Kyle's Church Blog

A sermon based on John 3:1-21

Okay, first of all, I need to start my sermon with an apology.  When I preached a few weeks ago, I didn’t communicate clearly.

I made the comparison of how someone asking if anything good can come from Nazareth is like Dog River speaking ill of Wullerton in Corner Gas, or how Steinbachers make fun of Grunthal, and how we need to repent of our arrogance.

The feedback I received was the most passionate and immediate I’ve ever received in 8 years of preaching here, and I’ve said a lot of things.  But of this feedback, there were definitely two camps.    I will apologize to both of them.

The first camp was those of you who are from Grunthal, or have family there, or love it, and you felt you had to defend it, and were a bit miffed at me comparing it to Wullerton <spit>.  I am sorry for not clearly communicating how our arrogance and conceit are sin.  Nobody is better than anybody else.  I have coached ultimate Frisbee for the past 7 years in Grunthal, and I have genuinely seen the light.

But the second camp… You were the ones who came up to me in the foyer and started telling me jokes about Grunthal, and how the only good thing to come out of Grunthal was highway 205.  I am sorry for not clearly communicating to you how arrogance and conceit are sin.  And nobody is better than anybody else.  There will be alter call after today’s sermon, and you’ll be invited to come as you are to repent and be born again.

But the worst that week was Mel.  Yes, wise Pastor Mel, whom I missed so much when he was on Sabbatical.  He was the worst because in the office that week, he introduced me to a new teacher from the Red River College English classes.  He said “Kyle, this is so and so, and she’s from Grunthal.  Hey, you mentioned Grunthal in your sermon on Sunday. Why don’t you tell her what you said?”

After I told her that I invited people to repent of their arrogance, she said to me, “Oh, don’t worry about it.  I may live in Grunthal, but I’m from Kleefeld, and Grunthal think they’re better than Kleefeld, so I get it.”

(And we won’t even start with the Mennonite town, French town thing).

We do this wonderful ability to divide ourselves up and declare ourselves better, don’t we?  We take a piece of our identity, an important and good and healthy piece of our identity, and we sometimes put it up on a pedestal and use that position to criticize and disparage others, and think we’re better than them.

I think that’s what happened with the “born-again” over the past several decades.  The phrase was used to describe those of us who made a deliberate decision to follow Jesus, an acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord and that we give Jesus the right to tell us how to live.   To be “born-again” was an attempt to articulate all sorts of good things that we Christians participate in:  confession, repentance, salvation, growing in relationship with God.

But what some of us turned it into was a checklist of things that we use to prop up our own sense of self, our own sense of rightness, often at the expense of others.  So being  a “born again” Christian meant something else, something special, something better, than the other Christians.

Great example: I grew up Catholic here in Steinbach, and I distinctly remember being told in Grade 10 Geography that Catholics are not Christian.  I didn’t take kindly to that assertion, so I responded with some ingenious non-violent resistance by taking that kids binder and writing all over it “Catholics are Christian!  Catholics are Christian!”  I think I converted him that day <smile>.

As I was preparing this sermon, I actually had quite a few stories of people being told “Are you born again?  You should probably say a prayer, just to make sure you’re good.”  Or, “Some Christians believe, but we, true Christians, believe this.”  Or, if we’re flying somewhere and the stranger next to us asks “Are you a born again Christian?” we quickly put in our earphones?  They were so easy to come by, I took most of them out.

But I do think it’s remarkable how something that can be a good part of our identities, can become something toxic. I think it’s because we the labels we use, such as Mennonite or Evangelical or Born Again or Catholic or Christian…  I think we use these words, very earnestly and well intentioned because they’re an important part of our identity and do a decent job to describe how we try to live in this world.  But when we use those labels to divide the world up into categories, or make ourselves seem better than others, well, yeah, I think we’re setting ourselves up for some disappointment.

We’re going to come back to the phrase “born-again” in a bit, so just hang on to it a bit

Let’s go to John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”    This is probably one of the most well-known verses in the Bible.

I preached on this verse 6 years ago.  I found my old sermon, and I kind of still liked it, which is surprising, because usually I re-read old sermons and think “What was I thinking?”

So, many of you weren’t here 6 years ago, so this might be new.  And some of you might have been here 6 years ago, but I’d be pleasantly surprised if you remembered it!  But I’ll risk it and repeat some of what I still find to ring true.

John 3:16 has been understood as a pathway to get to heaven (eternal life) and avoid hell (perish).  That Christianity is about spending eternity with God, playing our harps on streets of gold, and most of us will surprised to see that Mennonites aren’t the only ones in heaven.  <smile – That was a joke>.  Some people call it fire insurance… others call it God’s evacuation plan.

But I don’t really think that’s what this verse is saying, though.  It’s one of these questions about reading Scripture:  Are we reading what the text is saying?  Or are we reading what we think the text is saying?  What came first, the chicken or the egg?  Is the text shaping our thinking?  Or is our thinking shaping how we read the text?  In this case, I think that when we read the words eternal life and perish, what we end up doing it taking take our pre-conceived ideas of heaven and hell and applying them to the text.

Why do I think this? (Thanks to Shane Hipps in Selling Water by the River for spelling this out so clearly to me).

When we read in English “eternal life”, the Greek words are aion zoe.  Which we have traditionally translated as eternal life, the literal continuation of time as we know it.  365 days a year, over and over and over again.  Billions and trillions of years.

That is not the proper translation of aion zoe.  Aion zoe is not forever and ever and ever in the afterlife.

Aion has two meanings:

The first is that it means an age, a period of time.  Something that has a beginning and an end.  Not forever, but a tangible timeframe.  For example, if you see someone at Sobeys you haven’t seen in a while, you say:  I haven’t seen you in forever!  You’ve been gone for ages!  You don’t mean literally millions of years.  You mean:  I haven’t seen you the last time I saw you.  A beginning and an end.

Or we say:  The hippie era was a good era.  By driving your electric VW van, you are really capturing the spirit of the age of the hippies.  Woodstock was so great, it was like I was there, man.   Beginning, end.  An age.

The second definition of aion means an intense experience that transcends time.  Positively, it’s like a good movie.  You’re having such a good time, 60 minutes passes and it feels like seconds.   Kind of like church on Sunday morning.  Or, negatively, Aion is like a boring university lecture, or a sermon about the Greek words used in John 3:16 might only take 20 minutes, but it seems like hours.

Aion.   So it’s an intense experiences that transcends time, but has a beginning and an end.

Zoe, besides being a very popular name for children, and the same name as my favourite actress, Zooey Deschanel, it means life, but not life on the surface, like the things we do or what happens to us, but existence itself.  Like no matter how great or how hard life is at any moment, we still breathe in and we still breathe out.  Easily or barely, we breathe. Zoe is life itself.

 

Zoe goes by other names in English.  Some call it the human spirit, the divine spark.  Others call it unconditional love, others call it grace, and others call it the peace that passes all understanding.

So eternal life, aion zoe, is the intense experience of peaceful, grace-filled life that transcends time.

God loved the world so much that he sent his one and only son so those who believe in him can have aion zoe.

But what about the word perish?  That surely means hell, right?

No.  Jesus refers to Hell only a handful of times in all of the gospels, and the only people he sends there are either rich people or religious leaders.  Which is bad for pastors who live in suburbia.  And Jesus uses the word Gehenna, which was a dump outside Jerusalem where they threw dead bodies and was always on fire.

And even then, Jesus does not use the word Gehenna here.

The word used in John 3:16 is Apollumi.

And Apollumi can be translated:

Ruin.  Loss of personal welfare.  This is the word Jesus uses to describe the Prodigal son who took half his Dad’s wealth and partied.  He was apollumi.  Not dead, like dead not breathing dead.   Just ruined and missing everything good in this world.

It’s like saying:  You’re dead to me.  You’re not physically dead, but the loss of personal welfare in your life.

So to summarize, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not experience ruin and a loss of personal welfare but have an intense experience of a peaceful, grace-filled life.

Yeah, I know.  Crazy.  Maybe we should just stick to making fun of small cities and towns that we don’t like.  That’s a lot easier, isn’t it?    Here are the rules, here are the categories, and it’s simple.  Toronto thinks it’s better than Winnipeg, Winnipeg thinks it’s better than Steinbach, Steinbach thinks it’s better than Grunthal.  Grunthal thinks it’s better than Kleefeld.  Kleefeld thinks it’s better than New Bothwell.  New Bothwell thinks it’s better than Randolph.  And we all think we’re better than Saskatchewan.

Here are the rules. Here are the categories.  It’s simple.

And then Jesus tells Nicodemus – No.  You think you have it all figured out, but no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.

Born again is a metaphor.  All language for God is metaphor (this goodie is from Richard Rohr).  Jesus uses metaphors ALL the time.  He’s always saying “It’s like this, or like that, or here’s a story for you.”   Born again is a metaphor.

Nicodemus doesn’t get really get it, as he asks how one can re-enter their mother’s womb.

And then Jesus goes on and uses more metaphors and similes.  He talks about the Spirit being like wind… You can experience it, but you can’t see it.

And Nicodemus couldn’t understand.  Nicodumus thought he knew the answers.  He knew the laws.  He knew the rules.

But Jesus invites him to “think differently”.

That’s what I’ve settled on this week as a good understanding of “born again”.  Think differently.  God is bigger than any of us, and if we remain open to God working in ways that we don’t understand, then I think we’re on the right path.

Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without “thinking differently”.  Think differently about money, about power, about control, about success, about surrender, about servanthood.  Think differently about enemies, about who’s first and who’s last.  Think differently about about the stock market and political parties and our country. Think differently about our own sense of certainty. Think differently about winning and losing.

And I think, when we are able to do this, to open ourselves to God’s infinite possibilities, to God’s upside down kingdom, then I think we’re opening ourselves up to aion zoe –  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not experience ruin and a loss of personal welfare but have an intense experience of peaceful, grace-filled life that transcends time.

Now that’s quite the invitation, isn’t it?

Every year during Advent, as we wait in anticipation of God entering our world as a child, as we live the hope that God is going to come and set the world right, we encounter this guy.

John the Baptist.

We follow a prescribed set of Bible verses for Advent, verses that are used by millions of Christians around the world.

And every year, we all together read about John the Baptist, calling out from the wilderness the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Prepare the way for the Lord.  Make straight the paths for him!”

Repent!  Jesus is coming!

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One of the unique things about living in 2017 is the amount of information we get, and how fast we get it.  Between social media and 24/7 news channels and all of us having cameras in our pockets, what’s going on comes at as fast and hard.  Whereas some of us remembering having to wait til the 6 o’clock news, and some of us remember waiting until the next day’s newspaper, and still some of us remember town criers shouting in the city square, others of us have Twitter.

And it can at times feel a bit overwhelming, can’t it?  Or that our world is taking a turn towards something dark?

We read about climate change, and how the world will fundamentally look different for our children and grandchildren.   And since climate change exacerbates existing weather patterns, we see storms stronger than we’ve seen before.   And, we read about how some of those affected, like Puerto Rico, are still struggling to recover months later.

We see videos of white supremacists and Nazis marching with tiki-torches in the night.

We read about wealth inequality in our world, and how the top 1% of the rich, control 50% of the world’s wealth and how they influence politics and change the rules to favour them.

While most us are aware of media bias, the idea of fake news and wondering what’s true and what’s not and what’s political spin and whom can trust is all a little bit destabalizing, isn’t it?

We read about the global refugee crisis, from Syria, to where 1 in 4 civilians killed are children, to the plight of Rohingya in Myanmar.

And we’ve read, and shared, in #metoo, where thousands and thousands of women in all walks of life have shown great bravery and vulnerability and courage in telling their stories of how men have sexually assaulted them.  And we’ve believed them, and there’s been a bit of a long overdue public reckoning.

And all of this doesn’t even include a few unstable individuals who have access to nuclear weapons.

When we encounter all these stories, over and over again all day long, I get why jokingly some of us jokingly end up using apocalyptic language.

One of the ways that I understand the word “apocalypse” is simply this:  Uncovering. The great revealing.    No zombies. No end of the world prophecies.  Just a really truthful naming of what’s present in our world.  A revealing of what’s already there.

And when we stop and ponder, we know that everything I just named has been around for thousands of years.

For generations, we as human have been leaving the environment in worse shape for our children and grandchildren.

Natural disasters have happened before.

Empires and global super powers have neglected their responsibility to the poor and vulnerable and marginalized.

From Nazis to the KKK to the injustices done to indigenous people around the world, racism has flourished for centuries.

The rich and powerful have always tried to create propaganda that benefits them, and work to bend the rules in their favour.

Humans fleeing from war is as old a story as war itself.

And men have used and abused their wealth and status and power to exploit women for too long.

None of this is new.

What is new, however, is how all the darkness in our world is being revealed.  It is quick, it is widespread, and it is unfiltered.  And given the globalization of our world, we ponder our own roles in all of these things.

Advent is about waiting.  Waiting and longing for God to come and set the world right from all the darkness.

But we don’t wait passively.  We wait actively.   And part of actively waiting, part of waiting expectedl is for us to ponder our role in the world.

From how we respond with our money to the world’s crises, to whether or not we have believed the women’s stories about sexual assault, to our own role in perpetuating racism or climate change. Actively waiting for the Lord means that we have an opportunity to confront our own frailty, our own selfishness, own brokenness, our own fragile humanity.

And sometimes, I’m okay with a bit of a call for repentance. Of preparing the way for the Lord.  Because clearly we need it.  We’ve needed the call to make straight our paths for at least as long as John the Baptist has been saying it.

And I’m also grateful that John the Baptist quotes Isaiah 40.

There is the call for repentance.

And then there are the words offering comfort.  Comfort, comfort, O my people, says your God.

Your sins have been paid for, and you have received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

And when we read about God’s paying double for sin, we often conjure up images of God’s wrath being poured out on humanity.  Punishment for our sin.

But as Christians, we don’t believe that God treats us as we deserve.   We believe in grace.

A quick aside:

Grace is the free and undeserved gift of God’s favour that is always there, always available, even in our times of failure.   And even sometimes offered in double doses.  It’s the gift of God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness that reaches out to the sinner at the saint.

But Grace is not freedom from any consequences of sin.  Or freedom from public accountability. Goodness no.  One of the worst phrases in the English language is “Forgive and forget.”  Forgiveness is a journey that we all work at, yes, but forgetting means that we’re just setting ourselves up for a repetition of the negative action.  If our 16 year old kid trashes our car, we don’t just go buy them a new car.  Rather, we send them back to Driver’s Ed and tell them to have fun walking all winter.  Also, we don’t just shrug aside allegations of abuse and call it forgiveness… We work very hard at making sure destructive patterns aren’t allowed to continue.

Okay. Back on track.

As we wait, we say yes to repentance, and we say yes to God’s comfort, because we are in need of both.

The Lord is coming to set the world right.   And we get the joy of not only waiting for Emmanuel, God with us, but also actively participating in setting the world right.

A short First Advent sermon, based on Isaiah 64:1-9

We start Advent in the depths of Isaiah with a poem begging God to come down and shake the mountains.  That God would enter our world like brushfire to make God’s name known among the nations.  That God would come and save us.

Throughout Scripture, we often read calls for God to come and intervene in our world.  Life seems out of control, and we call to God for help.

I’m 34 years old, and while some of you think that 34 is really really old, and others of you think 34 is still really really young, but no matter, after being alive for 34 years, I am still amazed at how much we strive for control.  Control over our lives, our jobs, our finances, our health, our faith life.  We love control so much that we even invented buttons to close elevator doors faster.

But then, even as we strive for control, there are reminders everywhere that we are not in control.  There will always be natural disasters.  All our bodies will eventually stop doing what we want them to do.  Grief unexpectedly rears its head and simple tasks become daunting.  Let alone all the times where the mistakes we make come back and relentlessly haunt our thoughts.

In the midst of our broken world, we cry out for healing.  In the midst of our own brokenness, we cry out for healing.   We cry out for God.

Here’s one of the many things about calling out to God.  When we cry out to God, we don’t really get to be in charge anymore, do we?  By calling out, we give God permission to shape us.

We invite God be the Potter, and we let ourselves be the clay.

A lump of clay that is not in control anymore.

On one hand, I acknowledge that that is really depressing.   The image of a boat that has run out of gas just being tossed around by ocean waves comes to mind.

But on the other hand, if we really are a lump of clay, then it is absolutely audacious that we believe God has breathed life into us and cares about us.  It is audacious that we have hope that our existence is more than a bunch of random molecules making up our flesh and bones.

It is audacious that that we gather at First Advent in anticipation of God coming to live among us.   It is audacious that God relinquishes controls and enters our frail, human existence as a child. It is audacious that the Potter becomes the clay.

As mentioned earlier, our theme this Advent is “Let it be.”

When Mary, the mother of Jesus, is visited by an angel and told that her child is the son God and his reign will never end, she responds with the words “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  Luke 1:38

Let it be.

For some of us, we approach Advent with a sense of hope, excitement, and enthusiasm.  I’ve seen some of your Instagram feeds, and you’ve had Christmas trees up for weeks already.  The words “Let it be” can be so easy and natural. 

At Christmastime, we give, we sing, we share, we laugh, we decorate, the world is beautiful,we act like Buddy the Elf, and we can get onboard with Mary saying yes to God.  We got this.  It’s go time, God.  You’re coming into our world to cheer our spirits and disperse the gloomy clouds of night and put death’s dark shadows to flight.  Let’s build a mountain of toys!  Let it be.

For others of us, the words “Let it be” are a cry to God for help, because the darkness is overwhelming.  We cling to hope that that Jesus can set us free from Satan’s tyranny and save us from the depths of hell and give victory over the grave.  “Let it be” God, because we need you to come and order all things far and nigh.  “Let it be.”

Across the spectrum, from it’s the most wonderful time of the year and peace on Earth to all people to the depths of darkness and struggle, Let it Be, O God.  That is our cry to you.  That is our plea.  Let it be is us joining you in relinquishing control.  Let it be is us giving you consent for you to change our lives.  Let it be is us giving you consent to change our world.  Let it be is us hoping that the light will come and overtake the darkness.

O come O come Emmanuel.

Diagrams, Charts, Ideas, and Prayers that help me try to follow Jesus with integrity (I hope) without checking my brain at the door

If you’re interested in learning more about what influenced my past three sermons, here’s a list of what has shaped me.  All the books are available either in my office or the church library.  And if you have any questions, feel free to be in touch!  – Kyle

For a good overview of what some of the “essentials” are for us Anabaptists, check out Anabaptist Essentials by Palmer Becker.

One of the best books I can recommend on reading our Bibles (and what’s actually going on inside it) is The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read it by Peter Enns.  His book The Sin of Certainty is also well worth the time, as if you’re feeling extra nerdy, listen to his podcast The Bible for Normal People with Jared Byas.  Rob Bell’s book What is the Bible? is also a fun, delightful read.   If you really want to wrestle with the violence of the Bible, check out Disarming Scripture by Derek Flood, or if you’re looking for a lighter read, Brian Zahnd wrote a new one called Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.

To understand James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, I’d recommend Stages of Faith by James Fowler (see what I did there?).  But if you’re looking for something on spiritual growth that’s a bit more accessible (and a smidgeon less boring), check out Brian Mclaren’s books Naked Spirituality and Finding Faith.

For thoughts on spirituality and growth and a different way of seeing faith, I’d definitely recommend subscribing to Richard Rohr’s daily email at www.cac.org (and if you don’t always know what’s going on, that’ okay.  Stay with it.)  I’d also recommend his books The Naked Now, Everything Belongs, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, and pretty much everything else he says.

Alana Levandoski (who sang here in September) is good soil to plant some roots.  If you really want to go deeper, start reading the work of Thomas Merton or Henri Nouwen.

Check out the work put out by Phileena Heuertz, especially her book, Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life.  Plus, she and her husband Chris run www.gravitycenter.com, which is my go to resource for all things contemplative.

I am continually grateful for my spiritual director, Rachel.  I’d highly recommend a spiritual director (You can find one at www.spiritualdirection.ca).  Plus, where would I be without the wisdom, hospitality, and prayers of the nuns at St. Benedict’s Monastery?

The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system that not only helps us name our false self, but also offers pathways for transformation.  If you don’t know what the Enneagram is, don’t worry too much, as we’ll be introducing it in the winter of 2018. But if you want to get a head start, check out the book The Road Back To You by Suzanne Stabile and Ian Cron, as well as their podcasts The Road Back To You, Typology, and Enneagram Journey.  The Sacred Enneagram by Chris Heuertz is also helpful.

If you’re looking for free apps to help you pray, download the Centering Prayer app and the Book of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals app.

And finally, I am aware that the names on this list are primarily white men.  I can definitely recommend some resources/authors that have shaped my understanding of faith who aren’t white men, but this list is specifically about what influenced this sermon series.  Do feel free to share with me any authors or resources that would help make this list more diverse in the future.

First of all, before we even start today’s sermon, I need to apologize.  Last week I preached about James Fowler’s Stages of Faith.  I told you that Fowler taught at Harvard. On Monday morning, I received a very kind and gracious and gentle email, that pointed out to me that James Fowler never taught at Harvard, but rather at Emory University.  My professor, Sharon Daloz Parks, was from Harvard.  But I got Fowler wrong.  I love eating humble pie on Monday mornings.

And on that note, there has been a lot positive feedback and desire from you to learn more about these Stages of Faith.  And so the kind and gracious and gentle Dennis Hiebert, who did his dissertation on the Stages of Faith, has offered to lead a seminar on it here at Grace.  Bring a bag lunch on Sunday, Nov 19, and you’ll dive in after church.  And hopefully Dennis won’t have to spend too much time undoing all the things I got wrong last week.

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As you can see in, this morning is the third and final part of my sermon series.  It might not all wrap up nice and neat and tidy at the end. So you really can pick and choose what you want.  But I’m still hopeful it’ll be helpful.

And as usual, you are 100% free to agree or disagree with me.  Here at Grace, we allow for disagreement.  Unity is not uniformity.

And, in an effort to allow for communication to be a 2-way street, not only will I be available in the side room after worship to continue to conversation, but, in your bulletin you’ll see Q & R.  You are free to text me any questions or thoughts that spring up, and we’ll take a few minutes to engage with them.

Okay. Off we go.

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Today’s scripture (1 Kings is one of my favourite stories in not only the Old Testament, but the Bible.

God was not found in the wind.  God was not found in the earthquake.  God was not found in the fire.  But God was found in the sound of silence.

God was found in the silence.

I’ve dubbed today Graduate Class.  We’re going to start really practical, and then we’re going move into the really theoretical, and then back into the practical, and not one of us is going to be able to go home today and say that we didn’t learn something new, or try something new.

We are part of a tradition that, for thousands of years, have sat with questions of sin and salvation and growth and maturity and identity.  And prayer seems to be a vital piece of the puzzle on how we grow and mature and how we live and act in the world.

But I also know that prayer is quite frustrating more many of us. What are we doing?  Does it work?  Why do we do it?  How do we do it?  What if I don’t do it?

And why does praying sometimes feel like I’m treating God like Santa Claus? Thanks for the toys. Can I have some new ones?  And why am I not getting that pony that I ask for every year?

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But, in my experience, and based on today’s Scripture that God is found in the silence, I have learned a different kind of prayer.  It’s called Centering Prayer.

Quite a few of my Mennonite pastor friends, and quite a few spiritual directors and authors and speakers I follow all practice Centering Prayer, but we seem to all have learned it from our Catholic sisters and brothers.

It’s probably a prayer that is most connected to this morning’s Scripture passage, where Elijah found God in the sheer silence.

The idea behind Centering Prayer is that we learn to sit in silence.  And in that silence, we experience God’s presence within us.

We’re going to aim to sit in silence for 60 seconds.  Think we can do it?

There’s this great app for this called the Centering Prayer app. The day that I discovered this app, I came to office just gushing with enthusiasm. “Mel!  Look!  A centering prayer app!  You can even set a timer!  Now it’ll tell me when my time is up so I can stop worrying about how much time if left”

And he looked at me, a bit puzzled.  “You know, I just use my digital watch every morning.”

“Mel.  The 1980’s are calling.  They want their digital watch back.”

To do Centering Prayer, all you have to do is think of a sacred word of intention.  That word can be God, Jesus, Spirit, Peace, Love, Faith – Whatever you want.  For me, my word is always peace.

And as we sit in silence, every time we breathe out, we gently say our sacred word. By doing so, I like to think that we are giving God consent to shape our lives.  We give God consent.

And, generally speaking, if you’re anything like me, you hate silence.  We fill our lives with music and podcasts and Netflix and social media. We don’t do silence well.

And so today, for these 60 seconds of silence, you are probably going to be assaulted by your thoughts.   Your thoughts might be mundane, they might be viscous, they might be humiliating.   That’s all normal and expected.

But in our silence, when the thoughts come, all we have to is return to our sacred word of invitation.  Just gently say it again, and let that thought come and go.  And then another thought will come.  Acknowledge it, and return to your word.

By doing so, you are giving God permission to change us.  And we start moving from communicating with God to communion with God.

Ready?  Close your eyes.

Take a few deep breaths.

Gently say your sacred word of intention.

When the thoughts of the day, or of life, come to mind, just acknowledge them and return gently to your word.  Over and over again.  Just return to your word.

<60 seconds>

Amen.

Now, for some of you, you’re thinking: “We’re just getting started!”  And others of you are thinking “If I have to sit in silence for 60 seconds next Sunday I’m not coming!” Both are very normal responses.

No matter your experience, if you simply show up, you get an A+. Participation trophies for everyone.

Centering Prayer is one of the ways I move from communicating with God to communion with God.

My Spiritual Director and I were talking a few years ago, and since we both learned Centering Prayer from the nuns at St. Benedict’s Monastery, she asked me if I was practicing it.  I looked at her:  “I don’t have time for this.  I have little kids!”

“Okay, what’s’ the first thing you do when you go to your office?”

“Answer emails.”

She said, “You know Kyle, you have one of the only jobs in the world where you could take a few minutes to pray, and your church won’t fire you.  They’ll probably actually be really grateful that their pastor prays.”

Those spiritual directors just gently cut through all the layers, don’t they?

Oh, and a quick thing – Be gentle with yourself.  Give yourself years to figure it out.

And if you find that you fall asleep while praying, enjoy that.  When we fall asleep while praying, I think God treats us how we treat our children when they fall asleep in our laps… Filled with an immense, overwhelming love.

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Before we get to prayer #2 we’re going to have a short romp through history and psychology.

Augustine of Hippo was a bishop around the year 400. He wrote a lot of things, and was quite influential in Christianity becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire.  He also was one of the first Christians to encourage Christians to fight in the army, as Christians were mostly pacifist for the first 300 years after Jesus, but that’s a different sermon.

Again, we’re just going to scratch the surface here today, but one of the things that Augustine talked about the idea of original sin.  It’s an idea that’s not technically in our Mennonite Confession of Faith, but it still has been remarkably influential in many of our lives.

It’s the idea that after Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden, humans have since, been born sinful. We’re born into sin, and we all need saving from that sin.  We’ve inherited these inherent flaws from our sinful parents.  So Augustine advocated the baptism of children, to ensure that even if they were to die at a young age, they would still get to heaven.

Augustine argued that we, as humans, lived in utter in depravity.  That we were depraved.  The definition of depraved is morally corrupt or wicked.

The doctrine of original sin has been used to justify all sorts of mission activity.  If we don’t go and tell people about Jesus, they are living in sin, and will go to hell.  So we must go and tell the so they can be save.  And we experience salvation by seeking forgiveness for our sins, by being born again, and this not only gets us into heaven, but should help us to live better lives by trying to sin less.

But, what if Augustine got it wrong?  And got it wrong by one vowel in English (even though he didn’t speak English, because English wasn’t really a language yet).

What if we as humans are not depraved? 

What if we as humans are deprived?

When I first learned that Augustine might have been wrong by one vowel in a language that wasn’t invented yet, sweet mercy me, that has been a TSN turning point for me.

What if, we as humans, are deprived?

I think of it like this:  When we are in our mother’s womb, all our needs are being met.  We are one with our mother’s, we are fed through the umbilical cord, and all we know is love.

And then we come out screaming at having to leave that happy place.

But quickly we’re swaddled up and fed again.

And when we get to observe the beauty and peacefulness of a newborn baby in their parent’s arms, we get to see love at its best. All the baby knows, is love.

But, eventually, parents cannot meet all the needs of their baby.  The kid gets hungry, and they have to wait.  Or they get cold. Or they hit their heads. Or they get sick.

And as parents, we obviously do our best, but we know that we can’t satisfy all their needs.

And, so I like to think that as children, we learn to act out, almost like Freudian defense mechanisms.    We try to protect ourselves from the cruel, cruel world out there.  And so we learn anger to get attention.  And we learn to lie to avoid punishment.  And we learn to sneak Halloween candy.  And we learn to take our siblings toys because we want them.

As we grow, we are more and more deprived from the primacy love of God (hence why healthy religion is always about us returning back to God).

Some people call it “childhood wounds,” as that’s a bit unfair to the parents who are trying their best and obviously not trying to wound their children.

But as Chris Heuertz says, “Childhood wounds might not be real wounds. They might have been how we internalized the impression of our caregivers shadow.”  Or if you’re a Star Wars fan, how we internalized our parent’s dark sides.

It’s the idea that our parents all gave us baggage that we have to work through, and that we’re all going to end up giving our own kids baggage that they will have to work through.  Let alone any baggage or trauma that the world gives us.

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And so, eventually, these form our ego.

Psychology will define our egos in fairly neutral terms, like our concept of self, or our personality, or who we think we are.

But some spiritual writers refer to our ego as a mask, as a culmination of our defense mechanisms, as something that we project.  And something that we think will protect us.

Thomas Merton called it our False Self and our True Self.

The false self is simply who we think we are.  But our thinking doesn’t make it so.  Rather, it’s our fictitious self, our manufactured self.     Our false self is all the labels that we apply to ourselves, and how we project all those labels to the world.  The false self, in some ways, is our ego.  The false self is the illusions that we believe about ourselves. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.  A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.  (This is a mash up of Richard Rohr, Thomas Merton, and Ian Cron).

Whereas the true self is our identity, hidden in Christ with God.  If we peel back all the layers, what’s left?   Who are we?  We’re not as autonomous or independent as we think we are… but that reality is bigger and more solid than most of us know.  Our true self is our unchangeable anchored self.  Who we are always was and still is and will always be, from the moment of conception.   (This, too, is a mash up of Rohr and Merton and Cron).

The false self is not our physical bodies.   Some spiritual writes wish that instead of the word “Flesh”, the apostle Paul used the word “ego”.  So our physical bodies aren’t the problem, but rather, our egos are.  And when we’re able to name our egos for the illusion they are, we are able to put to death, and able to live into our true selves.   

Richard Rohr calls it the false provisional adaptive self, and declares that it needs to go in order for the true self to emerge.

The self that has to die is the false self. 

Our egos need to get out of the way. 

Only then can we start to live into the full, good life that God is calling us into.    

(Told you this was going to get theoretical <smile>)

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One of the best ways to identify our false selves, the illusions that we believe about ourselves, is to pay attention when we get angry at things.  Or offended.  Or we want to lash out.  Or we want to assert our own sense of rightness. This is the false self defending itself.

For example.  Ashley and I coach high school ultimate Frisbee in Grunthal, and to help our team learn the game, we try to organize an alumni game every year.   So the now young adults come from the last few years and we have a great time.

This year, after the high school team beat the alumni team, which was just delightful… like, we were pumped.  We had grade 10 girls playing against 24 year old men, and they won!   And after the game, one the very first players we coached 6 years ago came up to me and said, “Kyle!  I just wanted to let you know that I think it’s great how involved you are in the community, even I don’t agree with everything you say.”

The fury and the rage and anger rose up.  I thankfully said “Thanks” and walked away, but that car ride home… What kind of back handed insulting compliment is that?!?!  And at work the next day, oh Mel and Audrey and Cathy heard my anger and frustration.

What does this guy know about me and my family and my job and my life?  I’m not even his Facebook friend!  Who does he think he is, judging me?  He doesn’t know me.

A few months later, when I’m a little less mad, I can name it. This is my false self defending itself. This is my false self thinking that I am worthy or love and a good father and a good husband and good pastor and a believer in justice and equality and that guy has no clue what he’s talking about (and I actually know very little about his current life, either, but I’m sure he’s doing his best to live with integrity as well).

But does it matter?  All those labels I have for myself… what’s underneath them?  My true self, hidden in Christ, right?  We let the masks, the illusions, run the show.

The false self by itself isn’t bad.  It’s a necessary part of our lives that has helps us survive and sometimes helps us thrive.  But it will only take us so far.   Eventually, the false self has to die.  We need to name it and expose it so that we are better able to dismantle it so we can live into our true selves.  The self that God made and loves.

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So, for those of you who have jobs where they don’t pay you to pray, or whose home lives are full of boisterous children, or who would rather have your fingernails peeled off than sit in silence, I’ll teach you one more prayer.

It’s called the SNAP prayer.  SNAP is an acronym.  And if you like taking notes in church, write this one down. (I learned this prayer from Ian Cron).

And this prayer has been instrumental for me in exposing my false self and learning to rest in my true self.

Some people suggest doing the SNAP prayer at regular intervals in our lives.  Like, morning, afternoon, and evening.  Where we set alarms and do it.

Others suggest that we do SNAP prayer when we are in a particularly emotional state, positive or negative.  So when something happens to us that we want to react to right aways, we remember SNAP.  The choice is yours.

The S stands for stop.  So whatever you’re doing, stop.  Unless you’re driving on the highway. Then symbolically stop.

The N stands for notice.  Take a minute and notice what’s around you.  You’re breathing.  Your feelings.     Where you are.  The trees or the messy house or the people around you or the birds or the sky or your lunch or your emotions or the blankets for MCC. All of it. Take a few minutes and notice what’s around you.

The A stands for ask.

Ask yourself 3 questions:  “What I am believing to be true right now?”  “Are thse beliefs true?” “How would my life change if I let go of this belief?”

So, as an example, we’ll go to my car ride home after that ultimate Frisbee game where I was fuming on the ride home.

First Question – “What am I believing to be true right now?”  “He doesn’t know my life.”  But when I stopped and thought, deeper questions emerged.  “Am I not living my life with integrity?  Is this what people think of me?  Do they just write me off?  Am I failing at this whole Frisbee coaching pastor thing?  Am I failing?”

Second question – “Are these beliefs true?”  No.  Probably not.  I am not a failure.  People disagree.  My identity is a beloved child of God.

Third Question – “How would my life change if I let go of this belief?”  “Well, I’d be less angry right now.  And more loving.  And my present to my kids when I get home.  So, really, if I let go of these, my life will be better.

But do you see how the false self is defending itself?  When we’re angry, or offended, or want to push back against someone, that is one of the easiest ways to label our false self.

And unless we are willing to sit in silence, we will have a hard time naming the false self.  We will not be able to see masks that we wear.  We will not see the illusions that we believe.

But once we’re able to name it, we can P, which stands for Pivot.   We can choose to not listen to that voice.  We can pray asking God for help to change our behavior.  We can keep trying to live our lives with integrity.  We can choose to rest in our identity as beloved children of God, the identity that we always had and always have and always will have.

SNAP. There you go.

Prayer can honestly be life changing.  And the prayers that I find most life changing are the ones where I sit in silence.  I’m not entirely convinced that if my ego is the part of the problem, that my ego can get me out the problem. I don’t think the ego can show the way to God.  I think need ego needs to get out the way.  And in silence, we can give God consent to help us get our egos out the way.

Elijah was on a mountain.  God wasn’t found in the fire, the earthquake, or the wind.  God was found in the sheer silence.

As you can see in, this morning is the second part in a three part series, in which I am going to share and draw a whole bunch of ideas and thoughts and diagrams and prayers that I have found helpful in trying to follow Jesus.  And it might not all wrap up nice and neat and tidy at the end. So you really can pick and choose what you want.  But I’m still hopeful it’ll be helpful.

And as usual, you are 100% free to agree or disagree with me.  Here at Grace, we allow for disagreement.  Unity is not uniformity.

And, in an effort to allow for communication to be a 2-way street, not only will I be available in the side room after worship to continue to conversation, but, in your bulletin you’ll see Q & R.  You are free to text me any questions or thoughts that spring up, and we’ll take a few minutes to engage with them.

Okay. Off we go.

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Let’s start with a definition of faith:  James Fowler was a prof at Harvard for years, and defined faith the “Universal Quality of Human Meaning Making”.   So faith is not just about “believing” certain ideas, but rather an active process that we are all, constantly engaged in.  Faith is a verb, about how we see the world, what we trust, what we put our efforts and energy behind, how we live our lives.  So faith is not just for us religious folk, but rather all of humanity is trying to make meaning in the world and live with integrity. We are all “faith-ing.”

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I’ve been working as a pastor for 12 years now, and when I first started, I was amazed at how so many people call themselves Christians, and yet how they choose to express their faith seems so opposite from other Christians.  And this still continues to amaze me.

For example, if we go back to the Iraq War Part 2.  George Bush Junior was President, a Christian, and went to war because he thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and he didn’t want Sadam Hussein to use them.   And we are similar conversations these days with the threat of a nuclear war between the US and North Korea, in which one of the leaders identifying as Christian and being support by millions of Christians.

But, there are other expression of faith that run contrary to this.  Three years ago, 3 Americans, including an 84 year old nun, were arrested in the States for breaking into a nuclear weapons complex and defacing the complex.  They spray painted the words “The Fruit of Justice is Peace” on walls, and when they were arrested, they were having communion, and offered to give a Bible to the police and offered to share their communion bread.  Before she was sentenced to 3 years in jail, the nun said “Please have no leniency with me, to remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest gift you could give me.”

The different expressions of Christian faith are so diverse, I don’t even know how we’re on the same team sometimes.

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Luckily, early in my years as a pastor, I discovered a book by Brian Mclaren, where he talks about Good Faith and Bad Faith.  It’s a rough dichotomy, but it certainly helped me immensely.  It helps me try to navigate what’s going on in people’s lives beyond the labels of “Christian” or “not a Christian.”

Bad Faith is based solely on unquestioned authority.  Bad faith is based on pressure or coercion.  Bad faith is often the result of psychological need for belonging. Bad faith appeals to self-interest and base motives.  Bad faith is arrogant and unteachable.  Bad faith is dishonest.  Bad faith is apathetic.  Bad faith is a step backward.  Bad faith doesn’t work for the common good.

Good faith is humble, teachable, and inquisitive.  Good faith is grateful.  Good faith is honest.  Good faith is communal.  Good faith is active.  Good faith is relational.   Good faith works for the common good.

So, to be extreme, we can say, Mother Teresa is an example of good faith, and, the KKK burning crosses is an example of bad faith.  Churches sponsoring refugees?  Good faith.  Churches not sponsoring refugees because they might be Muslim?  Bad faith.  This is simple, but I have found it helpful.

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In the last several years, as you might know, I’ve been deeply influenced by Richard Rohr.  One of the things that I have learned from him is even more helpful language about spiritual maturity.

He moves beyond the straight dichotomy of good faith and bad faith, and uses the words healthy religion and unhealthy religion.

And how do we determine what’s healthy and unhealthy?

Well, in the book of Galatians, we have a wonderful list called The Fruits of the Spirits.  Love, patience, peace, joy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Again, it’s a broad stroke, but healthy religion produces this good fruit, and unhealthy religion produces bad fruit.

I also ask myself the question:  Does this expression of faith work towards of common good of humanity?  Or not?

Or, I ask about the Golden Rule… Would I want someone to express their faith to me like this?   Or not?

Learning that I have the ability to name something that I observe in the world as healthy or unhealthy, or learning that I’m allowed to name something INSIDE of me as healthy or unhealthy, is really freeing.

We all make choices about how to live our lives.  Good faith, bad faith, healthy religion, unhealthy religion, does it work for the common good, does it pass the golden rule… Simple, but helpful.

(The downside of this framework is that almost all of us will label ourselves and our worldview and our faith as healthy, and we’ll label those of us different than ours as unhealthy.  But we’re going to get to that in a bit.)

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But let’s start with spiritual maturity.  Over the past two years, I’ve preached a bit on growth, and how faith grows.  One of the frameworks I use is something called:  Fowler’s Stages of Faith.

I’m going to do a remarkably brief and inadequate summary of it because I want to make it make it as accessible as possible, and then I’ll make it really, really, practical at the end.  Especially for us at Grace.

James Fowler was a professor of religion and human psychology at Emory University, and he developed something called Stages of Faith.

I learned Fowler’s stages of faith from two separate sessional instructors at CMU, one I count as one of spiritual mentors, and the other was a visiting professor from Harvard, Dr. Sharon Daloz Parks.

But before I start, a funny story about Dr. Daloz Parks.  I think I was 21 when I took the course, and I knew that Harvard was a really good school, but at the time I didn’t realize that it was, like, the BEST, and that that they only take in 6% of all applicants, even though every person applying has straight As.

So in a class full of local Mennonite pastors with their undergrad degrees who were planning snack for youth that night, I asked, “Dr. Daloz Parks… how do we compare to your Harvard students?”  Everyone snickered, and now I know why.

She smiled.

“You are wonderful people with great hearts, and it’s a joy to be here teaching you.”

I think she was genuine. But I also think she might have been naming us as slightly less intelligent than her regular students.

Okay.  Back to Fowler’s stages of faith. You ready?

Stage 0 – Undifferentiated Faith – For some reason, Fowler’s starts at Stage 0  (because sometimes academics are strange?).  Stage 0 is newborn, where we come out of the womb with all our needs being met, and all we know is love.  When you’re holding a newborn who is contently sleeping in your arms, and you see the parent just hold them, smiling, it’s beautiful.  All we know is love.

Stage 1 is called Intuitive Projective Faith and stage 2 is called Mythic Literal Faith – Stages 1 and 2 are for when the kids grow up, ti their about 13.  I won’t spend too much time on these, but this is where kids kind of believe what they’re told, they’re not old enough to understand metaphors, they believe very concrete things and aren’t too worried about God being everywhere and invisible at the same time, and how we can’t really see heaven.  Kids in stages 1 and 2 have a strong sense of fairness, and justice, and right and wrong.

But, then adolescence hits, we start to move into stage 3.

Stage 3 – Synthetic-Conventional Faith and life in Stage 3 is quite black and white, and we like bold, clear assertive people who give bold, clear, assertive answers. People living in stage 3 have a really strong external source of authority, and we generally believe and act like those around us (3s are summarized as “conformists”). Our families, our churches, and our leaders.  We’re connected to our group, we have answers, and it’s good.

Stage 4  – Individuative-Reflective – Stage 4 usually starts in young adulthood.  By the time we’re 21, we know there are multiple viewpoints, that life isn’t black and white, but we can navigate this by learning all the different viewpoints and choosing the best one.  Stage 4’s have a strong sense of internal authority, as in, they know what they believe and why.  So people living in stage 4 are probably so confident in their answers that they’ll draw a bunch of graphs and diagrams while preaching on a Sunday.  But they’re also the ones who will be suicide bombers. Because they know the answers, they believe them, and they will follow through.  (This is where I find super-imposing the good faith/bad faith chart onto the stages is helpful, even though Fowler was quite neutral in his understanding of faith).  4s believe stuff, and they can tell you why.

Stage 5 – Conjuctive Faith – Fowler suggests that stage 5 starts around the age of 40.  I summarize stage 5 by saying “They hold less things tightly”. They are more unified. They are okay with mystery and paradox.  They don’t get uptight about differences. As we move into stage 5, we live in a constant battle between arrogance and humility.  We can get arrogant because we think “Ha!  Look at those simpletons over there, thinking they have all the answers!”, and humility, where our own questions remind us of how little we know, and how much room there is for us to grow.

“I’ll focus on a few grand essentials.  In essentials, unity;  in nonessentials, diversity;  in all things, charity.”

I sometimes think a good example of stage 5s is a Grandma’s unconditional love for her grandchildren… Like, that kid can totally be choosing to rebel against their parents, but grandma’s love is always there.  Always open.  Stage 5’s still believe things, but they know that it doesn’t matter as much as they thought it did.

Stage 6 – Universalizing – And then Stage 6 – Well, Fowler only thought that less than 1% of the world got here, because 6s are so rare that they end up dying because of love.  He uses examples like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr.  They sacrifice their own being because of love.  It’s worth nothing that they don’t kill for their cause.  That’s something 3s and 4s do.  But 6s choose to die for their cause, and they usually die with love on their lips and an invitation to their enemies to join them in the way of love.

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Okay.  Here’s how I best summarize stages of faith…  Fowler goes way, way, deeper than simple “issues”, but it’ll work for us today.  I want you to think of a question of faith, or a hot button “issue” that Christians hold strong opinions about that they might disagree on. I’ll give you 5 seconds.

You all picked head coverings, right?  Like we read in our Bibles how women should cover their heads!  Perfect.

Stage 4s will tell you why women should or should not cover their heads.   Stage 5s will say “Well, I either cover mine or don’t, but it’s not really that important.  What’s important is that we love.”  Stage 6s will die for the people who disagree with them.  And Stage 3s will say, “Well, my pastor says this… Or, my pastor says Richard Rohr says this”

But now we’re going to bring this to the practical, and how it affects us here at Grace. And I’m going to do so by saying a bunch of things about this chart that I think are important.

Here are the statements that I’ve been taught:

• Some scholars suggest that 80% of Christians in North America operate out of stages 3 and 4.
• Churches are most efficient operating out of stage 3. Here are the answers.  Do what the pastor says, you’ll fit in fine, and we’ll do great things together.
• We tend to look at further stages with fear, and we tend to look back at previous stages with arrogance, disdain, and loathing.
• When we look back at previous stages with disdain, what we’re usually most mad at it usually a previous version of ourselves.
• Knowledge is not the same as maturity. Having answers is not the same as maturity.  Confidence is not the same as maturity.
• It is really hard to churches to reach people in all 3 of these stages, let alone the children hanging out in stages 1 and 2.
• This chart can be a weapon. It can be used to dismiss others, label them as simpletons, or think we’re better than others.  If we dismiss others because they’re in a different stage than us, we’re probably acting out an unhealthy stage 4.
• So you do not have my permission to go and label people. You do have my permission to learn more about this, and filter the world through this lens, but don’t go labelling people (even though I know you will).
• I know some of you are already thinking about family gatherings at Christmas, and no, you do not have my permission to talk about the Stages of Faith with your cousins at dinner time.
• This chart can be a tool to help explain why people act differently, or believe different things. Some of us go through this growth process, and even in stage 5, where we hold less, they can still be different.  You can be in stage 5 and wear a head covering, and you can be in stage 5 and not wear a head covering.  So, Dr. Parks suggested that many leaders in America have gone through this process and in the end decided that money and oil were the things to cling to.  And that’s why they were invading Iraq.  So this chart isn’t about what we believe, but explains a bit about why we believe what we do.
• This chart can also help us understand others, practice empathy, and practice compassion.
• And, we will talk about how we move across these stages next week.

And the reason why I really, really wanted to share this with you this morning, is that over the past several years, Mel and I have been listening to what you Gracers are saying about faith and church and your attendance here.  I haven’t asked permission to share these, so they will remain anonymous, but we have heard these:

• I was tired of going to church just to hear a reaffirmation of doctrine.
• I’ve been thinking these thoughts about faith for about 10 years, and haven’t had a place I can ask the questions.
• Kyle, most churches would have fired you for what you said last Sunday.
• When I was younger, I thought answers were important. Now that I’m around the age of 40, I’m not as sure anymore.  And I’m okay with saying that.
• I’m grateful for a church that allows for disagreement.
• Family gatherings are really tough for me.
• The only beginners class I’ve ever repeated in dance class. So why after decades in church do I feel like it’s still a beginners class?
• We were wondering if there was a church in Steinbach that we could ever call home.
• Kyle, I knew that no matter what, my grandma would still love me.

I was told by Dr. Daloz Parks that if we were ever to preach about this, we have to tread very, very softly, and it’s really hard to communicate all of its complexities.  We just scratched the surface of it today (plus I superimposed my own beliefs on top of it).

However, I chose to share these models of growth with you because I think we can be reminded that maturing in our faith is a process… That growing in our faith doesn’t mean having more answers, or being more confident… rather, growing in our faith is actually about us learning to let go, about us being okay not having answers, about us holding things less tightly, and us learning to live sacrificial lives for our neighbours.

And I chose to share these models of growth because I think we need to know that wherever are on this spectrum, it’s okay.  It’s normal.  None of us walk alone. There’s room for everyone at God’s table.

We’re all in this together.  “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, diversity;  in all things, charity.”

Diagrams, charts, ideas, and prayers that help me follow Jesus with some integrity (I hope) without checking my brain at the door – A 3 part series.

Part 1:  Franciscans, Methodists, and Mennonites, Oh My!

As you can see in, this morning is the first in a 3 part series, in which I am going to share and draw a whole bunch of ideas and thoughts and diagrams and prayers that I have found helpful in trying to follow Jesus.  And it might not all wrap up nice and neat and tidy at the end. So you really can pick and choose what you want.  But I’m still hopeful it’ll be helpful.

And as usual, you are 100% free to agree or disagree with me.  Here a

t Grace, we allow for disagreement.  Unity is not uniformity.

And, in an effort to allow for communication to be a 2-way street, not only will I be available in the side room after worship to continue to conversation, but, in your bulletin you’ll see Q & R.  You are free to text me any questions or thoughts that spring up, and we’ll take a few minutes to engage with them.

Okay. Off we go.

 

(And if you’re reading this online, I’m just attaching the completed diagrams I drew during the sermon.  So you’ll have to just use your imagination to make sense of them all.  But this meme might help imagine how things went on Sunday… 😉

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We start off with Samuel hearing God’s voice in the night.  He hears God calling him, and he responds “Here I am!”

About 15 years ago, I was here at Grace one morning, getting ready to spend a year in Zimbabwe with MCC.  And Grace Mennonite sent me with love and prayers and blessing and the sang, “Here I am Lord.  Is it I Lord?  I have heard you calling in the night!”

Fond, beautiful, life shaping memories for a 19 year old.

I sometimes like to rephrase “God’s calling” with the question, “If God is calling me, how then should I live?”  Or “How should we live.”  Or “What do we take into consideration when we make decisions into how we should live?”

So, the answer most of us here in church would say: The Bible. Scripture.  Which, I’d say, yes.  Scripture should shape how we live.

It’s what the Reformers said 500 years ago during the Reformation.  They were upset at the church for a whole list of things, and so they came up with a phrase, Sola Scriptura, which is Latin for Scripture Alone.  The Bible tells us how to live!

If we imagine a building.  We could name the foundation of the building as Scripture, and the rest of the building as our lives. 

And so we hear God calling Samuel in today’s scripture.  Here I am Lord!  I’ve heard you call!

And then Samuel opens his theoretical Bible (because they didn’t really exist as Bibles back then) and he turns to the books in Bible named after him, Samuel, and he reads his own story about God calling him in the night, and then a mere 12 chapters later he reads the following:

This what the LORD Almighty says… Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ – 1 Samuel 15:2-3

Here I am Lord… I have you heard you calling in the night to go and commit genocide.  And kill the camels and donkeys too. Oh boy.

(We’ll come around a bit to the “Kill all the people and animals” thing in a bit.)

But when we read our Bibles, like actually read, them, wow… It’s quite the read, isn’t it?  Weird rules and contradictions and outdated practices and so much God ordained violence.  Women can’t speak, men can’t shave, God killed those people, God told those people to kill other people, we can’t wear a shirt made of cotton and polyester (let alone spandex), can’t eat shrimp, and it has a whole set of instructions on how to treat our slaves.

There’s a book that’s about a decade old now… AJ Jacobs tried following every rule in the Bible for 1 year.  It’s a hilarious read, but he literally ended up in a park wearing a tunic looking like Moses and throwing pebbles at a stranger because he was supposed to stone anyone who committed adultery.

And when I was at Conrad Grebel University College, our cooks were primarily Old Order Mennonite women.  They wore head coverings, and one day I asked them why… They looked at my quite puzzled. “Doesn’t it say so in the Bible?”

So, back to our image of Scripture as our foundation and our lives being the building… It doesn’t take much to start chipping away at that foundation, does it.  Strange rules.  Violence.  Contradictions.  Or that the authors of the Bible thought that the world was flat.  And let alone that very few of us read Greek.  A few years ago, we have professor from CMU come and help us learn how to read Scripture.  He showed us one greek work found in 1 Corinthians and then showed us 32 different ways we could translate that word.  And I remember thinking:  “I know nothing.”

Brick by brick, this simple foundation starts to crumble.

Or, we’re afraid that if we pull one brick out, the whole thing will collapse.  So some of us put our fingers in our ears and say “la-la-la I’m not listening”.  Or we walk away from the Bible entirely. Or church.  Or faith.  If God tells people to kill children, I’m out.

Sola Scriptura was a helpful correction in history, but, if we say we only follow the Bible in deciding how to live, we are lying to ourselves.  If we call the Bible God’s little rule book, we’re lying to ourselves, (not the least because it’s not little).  If we say the Bible is clear, we’re lying to ourselves.

Because we can follow our Bibles and own a slave.  And we can follow our Bibles and commit genocide.

So, here are three ideas that I have found immensely helpful over the years.

#1 is from the Franciscans.

When trying to figure out how to live, they take into account three things.

Scripture, tradition, and experience.

Scripture, because they’re Christian.

Tradition, because they are part of something that has been around for hundreds of years, and they don’t have to reinvent the wheel for everything. It’s kind of naïve of us to not acknowledge the good parts of our tradition, or fail to acknowledge the bad.  To do so is to almost to walk blindly.

And experience, because our world is constantly changing, and how we see the world is constantly changing, and God is constantly moving in our world.  Experience will tell us that committing killing an entire village is bad, or maybe it’s okay if we eat shrimp, and that women are just as capable of leading in church as men.   Experience will tell us that if we go up into the heavens, we won’t find God sitting on a throne, but rather the International Space Station, where Americans and Russians are getting along (maybe there IS a God!)

And it’s a bit of balance between these 3 things.  Scripture, Tradition, and Experience.  If we miss any of them, how we live our lives is going to be a bit out of balance.

But the Franciscans don’t just name these 3 things. They actually put one in the front of the other two.  It’s kind of like a tricycle.  Which one do you think they put in front as the most important one?  That drives the trike?

The answer?  We might think it’s Scripture, because that’s what we think we’re supposed to say.  But actually, they let experience lead the way.  That sounds blasphemous, but if we read our Bibles and understand the history of the Bible and learn the history of both the church (and humanity in general), we learn that “adjusting theology in view of cultural shifts is the very history of Judaism and Christianity, and it’s our sacred responsibility to continue that.”  – Peter Enns

And that’s why we can say that Christians killing Muslims in the Crusades is something that we no longer should be doing.  Or burning witches.  Or defending slavery.  Or sending kids to residential schools to make them Christian.

Here’s maybe one of the best examples. Before World War II, most of Christianity was anti-Semetic.  We did not think kindly of the Jewish people, even blaming them for the death of Jesus.

And then after the Holocaust, we saw what that theology did, and we said “Oh.  We were wrong.”  And we did a 180, and worked to address our anti-Semitism (and we still have work to do!).

Experience has taught us this.  Experience leads.  I think we deceive ourselves if think otherwise.

That’s the Franciscans.  But then, if we fast forward a few hundred years from St. Francis of Assisi, we learn about the Methodist Quadrilateral.

(So exciting, I know.)

Instead of a tricycle, they suggest that our lives are like a boat moored in the harbor with four anchor points.

Those four anchor points are… Scripture.  Tradition.  Experience.  And they add a fourth… Community. 

And these four are constantly in tension with each other.  Sometimes the boat is closer to this anchor point, and other times this anchor point.  But if we’re anchored, the boat is able to withstand all the waves that we encounter.

I was at a gathering of Mennonite pastors a while ago, and the speaker suggested the Methodist Quadrilateral is actually quite Anabaptist because it takes into effect the role of the community.

Community has always played a strong role in our history, from secret meetings in houses 500 years ago to moving entire villages from Russia to Canada.

The idea behind community is that if someone asks:  “Are you a Christian?”  We answer:  “I don’t know.  Ask my neighbours.”

The idea behind community is that we’re all responsible to give and receive counsel.

The idea behind community is that we don’t wake up in the night and decide that God is calling us to go and kill the the Amalekites and off we go.  Rather, we take that perceived calling to the community. We share it, we bounce it off each other, we discern it, we pray about it, and then we have a thanksgiving casserole potluck together.

I have found the Methodist Quadrilateral to be ridiculously helpful in trying to figure out how to follow Jesus.

And speaking of following Jesus, there’s one more diagram that I have found helpful.

It’s like a hill. 

This is the Old Testament.  This is the letters of the New Testament.  And this, here, on the top, is what we read in the gospels of Jesus.

We’re Christians, Christ followers, not Biblians, or Bible followers.  Yes, the Bible is the cradle that holds Jesus, the Bible points us to Jesus, but we do not worship the Bible.  We worship Jesus.  The Bible is just the map.

It’s a little thing, but it’s actually a huge thing.

It means that when we have to pick which Bible stories to read our children, we lean towards Jesus.

It means when we find two different views on something in Bible, we let Jesus be the referee.

It means that the golden rule of treating others how we want to be treated is really, really important.  (I always thought that the Golden rule was something my elementary school teacher, Mr. John Bestvater, made up.  Turns out it was Jesus.)

It means that when Jesus’ summarizes the Law as loving God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, we filter everything through that.

It means that we pay attention to Jesus going to the marginalized and outsiders first, we pay attention to how Jesus treats women and children, we pay attention to the teachings of Jesus on wealth and forgiveness and enemy love.

It means we read the Old Testament as something leading up to Jesus. And it means that we read the rest of the New Testament as something that happened because of Jesus.

Jesus himself says that he’s the top of the hill. In the parable of the house built on sand or built on rock, Jesus tells his listeners to build their houses on his words, not Scripture as a whole.

Jesus also says “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  He’s not the way TO something.  He IS the way.

We’ll be starting the gospel of John in January, but in the very first chapter we read that the word became flesh.  The word of God became Jesus.

It means that if want to understand God’s character, we look to Jesus.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1:3

It means we can’t really commit genocide, because Jesus says to love our enemies.

It means that we probably can eat shrimp, because Jesus says it’s not what goes into our body that matters, but what comes out of our hearts that matter.

It means that we can’t own slaves anymore, because we’re supposed to treat others how we want to be treated.

As Palmer Becker writes in his new book, Anabaptist Essentials, “Jesus is the fullest revelation of God and God’s will, he is the key to interpreting Scriptures.  The entire Bible needs to be interpreted through the eyes and nature of Jesus.”

A quick note about what we do with verses where God kills people, or God tells people to go and kill all the people.  I think, what the tricycles and quadrilaterals and pointy mountain thingy means is that… God didn’t command the Israelites to commit genocide.  Israel probably thought this is what God wanted of them, so they wrote that down, but they were wrong. They had an image of God that they thought they knew, but when we remember that Jesus is the exact representation of God, we can say they were wrong.  Now, throughout all this, God didn’t change. But our understandings of God have changed. And our portrayals of God have changed. And we have to always be open to them changing again.

And, I know that there are all sorts of alarm bells about me saying God didn’t say those things.  They’re going off in me too.

So first of all, none of us can actually prove what God said or didn’t say, to Samuel in the night, or when we read that God commanded genocide.   The best we can do is say “God probably, or probably did not” say that.

Secondly, I didn’t say the Bible is wrong.  I said the Bible records the Israelites probably getting God’s calling wrong.  Slight difference, but an important one.

Thirdly, why is the onus to prove that God probably didn’t say that these things?   I rather think the onus should be on the one who thinks God probably did command a genocide.  Because that God’s a monster.

You worship a God who kills people?  Tell me more about that.

And personally, I think it is kind of nice to know that we worship someone who dies for their enemies rather than killing them, isn’t it?

Now, even with all these three things to help us figure out how to live, how to figure out what God is calling us to, believe it not, we can still disagree.  There are even multiple ways that we interpret the words of Jesus.

So even with all these ideas and frameworks, even with Jesus as the center, people still sometimes seem called to live their lives in opposite directions.  Heck, there are less than 2 million Mennonites around the world, and we are one of the most divided denominations in the world.  Let alone that there are something like 42 churches in Steinbach, and if we all stood on our roofs we could probably see each other.

Yeah.

In the next two weeks, we’ll dive deeper as we talk about spiritual growth and spiritual maturity and spiritual transformation, which might help.

But to try to bring this to some sort of conclusion, even when we disagree… I’ll refer to back to Jesus.

Here I am Lord, says Samuel.  And we say, Here we are, Lord.

What are you calling us to do?  How is God calling us to live?

At the very least, may we try to love God, may we treat others as we want to be treated, and may be love our neighbours as ourselves.

And may that desire to love be what unites us.

Here I am Lord… Here we are.  We have heard you, calling in the night.

Grace and Peace.

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PS – After my sermon, someone for church suggested I forgot the 3 legged Anglican stool of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.  I agreed that analogy could have made it in here too.   Franciscans, Methodists, Anglicans, and Mennonites – It’s like the Reformation in reverse!  Love it!

Abraham almost sacrificing his son… What a great Fall Fellowship story!  Right?

We here at Grace are doing a 4 year plan to cover most of the Bible’s major stories, and we are currently in year 3.  Hence why we get stories of child sacrifice on the day that we give Bible’s to 3 year olds!

Ash and I have 3 children in our family, ages 6, 4 and 1.  And sometimes, when I reflect on what life was like before kids to now, I notice many changes, obviously, but there’s one change that was quite unexpected.

When I watch TV, or movies, or sometimes even commercials, I cry way more than I ever have.  More like, all the time.  Every time there’s any plot line involving kids or parents, I imagine myself or my kids in those roles, and I just start bawling.

For example, the other day we were watching “How to Train Your Dragon”, and sure enough, Hiccup is in the middle of fighting this really, really big dragon, and I started crying.  My kids looked at me:  “Daddy, why are you crying?”  “Because, the dad just told his son how proud he is of him, and that he loves him, and I love you kids so much and I am so proud of you.”    But at this point they’ve already forgotten about me and my tears and are watching Hiccup and Toothless defeat the big Red Death dragon.  And Ashley is looking at me from the other side of the couch, and I’m not sure if she’s filled with love and admiration for her husband, or if she’s wondering what happened to the man she married 12 years ago.

So when I read this story in Genesis 22 about a Dad going on a 3 day journey )to sacrifice his kid because God told him told, oh my goodness, what a horrible story.  I mean, what kind of dad is Abraham?  Tying your kid up and reaching for your knife?  Because God told you to?

And it’s even summarized as a “test”.  That Abraham passed the test with flying colours.

What kind of sick God puts people through tests like this?

If I believed God told me to kill my kid, I would not do it.  And neither should you.  Think of the trauma we’d inflict on our children, and ourselves.

What kind of God would tell you to kill your child? 

Well, as we hopefully know by now, what’s the first question we should ask when reading some of these strange Bible stories?

Why was this story written down?

When we look at this story through our 21^st Century eyes, we are rightfully horrified.  But notice how Abraham didn’t put up fight?  He didn’t protest against God?  Because sacrificing your children to the gods was something that was normal and expected all those years ago.  It was just what you did.  No big deal.

I heard it explained years to me when I spent a weekend with Rob Bell and Richard Rohr, and I’ve said it here once before, but I found it so profound, I’m quite alright saying it again.

Very quickly in our development as humans, we discovered that our very survival depended on the whims of nature.  Too much rain, we die.  Too little rain, we die.  We meet at sabre-tooth tiger in the forest?  We die.

And so we ended up giving offerings and sacrifices to the gods in the hopes of us getting the right amount of rain, sun, and to limit the sabre-tooth tiger encounters.

If our harvests are bad, or a sabre-tooth tiger attacks our cousin, it might be because we didn’t offer enough food and sacrifices.  The gods might be angry!  So next time, we offer more.

If our harvests are great, and we don’t have to send anyone to the hospital because of sabre-tooth tiger attacks, great!  Our offerings and sacrifices worked!  The gods are not angry!  So next time, we offer a little more, just to be on the safe side… you know, to stave off the wooly mammoth attacks as well.

It’s a never ending cycle of us offering sacrifice to the gods, of us not knowing where we stand with the gods, of us living in constant anxiety that the gods are angry with us, and so we kick up offerings.  From fruit to bread to chickens to goats to cows to our income tax refunds and eventually, what’s the most important thing we can sacrifice?  Our children.  That’ll make the gods happy.  We can’t offer anything more.

This is Abraham’s world.  God says to go sacrifice your children. Sure. That’s what we do.

But this story ends differently, doesn’t it.  It doesn’t end with Abraham killing his son.  It ends with God providing.

So if we ask the question, what kind of God would tell someone to kill their children?

The answer here, is, not this God.

This God is about something different. This is a story about a God who provides.  This is a story about us ending the never ending anxiety of wondering if we’re doing enough to make God happy.

But this story in Genesis is just the beginning of humans understanding this new type of God.   There’s still the sacrificial system, and then Jesus.  But this story is the beginning of a trajectory.

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With Mel gone on Sabbatical, I can tell a Mel story (I do miss him, though).

We have our staff meetings on Tuesday mornings, and after talking about the latest sports news from the weekend (like how the Bombers beat the Riders at the Banjo Bowl), he usually brings a question to the meetings.  In the past, they’ve been like, “What do we learn more from, success or failure?” or “I was reading Thomas Merton personal journal this morning, and he suggests that every time we’re insulted or angry that’s just our ego defending itself. What do you think?”  Or something else deep and profound like that.

But with him gone, I’ve been making the staff meeting agendas.  And when we get together it starts like this “Well, I changed two dirty diapers this morning, one of the kids made it to daycare without any shoes, the baby ate some unknown food off the floor, but we made it to the bus on time, so that’s something.”

Regardless of the seasons of life we find ourselves in, the full or not so full, the beautiful or the not so beautiful, the busy or not so busy, I am grateful for a God who provides.  A God who is not angry. A God who puts us on a better trajectory.

And I am grateful for a church community that gathers and doesn’t heap guilt on each other for not offering enough.  A community we can come to who will try to love each other and the world, even when we feel inadequate or that we’re not doing enough, or that we haven’t read Genesis 22 since we were children, or that we’re in spaces where find it hard to pray and trust and believe.   A church community that knows we’re in this thing called life together.

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The last time I preached on this story of Abraham and Isaac, it was for my preaching class in university.  (I remember that class quite well because I didn’t read the textbook, got an email from the prof telling me that if I skipped one more class I’d be kicked out, and I STILL managed to pass the class!)

When I was preaching on this text, we were graded on both delivery and content.  And I remember my prof, who was an Old Testament buff, said to me, “Kyle, you failed to mention that some scholars think that the mountain Abraham climbs with Isaac is the same place that Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well in the gospel of John.”  I remember my outside self, nodding and saying “Yeah, okay.”  And my inside self was screaming, “YOU ONLY GAVE ME 10 MINUTES TO PREACH, AND AIN’T NOBODY BUT OLD TESTAMENT PROFESSORS GOT TIME FOR THAT!”

Well, some years later, I think, maybe, I might have been wrong.

As Anabaptist Christians, we read Scripture through the lens and words and actions of Jesus. At the center of our Bibles is Jesus, and getting to know Jesus is how we best know God, and so if that mountain is the same place that Jesus talked to Samaritan woman at the well, then, this gets kind of fun.

Because at that well, Jesus points the Samaritan woman in a new direction.  He says to her, “You worship God, but there’s one or two things I think you’re inaccurate about.  I’m just going to reorient you a little bit, and once turned, you’ll see me.”  – John 4:21-26 (my very loose paraphrase)

So Abraham is worshipping God, and God reorients him to not kill his kid.  And the Samaritan woman is worshipping God, and Jesus reorients her to focus on Jesus.

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I now think that the story of Abraham and Isaac is a great story for Fall Fellowship, a Sunday when we symbolically kick off our fall.

It’s a story that reminds us that we are enough.  That God does not have unrealistic expectations of us.

And it’s a story of a God who is always pointing us in new directions, always reorienting us to look at the way of Jesus.  To quote one of my favourite singers,

“The heart of God has been revealed… to bring love and not hate, to pour out and not dominate, to forgive and not blame, to make whole and not shame.”  – Alana Levandoski

Maybe this is a great story for Fall Fellowship because it’s a reminder that when we put our trust in God, we open ourselves up to seeing God provide for us. That when we do our best to be faithful to God, however that looks… when we sacrifice a morning of sleeping in to come to church, when we teach little children or meet new people at a potluck (which I know is tough for a lot of people), when we give money to help a family from Syria make a home in Steinbach or make sandwiches for local school kids or sing at nursing homes, or say all sorts of prayers for all sorts of people… I think that in all the different ways that we show up, they’re all little acts of faithfulness… they’re acts of trust in God.  And this story is a good reminder that if we trust in God, God will provide.

Grace and Peace.