It Takes A Church...

Blessed Bark

No...this isn't a post about Scout.  She is still so young that she doesn't bark much.  It's about tree bark.  That crusty, rough, hardened exterior that protects the green flesh and sticky sap that gives a tree life.

Some recent posts by Steve Norris on Eugene Petersons' Eat This Book (another title I have yet to open), had me digging through my blogging archives to resurrect this section from an interview with Eugene Peterson in the March 2005 issue of Christianity Today, (p. 45).

He was asked by the interviewer, "So how should we envision the Christian life?"  A better question, admittedly than my "ideal church" one, but it gets to the same point.  Peterson then describes a "miserable" Norwegian Lutheran church with the words, "it wasn't a very nice service, it just was just not very good worship."  He then describes how this small, mostly elderly population cares for single mothers in their midst.

The interviewer asks: "But many Christians wood look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith."

Peterson responds: "What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church because there is sin the church.  But there is no other place to be a Christian except the church... I really don't understand this naive criticism of the institution.  I really don't get it. 

Frederick Von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree.  There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within.  And the tree grows and grows and grows.  If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive.  And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long.  It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy and narcissism."

Scout

My blogging has been sporadic the past two weeks because...well...I have a church again.  Coming back from sabbatical has been like a big reunion.  I have had a bunch of meetings with people, reconnected to my staff and have been getting back into the groove of administration and preaching. 

Then...this happened. 

She is Scout.  We named her after the spunky little girl in "To Kill a Mockingbird", one of my favorite films.  She is delightful, but I think my quiet mornings all by myself are going to be thrown off for a while.

Five months after we said good bye to my old pal Huge whom we loved dearly, it is pretty amazing how quickly we fell in love with this pup.  But she's pretty special.  In an upcoming post I'll tell you the story of her earliest days and the breeder who loved her into life.

(More Scout pictures below...sheesh... it's a bit ridiculous how much we like her.)

What Plan? Whose Acceptance?

My sabbatical has ended and I am back at church enjoying the challenges and reconnections with a church of people whom I love.  While the “days” of sabbatical are ended, the experiences and thoughts certainly linger.

Confident that that my blogging will become a place to further unpack what I learned, I want to begin a new series today my study and musings about the way we Christians think about that great gift of God to us—namely our “salvation.”  Over the next few posts, I want to consider how our thinking about salvation effects our living out the salvation we have been given  So, let’s start here.

Having started my ministry career as a youth evangelist, I learned the “plan of salvation” as a young college student.  Actually I learned several of them.  Campus Crusades “Four Spiritual Laws”. Billy Graham's, “Steps to Peace with God”.  I learned the "Roman Road" and few others, too.  I am truly grateful for them.  But, as I continue to study the Scriptures I have come to believe that they quite often start at the wrong place and end up leading off in a direction that is can be tangential from the Biblical description of salvation.   

Special Note here to calm friends who think I may be flirting with heresy—The plans in themselves are not misleading or wrong.  Millions of people have become genuine Christians through using them.  I have led people to Christ through them.  I had lunch with someone just yesterday who became a Christian by looking at the diagram in one of them.  God has and does use them, I am not throwing them out, but I do want to encourage us to return back to what the Scriptures say about salvation and how that “root” can lead us to much more and better “fruit”. 

So lets start today by reconsidering this idea:  Many of us think that the reason that Jesus came to this world was to save US.  God so loved US that he sent, Jesus, right?  Isn’t that what John 3:16 says?  Isn't the point of the Gospel that by grace,even people like us can "accept Jesus" into our lives?

Then after we having accepted Jesus into our lives, become saved, forgiven, set free from sins and given a new nature to live with him for eternity, we think, Jesus comes to us and says, “By the way, if you are satisfied with the salvation that I have given you, would you mind telling other people? If you are happy with what you have received would you mind supporting my work with the rest of the world?"

This approach makes the point of the gospel individual salvation and everything that follows it is about "expanding the market."

But is that really what the gospel is? Look again at John 3:16. For God so loved the world…

Our starting point is not God’s love for US, but God's love for the world of which we are part.  Jesus didn’t come to save us and then ask us to help him out in saving the world.  He came to this world to save the world.  And he saved us SO THAT we can be part of his plan to save the whole world.  God saved us to become his body at work in the world, his people carrying out the plan of God for all the world. 

As N.T. Wright points out, this is the biblical understanding of salvation that Jesus' own hearers would have understood when they heard him or that the early church would have assumed when the gospels were taught,

"Salvation,then, was a matter of a new world, the renewal of creation" through God's own renewed people, "the spearhead of the divine purpose." (Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, p. 338)

And grace, amazing wonderful grace--the “good news” of the Gospel is NOT that we can “accept Jesus into our lives".  The good news is that Jesus graciously accepts US into his.

A Place or A Way to Live?

Over the summer I watched on DVD a mini-series called “Into the West”.  In one of the early episodes, a young Jacob Wheeler has left the safety of hearth and home to follow a group of mountain men led by the famous (and historical figure) Jedediah Smith to exploring the uncharted west. 

In one scene, the mountain men are all in the middle of a night of carousing when young Wheeler notices that the devoutly Christian Smith has pulled away from the men and abstained from the debauchery.  When Wheeler asks his mentor about why he doesn’t join in with the other men, Smith tells him that “The west is just a place on the map, not a way to live.” 

That maxim leads the young Wheeler to a life of conviction and integrity.  A life that differentiated him from so many of the mountain men with whom he shared company. A particularly powerful moment comes when a young Lakota woman is being sold like meat for consumption; he duels for her and protects her, marrying her instead of exploiting her.

Throughout the summer as I traveled to many different places I observed that most of us have also confused our places and our lives.  I have seen this with beach cultures and mountain towns, in poor villages and wealthy enclaves.  We are so easily influenced by the culture around us that the place becomes the way to live. 

I found myself wanting to say to the lawyer who left his family in the middle of a “mid-life crisis, breakdown, whatever-you-call-it” to move to Costa Rica, to far-too-young adolescents on the beaches of San Clemente who were obviously growing up too quickly, to the ultra wealthy in resort towns who are living for nothing beyond golf or skiing or the next exotic vacation and even to the triathletes who seemed to have sacrificed everything for lower split times or a coveted spot in Kona…

This is just a place on the map, not a way to live. 

(There is a popular t-shirt in Tri circles that, while tongue-in-cheek, cuts close to home: “If you are enjoying a meaningful relationship….you could be training more.)

So many of us confuse where we are with who we are.  We are chameleons who take on our environment, our culture, and the world around us and are convinced that it won’t harm our souls.  We believe the lie that “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” when the truth is that what we do, wherever we are, shapes who we are.

In many ways, we Christians, fall into the same trap.  We often believe that the “Kingdom of heaven” is nothing but a “place” on a spiritual map that we hope to go to when we die and not a “way to live”.  We read passages that refer to us as “citizens of heaven” (Phil 3:20) and think that it refers only to the afterlife.  But it is actually a calling—a way to live—not an address.

N.T. Wright has pointed out that the imagery of citizens of heaven was a reference to those ex-patriots (most of the retired Roman soldiers) who were rewarded with land grants and asked to populate the conquered territories at a distance from Rome.  These “citizens of Rome” knew that while they lived in far off lands like Philippi and Ephesus, they were to be loyal to Rome and by their influence help turn this territory into Roman stronghold.  While the “place” they lived in was a foreign land, the “way” to live was as a Roman.

My friends, we Christians must get clear that as Christians, the Kingdom of heaven—life under God’s reign and rule—is the way to live in whatever “place” we are called or find ourselves.  And if the church is going to be, again in the words of Bishop Wright, the “place” where “heaven and earth overlap” and then that “place” will only become evident by the "way" we live.

"You Were Loved into Existence"

My Sabbatical has come to an end.  I entered back into our church yesterday and was welcomed back with love, affirmation and cake.  In my first sermon back (which is posted here) I told the story of the best sermon that I heard during my sabbatical.  (I heard some really good ones at a number of different churches this summer, but this one settled deep into my soul.)

It didn’t occur in the middle of a worship service, but at the Ironman Pre-Race dinner.  And it didn’t come from an eloquent preacher, but from a humble Catholic sister. 

Sister Madonna Buder was the oldest participant in Ironman Canada.  She is 76 years old and has raced in several Ironman events, even though she didn’t first pull on a pair of running shoes until she was 48 years old.  She was invited to the podium and after saying some brief gracious remarks, said simply, “When you are out there tomorrow and you hit a dark moment—and everyone hits a dark moment—remember, that you are loved.  You were loved into existence.”

You were loved into existence.

I looked at Charlie and we both had tears in our eyes.

While out on the Marathon run in the Ironman, I was more aware than ever that I was loved into existence. 
I was running with one of my best friends, in a beautiful place, doing something that I barely dreamed I could do.
I was running into the arms of my family who loves me and cheers me on in all the crazy things I do. 
I was running with the prayers and support of my friends back home, a couple who had even called me on my cell phone to assure me of their prayers for me, others who had emailed or posted on my blog to let me know that they were thinking of me. 
I thought back to all that I had experienced in these past three months and all that I have experienced being at San Clemente Presbyterian Church these past nine years (I had plenty of time to think about all of this—it’s a long run!).

I found myself well up with tears again because without question, I could say that I know that I was loved into existence. 

And without even intending to do so, I found myself thinking and praying for others.

I prayed for the people around me, some of whom live for little more than physical fitness.
My mind wandered back to so many people I had met along the way the last couple of years. 
Do our friends in Malawi know that they were loved into existence?
Do the Christian leaders serving in the Philippines, the cab drivers who were such kind Spanish tutors, the med students at language school, the people working the cruise ship who are so often so far away from their families in order to make a living, the nature lovers who have turned their backs on the church, even the creatures all about me:

Do they know, O Lord, that you loved them into existence? 

And once again, I realized how love—when truly experienced—becomes mission.  How the experience of knowing something so profound leads you to the desire to share that good news with others.

My prayer as this sabbatical season comes to an end is that I can so communicate to my church the presence of the Father who loved us into existence, that we, anchored in that confidence, will become more and more a part of the Father’s mission to make right the world that he "so loved into existence."

Stay tuned as we try to figure out exactly how we are called to do that.