Resurrection Life

Striving To Be All That We Are: 1 John 3:1-7

3 Easter 2009

1 John 3: 1-7

Striving To Be All That We Are
Pastor Chris Enstad

Brothers and sisters grace to you and peace from God our Father our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

Did you catch that? It’s easy to let it slide right by us as Bible verses read on a Sunday morning often do. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

Hold on just a minute here ‘o author of John surely there must be something we must do first in order to earn the right to call ourselves God’s children. How can you say that we already are God’s children? But what about living good and virtuous lives? What about the rules, what about our traditions, what about judging each other as clean or unclean in or out, with- the- program or just not going along with the show?

Maybe what John meant to write is, “See what love the Father has given us, that we might be called children of God; and that is what we might be.”

For too long the Church has lived as though Jesus Christ didn’t really die for our sins. Well, sure, we say we believe but we live as though we still have the weight of the world and life on our shoulders. We like to think we follow the great commission, you know, how Jesus sends his disciples out into the world to baptize in the name of the Trinity… but the reality is that we kind of like the way our church feels now not too big, not too small with familiar faces showing up for things and no one too outside the norm showing up or asking the wrong kinds of questions or forcing us to think about ourselves in a new way.

Now that’s a harsh assessment of the Church, and it is ok if you get a little offended, but I want you to try it on for just a moment. Is the church a club where rules both written and unwritten are expected to be followed and where some kind of culture of we show up to be taken care of is at work or is it a mission training center that recognizes that you are already God’s children and that we are here to equip you to live even better and even deeper into who you already are and that includes talking about things like life and death and jumping into God’s story which involves a huge amount of risk but no, not really because all it means is that this place isn’t someplace you belong to but it is a place you come because you already belong to each other. It’s a family reunion and this is the gazebo in some ways… there’s fellowship, some kind of speech, some singing and dancing, a meal, and then you are returned to your lives refreshed and ready to go about your daily lives but always knowing that your name isn’t something you had to earn, that family crest, it is someone you already are.

And all of what I just said is just about the first verse!

Can I do one more?

“The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” Matthew Henry, that great 17th century Presbyterian non-conforming British minister once wrote, “These poor, humble, and despised ones are the favored ones of God.” The children of God are not the honored, expounded, honored and celebrated in the world. Congregations of people who strive to be known in the world usually have rejected either implicitly or explicitly their true love, Jesus Christ. They live lives and do church in ways that their culture or community or world has decided is “Christian” and forget that the true life of a child of God is lived in the shadow of the cross… it is lived in the emptying out of reputation and status for the sake of the lost, it is the picture of the sheep going out of the fenced in pasture into the world knowing that their shepherd is the one who has claimed them and named them and saved them already. The world, in its current configuration, cannot figure out what to do with these rag tag armies of God’s children who seek to serve and to love and to save with little regard for their own status and reputation.

Brothers and sisters, we are living our lives between the font and the heavenly banquet table. In our baptisms we were joined to Christ and our membership in the family of God was bestowed on us not because of anything we did to deserve it or earn it but solely out of the love of Our Father who so loved us that He gave His only Son to die for us. And then, then we approach this table to receive this body and blood of Jesus, a foretaste of the feast to come when we will dine face to face with our Savior. The communion table is a waypoint in our journey; it is a touchstone where we are forgiven, fed, and nourished to return to our lives lived out there in the world.

And this church is being called to be out there. The life of this church is not restricted to Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings or the myriad other programs or opportunities that have come to be seen as our “church time”. No, the life of the church is in the world. It is vulnerable, it takes risks, and it plunges headfirst into real life… and that’s a dangerous proposition because that means a life lived beyond our control, our goal setting, our expectations but it is a life lived knowing that we are baptized and fed with just a foretaste of the feast to come… a taste of everlasting life that is intended to leave us wanting, seeking, yearning for more.

So when the author of John moves on and writes about purity and sinlessness he is not talking about more rules and regulations, he is not even talking about morality, he is talking about the result of a life lived taking the promises of the font and the table and this very Living World seriously. If you have this name, “child of God”, how can you possibly not want to free yourself of any hindrance, and hesitation, and yes, any caution that would keep you from God’s presence?

So what does this mean for us here in this little gazebo called Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth? What does it look like to be a community striving not become known or even honored, what does it look like to be a community that wants its building not to be a club but an outpost where missionaries are equipped to live their lives in that striving to better be who they already are?

My sense is that just as with my own children it will be a descriptive and not prescriptive community… by that I mean that as anyone knows with children you cannot raise them in a one size fits all mentality, it just doesn’t work. Berit is not Liv and Liv is certainly not Berit and yet they share my name and they are a part of my family. What works for Liv does not work for Berit, what works for me probably won’t work for you. But I can describe what this family looks like so let me try one description for you:

One of the downfalls of a church that doesn’t take its bestowed identity seriously is that they get the “child of God” idea just fine but then becomes the child who has moved back into their parents basement and never quite gets its collective act together to move out and live their own lives! So how about a church that comes together to be equipped to live in the world? How about a church that wants to Jump Into God’s story but then recognizes that that story continues out beyond the walls of the church building but is fully present in the world? How about a community that isn’t satisfied with the consumer mentality of “getting something out of church” but is striving to learn and serve and grow into its identity as God’s children in the world, a world that will not know it? And that that becomes our worship? No longer can we ask each other “so what did you get out of worship today” but we can ask each other “So, what did God get out of our worship today?” The consumer of our worship life is not us but God. We give, God gets. The consumer of our life in the world, then, is not us but our neighbor. We give, they get.

Our identity is not something we earned or even chose but was bestowed on us at the font, “Child of God, you have been marked with the Cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.” And the life we live between the font and the heavenly feast, that, that is our worship, our offering, our thanksgiving, our response to God’s crazy, amazing, lavishing love and grace.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: sermons

The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning: A Review

Before we go any further I want to say two things that I have never said about a book on "spirituality" or "religion" or "theology"
1. I read this book in one sitting.
2. I found myself passing the book to my wife to read a paragraph or two, she would read a bit further, find something else amazing, and pass the book back to me.

In short, this book is the good stuff.

Brennan Manning is the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel, if you haven't read it you can pretty much guess what that one was about from the sound of the word "ragamuffin". Ragamuffins are the lowly, despised, rejected ones of the world, you know, the ones God favors, the ones that Jesus sends us to bring back into the house, the ones we miss over and over again. Well, while that book may have described a recipient of the Good News, The Furious Longing of God is their creed.

In this book Manning presents a God, Father, Abba who longs so furiously for His children that he comes and gets us. This is a book that will blow the dust off of the faith while convicting us in our stupor.

Each chapter has two discussion questions, so this book may be used in a small group. Warning to all "small group pastors" out there, if you release this book into a small group it may end up being like throwing a grenade with the pin pulled. One way or the other, something's going to happen. I will quote one of his discussion questions:

"There is the 'you' that people see and then there is the 'rest of you'. Take some time and craft a picture of the 'rest of you.' Just remember that the chances are good it will be full of paradox and contradictions."

I appreciate Manning's going after this idea of the reversing of the arrows in terms of our relationship with God. For all of our seeking and fasting and "spiritual development" there is this lost (to us) idea of the gathering storm of bliss in the revelation that God longs for you, little ragamuffin you, right where you're at. Questioning you, fundamentalist you, absent for these many days you. You. Read it, pass it on, take Manning's suggestion and drop it in a used book shop or leave it at the coffee shop. Obviously all of our sermons and long range plans aren't doing the trick, here's a try from a slightly more chaotic and oh-so-needed point of view.

"The Furious Longing of God" (Brennan Manning)

Technorati Tags: Book review, Brennan Manning, life, religion

Does Not Play Well With Others: Palm Sunday 2009

Mark 11, 14, 15

Does Not Play Well With Others
Pastor Chris Enstad

Palm Sunday is one of the most jarring Sundays of the church year for me. Starting with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ending with the crowd shouting, “crucify him” all in one hour. And with many of the same people yelling those things too!

But there are many reasons that I love the way that Mark tells the Gospel story one of them being the structure of the story that takes place between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his betrayal by Judas. Mark makes this story rush in on us; he catches us up into the crowd and then it’s kind of like someone has pushed the fast forward button on the DVD player but not the super fast forward just the one that nudges it about 2 times faster so you can still kind of see what’s happening but your brain is not quite processing the details.

I mean listen to this cascading series of events that take place between the moment of Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and his handing over to the Romans to be tried and executed:

The first thing Jesus did after his arrival in Jerusalem was condemn a fig tree for not producing fruit even though it was out of season. This was how Jesus put Israel on notice. It was an immediate broadside against Israel for not producing the fruits of faith. Then he cleansed the temple throwing the moneychangers out, yelling that they had turned his father’s house into a den of robbers, overthrowing tables… not the picture of Jesus that we have today and certainly not the Jesus that the religious leaders and authorities were waiting for. And then there was that teaching on prayer where Jesus upended the teachings of the authorities yet again you know they had turned God into some kind of errand boy who only worked for those who followed the rules the best according to the authorities and so when someone asked God for something and didn’t get it those in charge would say well, you just aren’t a good enough person, you need to do this and this and this and then maybe God will answer your prayer. Well, Jesus took that idea and stood it right on its end. No, that is not what a life in worship of my Father looks like. Align yourself with the Father’s kingdom and your prayers will start to reflect that reality and that life is one lived in forgiveness and trust and hope. If our lives are aligned with the reality that Jesus Christ died on the cross wouldn’t our prayers reflect that faith?

He then turns the religious leaders challenge to his authority back on them with a discussion of the greatest commandment. He tells the parable of the wicked tenants who killed the Son of the Landlord foretelling his own death at the hands of those at work in his father’s field. He challenged the Sadducees lack of faith in the resurrection with the words, “God is the God of the living not the dead.” He denounced the scribes for devouring the homes of the widows and saying long prayers for appearances sake. He lifted up the tiny offering of the widow as evidence of her faith for giving out of her want over and against those who gave just a tiny portion of their abundance. He foretold the destruction of the temple and his own persecution. He taught about the end times but then warned people not to try to guess if they would come sooner or later. He warned that one could not tell when the Son would return but that we all must stay awake.

Is it any wonder then that this Jesus who was welcomed in triumph is, all of the sudden, being plotted against?

For the authorities and priests and scribes Jesus’ presence was undermining their authority over the people… as many church leaders find even today I might add… when Jesus Christ is truly preached and taught and lived it can overthrow our own control and overwhelm our mightiest expectations. Oh, we would prefer the Jesus who was conforming and controllable, who lived up to our expectations not this Son of God who is tearing down traditions, rules, and conventions because God was here to restore his creation to his will not ours and that means dying brothers and sisters. Someone had to die are you willing to do that? You’d rather have the rules and regulations so you can tell who is in and out, we’d rather have a list of busywork to do so we can avoid confronting what really needs to happen. Jesus had to die to bring us back into God’s presence. We have to die to ourselves so that we too might live. Oh man oh man.

But perhaps, perhaps it was the anointing of Jesus with the oil that was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Perhaps it was this extravagant act of worship, a jar of nard worth a year’s wages opened and upended on Jesus’ head. "Could not this bottle have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor?"

“Of course,” is the only answer Jesus could give. "But I am with you now"… you see, we always miss the point. We can serve serve serve but it is in the worship of God in Jesus Christ, and not just the victorious Christ of Easter but also the Jesus hanging lifeless on the cross that demands our attention first. We have to make a life of the worship at the foot of the cross that will spring forth fruits of service and worship that come as a result of that faith not as a prerequisite of it.

Brothers and sisters we cannot handle a God like this, a God who reminds us that the first commandment is the most important… you shall have no other Gods but me. Not your job, your house, your spouse, your reputation, your kids, their schedules, even service to the poor are only misfired attempts to do life on our own terms and not in worship of the God who gave his only Son to die for you.

So yes, this is an incongruous Sunday but I think it must be a necessary one to have to spiritually and physically jam us into readiness for the week and the life and the death ahead of us.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: lectionary, Lutheran, preaching, religion, Scripture, sermons

The Jesus we want vs. the Jesus we got

I'm working my sermon for Palm (Passion) Sunday and thought I'd throw these thoughts up here for y'all:

The Jesus We Want:
All Powerful
Enables us to live our lives as a cheerleader for *our* goals, *our plans/needs/wants*
*Teaches* us how to be/do good
*Helps* us in *our* priorities
*Validates* our traditions, rules and regulations.

The Jesus We Got (or were given):
Came to *die* (glorified in death not in his life)
His death radically *imposes* God's priorities over ours
*knows* we can't be or do good or he wouldn't be here in the first place. His presence is *judgement*.
Is here to show us what it means to live(die) a life of worship to God and it ain't about "going to church" folks.
*Breaks* our traditions, rules, anything that comes between us and God. Christ is the only *mediator* that could do what he did and that is win us back to God.

Technorati Tags: Palm Sunday