Pentecost Sunday

Hello everyone. I hope you were inspired and challenged yesterday. I know I was. The thought might have been new for many of you. Nonetheless, it is an important one to grasp. I stated yesterday, to the best of my ability, that Pentecost Sunday is part of a much larger story—the story of a missionary God. He is a fountain of sending love. This belief reveals some of the more fundamental aspects of our faith. Why is there creation? Why Israel? Why Jesus? Why the church? Because God wants to share his light and love. God has a centrifugal force (a movement away from center) as well as a centripetal force (movement toward center). Through his Spirit, God is reaching out and drawing all of creation back into his liberating light and love. God through the ascended Christ sends his Spirit . . . to send (form and empower) the church to witness to God’s grace and truth. I like the way David Bosch states it in his classic book, Transforming Mission: “In the new image mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. ‘It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church’ (Moltmann 1977:64). Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love” (391, emphasis mine). I would encourage you to read that one more time, slowly. You see, the church doesn’t create a mission per se; its reason to be is mission. To be a church is to be sent out into God's creation. Likewise, to be a Spirit-filled disciple is to be sent. We're a part of God's dream to bring healing and restoration to the world.

But what does this mean? Does this mean we’re all called to be evangelists? Does this mean we have fight for our rights or for our country? Does this mean we have to start knocking on doors? Does this mean we need to leave for another country in order to be a missionary? No, it doesn't mean any of those things. It's deeper and more dynamic than anything those questions represent. We are to be witnesses to God’s salvation in Christ (Acts 1.8), not just do some witnessing whenever we feel the desire to prove something. And for Luke, salvation is multifaceted. Quoting Bosch again: “One could say that, for Luke, salvation actually has six dimensions: economic, social, political, physical, psychological, and spiritual” (117). To witness to such a dynamic salvation will require the entire community moving outward toward the world, responding to the Spirit’s direction and empowering presence, loving the world with words and deeds. In other words, we need to be shaped and fashioned by God’s movement of love so that we can actually embody the good news. What a great adventure! No doubt, we’re not up the task on our own. We need the empowering presence of the Christ. And so maybe we need to wait like the early disciples (cf. Luke 24.36-53), seeking God's transforming grace so that our hearts will be stretched and enlarged to make room for the new life in Christ. Peace!

Empowered to Obey

I hope yesterday’s sermon was a challenging one. Speaking from John 14.15-23, I stated that we are called to obey the empowering presence of the resurrected and ascended Christ. The challenge is simple: Jesus speaks as if obedience to his commands is a possibility. John Wesley would agree. He states, in so many words, that we sin not because we have to but because we do not take advantage of the transforming grace of God. This is a revolutionary thought. Many Christians function from the belief that we will always sin, that is, we will always live in disobedience to Christ. But many of us agreed yesterday that sin (disobedience) is forgivable but not excusable, especially in light of what God has done for us in Christ (cf. Romans 6, 7, 8; 1 John 3, 4). In other words, Christ can really transform us so that we actually want to obey him. This does not mean we’ll get it right; our witness to Christ will fall short of his perfect life. We will make mistakes and misjudgments. Our unique personalities and perspectives will get in the way of fully representing Christ’s love. We will always be frail humans, which means we will be tired, gloomy, grumpy, hungry, and sad on occasion (which is not sin per se). Furthermore, our journeys will consist of failures and setbacks, ups and downs. We won’t live flawlessly. We will be tempted, and we might even glance longer than we should at a particular sin. But all of this does not mean that we have to oppose the purposes of God for our lives. Christ can do great things in us and through us. So instead of embracing a gospel of sin-management (Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven), we must assume that God can really transform us (Christians are not only forgiven but empowered to believe and love). What a challenge! What an opportunity: to live and believe that what God commands he also wills to accomplish in our life. Through the empowering presence of Christ—the Holy Spirit, God is working for our transformation. The only question remaining: Will we work with him? Peace.

Question: Is this expecting too much or too little? If the bar is set too high, we will end up being fakes, too low, and we'll set ourselves up for failure. Any thoughts?

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Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I’m always conflicted on what to do or say on this day. For starters, it isn’t a Christian holiday. Not that it’s wrong to honor our mothers and our fathers, it’s just that Mother’s Day isn’t something that everyone can celebrate, unlike other Christian holidays (Advent, Christmas, Pentecost, etc.) which speaks to every human and his/her most pressing need. What do you mean? Well, for many, Mother’s Day is a painful day—some don’t have fond memories, others weren’t able to have children for some reason or another, still others might feel guilty for how they actually mothered their children. So yesterday I talked briefly about some of the more motherly aspects of God. In scripture God is described as having maternal instincts, which should not surprise us since both men and women have been created in the image of God (Genesis 1.27). For example, the Hebrew word for compassion/mercy in Isaiah 63.7 is the same word used for womb in Isaiah 46.3 and 49.14. What a remarkable reference: God’s compassion is womb-like; it's safe, warm, and something the mother treasures. Also we are reminded in Isaiah 66.13 that as a mother comforts her child, so God will comfort Israel. Similarly, God’s faithful love is compared to that of a mother’s for her child: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49.15-16). After all, it’s God who has conceived and given birth to Israel in the first place (Numbers 11.12). The point to all of this is simple: God is not only like a father, but he is also like a mother. I’m not suggesting that we call God a mother; scripture never goes that far. Nonetheless, when wrestling with what God is like, motherly images are extremely helpful. So I hope that for all those who are reminded of what they don’t have on Mother’s Day, we (the church) can point them to God and to a community (a new family) that gives them the comfort they need. Peace.

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