Resurrection Life

Easter 5, 2012: In which the preacher invokes "The Big Lebowski" in a congregation full of 80-year-olds. Crickets chirped. Oh, and Jesus teaches us to "abide".

Gospel: John 15: 1-11

 

Today’s Gospel text follows on the heals of the message that Glenndy Ose brought to us last Sunday.  Last Sunday Glenndy spoke of Jesus as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep an image we quite like to have until we recall that, hey, Jesus is calling us sheep.  All we do is just kind of stand there and let Jesus do all the work.  To which I respond: exactly.

 

This morning we hear Jesus refer to himself as the vine and to us as branches.  Another quite intriguing picture of who Jesus Christ is but again, kind of a disheartening image for someone who wants to know what it is they need to do to get into heaven.  

 

Each of our girls developed their independent gene in similar ways and they both made those developments known to us in their use of language.  For one of them it was they word, “Self”.  If we tried to do something for her she would snatch whatever it was out of our hands with the words, “self self!”.  Likewise our other daughter notified us of her independence by grabbing the spoon or whatever we were trying to do for her with the words, “Oni me, oni me!”

 

Those traits continue in each of us as we grow and develop as adults.  We are a people who are proud of the things we accomplish for ourselves.  We pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on making our way through life to each his own.  

 

The news has had quite a few stories on the decline of the mainline church and the rise of the mega non-denominational church.  Why is this happening one radio commentator wanted to know?  One young woman phoned in and said, “I go to such and such church because their message is relevant to my life and is filled with good advice.  The sermons teach me how to be a better spouse, a better Christian, and a better person.”

 

We like to have a checklist of things we have to do so that we can then be assured of our place in God’s presence.

 

But then these little vignettes pop up in Scripture and it turns everything that we want to do on our head, instead it is showing us what it is God is doing to bring us together and to give us life.  We just sit there in the sheepfold or stay clinging to the vine.  No branch gets to exclude any other branch, it’s not our job, God does the pruning and tending to His garden.

 

Our job, if it can be called that, is to abide in Christ.  In the movie the Big Lebowski the character played by Jeff Bridges was called simply, “The Dude” and the dude was known for one thing and one thing only... the Dude Abides.  The dude was always around and always would be.  The dude stays the dude even when everything else around him was going crazy.

 

So when Christ is talking about the branches abiding in the vine is he using the same definition as the dude?  I think so.  We cannot win our salvation by doing checklists of good works, our salvation was won for us by Christ, our good shepherd, our vine.  

 

We, in turn, have been grafted into Christ by virtue of our baptism, we have become part of the vine.  It is our job to make sure we stay that way, thus, while good works are not our salvation, making sure we stay near Christ is.  Like any living thing our faith our relationship with Christ needs to be nourished to stay alive, thus, when we come to church, study God’s word, find fellowship with other people on their life’s journey’s, we find ourselves drawing our life and our light from the true vine, Jesus Christ.  But, when we do not we find ourselves soon lost and dried out, ready to be thrown on the fire.  When I get into conversations about faith with seekers or with those who just aren’t sure about the whole God thing yet I like to explain our my spirituality, my faith, is like having an extra gear waiting for when the going gets rough.  People of faith have been proven to be more resilient to life’s curve balls because we know when confronted by these things that we are not alone.  It is not up to us alone to walk through this life.  We have each other, and more importantly, we have our true vine, jesus Christ.

 

Amen.

 

Thoughts on Caine's Arcade

This video:

http://cainesarcade.com/

Is making the rounds of the internet.  I think it is a tremendous teaching tool for companies, entrepreneurs, and congregations.

The lessons I take away from a story like this in regards to church life go like this:

1. Do what you are called to do as a church.  Don't look around wondering if you're doing it right, just get moving and figure out the details as you go.  Many congregations are stuck in "talk" mode and don't ever get to "do" mode.  Caine just started doing it, and he made it his young life's mission to staff that arcade... that's what we're called to do for the Gospel Good News!

2. Find your congregation's square root button.  It slips by so fast you might miss it but did you notice that Caine uses square roots to determine the validity of the fun pass?  What's your cool button at your church?  Or did yours fall off years ago and no one has thought to clue it back on?  The highest functioning congregations are the ones having fun doing what they're doing.

3. It's ok to be proud of something you and your church have done.  We often, as congregations and leaders, don't like to wear our "Caine's Arcade" shirt to school because we're afraid someone will make fun of us.  In the church world we are reknown for eating our most promising young leaders because of the scorn heaped on them for trying something new and breaking established traditions.  The last words out of Caine's mouth in the film credits are, "I'm proud."  I think God says the same thing when we forget about the critics and the naysayers and just get to work doing what He has called us to do as congregations.  Celebrate the victories!

 

"Makings" vs. "Meetings"

Seth Godin recently pointed out that there is a huge difference between making something and meeting something. We organize and prioritize things differently if we were, say, to be meeting a train over and against making a train. Working in the church can often end up in days of endless meetings. Meetings are necessary but they invite hurried boredom, frustration and downright rudeness (for the chronically late) because more often than not creatives and producers on your staff would rather be out DOING something than sitting in a room talking ABOUT doing something.

I wonder if we might not invite each other into "makings" where the staff team is invited into a relationship where they are making something not meeting about something.  What kind of inspiration would come from that?  How many silos might get torn down when different areas of your church stop defending their turf and start making something new and exciting?

Challenge: Try preaching 1000 of your best words this Sunday

In listening to a singer-songwriter speak about his craft recently, he said something that struck me as quite poignant.  A woman asked, "How do you know a song you are working on is 'done'?"  His response, "When I am making an album I know that I have to say everything I want to say in 3 1/2 minutes, that kind of economy forces me to be creative with what I am saying and how I am saying it."

As preachers we have often been led to believe that we should preach until we are done, but there are often no brackets around the sermon moment.  Often preachers circle the landing field three or four times before landing the plane, as they say.  

And so I have been challenging myself to paint my sermons as though the canvas is only so wide and so high.  I have been crafting sermons that have a limit.  In self-limiting the sermon I believe two things are happening: I am making my points in a clearer, more succinct way and two, I see fewer glances at the wristwatch.  

How am I doing this?  By challenging myself, each week, to limit myself to 1000 of the very best words I can use to preach on any given text.  1000 words is a lot of words, why not try it and tell me how it goes?

When I mentioned this challenge on my Facebook page it ignited a small firestorm of pushback from several of my ordained colleagues but several more "attaboy" thumbs-ups from my friends who have to sit in the pew and not stand in the pulpit.  I wonder if preachers were to challenge themselves to hone their craft on a more consistent basis, more like a singer-songwriter, if we might not find ourselves with a cadre of energized, talented preachers rather than burned out, dried out, emptied out ones?

What do you think?

This post was 319 words.

 

On the Verge: a journey into the apostolic future of the church by Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson. A Review

On the Verge is an amazing snapshot and leadership guide to what church just may be in the first part of the 21st century.  Hirsch and Ferguson have teamed up to give us a look inside 12 churches that are experimenting with life "on the edge" of where contemporary Christian communities are in an effort to bring forward the best practices for how we can be church whether large or small, urban or suburban and yes even rural!

Because, face it, we aren't being churches all that well right now.  But the authors' main point is salient and very well-taken... churches as they are constructed and run today are basically competing for the same share of the marketplace with other churches and so they are in the arms race of being the "best" everything to everyone.  We have lost our missional impulse, the impulse that says, "No, the real market is the world of unbelievers who are running around outside our door and never being invited into a community of faith!"

These 12 profiled communities are examples of those who "get it" in the 21st century... there will be no more institutionalization of the church, we simply can't affort to calcify traditions.  What is needed is a constant cycle of imagination, shifting and innovation.  If a church leader can help his people capture that process as their new life together, they will have every chance of surviving and thriving in the new era.

The book is hard to put down.  It is something every leader will want to explore with their council or elders.  I especially implore pastors in smaller mainline churches who think they don't have much else to offer the world to give the world that Hirsch and Ferguson are painting a look.  It may just be the hope you are looking for.

A Sermon in which the Pastor combines Rally Sunday and 9/11 around a Bible verse on Forgiveness.

13 Pentecost 2011

September 11

Pastor Chris Enstad

Matthew 18: 21-35

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

Rally Sunday has become in our church culture another high holy day.  The air is festive, the choirs are back in full swing, Sunday School and Confirmation, Adult Education, all of our new Health and Wholeness offerings, things are back in gear at Elim Lutheran Church.  But, we have not been hibernating over the past three months, when we put our regular ministry offerings on hiatus, it gives the church as a whole, a chance to breathe and think and pray.  We are putting together at this very moment our Community Ministry Project Team who will work with our Consultant, Joy Skegstad, and me to plan for our next 90 years of ministry on the corner of 40th and Broadway.  Our mission is not longer restricted to inside these walls but, we aim to be a church that equips our members to serve their community and their neighbors, multiplying our reach and our impact throughout Robbinsdale, North Minneapolis and beyond.  I invite you to pray for the team as they begin their work next week and then, keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to become a part of this work.

But, today also carries with it an air of remembrance of the events of 10 years ago.  I’m sure just about everyone in this room who was alive that day remembers where they were and what they were doing when those planes hit the World Trade Centers.  

That day changed us as a country and a people in some good ways but, also some bad.  I received an email written by the CEO of Meetup.com on how he saw an opportunity in the shadows of 9/11 to help neighbors come together, to see each other and perform community service and other things together.  

But, we also have retreated to many stereotypes and tribal instincts.  When we are threatened it is easy to respond with a defensive stance that means we begin to distrust people who look act or talk differently than us.  Those things have and continue to happen today, yes, in some cases it has proved to be worth it but, I continue to wonder if our ability as human beings to grow in our understanding of people who may not have been born in the same circumstances, or who believe in quite different things than we do, I wonder if that ability has been stunted in some way and if that is a permanent condition.  The hatred and fear of Muslims and Islam, or dark skinned Arabs, is deep.  It’s all over the internet and on the 24 hour news stations.  People are profiting from keeping us afraid of each other.

Fitting then, that this Matthew text might appear today, on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, this text from Matthew 18 on forgiveness.

Forgiveness.  That has got to be the trickiest part of the Christian message that there is.  Peter approaches Jesus and asks, “How many times should I forgive my brother if he sins against me, seven’?  You see, traditional Jewish faith taught that forgiving somebody three times was a sufficient display of a humble and forgiving heart.  

But, Jesus responded, “No, seven times isn’t enough.  How about seventy times seven?”.  In fact, Jesus is saying, you shouldn’t even keep count... just keep on forgiving.

And, he then, tells the tale of the unforgiving servant.  The servant had a debt of ten thousand talents.  It was forgiven.  Do you know how large a debt ten thousand talents is?  Well a talent was roughly equal to 20 years of labor.  If a laborer earns $15/hour and works about 2,000 hours/year he earns about $30,000 a year.  So, a talent would be equal to $600,000.  So, 10 thousand talents is worth, in today’s terms, about $6 billion.   In other words, that servant was forgiven a whole lot of money... an unpayable debt was forgiven.

That servant then went and found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii which was about 20 weeks worth of labor or $12,000 and had him thrown in prison.

The one who was forgiven an unpayable debt repaid that grace with impunity at someone who owed him so little.

Brothers and sisters, forgiveness is tricky isn’t it?  So often we want to hold onto our grudges or the wrongs that have been done to us in an effort to wait for our offender to ask for forgiveness.  But, what if that conversation never happens?  We think that holding a grudge means that we have power over another person, but, in reality we are still allowing our offender to have control over us because, that grudge or fault eats away at our very soul.

How many times must I forgive a brother that has sinned against me?  Seventy times seven times.

Remember this,God did not wait for us to come to him to ask for forgiveness.  God did not wait for us to get our act together and come on our knees asking for admittance to the kingdom of heaven and the family of God.

No, while we were still dead to sin, God wiped our debt clean.  Our invoice from God says, “You owed me $6,000,000,000 but, that debt has been paid in full by my Son, Jesus Christ.  

How do we repay that debt?  By forgiving our brothers and sisters from our hearts. whether they ask for it or not.  Whether or not their heart has experienced God’s forgiving Word, yours.  Yours has.  
May God continue to work his transforming ways with each of you today and in all the days to come.  It has to start somewhere, why not start with you.  Today.

A little girl heard this passage one day and said to her pastor, “You know, forgiveness must be like the aroma of a flower after it has been crushed.”  

Life does that to us, doesn’t it?  Who of us has not been hurt at some point or another.

May each of you be given the power to forgive by the Holy Spirit, that we might each become the aroma of Christ in an unforgiving world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Reading the Bible: Day 87: Acts 22 - Romans 4 (August 31)

Well we are getting close to completing the challenge of reading our entire Bible this summer!  Some of you have already finished, I hear so way to go!

Today I am going to focus just a bit on the Book of Romans.  The entire book is dedicated to Paul's theology of the Righteousness of God over and against the unrighteousness of man.  In the letter he exhorts the church in Rome to preach the Gospel rightly divided between law and gospel.  It is this little hook, law and gospel, that launched the reformation and continues to inspire churches in their evangelistic endeavors to this day.

We live lives under the law.  Follow the rules and you will not get in trouble.  When we mistakenly bring this line of thinking into what Christ did for us we miss the point of the death and resurrection completely.  It is because we cannot follow the law, for instance the Ten Commandments, that God sent his son to fulfil the law on our behalf.  This now frees us to live new lives in him.  And so we go about our lives ministering to the needs of others and proclaiming that good news not because we have to but because we can.

So the first four chapters of Romans center on God's righteous judgement.  We are not the judge, God is.  And God has already judged mankind and found us to be lost and hopeless.  The birth of Jesus Christ, that we celebrate on Christmas, is actually a judgement day for us!  Could we make our way back to being right with God on our own?  God determined the answer to be, "no".  And so he sent his only begotten Son to get us back.

And so our righteousness is not counted to us by the number of rules we follow but by another important reformation phrase, "faith alone".  To those who believe in Christ comes the justification of the sinner... you and me.

Reading the Bible: The Home Stretch! Day 86 Acts 12-21 (August 25)

The Acts 16 story of Paul and Silas in prison is a powerful image, for me, of the life lived in Christ.  Remember that they landed in prison for healing a demon-possessed girl.  They were not imprisoned, it seems, for the healing itself but because they took away the means of making a living for the girl's parents.  For this the two men were thrown in prison.

Two things to take away from this: note that throughout the entire book of Acts, as the early church was being planted, we see the profit motive bumping up against the motive of the Gospel.  My bible finds comparisons with Simon the magician, Elymas and Demetrius the silversmith!  It does seem that pure capitalism and the Gospel are incompatible.  I am not advocating pure socialism, either, however what does a system look like where the wealthy put their hope not in wealth but in something else entirely?  Read 1 Timothy 6:17-19.  Feel free to comment on this comment as well, I'm curious to know what others think.  Truly, in the name of healing that girl, Paul and Silas actually stole from her parents... so how do those two things exist in the same world (healing and profit?)

Secondly, look at how Paul and Silas reacted to their imprisonment: by praying and singing hymns to God.  It is vitally important that we continue to teach our young people to know their story by heart so that in times of trouble they have a deep spiritual well from which to draw the water of life.  So many young people are suffering at the hands of our amoral world because they do not know enough the love God has for them.  They do not have a liturgy to draw upon.  They have not been read the Psalms.  They have not memorized the Lord's Prayer or the Creed.  How can we be surprised that they are showing the signs not just of physical but of spiritual illness?

 

Reading the Bible: Day 78: Matthew 28 - Mark 8 (August 17)

Ahh, tradition.  The Pharisees had a bit of a problem.   Jesus and his disciples were walking around not washing their hands before they ate.  They weren't following the rules.  If Jesus and his disciples were supposedly such holy men, why this dismissal of the most basic of rules regarding clean and unclean hands?

Jesus responded by calling them, "hypocrites".  You see, they followed the rules with their hands but not their heart. 

If we put the Ten Commandments on the walls of our courtrooms we would have a better country (folks who say this appear to miss the irony that this is a Christian version of sharia law).

If prayer were allowed in school, bad things wouldn't happen there.  (A friend posted something to this effect on her facebook page today)

"You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." - Jesus N. Christ

Outword piety and appearance of holiness is, in fact, the lowest common denominator of a life in Christ.  It is the transformed heart that Jesus came to get for the kingdom.  So, yes, post the ten commandments in the courtroom, but also post the Sermon on the Mount... you know, the part where Jesus presses the ten commandments and makes them EVEN HARDER.  You know, like, when you stab someone in the back you are murdering them?  How are our Christian politicians doing in this regard?

Did you know that prayer is actually allowed in schools?  Yes it is, ask any kid who didn't study the night before a big test what they are doing right before they pick up a pencil.  It is the organized prayer that all too often ends up being, again, outward displays of piety with no corresponding change of heart or life towards helping the outsider, the least, the lost, the lowly.  I'm quite ok with not making prayer another piece of bling that a "cool kid" wears to school.  

What if that kids mom and dad taught them how to pray "without ceasing" so that the fires of faith fanned on the home hearth transferred through their child to their friends as they became, then, the "aroma of Christ" to all those to whom they came in contact each day?

Traditions do not save us like some kind of magical talismen or chant.

Jesus Christ saved us.  Let's get back to that good news rather than doing our best to establish the coolest, hippest, savviest tradition and then banking on that to get us into the kingdom... 

Reading the Bible: Day 69: Ezekiel 45 - Daniel 5 (August 8)

The Book of Daniel is the story of God's lordship over all creation, including kings and empires.  Throughout the book we will see God setting up and then removing kings as He pleases.

The story of Daniel and his friends being taken into captivity has much to speak to our Church today.  Daniel, you will have read, refused to defile himself while in Babylonian captivity.  Their efforts to assimilate Daniel and his friends into their own culture and mores was met with resistance.  And this resistance was respected by the king.

Would that the Church would learn to be this resistance as well.  I'm not talking about resisting the culture of rap music or dressing like you don't care about your reputation, no.  In fact, I think the Church has been going along with our culture by playing the prim church lady shaking our proverbial finger at "kids these days" when the real decay in our communal life goes much more deeper than swear words and short skirts.

The church has gone along with our culture and allowed itself to be assimilated into world that has used it and thrown it away for political and financial gain.  The church has turned a blind eye to the needs of the poor and for advocating for the least and the lost and the lowly in order to keep its invitation to the country club elite.  We can discuss the poor over wine and pray over the lost on Sunday mornings but we dare not turn that discussion or those prayers into action or we risk being expelled from the hoi polloi.  

And so we see the church used and abused in our political process.  God, evidently, can tell politicians to run for office but then He better keep quiet when it comes time to legislate.

No, we would do our memory of Daniel well to say, "Thanks, but no thanks" to being a cultural institution.  A Christian's presence in the room should make people uncomfortable, not comfortable.