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Chosen People Choosing to Be Chosen.

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Ephesians 1:1-6
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

About three hundred years after this letter was written, some people began to teach that God predestined, or picked in advance, that certain people go to heaven, while other people are destined for hell. Greek philosophical ideas had become a significant influence around this time. While we often define God as love, these philosophical ideas took precedence, and love became interpreted through those lenses. God’s expansive love was sealed up to a select few.

This kind of teaching, based on interpretations of passages like the one I just read, have influenced certain circles of Christian theology and thought for a long time. It’s not uncommon to hear this teaching in many places today, but I have strong reservations of it, and believe it fails to stand up to criticism for several reasons.

First, it infers a duplicity about God in regards to his love. Second, it negates the choices given to people, as inconsequential. Third, as I say a lot, the good news is for everyone, not a few someones. Lastly, while I can applaud the intellectual heritage of Greek philosophy, its heavy influence adds a layer that doesn’t gel with the context from which people like Paul wrote.

When Jews, like Paul, thought of predestination, they thought primarily of Israel. As a nation, Israel was chosen to be the people who would serve God and serve the world by telling the story of God’s love for all people. But this didn’t mean that every person born in Israel did this. This was their story, a chosen people still choosing to be chosen. Often, they chose not.

Notice that Paul says God chose us to be holy and blameless. That’s the emphasis. Holiness, or wholeness, is about being restored to what we are meant to do, to serve God as part of his family. Blameless was most often used in the context of sacrifice. Paul would later talk about giving our lives as a sacrifice. Throughout the story of scripture, God desired for His people who choose his way. Ultimately his way, the way, was made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul taught that God’s people were not only the Jewish people but because of Jesus, included all people. Paul is again leaning on this idea that all people have a role to play in the story God is telling. It’s a story written here and now. This is not about a select few being chosen, but all people being called to a life that follows God.

When we put a hyper-focus on the idea of eternal destiny or damnation, we lose focus on this reality, and on the important part of the Lord’s prayer where Jesus taught for us to pray for God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. As in, if it’s only about where we’re going after we die, we lose sight of what God wants to do in, and through, us, ALL OF US, today.

The argument for predestination fails on two important rules of interpretation. It fails to interpret the Greek of the original letter, and it fails to take into account the Jewish context from which the passage was written.

The writers were writing from a Jewish context in the Greek language of their culture. While utilizing Greek ideas, they adopted and adapted, but they didn’t always apply those ideas with their full force. Paul and others knew Greek philosophy, but they weren’t trying to fit God in the confines of the box of that system. The scriptures reveal a richer understanding of God that shows an interplay of choice, free will, God’s guiding hand, and humans ability for good and evil. Predestination adherents continue to try to push God into a box in which God doesn’t fit.

Making sense of issues like this is a difficult task. We have to work hard at peeling back the layers and understanding what’s going on in the context of scripture and the people who wrote it.

What’s really going on is a God who loves all of us, who has chosen all of us, and has given all of us an invitation to follow the way of Jesus. You have been chosen. We’ve all been chosen. The invitation is available to all people, not just a select few.

All The Feels (Week 1)

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As a pastor, I feel it’s important to speak into the moment, addressing our current circumstances with the eternal message of the good news and what that good news means amid the situations we’re facing. But if I’m honest, when I look around today, I’m overwhelmed. There’s so much going on in our world. Words aren’t coming as easy as they used to.

Thirteen weeks ago, the whispers of an uncontrollable reality emerged. The news had been telling us that a new illness was spreading across the globe, but like those before it, we thought our precautions and history meant that we could face it without much disruption. I don’t know that we had any idea what it would look like as the first domino fell as college basketball tournaments canceled games. The NBA was soon to follow. I knew when sports that make a lot of money were closed for precaution, we were in very uncharted waters. Little did we know.

For thirteen weeks, we’ve faced a new normal, that looks like anything but normal as the pandemic still ravages our world and takes a shot at humanity and society in a way not seen for a very long time. Thousands of lives have been lost, with no immediate end yet in sight. We talk about life opening back up, but much of that doesn’t really look the same. This new normal isn’t normal yet. It’s a shadow of what we recall, and we’re afraid that it may stay this way. The unknown impact of the reopening of our halted life sits in the back of my mind, and it makes me scared.

Thirteen weeks ago, this was all we faced. This was the national conversation. Then, another conversation began, a much need conversation, as people once again stood up in protest, this time across all fifty states and now across our world. 

For the first time in my life, I have hope that the world will finally address the evils of systemic racism, but the cost to get here is heartbreaking. How many more voices crying out for justice will be silenced by the sins of racism created by history in need of repent. Watching the broken system, and those who support it, close their ears, and push back against the voices of the oppressed makes me angry. 

And while we face these issues, we can’t seem to get past the division and those who continue to stoke the fires of division and disunity among us. One human family continues to be divided as those in power find strength in our differences instead of our collective story. Our lack of imagination in talking through our stories, differences, and dreaming of a better world for our children makes me sad.

I’m not without words, but those words are words like scared, angry, and sad. I know that I’m not alone in feeling these because I’ve talked to so many of you. What I’ve said today, I hear echoed in the voices of my friends and this church. And there is a reason for this.

This year has brought us crisis, upheaval, and uncertainty in ways many of us have never experienced. Our bodies and minds have responded with emotions like anxiety, sadness, and anger, emotions we most often associate with people experiencing grief and loss. Some of you are experiencing the loss of a loved one, for others, it’s a different kind of loss. We all are facing something, and that something is leading us to grief.

David Kessler is the world’s foremost expert on grief. He co-wrote a book called On Grief and Grieving. His co-author, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, originated the concept of the five stages of grief. 

Now, there’s a lot of discussion about these stages, and whether they are stages at all. In many ways, these emotions can look more like a tangled mess, like an unruly extension cord, the more you pull on it, the more tangled up and endless it becomes. Others have described it as a roller coaster, doubling back on itself, leading us to the phrase “roller coaster of emotions.” 

Whatever metaphor we may use to talk about these emotions, we’ve all experienced them in times of loss. What we also need to recognize is that we’ve experienced and are experiencing them today. In talking about this reality, David Kessler, in a recent interview, said this. 

“We’re feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change, and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us, and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.” He continued on, addressing the other part of this that I think many of us feel. “We’re also feeling anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain…There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety…We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.” And concluded with this. “Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling.”

But there is another layer that I want us to explore. I think for far too long when it’s come to grief, there has been a tension where grief meets faith. 

When we experience suffering, the answer by well-meaning people has often been you just have to have faith. Many well-meaning people have caught off the grieving process with a misunderstanding of what trust in God looks like. We’re told to just have faith. We’re told to let it go. People who can’t seem to get suffering to line up with their understanding of God, tempt us to ignore the pain, numb it, or view it as wrong. We’ve been told to not experience the stages, roller coaster, and tangled up mess of emotions that come with grief. And that advice is wrong.

The danger in running from grief is that it can actually hinder us in our relationship with God, with others and with ourselves. We have to work to feel our emotions, to name them, to experience them, and to know that we have a heavenly father who not only listens to us but also sits with us amid our grief. We find this advice in a letter to the early church.

1 Peter 5:6-7

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Humbleness and anxiety don’t seem like words that go together, but these verses teach us something important about faith, trust, and grief. 

A proud person thinks they can handle things on their own, think they know better, think God isn’t doing a good enough job, and they can figure it out on their own. This is the temptation we talked about before. It’s actually a stage of grief called denial.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with denial. Dr. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman says, “Grieving appropriately means allowing ample time to remember and feel the loss as well as embracing occasional opportunities to distract ourselves and regroup.”

But fully ignoring our grief and the source of that grief is unhealthy. It’s also unspiritual. 

According to this passage in 1 Peter, ignoring our grief and not bringing it to God isn’t trust in God; it the exact opposite. Our grief is built on our anxiety about what we’ve lost or what we’re going to lose. Ignoring that grief is to say we don’t trust God and that we have a better way to handle it. 

We may be afraid to show our sadness, fear, and anger, especially when that anger is expressed toward God. But I know that he can handle it. I know we can do this, and that God can handle it, because scripture is filled with people expressing their most raw emotion to God.

Now, one of those places we find this is in a book in the Bible called Lamentations. It’s a book of public lament written at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, about 600 years before the time of Jesus. 

To read this very honest book is to experience the humiliation, suffering, and despair of the people because it’s a book of public, collective grief. Rather than deny their grief and the source of that grief, the author of Lamentations invites us into their experience.

Three chapters into it, we read these words that speak to us today as we wrestle with our grief.

Lamentations 3:19-33

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. 20 I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. 21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. 27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. 28 Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him. 29  Let him bury his face in the dust—there may yet be hope. 30 Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. 31 For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. 32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. 33 For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.

How do we hope amid this grief and loss? What do we do with the emotions we feel? What do we discover in the story of the people of God in similar times of uncertainty and grief? 

During this sermon series, we will explore the landscape of these questions, and the intersection of our emotions and faith. We will look at stories of people who experience grief. We will look at their faith, their misunderstandings, and the correction God gave to them as their understanding grew. And, while there’s a lot to explore, there’s something with which I’m certain.

I’m not without words in this time of collective grief and uncertainty, but those words are words like scared, angry, and sad. I want to say that it’s all going to be okay, but right now, I won’t deny what I feel. I won’t deny that there is something to grieve. I will take that grief to God. 

And, while I don’t have all the answers, I will simply lay my head against my heavenly father’s chest and let him hold me. And, maybe just listening to his heartbeat will be enough.

Empty

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I went upstairs after breakfast to brush my teeth and get ready for the day. I wasn’t going anywhere, and wouldn’t be close enough to anyone for them to smell my breath. However, my family still appreciates the fresh breath, and the dentist will undoubtedly confirm the wisdom of continued regular flossing and brushing.

As I reached into the drawer, I discovered not one, but three flattened tubes of toothpaste. I grabbed the one that looked the most unlikely to fight back with any resistance and began attempting to squeeze out whatever was left. My initial attempt failed, so I started my second attempt from the bottom, the tried and true roll-up method of squeezing an empty tube of toothpaste. Just enough toothpaste made its way onto my toothbrush, and I could begin my day.

For a lot of us, that tube of toothpaste is a good metaphor for life. We squeezed out the last bit of energy we had over these last couple of weeks. We’re tired, worn out by e-learning, Zoom meetings, and uneasy trips to the store for groceries. For others, you have the added stress of working in an essential role, keeping the rest of us healthy, fed, and able to keep a semblance to functional society in these strange times.

We weren’t meant to live like this. We weren’t created to live in a state of emotional and spiritual emptiness, squeezing out whatever we’ve got left and hoping that we will somehow make it. God intended so much more.

In the gospel of John, Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

This phrase “to the full” is also translated abundantly. But the word has another nuance, and that’s the idea of overflow. Jesus doesn’t merely want to give us life, but a life that overflows. We get that life from him and from allowing his grace, peace, and love to pour into our hearts.

Technology is a good thing until it’s too much, and I think that’s where a lot of us find ourselves. We need space and rest away from it. When we attach reflection on God’s goodness into that restful space, it becomes holy, a place where God meets us and replenishes our tired, worn-out souls. The scriptures refer to these holy moments as Sabbath.

To support the need for rest, we’re going to take a break from online worship this weekend and invite you to unplug and find safe ways to relax and recharge over the holiday.

I’m personally so thankful for this rest, as my family has produced online worship from our basement for two straight months. While this is my responsibility and job as the pastor, the added stress on our family is evident when combined with the emotions we’re all feeling in this season of uncertainty. Finding an empty tube of toothpaste as a metaphor for exhaustion confirmed the need for rest.

In these moments, let’s turn to God for holy rest, Sabbath, to allow Jesus the space to give us the overflow in our hearts that leads us out into the world to love God, love others, and bring life to our community.

To The Table

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Kurt Mann introduced us to a great new song on Sunday as part of our online worship gathering. The song, To The Table, is a great song of worship and a reminder of how we can lay our burdens before God.

To The Table- Written by Jonathan Smith, Tony Wood, Zach Wiliams. 2015 Anthems of Hope Be Essential Songs Not Just Another Song Publishing So Essential Tunes Wisteria Drive Curb Wordspring Music. Licensed through CCLI Streaming License.

Teachers, Nurses, Mothers, and the Good News of Jesus.

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This sermon, shared on Mother’s Day, is part four of a sermon series called Go preached virtually at Southeast- a church for the community.

This past week had the dual designation of Teacher Appreciation and Nurse Appreciation Week. If you’re a teacher or a nurse, I hope you felt appreciated and honored by the people in your life, and by society as a whole. The overtures of appreciation any of us could do will never match the respect and honor you deserve for what you do. If we all failed to recognize that in the past, our present reality makes it easier to see this truth.

How many stories have we heard of nurses who go each day to care for patients, while risking getting sick from the illness themselves? While we all hope they have the protection they need to stay safe, they still put themselves at a higher risk than any of us ever will during this pandemic.

How many parents who find ourselves helping our children through their e-learning, have gained an entirely new respect for the teachers who show an incredible amount of patience, expertise, and care as they teach our kids? And now, every grade level entering Zoom meetings in place of classrooms. I don’t like to Zoom with adults. I can’t imagine the grace and patience it takes to try to keep the attention of 30 kids logged into a computer in the middle of a pandemic.

The reality we find ourselves in today has given us a whole new level of appreciation for the women and men who find their profession in these fields. As someone who feels called to their work, I believe you are not merely doing a job, but fulfilling a calling on your life. For that, we are grateful and appreciate all that means for you and for the people you love and serve. Thank you.

These words of appreciation feel especially significant today, as we also celebrate Mother’s Day. Many of the words of appreciation given to teachers and nurses feel equally appropriate on Mother’s Day. In the same way, as I’ve already said, our expressions of appreciation, flowers, breakfast, gifts, and thanks never add up to the specialness of the mothers in our lives. Whether maternal or not, we have all had mothers who showed a love for us and for whom we give thanks.

Now, in looking at these three roles that we honored over these past seven days, we can find a lot in common between them. When I think about my mom, I see someone who served on more than one occasion as my teacher and as my nurse. We can also see the sacrifice of these roles, and the love that is at the center of everything they do. Teachers, nurses, and mothers show an incredible amount of empathy, patience, and love for the people in their care.

But there is one word that I think connects these roles that also connects to the sermon today. It’s not a word we might automatically think of, but it’s one I was drawn to as I reflected on the intersection of this passage and these roles we are honoring. That word is the word wholeness.

A powerful image has been watching doctors and nurses cheer as recovered patients are released from the hospital. Their cheers aren’t focused only on the recovery process, but a return to life for that person, beyond their illness. Teachers don’t simply teach concepts and information. The teachers I know want to see their students grow up and make a positive impact on the world. And mothers nurture, love, and discipline, so their children leave the nest, ready to take on the world with everything they taught them.

This focus on wholeness is what I hear in the word of Jesus in Matthew 28:16-20, a set of verses that have come to be called the great commission.

Matthew 28:16-20
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

In these verses, Jesus gave a command to his disciples to prioritize their lives to share the good news of Jesus.

As we look closer at these verses, we discover there is only one verb found in this command. That verb gets translated to make disciples. And when we look closer at that verb, we find that the nuance in it informs the posture that we are to take as we share the good news of Jesus.

We are called as learners exploring the way of Jesus, to invite others into the incredible community of fellow learners exploring the way of Jesus together. And we are to invite everyone. The nuance isn’t going into the world fixing people, but inviting them into a journey of faith where we need each other as we all learn from Jesus together.

This posture and nuance impacts everything about this passage and what it means to go and make disciples. I think it also speaks into our present reality, because the emphasis of the language is not going somewhere in particular, but that sharing and inviting others to explore the way of Jesus is something you do as part of your life, even as you practice social distancing and social solidarity.

It also informs the heart of sharing that good news, because what our motivation should be to invite people on a journey to explore the way of Jesus. And that way brings life and wholeness. Jesus described this reality with the picture of a shepherd and used these words.

John 10:9-11
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. 11 “I am the good shepherd…

And while those words sound like beautiful words of comfort, when they were spoken they were spoken as a warning about and to the religious teachers in the time of Jesus. These religious leaders, Pharisees, refused to celebrate the healing of a blind man by Jesus. Instead, they insulted the blind man, judged and shamed him. The Pharisees only saw brokenness as their focus, while Jesus taught the way of wholeness that was a gift available to every person who ever lived, including you and me. And we find this truth in this command Jesus gave his disciples.

Matthew 28:19-20
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

It’s easy to pass over this passage and fail to recognize this connection to wholeness. It’s found in verse 20. The reason we pass over it is because of the first word and all the nuance we’ve attached to it, but if we look closer at the words in it, we will see what’s happening here and what it means as we go and make disciples. So, let’s take a closer look at verse 20 and peel back some layers.

When I read this passage, I’m initially overwhelmed by it. Even as a pastor, to teach everything Jesus commanded feels like an overwhelming responsibility. And then I think about teaching my families, friends, and neighbors. I wonder what that would even look like. Am I supposed to set up a socially distanced classroom in my yard? I could invite them to participate in our church, even in this strange new reality, and I think that’s a good idea, but I don’t think that’s the focus here.

We get thrown off by words like teach, obey, everything, and command create because they create all kinds of pictures in our minds. But these are translations of Greek words, and that translation process can lead us to attach ideas that make sense in our language that aren’t necessarily at the heart of the passage itself. And I want you to see there’s so much more when you peel back the layers of language. So, another way to translate this passage would be like this:

Matthew 28:20
20…instructing and guiding them to observe, watch over, and keep all the things of eternal significance that I told you to focus on.

That changes things a bit, doesn’t it? But the context drives us toward something closer to that. And this matters so much, because like we talked about last week: when it comes to sharing Jesus with the world around us, our posture matters, how we carry Jesus into our world matters.

The last time the followers of Jesus found themselves on a mountain, Jesus described to them the Kingdom of Heaven, the goodness of heaven breaking into earth. We’ve talked about this at Southeast so much, but it’s so significant. The invitation you’ve been given is to explore and live out the way of Jesus in the here and now, dragging the eternal goodness of God into the present.

The Kingdom of Heaven Jesus described wasn’t one of brokenness or shame, but of wholeness and life and the reality that it wasn’t something far off. I can’t think of a more needed reality than goodness, grace, love, mercy, at a time where suffering, pain, and anger are becoming the norm.

What does it look like for you to share the good news of Jesus with the people around you? How can you point others to wholeness and eternal life found in Jesus, ready for us to live out today? What does it look like to guide your friends, family, and neighbors to those realities of eternal significance, grace, love, mercy, and forgiveness, because you know it would change their lives?