crazy magi who traveled across the desert with gold, frankincense and myrrh and lay it at the feet of a baby for no good reason except it was the best gift they could offer. It’s like that man who gave himself up to be beaten and whipped and spit upon and nailed to a cross and who died for no good reason except that it was the best gift he could offer to show how much he loved you and me. Extravagant generosity.

When you get right down to it, we’re not very good with money. We don’t even understand how this meltdown happened and we struggle to know what will help to get us out of it. As for what we do with what we have, Dave Ramsey says, “We buy things we don't even need with money we don't even have to impress people we don't even know.”[ii] Isn’t that true? Surely there’s something better we can do with our money. Surely there’s something better we can do with our lives. Surely we can model in our lives the giving that Christ did in pouring out his life for the life of the world.

Last year at the Annual Conference, our annual gathering of United Methodists in Virginia, an amazing thing happened. On the last night of the conference there was a presentation on the “Nothing but Nets” campaign which we have entered into with the NBA. For $10 we can provide a mosquito net for children living in malaria-prone areas and the program works. Lives are saved. 10 bucks. So Martha Stokes, one of our Conference staff, reported that the Conference had raised $26,000 for mosquito nets and presented the bishop with a basketball to recognize the campaign. It was a good report.

Then something amazing happened. Mike Mayton, a pastor in the conference, stood up at a microphone and offered $50 for the basketball with the money to go to Nothing But Nets. Then the Cabinet got up and as a group all of our District Superintendents offered $100 each for the basketball. Then Jim Ullian, another pastor, got up with another bid. Kenneth Carder, a retired bishop offered $1000. Larry Tingle got up and pledged $3,000 from his church. Section 26 made a donation. Somebody said pass a bucket. The bishop offered kisses for donations. The northern Virginia churches pledged $6000. The Richmond District superintendent, Marc Brown, said, “We’re not going to let Northern Virginia outbid us, we pledge $10,000.” The Norfolk District pledged $15,000. Marc Brown upped the pledge for Richmond to $17,000. The bishop said, “I’m getting hot flashes.” By the end of the night we had raised $23,000 in cash and had $80,000 in pledges. Nobody knew what happened to the basketball. But $100,000 buys a lot of mosquito nets. And lives were saved. And I have never seen the annual conference so happy. Or the bishop.

It is a crazy thing to think about giving in a world like we live in. When the stock market crashes you just want to pull everything in and make sure that what we have doesn’t slip away. At least that’s what you do if you’re not paying attention to gospel. Because what the gospel says is, “Give.” Open your hands. Open your hearts. Trust that even when everything seems to slipping away, God is not going anywhere. Trust that Jesus Christ who was there for you yesterday is there today and will be there tomorrow. Trust that the Holy Spirit still blows through this tired land with a promise that we will have everything we need to be the people we were made to be.

Who knows what this week will bring? Who knows where the stock market will go? Who knows what the future holds? But we are not going any place that God’s people have not been before. And we can trust that God is in the future already preparing the way. So we are free to give. To be confident. To be loved. “Give and see what will happen,” God says. “See if I will not open the heavens and send down showers of blessings.” Bring it on. God’s bigger than Henry Paulson. God’s bigger than our fears. God is able. Thanks be to God.

Malachi 3:7-12 [NRSV]

Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts.

But you say, "How shall we return?"

Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me!

But you say, "How are we robbing you?"

In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me-- the whole nation of you! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I will rebuke the locust for you, so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil; and your vine in the field shall not be barren, says the LORD of hosts. Then all nations will count you happy, for you will be a land of delight, says the LORD of hosts.

[i] Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2007), p. 116.
[ii] http://www.fcccanyon.com/pdf/102107.pdf.

8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Worship

8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Worship
October 5, 2008
Franktown United Methodist Church

I hope that you were as stimulated by last week’s revival as I was. Over the course of those three services we were called to remember that we were made by God on purpose and for a purpose. We were reminded that we do not exist for the maintenance of a church building but that we are supposed to be more for the community around us. And we were challenged to live out the unique calling that God has for Franktown Church – to be a people living on the margins but telling the world what we are learning by being where we are. We may not have liked being called marginal people, but our guest preacher reminded us that we live on the edge – the edge of the continent, the edge of the economy and the edge of the kingdom. I like to tell people that the Eastern Shore is the edge of the world and the verge of heaven. Some of the most important things happen on the margins.

So I don’t want to forget that message. In fact, I want us to explore it some more, but we are going back to the sermon series today and so I want to take us back into the craziness. For 4 weeks before the revival we were looking at things that Jesus asks us to do that we would not do if the gospel were not true. These are things that mark a transformed people. So we talked about loving our enemies, loving our neighbors, praying and witnessing. All unique things that Christians do that might look crazy to the rest of the world. What could those Christians be thinking by doing those things?

So back to the craziness and today we talk about worship. Now the craziest thing about this sermon is that I’m going to be talking about the importance of worship this morning to people who have come to worship this morning. So it sounds like I’m talking to the choir here. Maybe the folks who need to hear this are the folks who aren’t here.

I’m aware, though, that we do a lot of things and we aren’t sure why we do them. Is that true for you? I mean, when you go into an elevator where do you face? The door, of course. Why do you do that? Do you have to face the door? Is anybody making you face the door? No! I want to know why it is that I face the door! In fact, let’s all just try a little experiment the next time we get on an elevator. Face another direction and see how much tension you can cause in a crowded elevator!

So, I guess what I’m saying is that even though you are here, you might not know why you’re here. You might not know what worship really means and you may be looking for an answer to a question you didn’t know that you had. So let’s look at some reasons that we are doing this crazy thing called worship.

One reason is that the Bible tells us to. That’s a pretty powerful reason. The Bible tells us to. There’s something to be said for heeding the wisdom of the ages. After all, one of the first things humans do in the first book of the Bible is to worship God and offer sacrifices to God. Of course, the first story of this is the story of Cain and Abel where one brother’s sacrifice was accepted and the other’s wasn’t and then Cain killed Abel out of jealousy, but we’ve always had wars over worship. J The point is that worship is part of the Bible’s story from the beginning.

Psalm 29 begins with this command – “Give God what is due to God, you children of God. Give Yahweh his due of glory and strength. Give Yahweh the glory due his name. Worship God in the splendor of his holiness.” [Psalm 29:1-2] Worship God. The word we translate as worship there in the Hebrew means ‘to bow down’ like a servant before a superior. But in romance languages like Latin and Spanish there is more…romance to the word. In Spanish it is ‘adorar,’ which you can recognize in the English word ‘adore.’ So there is this sense, not only of obedience and prostration, but adoration and love. We sing, “Come, let us adore him,” at Christmas time. We sing songs of praise that would embarrass a lover. “I could sing of your love forever.” “I want to touch you. I want to see your face.” “I’m desperate for you.” These are all lines from recent praise and worship songs and they speak to this sense that worship…what we are commanded to do…is a little like love.

Yesterday several of us from church were involved in a little conference at the soccer field. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time in the homes of adults with children. Tabi Webb is coaching a girl’s soccer team and a good number of the members of this team are from our church, including my Rachel. So we were standing by the field at the beginning of practice trying to determine when the next practice would be and whether we could have the first game of the season on Friday instead of Saturday. You have no idea how complex the negotiations were! Between school and music lessons and dance lessons and other sports, there were conflicts every day of the week. And there in the mix of all of this was the church. Youth events. Youth retreats. Wonderful Wednesday dinner.

It was clear to me that unless we make church a priority for our children it will quickly get lost in the avalanche of other things they are already active in. And it was also clear to me that many of our parents are doing that – making church a priority. Expecting that it will be part of the weekly routine. I appreciate what a challenge that is, especially when the image many children have of church is as a place where you have to be quiet.

I hope we’re changing to be more kid-friendly, but I also hope that we don’t lose the expectation in ourselves that we will introduce our children to the faith previous generations handed down to us. There will be a time when children will grow and will have to make decisions on their own about church, but they need us to give them a base. They need to see what we value and what we care enough about that we would bring them to even on days when they were resistant. They will have a chance to push back against the things that base and to question it, but they need to have a base to push back against. Worship God. Just do it. Why? Because the Bible tells us so.

Admittedly, that’s not a particularly satisfying answer to the questions of why worship, even if it’s true. Perhaps another way to approach it is to realize that we are built to worship. It’s in our make-up. It’s in our DNA. There is something in us that wants to give glory to God. There is something in us that moves us to praise. There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. And it wants to sing out to God.

The psalms are full of images of people and other creatures singing out just because they have to. Psalm 65 begins with words that can be translated, “For you praise waits in still repose, O God Elohim.” Every time I think of that I can’t help imagining this great wealth of praise locked up inside of each one of us that is just waiting to be released. When we worship it unlocks that safe…it liberates what is inside us and it makes us what we were always meant to be. In that sense, God doesn’t just command us to worship and we’ll do it whether we like it or not because it’s good for us like cod liver oil. No, the Bible tells us to and in doing so it helps us to discover that we are native worshippers. We were meant to worship and adore God.

This is so basic to us that we wind up worshipping things we ought not to when we stop worshipping God. Or we start loving people or things in ways that we ought to be loving God. It was my old buddy Augustine, the fifth century saint from North Africa, who observed that all of our loves are ultimately directed toward God. Our hearts are just made that way and when we take our eyes off of God and start to love lesser things with the passion that is meant for God then we get ourselves in trouble. We become obsessed with material things. We have extramarital affairs. We serve our pleasures. All of those sins come from a noble impulse within us – the impulse to give ourselves to someone or something else. But the one to whom we are to give ourselves is God.

Finally, we worship because God wants witnesses. God wants witnesses. This summer the Barrier Island Center premiered a new movie. It’s about 18 minutes long and you need to go see it. Not next month. Not soon. Go. It’s that important.

The movie is called “Our Island Home” and it is the story of what happened to Broadwater, the community that used to be located on Hog Island. Hog Island is deserted now. The big storm of 1933 basically did it in. If you go over around Willis Wharf you’ll find some of the old houses from the island that were moved to the mainland. Half of the United Methodist Church in Oyster was brought over from Hog Island. So there is nothing left of that old community on the island. The filmmaker, James Spione, has some beautiful shots of what the island looks like today – lots of empty beach and quiet marshes.

If that’s all the film was, it would be pretty to look at but it would not be worth me telling you to go see it. What make it a powerful film are the witnesses. They interviewed three folks on the Shore who were born on Hog Island to get their remembrances of life on the island. Yvonne Widgeon is one of them. She says in the film, “After my mother passed away, I realized that all of the older people were beginning to pass away and all of the stories from Hog Island was going to be lost.”[i]

As you listen to her and to Norris Bowen and Iris Clemente tell those stories, you begin to feel how fragile our communities are. The people who knew what Hog Island was will one day all be gone. The island itself is shifting and moving so that the place where the community was is now mostly out under the waters of the Atlantic. But as these three tell their stories you realize what a tough and vibrant place Broadwater was. People lived and died out there. People loved it and people hated it. People hung together through good times and hard, hard times. We know that because there are witnesses who care enough about the place to give voice to what they’ve seen and know.

God wants witnesses, too. When Jesus is born, God sends angels and shepherds and funny looking astrologers from the East and they all go worship him. Witnesses. All around the throne of God in heaven, Revelation tells us, there are angels worshipping God. Witnesses. There are saints who have gone through the trials worshipping God. Witnesses. God does not need them. God does not need their praise and worship to be God. God does not need our praise and worship, but God wants our worship. God wants our presence. God’s love is so great that it overflows the boundaries of all good sense to bring in you and me and all the nations of the earth to worship. God wants witnesses.

My colleague Steve Rhodes tells the story of a birthday party his daughter had when she was younger. Getting to be a year older was good, but what really excited her was the party. So the day came and she stood at the window waiting for the first guest to arrive. When she saw her friend get out of the car she started jumping up and down and she swung the door open and ran out to meet her and they both started jumping up and down. Then the two of them stood by the window and waited and they could barely contain themselves. When the next guest arrived they jumped up and down and ran to the door to greet the newcomer. It was pure joy. That, Steve says, must be what God’s kingdom is like.

Where do we get a taste of that kingdom? Right here. In worship. God is waiting like a 9-year-old before a birthday party…knowing that everything is ready and just desiring some witnesses. God is desiring you. And jumping up and down and running to meet you coming from wherever you’ve come from.

It’s crazy to worship God like this. But it’s the kind of craziness that makes the world the miraculous place that it is. Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 58:1-14 [NRSV]
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.
"Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

[i] Barrier Island Center website: http://www.esva.net/~bic/barrier/excerpts.html