[This sermon was preached at Saint Peter’s Church on March 22, 2015, reflecting on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and John 12:20-33. You can hear the audio here.]

So we’ve been going through the fruits of the Spirit these last few weeks, and this Sunday we come to kindness… It feels little bit cliché and even boring honestly to be talking about kindness in Church — I guess because it’s so expected. And everybody tries to claim it!

Pretty much every major world religious tradition says something about the importance of kindness and compassion, such that the Dali Lama can say, “my religion is kindness; kindness is my religion.” And even among non-religious people there is a widespread acknowledgment of the value and desirability of kindness.

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, Oct. 19th at Saint Peter’s Church.  The audio can be found here.

We’re going through this series right now that started last week on the Generosity of God, and our response to it, and we’ll be continuing in it for the next month or two. If you missed this past Sunday, then please try to find time to listen to the audio of TJ’s sermon on the website, because each message is going to build on the previous one somewhat. We know where this is ultimately pointing – to a generous God, and a merciful God, who we know through Jesus and who through Jesus demonstrates radical generosity, as TJ talked about last Sunday. And the appropriate response to God’s generosity was illustrated by the tax collector, who humbled himself before God, in contrast to the Pharisee, who exalted himself. But today, we’re going to begin at the beginning, with Creation itself, what we learn about God’s generosity in & through Creation, and what that tells us about our role as stewards of Creation, and what that means we’re supposed to live for.

Psalm 8:3-4 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

So first, that God is Creator: we live in a universe — not just a world — 99 percent of which is nothing but empty space, stretching across billions of light-years and including billions of galaxies and stars. The universe was around for a long time without the earth, and the earth was around for a long time without human beings, and human beings have been around for a long time without us. Our smallness, compared to the universe’s bigness, is humbling. And God made the whole thing!  We see that God is the reason for existence, and we’re not at the center of the universe — not even close. And humility is the appropriate response! Just as it was for the tax collector.

Secondly though, and just as important, we learn in this Psalm that human beings have a very special place in created order. Here’s Psalm 8 again, picking up in v. 5:

You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e]
and crowned them[f] with glory and honor.
6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,

So despite our smallness, our apparent insignificance, human beings are set apart and given a unique role. God gives us dominion over the earth and we’re to be stewards of it. It’s been entrusted to us. We’re to be a stewards, meaning we’re to be managers or overseers — caretakers — which means our responsibility is to do exactly what the owner wants us to do with the things that are not ours but Owner’s. The things that are God’s. So as it turns out, in spite of some obvious limitations, we nonetheless possess a certain degree of great power and freedom — and — responsibility, as stewards. Because Human beings have the capacity to do things that no other creatures can’t do.

Here’s what happens though. And you all know the story. We take this privileged place that God has put us in and given us, for granted, and we abuse it. We go from having stewardship to entitlement, from dominion, to domination and even exploitation.

Look at the quote in your bulletin from Tim Keller:

If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God.

We had no say, and no control over what century we were born in, what country, or what family. Just taking an example that’s close to home for some of us at St Peter’s: What if you were born in Honduras, in Flor del Campo, where our team is going next month, where our missionary partner and fellow church member, Suzy McCall lives? Suzy’s actually here with us this morning, so come give her a hug after the service. We obviously have a lot of successful business men and women in our community. Think about just starting a business in Honduras, if you’re a citizen there instead of here. If you’re trying doing business in Flor del Campo — you may be paying taxes to drug cartels, they might kill you and your family. I know that kind of intense and not very fun to think about it, but we need think about it. It should humble us. It should make us grateful. And remind us even more of our role as stewards.

But that’s not our nature, and that’s not what a lot of our culture says. We want to celebrate the independent, self-made individual, as if we have enough power, and enough control, to deserve all the credit when success comes our way. Or, maybe we know better than to be too direct with our boasting about success and achievements, so instead we master the art of the humble brag. I think if you took away the humble brag, Facebook stock would completely crash.

Or, how about even our health — something else we like to boast in, or something else we think we control. You can exercise, you can be super fit, eat all organic food — and still get cancer. I just watched this great movie the other night, “The Fault in our Stars,” about two teenagers dying of cancer. We just do not have as much control as we think we do. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has said this: “Nobody’s getting out of life alive.” And then he asks, “So what are we living for?”

In this movie, The Fault in Our Stars, the main character, Hazel Grace is her name, she’s upset, because her parents have had to make their whole existence all about taking care of her, and she’s afraid that when she dies, they’re not going to have anything else to live for. And so there’s moment when she tells them that this is her biggest fear. She’s come to terms with the fact that she’s going to die. She’s been terminal for a long time. She’s not afraid of death. When she tells her parents this, her mom says, honey, losing you will hurt more than anything we’ve ever experienced, and it will be the hardest thing we ever go through. But we’re gonna keep going. We’re going to live with our pain. You of all people have taught us that we can do that. And then, her mom says, I’ve been social work classes, and I want to start an organization that helps parents whose children are dying. I didn’t want to tell you this though, her mom says, because I was afraid that you’d think we’d given up on you, or that we had decided to move on without you. Hazel Grace bursts into tears, because she’s so happy. See Hazel had lived with pain and suffering long enough, even at age seventeen, that she figured out the only way to overcome that pain, was to fear it, avoid it, or numb it, but to live for something more than herself, and actually grow in her concern for the lives of others. And then, her parents learn the same lesson, about stewarding their lives, and living for something more than themselves. “Nobody’s getting out of life alive. So as Christians, as stewards of Creation, what is God calling us to live for?”

Let’s look at David’s prayer from 1 Chronicles 29, and see if it might answer this question. Keep in mind that David has just taken up an offering for the Temple that God has said Solomon will build, and David’s giving out of his own treasure before asking other leaders to do the same:

11 Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, LORD, is the kingdom;

This may sound familiar, because some of this is the basis for Lord’s prayer! Jesus knew the Jewish Scriptures of course, and he draws on this prayer! as a Son of David. So it shows up again: “Yours is the Kingdom, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” According to David, and according to Jesus, this something that we’re supposed to be living for is God’s Kingdom. A more contemporary word in place of Kingdom could also just be God’s economy. Living as stewards, living generously, means that we live in God’s economy.

Jesus gives some instructions about life in this kingdom, life in this economy, beginning in Matthew 6:31. Jesus says,”do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom (God’s economy) and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Don’t worry about tomorrow.”

So here we see how close a relationship there is for Jesus, as there was for David, between generosity, and life in the Kingdom of God – life in God’s economy. What joins these two things together, is trust. Trust in God. He says don’t worry, don’t be anxious. You don’t really control any of that stuff anyway, so stop chasing after it. Stop living for the world’s economy. It’s not reliable. You’d think we would have learned that by now. A life without anxiety, with open hands, without clinging to our wealth, our status, our security — that’s what enables a generous life, and that’s what enables life in the Kingdom of God, life in God’s economy.

But let’s pause and try to put life in our own economy into perspective for a minute, at the global level. The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent. It’s been estimated now that it would take something like three more planets to sustain us, over our lifetimes, if everyone on the planet consumed at the rate we do over the course of their lifetimes. And that’s of course assuming that the population of the world stays the same, which it clearly is not.

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “there’s enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” That pretty much describes our situation. Obviously, this is not good economics. This is not good stewardship. Let’s look at the rest of First Chronicles 29:

12 Wealth and honor come from you;
you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.

This prayer, is a model for stewardship and generosity. It contains the the clue to the cure for the human disease I’ve just been trying to describe — this independent thinking that gives credit to ourselves, like we’re the ones most responsible for our own success or prosperity. It’s a disease of individualism. It’s a disease of consumerism. But this prayer is the counter-story. It’s tells the truth that we ignore, and it exposes the entitlement and domination in our thinking, and calls us back to stewardship. David is simply proclaiming that, because God is Creator, because of God’s generosity, everything we are, everything we have, everything we benefit from, and even everything we give away, is God’s.

This is what Jesus was teaching. It’s what Paul was saying, especially in Philippians, which we just finished studying earlier this month. And here’s what it boils down to: despite what we naturally think, we are actually more fulfilled, more content, more grateful and therefore more generous, when life is not their own — when we’re willing to give up ownership. And, conversely we are more miserable, more frustrated, more fearful, more discontent, when life is all about us, and we’re unwilling to give up ownership.

So, here are three final things about stewardship and generosity in God’s Kingdom, in God’s economy. First, when we imitate God’s generosity, Jesus’ generosity, it makes God’s grace visible to the rest world. When people see the people of God living with an open-handed understanding of all they have and all they are. The church is doing its job, when we see ourselves not as the owner of anything but as stewards all that God has given us.

Secondly, God is not threatening to punish you if you’re not generous. The absence of generosity in your life is its own punishment. Greed and sin are their own punishment! This is what Jesus is trying to tell us. It feels like you’re more in control at first, like you’re answering to yourself, and getting what you want — like you’re free. But you’re not. You become a slave to it, and it will rob you of peace and joy in your life. So this kind of Generosity is always an invitation.

And here’s the last thing: you can’t do it by yourself. You can’t do it by yourself. Some of us want to be more generous, but we feel constrained by our jobs, our commitments, and our schedules with family, social obligations, or whatever. Eventually, we discover that the patterns of our culture, a culture of entitlement, of domination, of individualism, of consumerism — it’s simply too much to resist by yourself. And the only way for us to resist these things is to have a community around us that’s helping us resist these things. In other words, just like the early Christians did, who we read about in the book of Acts which we studied this past summer, we have to move toward interdependence and a shared life together. This is what life in God’s kingdom and God’s economy looks like. You want a picture of it? Go back to Acts 2 and 4.

The well-known author and professor Huston Smith said this:

“I don’t have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that’s the severest test, not death.”

This is what we have to learn though. We have to face this fear. We have to grow into interdependence. We have to help each other ask, “what crowds our lives and keeps us from flourishing?” In the Connect Group that I’m a part of, we’re reading a book by a guy named Mark Scandrette about taking steps toward simplicity and generous living, and he describes generous living as:

“choosing to leverage our time, money, talents and possessions toward what matters most… toward [God’s economy].”

Generosity is going to look a little bit different for everyone, but one of the best environments that we as a church can offer you where this can happen is through Connect Groups. We started several new groups just in the last month, and already I think we’re beginning to see some fruit, even in these very early stages. Several leaders of the groups gathered yesterday for a training session and a time of sharing and learning together, and I think we were all encouraged by it.

One of my main responsibilities as a pastor on staff is to champion these Groups in our community. And I wasn’t asked to do this because I’m an expert, or because I have all the experience, but because I believe in them, and because I’m committed to seeing these Groups become avenues for God’s work of transforming our lives, taking our church deeper, and even transforming the culture around us.

So if you haven’t been to a Connect Group gathering yet, go check one out. You can visit as many as you want. We have 8 groups meeting on four different nights of the week, at least once a month, in a number of different neighborhoods. You can find the contact information of the leaders on the website, and there’s also a brochure with more information on the wall outside in the greeting area of the sanctuary.

As we move to communion, in light of the call on our lives to be stewards and to live with generosity in response to God’s generosity, I want us to close with a responsive acknowledgement and prayer together — A prayer for generosity and stewardship (adapted from Free: How to Spend Your Time and Money on What Matters Most:

I am dependent on and cared for by an abundant Creator.
I choose to be grateful and trusting.
I believe I have enough and that what I need will always be provided.
I choose to be content and generous.
I know that my choices matter for myself, for others and for future generations.
Help me to live consciously and creatively, celebrating signs of your new creation that is present and coming.
God, who made me to seek your kingdom and your righteousness,
Guide me to use my time, talents and resources to pursue your Kingdom.
Teach me to be free,
to live without worry, fear or greed in the freedom of your abundance.
Give me my daily bread, as I share with those in need.
Thank you for the gift of forgiveness through your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

This sermon was preached yesterday, September 28, 2014, at St. Peter’s Church, Mt. Pleasant, SC.  The audio of it can be accessed here.

The Alpha course started this past week, and Whitney and I are going through it, which I’m excited about because, as I shared with you all early last month, I tend to approach matters of faith from a fairly intellectual place. So I enjoy the kinds of conversations that we get to have in Alpha, and the questions that are asked, like “why is the Christian message any more authoritative and true in comparison to other messages that are out there?” Because there are a lot of alternatives, when it comes to what people think about the world and how they should live. There are a lot of other stories being told — some religious, some not — “what makes the Christian one any more compelling?” That question is on my mind a lot, even as a person of faith, and I’m going to get to talk to others about that every week for the next couple of months, so I’m looking forward to that.

Especially in the modern period of our Western history and culture though, we have tended to approach these kinds of questions largely from standpoint of trying to arrive at the right information. It reminds me of this time when I convinced a friend of mine who was pretty agnostic in his faith to go to coffee with me so I could basically tell him that I thought he really needed to read this book I had on Christian apologetics — that had basically answered all of my questions. I figured that if I could just convince him to read the book, he’d be persuaded just like me that Jesus really was God incarnate, and that the central Christian truth claims were all true.  That is not what happened.

This is partly because, I think, many of these questions about the trustworthiness of the Christian faith cannot be fully approached from the standpoint of thinking. And even with some of the deep reasonableness of the Christian faith that I think we should rightly draw on, some of the questions I just mentioned are very hard to answer simply on the basis of evidence or argument. Remember what the Bible says about faith in Hebrews 11:1, just as one example: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” And again, that doesn’t mean it’s blind faith. But it’s faith nonetheless.

However, even if we could prove that Jesus was who we as Christians say he is, what would that do? If we could convince all the non-Christians in the world that our faith’s claims were the truest, would the sin and the violence and the hate and conflict in the world just all go away?

The book of James says, in chapter two, v. 19: “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” This really throws into light for our ability as human beings to believe one thing supposedly with our mind, but live out something completely different with our desires and our actions. Nobody really doubts anymore whether smoking is bad for you, but people still smoke. We all know that healthy eating and exercise is pretty much a necessity for most people to be able to live a long life. Nobody’s really denying this. And yet, many of us don’t eat well or exercise.

Because here’s the deal: thinking something is true does not necessarily lead to change in your life. In fact, sometimes it even hinders change. Because our selfish and immature minds that we all have from birth — even when given good information — tend to just want to take security from the idea. This is why Paul says elsewhere in Romans 12, that our minds must be transformed. What is it about this story and this good news that Paul is announcing that can transform our minds?

So as we consider this passage Paul is writing to the Philippians, I propose we look not only at its contents — that is, not only at the information it gives us — but the form in which that information is presented, and see what that might tell us about the nature of Paul’s faith in Christ, and therefore also the way that we’re supposed to have faith too. So let’s look at it.

Notice the way the structure and shape of the passage changes in vs. 5-11, and looks more like a poem than a letter, with stanzas instead of just lines:

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

There’s this celebratory and dramatic tone that suddenly begins here as Paul starts talking about who Jesus is, and what he did. Why the artistic and exalted prose? It’s like this part of the letter almost leaps off of the page and takes on a life of its own. In just a few stanzas, it tells the story of God’s relationship with the world that God created.

Maybe Paul writes this way because this proclamation, which is different from a definition or a theological treatise, about who Christ is simply cannot be captured in ordinary language. It has to be proclamation, confession, and testimony. There’s something more that gets said when the form of the statement is creative, is beautiful, has rhythmic structure, and musical movement: starts high, moves down low, and then goes back up again. Paul does this to evoke something in us. He does this to propel us into worship with him, and into a posture of being mesmerized by the story.

Because ultimately, the doctrine of the incarnation, which is largely what this passage is referring to — the claim Christians make that in Christ, both divinity and humanity are dwelling together and have been united in God — this doctrine, this announcement of good news is mysterious. Paul doesn’t try to explain the mystery of the incarnation, that Jesus was somehow fully divine and fully human. He doesn’t try to define it. He has to sing it!

There was a Danish physicist named Niels Bohr, who was a friend of Einstein, who puzzled over how something like an electron could simultaneously occupy several different states, assuming multiple positions or momentums or energy levels, and still be one thing. How could, for instance, an electron, be both a particle and a wave, and function both like both a particle and wave, two clearly different things — like humanity and divinity, like God the Father and God the Son. Bohr answered: “We must be clear that, when it comes to atoms, language can be used only in poetry.” Later on he remarked that if you study quantum physics and are not moved to amazement and wonder, then you aren’t studying quantum physics.  So maybe, as Christians — in much the same way — we should say that if you study theology, and you aren’t moved to amazement and wonder by the doctrine of the Incarnation, then you’re probably not studying theology.

But not because the Incarnation is irrational. That an electron can function as both a particle and a wave is not irrational. It’s just incredible. The incarnation is incredible too. But the incredible thing about the incarnation is not just that it happened, but how and why. In other words, it prompts us to ask, what kind of human being does God become, what kind of live does that human being lead, and what does this tell us about who God is, and what God wants for us?

There’s a famous parable told by the 19th century Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called “The King and the Maiden.” And in it, thinking about this very idea of the doctrine of the incarnation, Kierkegaard talks about how this King has fallen in love with a humble maiden. Her beauty has captured his heart, and he longs to be with her. But because of his status as king, and because of her status as a peasant, and as a commoner, the king is deeply conflicted about how she could ever possibly love him as an equal in a genuine relationship. In some of his concluding remarks after telling this story, Kierkegaard says the following:

The unity of love [between God and humanity] will have to be brought about in some other way. If not by way of elevation, of ascent, then by a descent of the lowest kind. God must become the equal of the lowliest. But the lowliest is one who serves others. God therefore must appear in the form of a servant. But this servant’s form is not merely something he puts on, like the beggar’s cloak, which, because it is only a cloak, flutters loosely and betrays the king. No, it is his true form. For this is the unfathomable nature of boundless love, that it desires to be equal with the beloved; not in jest, but in truth. And this is the omnipotence of resolving love, deciding to be equal with the beloved…

See, God’s not just giving us new instructions. Of course some new teachings do come from Jesus, but other religions claim to have instructions from God too, or at least they claim to have some kind of special insight into ultimate reality. But the God of Hebrew and Christian Bible gives us God’s own very self in the form of a human being — not just a written word and not just a sacred text. And what kind of human? Here’s the really surprising part. A humble, common, ordinary, even lowly person — not a self-exalting one — not a royal, powerful, or highly educated person.

Ok, let’s go back to the question from a moment ago: what is about this story and this good news that can transform our minds, and get us to stop thinking at just a informational level? What is the force of this story that move from the level of understanding and tap into a much deeper, and visceral place where change can begin to take root in lives?

Remember again about how all this talk about humility and selflessness, Christ taking the form of servant — remember how this would have sounded to the Philippians:

For the people living in Philippi, they only know about the Greek and Roman gods, and about Caesar, who is also called a son of God, Lord and Savior. In contrast to Caesar, the New Testament writers give these titles to Jesus, which was a radical and politically dangerous thing to do. But it was also very strange!

The Greek and Roman gods — kind of like Caesar — they basically just do all the things pagans do, but better: they conquer, crush, dominate, win, feast, make love, manipulate and deceive. They get angry, they punish, they fight, they threaten. So how surprising and profound was it for them to hear that, unlike Caesar and the Empire, unlike the Greek and Roman gods, the God of Israel, and the God of Jesus Christ — the Creator of the Universe! — is a God that is generous, Paul says, and is a God that shows compassion and humility.  Not a God that grasps for power and divine status — even though he had the right to!

And then Paul proclaims that Christ became obedient to death, even death on a cross! So if that wasn’t surprising enough, that God is humble and compassionate, now God even suffers and endures humiliation. This is part of what’s so scandalous to the scribes and Pharisees in the gospels.

But we shouldn’t let ourselves off the hook either!  Because we don’t want to humble or have to suffer either. We want our God to come back now and win, and force everyone to do what we think they should do! But that mind, that very attitude, of grasping for power and honor and esteem for ourselves, is what led Jesus to bear the cross in the first place.

See, in Jesus, it is revealed to us, for the first time in history, that God doesn’t put people on crosses like Ceasar does. No, in Christ, God bears crosses. See, the gospel is a story about God taking the risk and the sacrifice of showing up in the flesh. It’s a risk and story that we’re all called to. And without risk, there is no faith.

This risk is one that we all shy away from of course. Because this takes real fearlessness. I heard someone say recently that safety is the greatest idolatry in our culture. I think this is probably true. Paul has bought into a different kind of safety, one doesn’t offer material security at all. What is it about the gospel that gives us the freedom to not put trust in these things? In other words, what is it about this story, and about this gospel, that has the power to transform our mind? I think it’s this: In this this story Paul is telling, in this poem he’s writing, this song he’s singing, we learn that, in Christ, we serve a God who has experienced and gone to the depths of human violence, betrayal, agony and defeat — so that nothing would escape his redemptive reach.

See, our faith won’t fully sink down from our heads and into our hearts if we’ve never received unconditional from someone else. And that’s exactly the kind of love that God demonstrates and extends to us in Christ. No other faith claims something quite like that.  So we believe that this story is not only true: but that it’s beautiful and good and unique and compelling! It’s just something we think. It’s a story that has to be lived, and tasted, and felt!

It’s a story that gives great comfort on the one hand, but a great calling on the other. It’s comforting because, in the resurrection it assures is that, again, whatever is shameful, humility, painful, despairing or oppressive in any situation does not have the last word. But it’s also a calling to live without fear! With the grace and mercy of God is on your side, what is there to be afraid of? Risk something big for something good. Be bold, be courageous! Live with humility, selflessness and be empowered by Christ who loves you unconditionally.

This is one of the reasons we do communion — one of the reasons we return to it, again and again, is that we need to be reminded. If you’re like me, you need to be reminded very often, that these things we’re going through do not have the last word. The grace of God has the last Word, and that’s where we draw our strength.

But before we move to communion, I just want to ask: Where are you on this spectrum between Caesar is Lord and Jesus is Lord? Who is the real Lord of your life? Is it Fear, or it faith? Is it competition and performance, or is it unconditional love and acceptance?  Most of us are probably somewhere in the middle, so maybe the better question is, in which direction are you moving?

Maybe you came in here today fully believing that the story was true, but you’ve been going for a while forgetting that it’s also good, and beautiful, and compelling, and something to trusted in and shared with other! Or maybe you’re new to this whole Christian faith thing or unsure about your commitment to the Church. Maybe you don’t know if it’s true, but you think it’s good and beautiful or intriguing. My encouragement to you then would be to let yourself be moved by this story. Take the risk, the leap of faith, of experimenting with what it would be like to live as if this story were true. Get to know some people in this church. Step into community with us, and see where it leads you. Try living with Jesus as Lord for a while and see what happens.

I want to give us a minute of silence just to respond to this question.  This is a hard question. There’s so much to fear, it seems like. The weight of the world and the stuff going on in our lives can be so devastating. But that’s why Jesus came, and that’s why he says that in him there is peace. In this world we will have trouble. But Christ have faced the world at its worst and at our worst, and you have overcome the world.

May God give us faith then to trust in not only the truth of the story of the incarnation, as an idea, but in its goodness and beauty and mystery — that it would move us, transform our minds, and that we would trust in it as reality, and allow it to become the story of our own lives as well.

[Below is the manuscript of a sermon I just gave at St. Peter’s Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC, where I am now the associate pastor.  To listen to the audio, go here (saintpeters.me).]

Chapter 16 is a fairly lengthy passage, as we saw — and we didn’t even read all of it — so there are many important aspects to it that we could touch on, but we’re gonna have to focus in a little bit. Basically there’s this series of encounters between Paul and Silas and the three other people we just read about — Lydia, a slave girl, and the jailer — each one in very different circumstances, so I just want to walk through and see what we might be able to learn from each exchange.

We can gather from the outset that despite the significant setback of getting thrown in prison, Paul and Silas were used by God in an especially powerful way in this story.  Because in Antioch, in Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas stayed around to encourage the Christians in the church there for about a year. In this case though, in Philippi, Paul and Silas are only there for a matter of days.  And yet, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it was somehow enough to start a church that Paul would later write to with great affection, presumably because they were really on the right track, at least a little more so than some of the other churches Paul was ministering to.

So in light of this fruitful effort by Paul and Silas, here’s the big picture question I want to raise that their example might be able to help us with: When it comes to our ministry to people in the Low Country, as we are striving to share the gospel, how do we as a church engage this community and this culture around us in a way that not only sustains this church but in a way that sows seeds that might even allow new churches to take root — Just as Paul and Silas did in Philippi?

I: Ok, in the story we just heard, there are three very different people are encountered by the power of the Gospel in three very different ways. Let’s take a look, starting with Lydia. That she’s a “seller of purple dyes” tells us that she’s probably a wealthy business woman. She’s described as a “God-worshiper,” so she’s someone who has rejected the many gods and many different ways of salvation that were offered by the mainstream religion of her Greek and Roman environment. She has come to have faith in the One God of Israel, even though she’s neither Jewish nor Christian.

I want to use some imagination here, and admittedly, this is somewhat speculative, but I think it’s appropriate to picture that Lydia’s the kind of person who today we might call a seeker. She really likes to think. She’s searching for meaning, purpose and truth. She’s not satisfied with the religion, values or worldview of the dominant culture around her. Maybe we could even say her main faith language is knowledge.

So the mind is the way that Lydia receives the Gospel. Now, it’s God who opens her heart and whose grace goes ahead of Paul to prepare her to hear and to understand, but the channel through which God does this is her intellect. So she listens and responds to God’s prompting, and Paul is able to reason with her and show how Jesus fulfills the divine promise of a Messiah who has brought salvation.

I want to pause here for a moment. There are some people, I think many of us could say, whose hearts seem pretty closed off or hardened to the things of God. The Bible talks about this. But there are others who, despite reservations, aren’t necessarily closed off completely. Maybe something about the Christian faith just doesn’t seem to make sense to them, or they’ve had a bad experience in church, or with Christians who are judgmental and narrow-minded.  Some people are skeptical, and sometimes for good reason. And I just want to say, if that’s you, if you’re kind of a Lydia, or someone you know is — then we want you here.

And not because you would be our next evangelism project, but because at St. Peter’s — even though I’ve been here for like three weeks — I think I’ve learned that the first thing we want to do is connect with people. This isn’t a place — and frankly I don’t think church should ever be a place — where you have to conform first in order to be accepted. Yes, there is a way of life in Jesus that we want to invite everyone into, and we have beliefs and convictions that are central, but we want to extend friendship to people, whether they’re like us or not. I think this is a church where people can bring their questions. And I believe we’re a community in which, if people have doubts, they can be honest and unashamed about that.

I emphasize this because, if there’s one character out of these three that I resonate with, it’s Lydia.  My main faith language is knowledge too. When I was in high school and college especially, I thought that if I could just answer the difficult questions with convincing arguments, my faith would be in a secure place. This partly why until literally the last month of my senior year of college, I was planning on going to law school instead of seminary. As long as I thought I could understand, I’d be in control. So I read books on apologetics. I even regularly attended the atheist and agnostic society meetings on Baylor’s campus that met weekly for several years, because I thought I had the answers they needed.

As you might guess though, I eventually learned that I didn’t have all those answers, and that some of my answers were misguided, or even flat out wrong. More than that though, as they graciously befriended me, I also began to learn how to listen. And you know, while some of them just wanted to argue and were cynical, others were genuinely open — they just had some tough questions! So knowledge is essential, and God uses our minds to reach us, just as he did with Lydia, and we can use our minds to worship and serve God — but knowledge can become idol, as it did for me, and still does.  So as we continue to welcome people and their questions, I would encourage us to remember not to confuse knowledge and faith.

II. Alright, after Lydia, we come to the Slave Girl: This is a strange and interesting story, because Paul doesn’t even initially set out to free this girl. He merely commands the spirit to come out of her because he’s annoyed. What the girl is saying seems to be a distraction to their mission. But even though Paul may not care very much about her wellbeing in this moment — we don’t know if he does — Paul’s trust in God’s authority over this Spirit allows God to nonetheless free the girl. Because liberating people from bondage is what God does. It’s one of the biggest themes in the Bible, beginning with the Exodus story. But we also find it all throughout Jesus’s ministry. I mean Jesus heals people and casts out oppressive spirits left and right. So for one thing Paul is imitating Jesus here. But the very first words of Jesus’ public ministry in Luke come from his reading of the Isaiah scroll, when he declares that he has come to bring, among other things, deliverance to the captives, good news to the poor, and to set people free.

And this girl is definitely a captive. Yes, there was a Spirit inside of her, but she had to be set free physically — probably before she could even start to understand with her mind, as Lydia does! Lydia was at the top of the social ladder, or close. The slave girl was the very bottom. The importance of this distinction is something else I had to learn.  I think God takes our social circumstances into consideration in the way that God pursues us.

I mentioned I started off in my faith journey as a Lydia. My faith was mostly in my mind and in my beliefs. And I’m still working on this, but as I matured somewhat toward the end of college and beginning of seminary, my eyes began to be opened more to God’s concern for the poor and the oppressed, and this theme throughout Scripture. I grew more sensitive to social injustices, to inequality, and to violence against vulnerable people groups in the world, as I was learning about different conflicts and so on. And in 2007, I went to Juarez, Mexico, right before the drug war got really bad, so it wasn’t too unsafe yet, but seeing the poverty in parts of that city was a wakeup call for me. I’m sure some of y’all can relate to this from when you’ve gone on mission trips to underdeveloped and developing countries. On this particular mission trip, we went there to tell them about Jesus, and it’s like I left with them having told me about their social problems, and how some of those social problems, in their view, were connected with my social privileges! This was a big moment in the shaping of my worldview. I would call it a mini-conversion of sorts.

But you know, in the past few years, God’s been teaching me another lesson. Recently I came across this quote from Gustavo Gutierrez: he says, “It might sound strange to say this, but even justice can become an idol, when it’s not placed within the context of gratuity.” Because what happens after the Israelites were brought out of the land of Egypt? Is everything smooth-sailing with God from then on? Are they totally grateful? Perfectly obedient? No way, not at all, right? After a rough journey through the wilderness, and a lot of highs and lows, they make a covenant with God, but they break it, God gets angry, forgives them, and the whole thing repeats itself.  Eventually they demand a king and establish a kingdom, and while there’s some good moments, before long Israel starts to look a lot like the very place they were delivered from in the first place: Egypt.

Because justice separated from gratitude adds something to or takes something away from the gospel.  Have y’all ever met anyone, for instance, who seems very passionate about social justice, but they’re also kind of mean? I think I was in danger of being that person sometimes.  So justice became an idol for me as well.  What’s currently helping me, and what will always be helping me overcome these idols, can be seen, finally, in what we learn from this third encounter, with the Jailer.  So let’s get there.

III. What else happens when slaves are set free? Well for one thing, the people who used to own them get upset. And that’s exactly what happens. Think of Pharaoh sending his army after the Israelites across the Red Sea. And Philippi did not have a big Jewish community.  It was populated by what we might call Roman “veterans” and their descendants — a pretty patriotic bunch.  So their reaction to some Jewish guys interfering with their commerce and promoting these beliefs and this way of life that ran contrary to the Roman culture is fairly predictable. And it lands Paul and Silas in prison after a severe and unlawful beating — even by Roman standards.

So this is not a very encouraging story so far! But it’s pretty typical in the Bible, in Acts, and especially for Paul it seems like.  The Bible is full of one story after another of men and women who faith great trials and suffering because of their faithfulness.  Why is that? Does God just want to mess with us and test us all the time? Well, that’s a big question. And I’m not going to try to answer it.  But I do think that one of the reasons this tends to happen is this:

The Gospel is counter-cultural.  It’s always subverting the status quo of our society.  And that word subvert has a very subtle meaning. It doesn’t just mean to “directly oppose.” In this instance it means something more like “undermine,” or to “expose the flaw or the deceit in whatever the dominant way of thinking or living might be.” So to subvert is tell a different version of the story, and to present an alternative faith system to live by. These Romans were trusting in Caesar, not Jesus, not the God of Israel. Their faith was in the Roman “Kingdom,” so to speak, not the Kingdom of God. So when you say to a big and powerful Empire, we’re not going to live under your rule — we’re citizens of a different Kingdom — that’s perceived as threatening! Even if you’re non-violent, as the early Christians were.  That’s the kind of thing that can get you beaten up and thrown into prison — or in Jesus’s case, crucified.

What’s incredible though, somehow, is that this didn’t seem to discourage Paul and Silas. Not only did it not discourage them, but it says they were singing! Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I have to confess, this is where some of my doubt comes in… So it helps me to imagine, whether it’s true or not, that if Paul and Silas were actually singing praise songs — maybe they were taunting praise songs, like “our God is an awesome God… and he’s better than yours.” Something like that would make me feel better! But whatever it sounded like, it left an impression on the jailer.. so let’s talk about him.

If Lydia was upper class, and the slave girl obviously in the lowest class, the jailer is somewhere in the middle. And Lydia receives the gospel through the use of her mind, and the slave girl is set free by physical liberation, through the body, then for the jailer the Spirit cuts straight to his heart. This is a guy, in all likelihood, whose dignity and worth is directly tied to his job and his loyalty to the Empire. Unlike Lydia, he’s probably a good pagan worshiper of the many Roman gods, and he calls Caesar his Lord. When it comes to his culture, he’s all in.

So, after the earthquake, we can assume that the jailer is about to kill himself either because of the disgrace he feels for having failed in his duty or out of anticipation for the punishment that was to follow. So, this is a ruthless system that he’s living in, and this is a man who’s probably never known anything different – the Romans governed with brute force and by instilling fear in people — even its own people. The jailer is probably a former soldier who’s good at instilling fear in people too!  He’s been trained to show no mercy.  So it doesn’t matter that this escape wasn’t his fault; he knows he’s not going to get any mercy either.  The sad thing is, this is the way a lot of people still live today: might makes right, competitive, keeping a record of wrongs.  So maybe you sense this too: a guy like that, or anyone living this way for that matter, I think, has to be starving for God’s grace — even if he doesn’t know it.

So probably for the first time in his life, when Paul and Silas give him a taste of what unconditional love looks like, this leads him to literally beg for more. And even though there’s this crazy earthquake, that’s not finally what God uses to change the jailers heart. It’s Paul and Silas’ care for him. For an enemy! The guy who’s with the Romans, who just beat them and through them in jail. I mean, this doesn’t make any sense! And the jailer doesn’t know what to do with it, other than to say, I want some, I want in on this, whatever it is. I mean, there is no way he has his theology figured out yet. All he knows is that he needs forgiveness, and these guys, his enemies, just showed it to him. And here’s the most incredible thing about this story to me: because Paul and Silas love their enemy, the jailer is able to start becoming the kind of person who loves his enemies too. He washes their wounds, gives them a meal, and the text says that he is overjoyed, even though he has every reason to still suspect that his life is probably going to end soon.  This is a radical transformation.  This is how the gospel turns the world upside-down.

All three conversion stories are legitimate — mind, body and heart, rich, poor, middle class. But I would suggest the jailer’s conversion is the culminating moment and the crescendo of this sequence. New understanding, and physical liberation are vital components to the Gospel. But history and our lives remains tragic without God’s grace.  As long as we trust in our own knowledge, our own ability to achieve justice, or to justify ourselves, we deny our dependence on God’s grace.  But if we start with God’s grace, then we’ll begin to have true knowledge, and our hearts will be set free to pursue real justice.

So to close, I briefly return the big question from the beginning: what would it take for us as a church in sharing the gospel to both deepen our roots as a growing body, but also to produce fruit that yields this harvest — even in a way that starts other churches, as Paul and Silas did? The Christian faith is mysterious, and it’s a journey that never ends.  As soon as I think I’ve arrived — whether in my knowledge, with my concept of justice, or whatever — I either fall on my face, or God reveals a whole new part of me that needs some serious work.

In a word, I think this story teaches us that God’s mission is a reconciling one. It touches on all aspects of our lives — mind, body and heart.  And it’s breaking down social and cultural boundaries between rich and poor, slave and free — even for the purpose of reconciling enemies. Let’s pray.

God, we thank you for your Word, and how you speak to us through the example of the early Church, and through the boldness and faithfulness of Paul and Silas. I pray that in our lives, our jobs, our families and in neighborhoods, that’d we’d live into this picture of what it means to share your good news, in word and deed, with people who are different from us, and that we’d have the courage to do so in ways that are sometimes outside of our comfort zone. By your grace, Lord, use us to set other people free – in mind, body and heart. It’s in Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.

 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

8:7 Now as you excel in everything–in faith, in speech, in knowledge,
in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you–so we want you to excel
also in this generous undertaking.
8:8 I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness
of your love against the earnestness of others.
8:9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that
though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his
poverty you might become rich.
8:10 And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for
you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to
do something–
8:11 now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by
completing it according to your means.
8:12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according
to what one has–not according to what one does not have.
8:13 I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure
on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between
8:14 your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance
may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.
8:15 As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much,
and the one who had little did not have too little.”

The exercise for us here I think would be to hear these words imagining that we are the Corinthians and Paul is writing to us.  I don’t know exactly who the Macedonian churches would be in our case on whose behalf Paul is asking for an offering necessarily, but we can still listen to this letter from Paul as a modern-day encouragement and request to a church like ours to be faithful in the grace of giving, especially since we too have been given so much. Paul’s plea to the church in Corinth in this second letter comes after his summary of the difficulty that the Macedonian churches are in, as well as his description of their attitude toward their situation as one of overflowing joy and rich generosity despite their impoverished condition.  They’ve asked for help so that they might also participate more fully in service and ministry to God and to others as a church. Paul then goes on to affirm the church in Corinth for their own excellence in faith, speech, spiritual knowledge, and their intention to be an earnestly and eagerly giving church.

If he were talking to us, he might mention some of the good things we do.  In addition to sharing and fairly leasing our building to other churches, we open our doors to anywhere from 25-30 different support and recovery groups during the week.  Our apportionment money goes through the United Methodist denomination to disaster relief, theological education or a college scholarship fund for minority students.  We also fulfill a mission to the community through Family Promise, the Santa Clarita Food Pantry, Santa Clarita winter homeless Shelter, COSROW and the work with domestic violence, Monday night Tutoring, Military Boxes, the Million Meals Marathon, the Have a Heart to Help Campaign – this is a lot, and we need to remember what all we do and talk about it often so that people know how we give and serve. Paul is a great example of a pastor, teacher, and church leader who comforts the afflicted and distressed people whom he loves, and yet is also not afraid to challenge, strongly urge or even rebuke those same people and churches that he loves when they get too comfortable.

As a church, I think it’s safe to say we’ve had some true successes in the past year and have done very good things (burned mortgage, growing and improving programs, and as the most recent circuit rider announced, we received a matching fund from the district that will go a long way in helping us to make some much needed safety improvements to our property.) Now, it’s a well-known lesson in coaching in sports that oftentimes teams are most vulnerable and susceptible to stumble just after having great success.  I remember how good the Oklahoma City Thunder looked after their first game in the NBA finals against the Heat, and yet the Heat went on to win the rest of the games.  Or maybe you watched the Stanley Cup when the Kings were up 3-0 against the Devils, and it looked like things were all down hill.  It seems this lesson might also be applied to life in general, and to church life in particular.  Perhaps it would be good for us then, to hear Paul right now saying to us and cheering us on, “well done friends and fellow followers of Jesus, servants of the Gospel, citizens of God’s Kingdom, but don’t forget what you started and to what you were called!”

I want to take a minute to comment just briefly on the Gospel reading for today as well, which we didn’t look at, but I think this is worthwhile because of how it happens to sort of highlight and illustrate exactly what Paul is saying in 2nd Corinthians I think.  In Mark, building on last week’s story about Jesus calming the storm, if you remember, this time he heals a sick woman and raises girl from the dead, two seemingly similar incidents, and they are related, but the woman with the hemorrhage who touches Jesus’s cloak and is healed, is certainly an outcast in society and considered ritually unclean.  She is destitute and severely marginalized, forbidden to participate in routine religious ceremonies or worship in the Synagogue/Temple.  The young girl, however, appears to be the child of a well-to-do and respected man, Jarius, who is probably connected to higher and inner circles in society, and yet both desperately need Jesus – just as both the Corinthian and Macedonian churches do in Paul’s letter — if the Corinthians are like Jarius and the Macedonians are like the sick, outcast woman.  It is as if Mark says, by sandwiching these two stories together, worldly favor does not guarantee true security; nor does a lack of it keep us from God’s mercy and love in the face of suffering and death. God’s favor and healing is with both of them.  Jesus meets both of them right where they are.

Which gets back to Paul and the parallel he draws between what God does in Jesus and what we are called to in return to do as a church. It reads: “8:9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” I entitled the sermon: “Strength in Weakness,” or “Wealth in Poverty,” which is a lot like Paul’s words in 1st Corinthians, chapter one, when he says in verse 27, “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”  Upon hearing these words, maybe the famous Philippians 2 hymn comes to mind which I think is worth reading: Paul says:

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in
humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own
interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as
Christ Jesus: For though being in very nature God, he did not
consider equality with God something to be grasped [or used to his own
advantage],

7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

This is a theologically dense hymn, for one thing. It tells us about the incarnation — how God is with us, that is, how Jesus has the authority of God, shares God’s nature, and yet fully embraces the challenges and trials of human existence.  This is Paul’s central thesis: that God in Christ becomes poor for our sake and we are to do the same for the sake of others — individually and collectively!  But several other themes follow, if you notice.  First, Not giving out of coercion but out of joy, willingness, eagerness, and sincerity.  Secondly, Giving what one is able… that’s a bit vague though isn’t it.  It all depends on what is meant by “able”, right? I mean if you don’t have a million dollars, you can’t give a million dollars.  I’m reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis on this matter.  he says, “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give.  I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.”

So focusing now on the church specifically since that is what Paul was doing, what does this giving mean for us? Well, remember we’re saying strength in weakness, wealth in poverty, and so forth, but poverty here is also kind of ambiguous.  Does poverty mean, oh there aren’t enough people in attendance on Sunday giving enough money to pay our bills? That might be a bit too shallow of an understanding of poverty.  Instead I suggest we conceive of poverty in terms of a willingness to engage the poor, work with them, not just for them — embracing poverty itself in some sense, whether that’s through giving or better yet just investing in and serving alongside of those who are poor, dignifying them as fellow human beings.

But giving is still good, and the way that Paul is envisioning the Corinthians church is more like that of a living body – a unit – than as a building, and this has powerful implications for how we think of ourselves too.  Instead of thinking about church as something separate from ourselves that we give to, which is kind of the conventional assumption, doesn’t it make more sense, and isn’t it more biblical to imagine that we, together as a church, give to others.  The tithe takes on a whole new meaning in this case.  One United Methodist Church I know of in Austin, TX, embraced this and took it to another level by challenging themselves to strategically work toward being able to give half of what they take in away each year to other ministries and other needs in the community and abroad.

Going beyond mere giving though, here’s another kind of example: The Jewish philosopher Maimonides said that the highest form of giving is to lend someone money with zero interest, to let them learn how to fish, so to speak, to create a job or small business for themselves, perhaps. This past week Whitney and I had the opportunity to attend a KIVA CITY Los Angeles launch party. KIVA is an organization that facilitates the lending of micro-finance loans directly between lenders and borrowers.  You can create your own profile and send capital directly to people all over the world, but now they’re expanding even into U.S. cities like LA.  One way we could participate in this amazing work is to allocate a substantial portion of our savings toward these kind of loans, rather than having it sit in a bank account earning low interest anyway — or in the stock market, where who knows what could happen… This is not to say we shouldn’t have savings or stock, necessarily — I have both.  Rather it is one small way to remind ourselves to try and find our security in God rather than in money — and to invest in the Kingdom of God instead of the Kingdom of the invisible hand, free market, eternal growth and prosperity, etc…

Getting back finally to third point that Paul makes in the letter — and this is especially important if what I’ve said so far is a little bit overwhelming: Paul’s not interested in overly-burdening the Corinthians by asking them to give; rather he’s concerned about what he calls fair balance, or equality.  And he mentions this twice — which is yet another sort of point of tension, because we’ve already been talking about strength in weakness and wealth in poverty, so we have to keep equality in mind as well.  In other words, we’re not trying to just make ourselves totally poor and helpless.  It’s just as much about attitude, which is why Paul says in Philippians 2 Jesus humbled himself and become obedient to God.  Ok.

The goal is not to reluctantly consent or to be coerced but to eagerly and earnestly desire to find the strength in weakness and richness in poverty that comes from emptying ourselves and being filled with the law of the Spirit, which is love.  We live by a different script, if you like, one that subverts the dominant narrative of consumerism and militarism, of fear about insecurity.  We practice this by imitating Christ in our thinking and interacting with others.    This requires giving up our desire for control, for approval and affection, and for security.

It is a life-long practice and spiritual discipline with no easy solutions, in the context of Christian community, in which we are empowered to let go of what some have called our emotional programs for happiness, our mechanical, false-self, and begin to more consistently live out of a place of authentic existence, in which we serve God rather than our own ego.   This enables us to step out into the peace and freedom, giving us the courage to take risks for God.  This peace and freedom also releases us from the urges to over-identify with certain ideas, groups, sports teams, political parties, national pride — and to find instead our deepest and truest sense of identity as children of God.  This is where real power and strength in weaknesses is found.  By impoverishing that which runs contrary to the will of God, we can in turn be enriched by what brings fullness of life — the strength and riches that come from God in our giving, even in weakness and poverty.  Amen.