Last summer when our family took a vacation to Vermont we had a day where we learned how Vermont makes stuff. We were camping at a state park on a beautiful lake so, of course, we were up at 4 AM. After breakfast we headed into the town of Waterbury where they make one of Vermont’s most famous products – Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Fascinating.
We saw the production floor with the big vats where they make Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey and all those flavors. We saw a video on the history of the company. We saw more tie dye than I’ve ever seen outside an Emmaus gathering. There was a graveyard of flavors that didn’t make it like popcorn and peanut butter and jelly ice cream. It was amazing.
So we got out of that factory and we said, “O.K. What else does Vermont make? Maple syrup!” So we went to a maple syrup farm and I was imagining a forest of trees with little tin buckets hanging off of them. But that is so last century. Now the trees are all connected by this plastic tubing that goes around the forest and down the hill to a syrup shed where they boil all those gallons of sap down into pure maple syrup. It takes about 10 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. And the color and grade of the syrup is determined by how late in the season you get it. Early in the season its lighter and later in the season is darker. Amazing.
So when we left the maple syrup farm we said, “O.K. What else does Vermont make? Cheese!” So we drove over to the Cabot creamery where they make Cabot cheese and we missed the factory tour because it was late in the day but we did get to see the video starring all the cows of Vermont. And we also got to try all of these samples of cheese out in the factory shop. You left feeling good about cows and dairy farmers and the wonder of cheese. Amazing.
We finished the day by stopping by the birthplace of Chester A. Arthur, one of the least known presidents we’ve ever had. It was a one room house on a dirt road near the Canada border. In fact, it’s not even certain that he wasn’t born in Canada which would have made him ineligible to be president, but if you won’t tell I won’t. We’ll still claim him as a Vermont product.
All in all it was a fascinating day where we learned the art of Vermont production. Which brings us to the question of the day for us here at Franktown Church – how does God produce fruit? How is it that the Holy Spirit works in the lives of Christians to bring about the fruit that Paul talks about in the letter to the Galatians? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, humility, and self-control – all those things that the world needs from Christians – where is the factory that produces these things?
I was listening to an interview recently with Diana Butler Bass, who has studied the history of religion and who has taught at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. She has written a new book called A People’s History of Christianity and one of her arguments in the book is that Christians have developed a kind of spiritual amnesia about where we have come from and who we are. And we have also fallen into a dangerous trap of thinking that Christianity is not a set of practices but a list of things that we believe. When Christians forget the art of fruit production and concentrate only on doctrine they tread on dangerous ground.
Beginning around the 5th century, she says, “Christians began to think more about their faith as a doctrinal system or a set of beliefs. But before that they thought of Christianity as a set of practices of things that you do – prayer, hospitality, doing charity, healing the sick, and it was much more a sense of their identity rather than what they believed.”
Of course, it was important what they believed. All of those practices came from things that Jesus did and that God’s people had done and it was obviously important who they believed Jesus was. But the beliefs didn’t define Christianity. It was a way of life that defined Christians. They lived the way they did because that’s the way Jesus lived.
When the shift happened in the 5th century “as the church became institutionalized and it became more mainstreamed in the Roman Empire,” the emphasis changed from what Christians did to what they thought and they began to behave badly. Christians didn’t kill one another over disputed beliefs until this period. They didn’t go out to eliminate others who believed differently until this time, according to Butler Bass. As she says, “Essentially Christianity moved up out of the body, out of the heart, out of the hands and it moved more and more into the head.”[i]
One of the things I think we are trying to do with this study on the Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations is to recover Christianity as something Christians do – not just something they talk about and not just a set of beliefs that we give assent to. As a recent ad campaign for the United Methodists says, “What if church was a verb?”
So as we’ve gone through this study we’ve started to go back to the basics. We’ve talked about radical
hospitality as something that Jesus and the early church did very well. In a culture which said, “God’s message is meant for one nation and one group of people,” Jesus said, “No, the good news is for everybody.” When the early church struggled over what it was going to require of new converts and how wide it was going to cast the net, Paul said, “Baptism means we’re all in this together now – Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. Because in Jesus there are no more distinctions. There are no more barriers. In Christ we find a new identity.”
So yes – radical hospitality. The doors are wide open. And passionate worship – that’s something else we Christians do. We come together expecting the Holy Spirit to be in our midst – to blow through us – to move us toward God. It’s what we invite people to every week in this place. And it only starts here. We expect it to continue in our lives as we leave here.
Now today we talk about intentional faith development. God does not just turn our lives around and then leave us alone. Christian faith is not just a great entry experience followed by a lifetime of “shampoo, rinse and repeat.” God invites us in through hospitality, meets us in passionate worship and then challenges us to continue to grow in our faith and in our practice of the Christian life.
Suzanne Hiler was telling me the other day that as the New Covenant Class was beginning this study they talked about how there was nothing really astounding about any of the nouns in the five practices. We would expect that any congregation worth its salt and any Christian trying to be salt would exhibit hospitality and worship and faith development. It’s the adjectives that make all the difference.
We think that we are a hospitable church but are we radically hospitable? We worship every Sunday but is it passionate worship? We express a desire to continue developing in our walk with Jesus but are we intentional about the ways that we do that?
Intentional faith development refers to a discipline that doesn’t just happen haphazardly. It takes place as Christians gather together to grow in faith. As Robert Schnase points out in the book we are studying, “Learning in community replicates the way Jesus deliberately taught his disciples. People cannot learn grace, forgiveness, patience, kindness, gentleness, or joy, simply by reading about it in a book. These are aspects of spiritual formation that one learns in community, through intentional engagement. The sanctifying presence of God's spirit works through these practices to help us grow in grace and in the knowledge and love of God.”[ii]
Bishop Schnase is referring here to those same fruits of the Spirit that Paul talks about in the letter to the Galatians. Paul was talking to that early community of Christians and it’s obvious that they were facing some of the same struggles that Christian congregations have always faced. They misunderstood the freedom God was giving them. They took the liberation that Christ was giving them to mean that they could be self-centered and self-focused. The result for the community was an epidemic of bad behavior.
“You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters!” Paul says. “But it wasn’t the freedom of opportunity for self-indulgence but rather, through love, to become servants of one another. Don’t you remember how the law is summed up? ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ But it’s all too easy to start tearing each other down.”
Paul knew that without intentionally seeking to grow in their faith, it would be all too easy to fall back into impurity, impiety, jealousy, dissension, envy and drunkenness – among other things. What Paul urged them to do was to allow themselves to be led by the Spirit so that they could start to produce the fruit they were supposed to produce.
So how do we do that? What are the practices that make for good fruit? One of the things that every growing Christian knows is that you have to stay close to the Bible. Bible study is a characteristic of intentional faith development. Not just so that you can read it and then say, “O.K. those are the things that I have to believe so now I know what they are and I can do them.” That’s not the deep desire of our heart.
Bible study is about deep engagement with the basic stories of our faith. Bible study is about spending time with the Word and entering its world. It’s about asking questions and seeking wisdom. Our task, according to the great theologian Karl Barth, is not to go to the Bible and expect to fit it within our understanding, but to let it form us. What we meet in the Bible is not a world where we think we know it all, but a “strange new world” that takes some place we have never been before.
Here at Franktown there are groups studying the Bible and there will be more opportunities to study the Bible. The Disciple Bible Study has been a powerful tool in introducing people to the Bible and we are anticipating starting a new round of Disciple classes this fall. But whether you take on a long-term or a short-term Bible study, whether you are studying on your own or in a group, be intentional about this practice. We can’t be what we say we are unless this book is grounding our lives.
Everybody should be in a small group of some kind for continuing growth. It’s just that important. None of us are equipped to make it on our own. We need the accountability, the encouragement and the intimacy that small groups provide. To borrow a phrase from the old TV show “Cheers”, we want to go where everybody knows our name and, more than that, knows our joys and our pains. Small groups provide that. Whether they are built around Bible study or covenant discipleship or dealing with a common issue – small groups pull us together. That’s just what John Wesley intended when he set up class meetings everywhere he went with the new Methodist movement.
We should also all be involved in study of some kind. There is so much to learn. Christians have always known this and that’s why we have always been associated with books. And here’s where I want to encourage you to read widely. The medieval believed that all knowledge was from God and could lead us toward God if approached rightly. If you ever get an email from me you will see in my signature that there is a quote from the 12th century mystic Richard of St. Victor who said, “Learn everything; you will find later that nothing is superfluous.” The world is full of things that can lead us to God. Like the wonder of cheesemaking or tapping maple trees for syrup. Look for God all around.
I know the danger I get into when I start talking about this. I know that it can sound like intentional faith development takes place when we give ourselves over to an academic life. I’m prone to that danger. I know I have a penchant for reading 12th century monks. It’s what happens when you get a degree in something as obscure as philosophical theology.
But here’s the thing – faith development is not about becoming a scholar locked away in a study carrel. Faith development is about a practice of seeing every moment as an opportunity to know God better and to know yourself better. It is about making your life open to the movement of the Holy Spirit so that the fruits of the Spirit can be evident in your life.
I was talking to an elderly neighbor once and she said, “It’s all so brief. It seems like only yesterday I was having my children and beginning my marriage. I can’t believe I’m as old as I am.” I know the feeling. Recently I’ve begun looking at my skin and saying, “Whose skin is that?” It certainly doesn’t look like the skin I’m used to. It’s aging.
It might be easy to think of how transient the world is. How fleeting these moments are. But when we see them as a gift God gives us to use, to learn from, every second becomes what it’s meant to be – precious and holy and with the potential to lead us closer to God. Don’t waste this time we’re given with anything less than dynamic adjectives. Be radical. Be passionate. Be intentional. And grow. Thanks be to God.
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
For freedom Christ has set us free. So stand and do not be loaded down again with the yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters! Not to the freedom of opportunity for self-indulgence, but rather, through love, to become slaves of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one commandment - "Love your neighbor as yourself". But if you bite and tear one another to pieces, see that you do not devour one another.
So, I say, walk by the Spirit and do not satisfy the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh, because these two are in opposition to each other in order that you might not do what you will. But if you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.
Now the works of the flesh are clear - fornication, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, selfish ambition, dissension, factionalism, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, just as I said before: those who do such things will not inherit the
But the works of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, humility, and self-control; against such things there is no law.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with all of its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
[i] Diana Butler Bass, interview on The Washington Post Book World podcast, May 8, 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artsandliving/books/index.html?sub=AR.
[ii] Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007, p. 62.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment