This was the last week.  You’ve finished the book.  We have been asked to respond.

What has been the most significant thing that has happened in your life during these six weeks?

Because I wanted to emphasize a clearer All Saints theme this week, I added the story of Abraham (Abram at the time of the reading from Genesis 12).  The story has such rich lessons for all of us.  We do enjoy some comfort in keeping things the way “they’ve always been.”  However, the challenges for the modern day are calling us to a new unknown land.  God is the one actually calling us and leading us on this journey.

In my own life I can think of people like my grandmother who took me to church as a child.  She and I used to sing through the hymnals she had obtained.  The pictures of the life of Jesus in her old family Bible (a gift to her from her father-in-law) impacted m y life of faith and my journey to the “promised land.”

Who in your own life influenced you?  What saint impacted your faith?  How are you no3w living as a saint int eh light?  and How can our church carry on this legacy?

The person who is alive in Christ is one who is prepared for the flow of the Holy Spirit in them and through them.  This is not to offer a list of have-tos that must be accomplished or rules that must be followed to get on God’s good side.  No this is not legalistic at all.  Rather it considers the practices and disciplines that can create a life of fullness.

How has praying the prayer: “Oh, God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.” impacted you this week?

John 14:6–14

October 26, 2008

The pages of the Old and New Testament are scattered with promises—all kinds of promises: God’s offer of life and meaning to us. The New Testament is especially packed with promises—many of those promises from Jesus Himself. Listen to Him:

Because I live, you also will live. (John 14:19) 

I am come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10) 

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matt. 11:28) 

One of the most fantastic promises of Jesus is in our Scripture lesson, John 14:12. Listen again to when he says: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…”

Isn’t that a spectacular promise?  If this is even remotely possible, then shouldn’t we admit that we have never taken Jesus seriously?  The least we have to confess is that we have certainly been satisfied with far less than he has in mind for us as his followers.  So I want to challenge you to claim this fantastic promise of Jesus himself: we will do even greater things than him.

Charles Schultz, the artist who provided us with the Peanuts cartoons, is really an astute theologian.  In one of his cartoon series, Snoopy is saying of Woodstock, “Someday, Woodstock is going to be a great eagle.”  Then in the next frame he says, “He is going to soar thousands of feet above the ground.” Woodstock takes off into the air and as Snoopy watches he sees the bird upside down whirling around crazily.  So he has second thoughts.  In the third frame Snoopy says, “Well, maybe hundreds of feet above the ground . . .”  But hardly had the words gotten out of his mouth when Woodstock plummets to the ground and lies there, on his back looking dazed, and Snoopy concludes, “Maybe he will be one of those eagles who just walks around.”

Isn’t it amazing how quickly we settle for less than is promised, and for far less than is possible?

The dramatic power in these words, “Greater works than I have done will you do,” becomes more pronounced when we keep in mind Who said it.  Jesus said it.  The One who came to save the world.  The One who forgave and loved, and washed his disciples’ feet.  The Man who made the lame to walk and the blind to see.  The Man who calmed the storm and took little children on his lap and blessed them.  The Man who ate with sinners and confronted the raw and rampant prejudice of his day by talking with the Samaritan woman at the well.  The Man who finished all the work God gave him to do, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, crowned with glory and honor.  Can you believe it? That’s the one who said to you and me that we would do greater works.

Do you believe it?  Don’t answer too quickly. Do you believe it enough to start the process in your mind of claiming the promise?  Our problem is that we trust in Jesus in some things when we need to trust Him with all things.  I want to give two affirmations that give meaning to this promise of Jesus. 

The first affirmation is this: You are more than you think you are.  I believe this is at least a part of what Jesus is saying.  You are more than you think you are.

I read recently of an elderly bachelor and an elderly never-married woman who started dating.  Each had lived alone for many years.  Gradually, the old gentlemen recognized a real fondness and a definite attachment to her.  But he was shy and afraid to tell her his feelings.  Finally, one day he mustered up the courage to say, “Let’s get married!” 

Surprised, she threw up her hands and shouted, “It is a wonderful idea, but who in the world would have us?”

It is easy to sink into that kind of self-understanding that is negative.  In those situations try to remember the eighth Psalm. 

When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little less than God (some translations have it a little lower than the angels) you have made them a little less than God and crowned them with glory and honor.

If you can put this word of the psalmist together with what Jesus said, then you can know that you are more than you think you are.

But you press the question. How can I believe that I am more than I think I am? Listen! You are important to God. In fact you are a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God. You have that on the authority of God’s Word. You are important to God. That ought to transform your self-depreciating thinking. This is the witness of Scripture. That means there is a place in God’s heart that only you can fill. That is the message of the Bible.  God loves each one of us as though each one of us were the only person in the world to love.  

So will you claim the promise—Greater things than I have done will you do. You are more than you think you are.

Maxie Dunnam talks of his wife, Jerry who attended a women’s retreat led by a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Susan.  A few days after returning from the retreat, Jerry received a letter from Sister Susan which concluded with this prayer, “Oh, God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.”

What a prayer.  Maybe it shocks you. “Oh, God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.”  Let’s memorize it together. … Will you make a commitment today to pray that prayer every morning this week?  As you begin your daily Bible reading and prayer time, and the daily reading in Irresistible Invitation, pray the prayer: “Oh, God, help me to believe . . .”

Now a second affirmation: there is something you can be and do, but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ.  I believe this at least a part of what Jesus is saying.

A basic truth of the gospel is this: to be a Christian is to be alive in Christ.  When most of us think about the apostle Paul and what he taught, we think of the basic doctrine of justification by grace through faith.  We forget the other great affirmation that he put as much, maybe more, emphasis upon—a Christian being a person in Christ.

It is interesting that Paul does not tell about his Damascus Road experience in descriptive detail.  Luke records that dramatic event in the book of Acts.  Paul doesn’t retell any outward description of the experience of being struck down by a blinding light and hearing the voice of Christ.  Rather, he talks about the meaning of that experience:

What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. (Gal. 2)

In the book this week, Maxie Dunam puts it this way: Jesus came for one purpose and one purpose alone—to bring himself to us and in bringing himself to bring God.  Not only does he justify us by providing full pardon for our sin, he dwells in us to give us the power to be and do all those things God calls us to be and do. 

Whatever the language we use, our experience is that as we confess and repent of our sins, we are forgiven.  We are justified, accepted by, and enter into a new relationship with God who then lives in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Christians are to be alive in Christ.  Therefore the affirmation: there is something you can never be or do apart from Jesus Christ. 

I could not begin to name all the struggles that are going on in your lives.  Very few of you are without some kind of struggle.

Some of you are struggling in your marriage. Did you know that about the same percentages of the marriages of Christians end in divorce as those who are not?  Some of you here are struggling in your marriage.  You don’t want it to end, but it’s tough to keep it going.

I can guarantee you that there are those here today who are flirting with, even addicted to pornography.   

If this is an average group, more than a few of you are struggling with or you have a family member or a very close friend who is struggling with alcohol and/or some other drug addictions.

Some of you have elderly parents for whom you have to care and it is wearing you down.  I could go on and on: a terminal illness, financial problems, a rebellious child.

Listen!  None of your struggles is beyond the power of Jesus.  There is something you can be and do, but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ. 

It may be that the primary reason most of us are not empowered to live more effective Christian lives is that we don’t spend enough time on our knees.  We trust Jesus with some things some of the time, when we need to trust Him with all things all of the time.  We don’t believe what Jesus said. 

What did Jesus promise he would do when he returned to the Father?  He said he would send his Holy Spirit.  And what would the Holy Spirit do?  The Holy Spirit would give us power.  That is one of his fantastic promises.  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you,” Jesus said.  And Paul said to the Ephesians that the very power which raised Jesus from the dead, was available to us.

The Holy Spirit that gave power to Christ is giving us power.

Let me ask you a question.  When was the last time you attempted something so great, so demanding, so kingdom-like that you knew you would fail unless you received the power of the Holy Spirit?

When was the last time you heard the call of God to do something bold, and you followed boldly, knowing that the only way you could do what you were being called to was to be guided by the Holy Spirit?  

This summer the Church Council finished a long prayerful process of defining goals for our church over the next 2 to 5 years.  They asked the question, “What is Jesus calling us to do in this town?  Who is Jesus calling us to reach out to? 

That process led us to affirm that we needed to be a church whose motivating strategy to live out our mission was by 2012 we will connect with 1,500 individuals, providing an opportunity for 500 people to seek a deeper relationship with Christ.  Our connections will be motivated by open hearts, open minds and open doors.

Included in those goals are things like burning the mortgage in 2013 (or sooner) so we can expand the ways we offer ministry, being intentional about small group ministry, expanding our understanding of and involvement in missions, expanding the number of people putting their faith into action in service, exploring other worship service opportunities, expanding ways we connect people to the church.  They also outlined that our audience for our ministry are those who do not know Christ-the unchurched.  That makes a big difference in how we go about planning what we do.  One of the most important points of clarity I experienced at the Leadership Institute at Church of the Resurrection this year was that we need to help our ministry leaders understand that we are not asking them to run a program.  We are asking them to make disciples.  That had been on my heart for a couple of years but I hadn’t found a way to express it.  That’s it.  That is a major shift in how we do church.

Are we stretching ourselves to the limit in a kingdom enterprise to the point that we will have to be totally dependent on the Lord’s doings?

If you are going to claim the promise—greater things than I have done will you do—you have to believe also that you are more than you think you are. And second, there is something you can be and do but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ.

We put those two claims into practice through a total surrender to the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sermon for Week 3

 FILENAME ser102608.doc

PAGE  

1274

PAGE  1

1274

 PAGE 1

 PAGE 8

October 19, 2008

A popular monk in the Middle Ages announced that in the cathedral that evening, he would preach a sermon on the love of God.  The people gathered and stood in silence waiting for the service while the sunlight streamed through the beautiful windows.  When the last sparkle of color had faded from the windows, the old monk took a candle from the altar.  Walking to the life-size figure of Christ on the cross, he held the light beneath the wounds of the feet, then his hands, then his side.  Still without a word, he let the light shine on the thorn-crowned brow.

That was his sermon.  The people stood in silence and wept.  They knew they were at the center of mystery beyond their understanding, that they were looking at the love of God, the image of the invisible God, giving God’s self for us—a love so deep, so inclusive, so expansive, so powerful, so complete that the mind could not comprehend nor measure it, or words express it.

Paul knew that, too.  He comes back to it again and again: the purpose and power of the cross.

Let me urge you to try to look at it with fresh eyes.  Hear the message as though you were hearing it for the first time.  Maybe we can do that best by beginning at the point of our deep needs, and look at the cross as the answer to those needs.

When we probe to the core depths of our being, when we get down to the base level of our identity, we discover four absolute needs apart from physical survival needs.  There are burning emotional, spiritual, and relational needs which, when unmet, leave us less than whole.  The needs are common to all persons.  Even though we may not use the same words to label them, the reality is the same.  The needs are:

1. To receive forgiveness;

2. To love and be loved;

3. To experience community; and

4. To have a cause for which to live.

Other descriptions of our needs—acceptance, affirmation, security, freedom, purposefulness, and self-esteem—are rooted in these four.  The cross meets us at the point of these deepest needs.

Let’s explore these.

First, our need for forgiveness.  There are all sorts of ways to talk about us humans, about what and who we are.  G. K. Chesterton was right, “Whatever else man is, he is not what he was meant to be.”

We’re sinners.  We may not mean to be, but we are.  There is within us the same conflict that terrorized Paul—the battle between the “good that I would, and the evil that I would not.”  In our times of introspection and self-examination, we are often driven to cry out with him, “O wretched being that I am!”

Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden, sin has been the factor of human life that has ravaged our beings, torn us to pieces, set us at odds with God, and at opposition with each other.

We can’t explain it.  But when we are most perceptive about ourselves, we come to realize that somehow a wedge has been driven into our life, a wedge that threatens to undermine us, or at least preventing us from being whole in intention and direction.  That’s what Paul was moaning about, in Romans 7: “For the good that I would I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do . . . O wretched man that I am!” (KJV).  Sin prevents us from being what God intended us to be.  It separates us from God and from each other.  So our great need is for forgiveness.

In this passage from Colossians, Paul paints a graphic picture of Christ’s work of forgiveness.  He says that Christ nailed our sins to the cross.  But not only that.  He adds, “He disarmed the principalities and powers” (v. 15 RSV), triumphing over them.

We have been forgiven, set free—and, if we will accept it, we have the power to live as victors over sin.

Paul says that’s our first need—the need of forgiveness, and the cross meets us at that point.  In an earlier verse, Paul paints a beautiful picture of what the cross does for us.  The Revised Standard Version translates it, “He has now reconciled [you] in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.”

The Message says, You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that!  

The Living Bible paraphrases it: “And now as a result, Christ has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are standing there before him with nothing left against you…”

The cross has ushered us out of separation into intimate fellowship with God. We are forgiven.  The blame for our sins has been taken by Christ and suffered for by him on the cross. 

So the force of the whole idea for us is that because of the cross, God accepts us as cleansed, forgiven, and completely reconciled. 

What a powerful, powerful work—our need for forgiveness is met in the cross.

But not only do we need forgiveness, we need love; and the cross meets us at that point of our need.  More than anything else, the cross is love at its deepest and purest.  I think this is the most powerful image of the cross and salvation.  

No picture of love is more powerful than the cross: Charles Wesley felt it deeply and sang: 

O Love divine, what has thou done! 

Th’incarnate God hath died for me! 

The Father’s co-eternal Son 

Bore all my sins upon the tree! 

The Son of God for me hath died: 

My Lord, my Love, is crucified. 

Here in the cross, our need to love is met in the deepest and purest response possible.  Think about it: for you, for me . . . Christ’s love is so great that he willingly dies for us.

Our third need is a companion to our need for love.  In fact, it’s the other side of the same coin—our need for community.  We need to belong.  In fact, this may be our most desperate need in the twenty-first century.  All sorts of forces have combined to destroy community and unity.  Where in the current American scene is the local neighborhood?  We are isolated in our mad thirst for wealth, security, pleasure, success, identity.  People have had experiences in their life that have isolated them.  They feel cut off.  We need community.  

Keith Miller told the story of an outgoing forty-year-old woman who was a part of a sharing group he led.  When she was a tiny little girl, her parents died and she was put in an orphanage.  She was not pretty at all and no one seemed to want her, but she said that as far back as she could remember, she longed to be adopted and loved by a family.  She thought about it day and night, but everything she did seemed to go wrong.  She must have tried too hard to please the people who came to meet her, and in doing so, would drive them away.  But then one day the head of the orphanage told her that a family was coming to take her home with them.  She was so excited that she jumped up and down and cried.  The matron reminded her that she was on trial and that this might not be a permanent arrangement.  Overwhelmed with joy, the little girl just knew that it would be.  So she went with this family and started school.  Listen to the woman’s words as she concluded her story.  “I was the happiest little girl you can imagine, and life began to open for me just a little.  But then one day a few months later, I skipped home from school and ran into the front door of the big old house we lived in.  No one was at home, but there in the middle of the front hall was my battered old suitcase with my little coat thrown across it.  As I stood there and looked at my suitcase, it slowly dawned on me what it meant.  I did not belong here anymore.”

Miller said that when the woman stopped speaking, there was hardly a dry eye in the group.  But then she cleared her throat and said almost matter-of-factly, “This happened to me seven times before I was thirteen years old, but wait, don’t cry.  It was experiences like these that ultimately brought me to God.  When I was having so much trouble finding a sense of belonging, I was driven to God, and there I found what I had always longed for—a place.”

Perhaps not that dramatically, but I have an idea that all of us have come to that place when we felt that we did not have a place.  We felt we didn’t belong—not even to our spouse, not even at our job, not even with our friends who seemed to be getting ahead of us.  Maybe we have even felt our church was leaving us behind or our family was leaving us out.  That’s when the cross speaks its most dramatic word to us.

The ground around the cross is level.  We all stand there stripped of pride, knowing that we are powerless to save ourselves, and we are drawn into an experience of love which is the dynamic for community.  When we experience belonging to Christ, when lifted up from the earth on the cross He draws us to Himself, we discover that we belong also to each other.

Paul talked about our mutual identity, our community of belonging, with the image of circumcision. The sign of belonging for the Jews was circumcision.  This was their badge of identity, what showed they belonged to Abraham’s lineage.  Paul gave that image a spiritual meaning which creates an unbreakable bond of community.  Listen to verses 11 and 12:

“In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:11–12 NKJV).

Our community at Christ UMC is an in-Christ community into which we are initiated by baptism—a death-and-resurrection community empowered and bound together by Christ (v. 12).  That community is the church, though we must never restrict it to the church building.  It is that fellowship, local and visible, but also universal and invisible, of which Christ is the Head.  He nourishes the community and joins every part of it together (v. 19).

All our needs to belong are met in Christ and the fellowship of his people.

Our need for forgiveness, our need for love, and our need for community—all met in the cross.  Now all these needs focus on ourselves, our identity, and enhancement as individual persons.  We are so created, however, that we must move out of ourselves to find meaning in a purpose beyond ourselves for which to live; therefore, we must speak of this next need.

Paul’s confession of it came earlier, in Colossians 1:24: “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church.”

In Philippians, Paul stated his purpose, the cause for which he lived and died, even more completely: “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10–11, RSV).  The more he knew Christ, the more he realized his true self and the more he experienced fulfillment.  The more he knew Christ, the more he realized his needs and limitations and the more he had to press on to the high calling in Christ Jesus.  The more he centered himself in Christ and pursued this high calling, the more he became sensitive to the needs of people around him and the more he realized that cross-motivated love had to be the foundation of his life.

No wonder Paul could sing, “I rejoice in my sufferings” (v. 24).  Because of the love he had received from the cross, his purpose was to love, even if that called for suffering.  The cross was the driving force of his life.  His burning desire was for all persons to experience the love of Jesus Christ which he had experienced.  The cross gave him meaning, for it gave him the cause for which to live.  So it is with each of our lives and our church together.  That all persons may know Jesus and become disciples who are transforming the world through a cross-powered life is our existence.

Dr. Parker Palmer, one of the creative leaders in spiritual formation and Christian community, told a group of YMCA workers about a good friend of his who labors in an especially difficult assignment at the New York Catholic Worker House. One day, Dr. Palmer said to her, “All the facts that I can gather and all the feelings I have tell me this work you’re trying to do is just impossible.  There’s no success in it. There’s no gratification.  The tide keeps rolling over you.  Why do you keep doing it?”

Looking earnestly at him, the woman answered, “Parker, the thing you don’t understand is this: just because a thing is impossible, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it” (Discovery YMCA, July/August 1985, p. 15).

The woman was right.  Listen to Jesus: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23 NKJV).

He’s talking about nothing less than the kingdom. When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come”, we are taking on an apparently impossible task.

J. Ellsworth Kalas has this to say: 

We are called therefore to be some small part of this kingdom of God on earth. We claim our moments of victory for Christ, here in the midst of a world which so much of the time seems so far from Him.  The people of God love, laugh, and weep back.  We save a soul here and teach a young person there.  We work like Christians on our jobs and talk like Christians in our neighborhood.  We are resolved to out-think, out-care, out-live, and out-die the kingdom of evil, until God’s purposes are fulfilled in this earth.

What do our efforts matter? I think Jesus would answer, “It is like a little leaven which a woman puts in a lump of dough.  In time, it changes the whole lump.

The cross calls us to take up our own cross, to pray and live the petition “Thy Kingdom come.”  This meets our need for a cause for which to live.

And how will we respond?  Let’s determine to do so with hymn writer Isaac Watts, in total commitment:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were an offering far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all. (“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”)

Heart of God. As you read the daily chapters, how did you feel about Jesus loving you as though you are the only person in the world to love? Do you know who you are, viewed through the eyes of Christ? What does the cross represent to you?

We must remember that we can only experience that new life by choosing to enter through the door of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.