opc blog

In his blog, pastor and church planter Adam Walker offers a tongue-in-cheek list about building community. You can see the full list here.

To make his point, he offers ways to avoid building community. It’s a great list and funny too. Over the next three months, we will look at this humorous take on anti-community building, and then we will flip his list around and share the positive ways to build community in your church. We’ll begin this month by looking at Walker’s first four ways to avoid building community in your church.

Ways to Avoid Building Community in Your Church:

1) Keep conversations short.

You are busy, you have a lot to deal with in your life. If you talk to someone, you might get close to them and that takes time and energy that you don’t have. Just keep it short and sweet. Don’t bother talking about anything more than the weather. If you don’t know a person is hurting, then you don’t have to do anything about it.

• Positive Take: Build situations where people can actually hold meaningful conversations with each other. Real community is built when we spend time conversing with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

2) Always sit in your “assigned” seat

By always sitting in the same seat, you always sit around the same people. These folks know the deal, and stick to the appropriate thirty second conversations: weather, sports, how the preacher is doing, etc. Also, this keeps you from having to venture out, meet new people, and possibly sit next to someone you aren’t familiar with.

• Positive Take: Move around and make new friends. You’ve probably heard the stories where feuds have started because someone sat in the “wrong” pew one Sunday morning. How sad. Circulate where you sit and you might make a new friend and help others feel more comfortable, too.

3) Avoid new people

It’s one thing to deal with all the people that you already know at church, but it’s another to actually meet new people. Seriously, you aren’t good with names. You don’t have the time, or the energy, so just walk right past anyone you don’t know. After all, they won’t notice that you totally avoided them.

Positive Take: Make a point to actively introduce yourself to visitors. Tom Rainer has proven in his book Break Out Churches that an active welcoming program is vital to church growth. Everyone needs to be a greeter. One Sunday we saw a new couple sitting near us, so my wife introduced herself after church. They had the same exact first names as we did! They wound up in our home group. Funny how reaching out blesses others.

4) Come in late

Don’t overlook the beauty of this one. By coming in late, you totally avoid even the thirty second conversations. And (bonus), you avoid the new people! It just makes life easier.

• Positive Take: Get to church early. We know it’s hard to get yourself up and at ‘em on Sunday, let along the entire family if you have one. But this has actually become our favorite part of church, hanging out and encouraging people we see. Our pastor encourages all key leaders to be there early to connect with others. It works.

Next month we will continue this fun take on community building and look at three more ways to avoid connecting with others. Just make sure you don’t tell anyone else about this article. It might lead to a conversation!

©2011 Matt Schoenfeld, used by permission

01-29-12.MP3
Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Mark 1:21-28
1 Corinthians 8:1-13

This morning, we begin a new sermon series on what it means to be marked for good. We are not perfect, by any means. Not even close. But what is strange is that our imperfection doesn’t seem to matter to God. God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before engaging us. God meets us where we are. And in meeting God, we cannot help but be changed. We will learn and grow. And somewhere in the middle of all that, way before we have gotten close to any kind of perfection, God sends us out into the world: changed, marked, but still imperfect.

This morning we look at the mark of sympathy. Sympathy is a normal human emotion. With all the advances in neuroscience recently, we have learned a great deal about human emotions. With sympathy, what we have learned is that our sympathy for another person increases with proximity. In other words, the closer a person or a tragedy is to us, the more likely we are to be sympathetic. This isn’t really earth-shattering information. We know that news of a Tsunami half-way around the world is tragic, but doesn’t affect us nearly as much as word of a national tragedy. And these are both minute compared to a local emergency or, even worse, a family agony. The closer we are to something, the more time we have invested in it, the more likely it is that it will affect us.

And yet, the same is true when we’re simply talking about physical proximity, and even when we’re talking about complete strangers. There’s an experiment that illustrates this quite well. I don’t think I have shared this story before from the pulpit, but if I have, please indulge me. It’s an experiment by Joshua Greene, professor of psychology at Harvard University. He asked respondents two simple questions.

You are at a train yard. There are five men working on one track, and a train is coming, but they can’t hear or see it because of the work they’re doing, and you only have one option to change the situation: you can flip a switch which will move that train to another track. On that track, one man is working, and he cannot see or hear the train either. So the choice is: do you throw the switch or not? 9 out of 10 people answer yes.

Second question: same train yard, same situation. Except this time, you are above the track, and your only option is that there is a man standing next to you. If you push him down onto the track, he will be killed, but the five men will be spared. Do you push him or not? 9 out of 10 people answer no.

The arithmetic is the same. Five dying is worse than one dying. But there is something within us that would be willing to make that choice if it’s a mechanical one (throwing a switch) but not if it’s a physical one (pushing a person).

And here’s what’s particularly interesting about Greene’s experiment: the moment of decision in each question activated a different part of the brain. The first question, in which you choose whether or not to throw a switch, activates the part of the brain that deals with simple calculations. The second question, in which you choose whether or not to push someone, activates an older part of the brain (biologically speaking), one that has more to do with survival, with our fight or flight response.

When it comes to the arithmetic of lives, I came across a shocking chart the other day looking at casualties as a result of September 11 and the War on Terror. We all know that close to 3000 died on 9/11. And in the ten years since then, we are probably aware that almost twice as many American military lives have been lost. Here is where it gets troubling: the Afghani civilian casualties have been twenty times that, at about 60,000. And in Iraq, the numbers are mind-boggling: since 2001, 300 times as many Iraqi civilians have died as Americans who died on September 11, approaching 1,000,000.

Most of us can grasp that, intellectually, the tragedy of Iraq is far greater than our own. But do our emotions reflect our mathematical calculations?

As much as we would like to think of sympathy as a choice, it’s far more likely to be based on a natural reaction deep within us.

Sympathy itself is a Greek word. It means, at its most basic level, to feel with someone. And in both of our lessons this morning, sympathy plays an interesting role.

In the passage from Mark’s gospel, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when a “man who was deeply disturbed” interrupts and confronts him. Even though we may be centuries removed from the context, we can get our minds around the fact that such a man would’ve been an unwelcome embarrassment, an intrusion.

Given this, Jesus’ response is intriguing. He doesn’t rebuke the man, but, in the language of the time, “casts out the demon.” The man who had been, no doubt, a sort of local curiosity or village idiot is now free of the very thing that kept him on the outside of respectable society. We do not know for certain what happens to the man after this story, though we can certainly take some guesses. It is not likely that he was immediately welcomed in. Societies tend to appreciate a certain stability, and the movement of someone from the fringe to the inside does not happen with ease.

There is, in Jesus’ act of healing, a threat to the Capernaum status quo. And for Jesus, this threat quickly becomes a constant theme of his ministry. There’s no mention of sympathy or feelings in this particular story, but we know from other episodes of Jesus’ life that his compassion for others is often what leads to dramatic healings as well as clashes with the religious authorities. Sympathy, when acted upon, can be very upsetting.

And it’s sympathy that’s at the heart of what Paul is writing to the Corinthians. The church in Corinth is quite the mix of people. Predominantly gentile and poor, the congregation nevertheless had a mix of Jews and gentiles as well as some prominent members of society. And the bulk of Paul’s writings to the church are an effort to bring these various factions together into one community. If we can take Paul’s letter as any indication, it is a lack of sympathy which marks these divisions.

In our passage this morning, Paul writes to those who have come to the more enlightened understanding about this new Christian community’s relationship to other gods. Corinth was a cosmopolitan city, and so it had full representation of the Greek polytheistic practices. Temples to various gods abounded, and sacrifices were regularly made to these gods.

For those who had been at this “Christianity thing” a while, they knew – rightly – that these gods were powerless, and the sacrifices were meaningless. So eating meat that had been sacrifices to these gods was also without power. It literally meant nothing, beyond the consumption of meat. But, Paul reminds this diverse community, there are those in your number for whom sacrifices to the gods meant a great deal just a short while ago. They are relatively new at following Jesus. Intellectually, they may be able to grasp that these sacrifices are powerless. But at a gut level, it is still too new for them.

So, the message is, you may be correct in your practice, but the right thing, the sympathetic thing to do, is to let it go. Don’t eat this meat that is up for review. Give these new brothers and sisters time to adapt. You needed time to get used to that idea. Give them the same time. I love the way the Message we’ve been using recently in worship translates the verse: “Real knowledge isn’t that insensitive.”

Sensitivity to the feelings of others, sympathy, is one of the marks of discipleship. At its heart, sympathy is the very gospel itself, the idea of the divine God taking human form, experiencing what we experience, feeling what we feel, suffering what we suffer, and loving us all the more.

How’s your sympathy? Do you, like the Corinthians, indeed, like most of us, have room to grow? When you hear news stories from around the world, how do they affect you? Is your sympathy affected by the tribal lines that have been drawn in your life? Are you willing to let your heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God?

I’d like to suggest an exercise. When you hear stories of tragedy, gauge your reaction. What’s your typical response? Is it to turn the channel? Is it a heartfelt sadness? Does the closeness of the story affect your response? If it does, then pause for a moment. Close your eyes. Imagine what it would be if that story that took place in Syria, or Sudan, or China, or Peru was a local story. What would it be like to walk in that other person’s shoes?

And when you do this, when you imagine yourself experiencing the aches and pains of the world, know that this sympathy is its own form of prayer. It is a response to Paul’s call for unity. It is the confronting of a societal demon that afflicts us all. May we all be marked by its healing power.

Amen.

01-22-12.MP3
Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Mark 1:14-20

Justin Bieber has 16.7 million followers on Twitter. He has tweeted almost 13,000 times. I, on the other hand, have tweeted 1800 times, and my followers number in the dozens, at just shy of 200. It’s game on, Bieber!

Twitter is, of course, just one of the multitude of social networking tools that has taken over the world of communication in the last few years. From a service that started just five years ago, it now numbers users that rival the population of the U.S. It is being credited with the overthrow of dictators in Egypt and Libya and with populist movements in places as far flung as Syria and the United States. If you can edit your thoughts down to 140 characters or fewer (that’s about 25-30 words), then Twitter might be the tool for you.

Like all technology, it’s a double-edged sword. The short length of messages seems to play into and contribute to the sound byte culture which plagues us so – and if we had forgotten that, another round of elections is here to remind us that content most certainly isn’t king. Critics attack Twitter for feeding into our unhealthy narcissism, where people feel compelled to share what they’re having for dinner and why they think “Two and a Half Men” is better with Ashton Kutcher.

And yet, at the same time, it has given people who have long been disenfranchised access to information. We need look no further than the Arab Spring for evidence of that. And for truly breaking news there is no better source than Twitter. While Fox and CNN try to fill the void of the 24-hour news cycle with vapid information and pointless commentary, if you really want to know what is going on at the moment, Twitter gives you instant access to eyewitness accounts.

What strikes me as curious about Twitter, alongside everything else, is the language choice of “follow”. Unlike Facebook, where you “friend” someone, in Twitter, you “follow” them. And they can also “follow” you – which sounds a bit like everyone is just going in circles. And that is one of the dangers of our technological boom. We are self-selecting for the information and relationships that agree with what we already think we know to be true. We are less and less likely to seek out friendships and websites and news channels that challenge our assumptions about the way the world works. We are feeding our own self-righteousness, and becoming more and more siloed from folks who aren’t like us.

And that’s where the Scripture texts today come into focus. We first heard the dramatic tale of Jonah, skipping over the introduction where Jonah tries to run away from God, gets caught in a storm, then thrown overboard, eaten by a giant fish, and spit back up onto dry ground. Now God is telling him, yet again, “Go to Nineveh and tell them to get straight.” And they do. The people of Nineveh fast and pray. And God relents from the promised destruction.

For Jonah, following God meant doing something he didn’t want to do. Nineveh was a big, bad city, and the last thing he wanted to do was to go there and tell everyone how big and bad they were, like Pee Wee Herman trying to use the phone in a biker bar.

For the people of Nineveh, following God meant doing a 180, spinning on their heels, putting a stop to their ways and starting off on a new path. For the people of God, following breaks us out of our silos and can often bring us into uncharted territory.

No one knew this fact better than the disciples. Today, we heard the familiar story of the four who simply dropped their nets and followed Jesus. Simon and Andrew were drawn by the promise of catching people in their nets instead of fish…the same with James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

We’ve talked before about this story and the weight of the decision these disciples made. Bethsaida, their home town, meant “the place of fishing.” There’s little doubt that this was work that had been handed down for a multitude of generations. This was a great deal more than a simple career change; to follow Jesus was to turn their backs on everything they had known. Fishing was practically in their DNA. And while Jesus promised they would still fish, it would be unlike anything they had experienced before.

To become a disciple means quite simply to become a student, a pupil. But there’s one key difference: the student can eventually become the teacher. The disciple remains a disciple. And for the disciples, following Jesus meant heading off into the unknown.

What about us? What does it mean to be followers of Jesus?

Like Jonah, are we being asked to do things that we don’t want to do? Are there places in our lives where we know that the faithful thing to do isn’t always the easy thing to do? It’s never as easy as saying that the right thing to do is always the hard thing to do. God expects much of us in terms of our own wisdom and discernment as we think and pray through choices in our lives. And yet, we all know of moments where we know what we ought to do, and that this obligation may have a cost that we’re not quite willing to pay. Is that where you are right now, facing a decision that may take you somewhere you’re not sure you want to go?

Or do you find yourself more in line with the people of Nineveh? Is God asking you to turn away from choices you have made which have been, time and time again, the wrong choices? The churchy word for that is repentance, which means turning to face God and owning up to mistakes. If so, then the invitation today is to take the opportunity to start over. It’s still January, and though the calendar is an admittedly arbitrary tool, it may just be the tool you need to make that 180 and begin afresh. The road may feel uncharted, but the truth is that God goes before you every step of the way.

Or is it the story of fishermen which resonates with you today? Is there something nudging you, calling you to a bold new adventure in faith? Is it a change in careers or a leadership role here at OPC? Is it downsizing your lifestyle to make more room for the things that you know are of ultimate importance?

Maybe none of this strikes a chord with you today. Maybe you’ve already heard this message before loud and clear, and so the text today is meant as an encouragement to stay the course.

In any case, to follow Jesus is to break down the walls of our silos. We are brought into relationships with those who are unlike us. Jesus is not the ultimate “yes man”. There is, always, a word of challenge at work. In our afflictions, we will be comforted; and in our comforts, we will be afflicted.

And to follow Jesus puts us very much in the here and now. We care about this world because it is God’s world. We are invested in our community because, in Christ, God’s own self became deeply invested in a world of material, fleshy reality. To be followers of the incarnate God is to be, ourselves, the incarnate body of Christ, the hands and feet of the one who calls us to drop our nets, follow, and fish in a whole new way.

Amen.

01-15-12.MP3
Jill Patterson Tolbert (Jill’s sermons and other reflections are also available on her blog)

1 Samuel 3:1-20
John 1:43-51

Hundreds of years ago, there lived a man named Eli.  We don’t know much about Eli—he appears only for a few chapters here in 1^st Samuel.  But this is a familiar passage, and so Eli is a familiar player in the Biblical narrative.

Eli was serving as priest in the city of Shiloh, what was then the religious capital of Israel.  And as tradition would have it, his sons would typically be next in line for the office of priest.  However, Eli’s sons had become scoundrels, They had lost respect for the office of priest.  They had grown stingy, , dishonoring their father and all of Israel with their selfish ways.

As saddened as Eli was by his sons’ behavior, he knew that his family had lost favor with God.  God speaks to Eli in chapter 2, beginning with verse 27.  “A time is coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your ancestor’s family…no one in your family shall ever live to old age…and I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind.”

There also lived a young boy named Samuel.  Samuel had been promised to God by his mother Hannah before he was even born, & had been serving God under Eli’s watch for quite some time.  But he was still young.  We will read in today’s text that Samuel “did not yet know the Lord,” that God’s word “had not yet been revealed to him.”

He was young, but he was also faithful.  Samuel loved and trusted Eli, and was being taught by Eli to love and serve God.  As we will soon see, God’s new agenda becomes clear to Eli.  God’s favor, God’s call, comes to young Samuel.

Listen as we read a portion of their story…from 1 Samuel, 3:1-20.

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room;  the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.  Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!”  and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”  Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.  The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.  Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.  Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.  For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.” Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”   As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.   And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.

Ahhh, young Samuel.   One minute, he lay on the temple floor, snuggled under the covers, perhaps even asleep.  And out of nowhere comes this voice.

Samuel is faithful—a dedicated student who is learning the ways of the temple from wise old Eli.  But we realize in this narrative that Samuel is unable to discern this call on his own.  Was it because he was young, inexperienced?   Was it simply because “the word had not yet been revealed to him?  Was it because he was in a sleep-induced fog?

We don’t know.

But we do know that three times, God called, and three times, Samuel misunderstood that call to be someone else. 

How often do we misunderstand God’s call?

We each have our own ideas of what God is, of what it is that God does.   God is wise.  God is sovereign.  God loves.  God judges.   God is mother, God is father.  God is faithful.  God is a comforter.  And while God is, indeed, all of these things and more, why is it so hard for us to remember that God also calls? Why is it so hard to realize, to recognize, that the God we worship and serve does love, and is faithful, and is wise, but also calls out to us.

I forget it sometimes too.  I know that God has called me to particular roles and jobs in my life, and yet I forget it on a daily basis.  On January 2^nd of this year, over 900 college students were summoned by this calling God to Montreat– to learn more about how this God who calls is at work in their lives.  There, we gathered together with others–Eagles, Bulldogs, Wildcats, Gamecocks, Seminoles, Yellow Jackets, Volunteers, Rebels, Hokies, Gators, Commodores, and many others, from all over the Southeast.  We worshipped alongside other energetic and enthusiastic college students, each of whom was eager to hear and discern how God is calling them to life.

We were surrounded by hundreds of young Christians, and together, we gathered under the conference theme of “Seeking Stars,” alluding to the fact that stars have, for millennia, served as guides in the dark of night.

We heard Sara Miles, noted author, columnist, and founder of The Food Pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, California share her story of calling…her conversion from rabid atheism to a life of priesthood in the Episcopal Church.

We listened with attentive caution as Gabe Lyons talked about how the death of Christian America was a good thing because it makes way for a new generation of believers that God is calling—believers he refers to as the Next Christians.

We spent time together in small groups, wrestling with what it means to be called, and what “stars” we use as our guides along the way.

There are times when working with college students is frustrating, yes.  But most of all, it is a privilege and an honor to be ministering with and to them as they are beginning to find themselves and as they continue developing their own faith identity.

I left those Montreat mountains in early January as I have for the past five years now, grateful for God’s call to me—to ordained ministry, to campus ministry, and to the ministry of lifelong education.

Most of you know that my husband and I are both second-career clergy.  We had a “real life” for twelve years prior to beginning our seminary journey and consequently our ministries.    In fact, it was ten years ago this month—in January of 2002—when we turned the proverbial corner and committed to moving to Decatur for seminary.  And over the past ten years, I have learned lots.   But one thing that stands out is this…I have truly come to marvel at this calling God that we worship and serve.

You see, this whole business of “calling” is something God has been doing for eons.  There are countless stories here in these pages that tell how God has called, how God has spoken, to various people over time.  Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, Isaiah…Mary, Elizabeth, John, Peter, Paul.  And just as each of them have unique encounters God, so I, too, have my own stories about how and when and where God has called me.

But there is a serious problem with this notion of call.  You see, I fear that most folks reserve the call of God for people like me—folks who have been “called” into ordained ministry.

In seminary, we are often asked to “share our call story.”  Ad nauseum.  It’s as if we each have only one “call story,” and that the story only exists in the context of our decision to pursue ordained ministry.

That is simply not true.

God calls into ministry, but more importantly, God calls into LIFE, to abundant, meaningful LIFE.    And that is a call that God makes to each and every one of us, each and every day.

I recently started reading the book “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese.  It tells the story of twin brothers born out of a secret union, and raised by nuns in what is essentially an orphanage.  Early in the story, the narrator tells of how he decided to become a doctor.  He tells of how Matron, his mother figure, would remind him:

“Marion, you are an instrument of God.  Don’t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son.  Play!  Leave no part of your instrument unexplored.  Why settle for “Three Blind Mice” when you can play the “Gloria?”

“Matron,” he whimpered.  “I can’t dream of playing Bach’s Gloria!  I’ve never played an instrument.  I can’t even read music.”

“No, Marion,” she said as she reached for him, placing her gnarled rough hands on his cheeks.  “Not Bach’s Gloria.  Yours!  Your Gloria lives within you.  The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.”

And so he becomes a doctor.

We are—each of us, Samuels.  We hear a voice, a call, and we misunderstand.  God calls to us, and we think it is someone or something else.  You see, each of us, each of you sitting here today has been called–called to this place, for this time.

We have been called, are being called, to specific tasks in our personal and professional lives in this crazy, mixed-up world.

We have been called, are being called to follow—to follow the baby in the manger, Jesus the Christ.

We have been called, are being called not simply to believe, but to become disciples of this baby in the manger, this Jesus the Christ.  

The call comes, each and every day.  It comes to the young and the old, to those just starting out on their adult life, and to those in the sunset years.  It comes to those in the halls of power and to those in the halls of homes.

God’s call comes.  And like Samuel, we often mistake God’s call for the call of the world.  But if we surround ourselves with others—others like Eli–who are also listening for God’s call, then we are much less likely to miss it.  Sure, it might take two or three times before we wake up and realize, “Hey, that just might be God calling me!”  But the good news is that God does call, and God continues to call, whether we hear it on God’s first or 41^st attempt.

Listen for it.  Listen and follow.  For it is in following God’s call that you will find peace.

Blessing and Benediction

What is God calling you to do in this new year?  Who is God calling you to be?How is God calling you to witness to the amazing Good News of Jesus Christ?

What is God calling this community of faith we call Oglethorpe Presbyterian Church to do in 2012?   Who is God calling the OPC family to be with and for those in the surrounding community?  How is God calling US to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sharing it with our Brookhaven neighbors and beyond?

Listen for the still-small voice, friends.  Listen for God’s call and play.

Find your own Gloria, find the Gloria of OPC, and play it!  It lives within, as God’s gift to us. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God has made possible.

01-08-12.MP3
Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Isaiah 60:1-6
Matthew 2:1-12

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind the insiders what they’ve got.

Question: When was the last time you went to the Woodruff Arts Center? Or took the Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad? When was the last time you visited the King Center or went to the World of Coke? It was probably the last time you had guests in town, wasn’t it?

Elizabeth and I lived in Chicago for seven years. The only time we ever went to the top of the Sears Tower was when our families came to visit. Seven years we lived there, a quick ten minute train ride away; and we probably went there three times.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind the insiders what they’ve got.

That’s the essence of the lesson from Matthew this morning. There are two competing theories about where these Magi are from. The word “Magi” is a Persian word, referring to the Zoroastrian priestly class. And the three gifts – the gold, frankincense, and myrrh – never appear in Biblical literature together, but were common Persian temple sacrifices. On the other hand, the text we read from Isaiah talks about Midian and Ephah and Sheba, all regions of Arabia. The phrase “the East” in Scripture usually means “the other side of the Jordan River”. And frankincense is native to the Arabian Peninsula.

Whatever the reality, whether these visitors to the Christ child are Persian or Arab, in the eyes of the Jerusalemites, they ain’t from around here. It was every bit as unimaginable then as it would be today: Persians and Arabs paying homage at the feet of a Jewish infant.

Let’s back up the story a little bit. For four hundred years the people have been awaiting Messiah. All the learned scholars of Jewish Scripture had deciphered the texts, ready to read the signs. They knew what to look for, and where to find it. Out of the blue, these foreigners come to Jerusalem looking for an infant king. Herod, who is a mere figurehead king, holding onto his pitiful power so that the Romans can continue to rule, consults these scholars: “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?”

“Bethlehem,” they tell him. And they even recite the text from Micah, something about this little town of Judah who will bring forth a ruler.

Four hundred years they’ve been waiting for Messiah: yearning, pleading, hoping, begging, waiting. And as soon as the possibility arises that the Messiah is here, all they can do is tell Herod how to MapQuest Bethlehem. Meanwhile Herod, supposedly the protector of his people, decides that this Messiah person must be wiped out! Why would they do this? Why wouldn’t they go with the Magi, pay homage themselves, and welcome the Messiah for whom they have waited so long?

I do want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt. I’m guessing that this wasn’t the first time that Herod or the religious scholars heard these claims. The “boy who cried Messiah” was probably a pretty familiar occurrence around Jerusalem. In the modern day city, in fact, there is an illness called “Jerusalem Syndrome” whereby visitors to the holy city become so overwhelmed with the emotion of being in the place that they become convinced that they are the Messiah, or Jesus returned, or the rightful heir to King David. In the ancient longing for deliverance, it is fairly likely that Messianic claims were a dime a dozen.

But I don’t want to let them off the hook too easily. After all, the text lets us know that all of Jerusalem was terrified. If this kind of thing happened regularly, it’s doubtful that it would have thrown the whole city into panic. Instead, there must have been something markedly different about this time. Foreign visitors, priests of another religion, had come at the beckoning of the heavens themselves to meet the Savior of another tribe, another nation.

It causes me to wonder if this has more to do with the fact that Herod and his coterie of scholars and functionaries have everything to lose. If these Magi are right, if they have read the stars correctly, then it won’t be long before Herod is replaced by the rightful heir to David’s throne. And all of the knowledge that the scholars have accrued – and the power it has brought them – it will soon become completely irrelevant. We are no longer waiting for Messiah; Messiah has come!

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind the insiders what they’ve got. But that doesn’t mean that the insiders will pay attention.

What does that mean for us? Is there something for us in this lesson of the Magi who seem know the truth more readily than those who ought to grasp it? Could this be a warning for those of us inside the church to pay closer attention to what those we have considered “outsiders” have to say?

We live in a radically changing culture. This is a familiar refrain in my preaching, I know. The place in society for churches like OPC is up for grabs. The days are long gone when you can simply build a church in a neighborhood and expect people to show up because you have opened the doors.

And folks, we are not alone in this challenge by any means. The size of a church doesn’t matter a whole lot. The only thing a larger community gets you, it seems, is a little more time. In a way, we have been like those religion scholars sitting in Jerusalem, hanging onto the minutiae of religious life, with our own language of narthexes and intinctions and benedictions while the world outside has ceased to care what we have to offer, more eager to scan the horizon for heavenly signs that might point them to a living, breathing, yet vulnerable reality of God at work.

I come to you with this not as one of the Magi, but as a fellow Pharisee who sees a world that is very unlike the world I knew as a child. I am unsure of what is to come, but I am convicted of two things: it won’t be like it was, and it will be in the hands of God.

I don’t have a magic star to point to as a guiding light; but I am convinced that OPC is a unique community, one that can ride the waves of a changing world, be changed by it faithfully, and come out stronger and more committed to the ministry Christ has called us to.

It has been a few years since we started using the tagline “the community is our congregation.” But the truth is that this self-identity is in the DNA of this place. For 62 years OPC has lived by this conviction, seeking to make this little corner of God’s world a better place.

And the ability to adapt is particularly remarkable. When I talk to colleagues in ministry about the creativity and openness about OPC, they are stunned. By way of example, I relate one story that happened about a year after I arrived here. It was All Saints Day, and we decided to sing “When the Saints Go Marching In” in worship. Not only were we singing a hymn that wasn’t in the hymnal, we were doing it with drums! As I stood at the door shaking hands, Ralston Woods – some of you remember him, I’m sure – greeted me in the line: “There was only one thing wrong with that song…” I braced myself…“It was too short!”

You do know that churches split and ultimately collapse under their own weight over things we have done without much fanfare at all. Drums? Guitars? LCD projectors? Coffee in the Sanctuary?

And that leads me into what I love about this church the most: you are not people convinced that we’ve got it all figured out. We may have some glimpse of it, but we are more likely to struggle through it together, knowing we don’t know it all, but willing to try and figure it out. Especially in the world we live in, that’s a kind of Christian community that is desperately needed!

And I’m also convinced that it is this collective wisdom which is going to help us read the signs in the sky as we continue our journey toward a thriving faith in a world that is, much like Jerusalem, terrified at the possibilities.

We have posted a congregational survey online. And as you do, I especially invite you to read the initial letter from the Session. It gives a concise summary of our current situation and how we can find our way forward. We will also hold a town hall forum three weeks from today on January 29 immediately following worship.

Above all, I invite your prayers for our church – not for our own sake, but for the sake of our calling as God’s people. At times like this, the temptation can be strong to turn inward: to treat surveys as customer service evaluations, to circle the protective wagons against “them”, whoever “they” might be. Instead, I trust that we are being nudged to keep an eye out for the Magi. May we have the wisdom to hear them!

Amen.

Do you remember the first time “Amazing Grace” lifted your heart to the rafters? It might have carried you at the funeral of a loved one.

Or have you ever recited the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”? These simple words inspire millions to turn their struggles over to God.

Prayer does so many things: makes children feel safe at bedtime; brings the sacred to a wedding day; ushers in joy at a baptism; inspires us to give.

What makes these moments of prayer so inspiring is just that – the moment. They bring us out of tomorrow’s anxieties or yesterday’s worries. In times of struggle and celebration, through prayer, we let go of ourselves, focusing entirely on someone else.

Prayer helps us do the impossible: let God lead. Whether sung in grief, said in community, or wept alone, prayer is the North Star: a light of inspiration.

In stewardship, God calls us to set aside our own needs in order to help others. We can easily drift into worry, where inspiration gets lost in our fears: fear over security, fear of being duped, fear of losing control, even fear over how our gifts will be used.

It is when we are lost that we need that inspiration the most. Prayer can inspire us to give naturally, as natural as breath. When inspired by prayer, we share in ways that make the soul laugh and weep.

We can easily forget to be a steward, just as we can forget to pray. But prayer can remind us that it is the Holy Spirit’s flame in us that frees and inspires us.

When the Spirit helps us remember, we can find our Amazing Grace, our serenity, our light of inspiration, and give freely and openly— just as God does.

© 2011 Dan Madden, used by permission.

01-01-12.MP3
Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Luke 2:22-40

The pace of technology is mind-boggling. From the dawn of the internet to the introduction of power-packed cellphones and tablet computing devices, the way we interact with each other has changed dramatically in the span of a generation. And like most things, this evolution is a double-edged sword.

Global Positioning Systems on our smartphones have rendered maps, directions, the yellow pages documents of a bygone era. Programs like Skype allow us to video chat for free across continents, a thought that was mere science fiction not that long ago. Platforms like Twitter have even been at work in unseating dictators in the Middle East.

But wait: there’s more!

For the iPhone alone, you can get the following apps:

• Payphone locator! Have an iPhone? Want to know where the nearest payphone is? Love irony? Then this is the app for you!
• How about Beer Opener? You can enjoy the experience of opening a virtual beer without the hassle of having to drink it!
• And my personal favorite: HangTime. This app measures how high you can throw your iPhone. And it only costs 99 cents. Plus the cost of a new iPhone.

For every device that might save us time, there are tons that would love to waste it. When you embrace technology, you have to take the bad along with the good.

We might as well say the same thing about our current sermon series. The basic idea is that, as we face the dawning of a new calendar year, we might consider the ways we might like to start over. And the beautiful thing about our faith is that it constantly gives us the opportunity, no matter the season, to begin again.

Now the title, Ctrl+Alt+Del, is taken from technology. If you own a Windows computer, you have, at some point, had to use this little combination of keys to restart your device. So if you understood the title of the series without the explanation, then you are a fellow lover – and hater – of technology.

Today’s sermon pushes the technological conceit one step further. It’s a play off of the idea of Web 2.0. If you know anything about this concept, then you will know that I understand it only in part. But here goes:

The world wide web began as a one-way communication technology. Sure, you could send emails back and forth, but these were not interactive in the way that, say, a face-to-face or a telephone conversation is. And websites took this approach as well. Websites started as kind of a virtual brochure. For your company or your organization or yourself, they were places you could post information that you wanted the user to know about you: your history, location, telephone number, email address, etc.

In tech circles, this approach is now referred to as Web 1.0 – kind of a rough draft version of the internet.

We have now moved into a phase known as Web 2.0, which has added the interactive component to internet activity. Rather than a model in which the owners produce the content, the reality now is that the user has a great deal of say in how the content is received. It has introduced a level of participation to the internet.

Anyone can start a blog. For free. And anyone can respond to that blog. For free. Anyone can post a video on YouTube. Again, for free. And anyone can respond to that video. For free. If you have a website that is of the 1.0 “information only” model, people will not be interested. You have to open up your site so that people can tell you what they think of your content. And that reaction helps to shape your future content in conscious and subconscious ways.

Another aspect of Web 2.0 is syndication, or the ability to share the content you find. Through social media, like Twitter and Facebook, among a hundred others, you can let other people know what you’re reading, seeing, thinking, engaging, and let them know what you think about it. And they, too, can share that content with others. When a piece of information spreads rapidly, it is said to “go viral” – that is, it has taken on a life of its own and spreads further than the creator of the content could ever have imagined.

At the risk of stretching my metaphor well beyond its breaking point, could it be that the birth of Jesus ushered in a new era of God 2.0?

This may not sit well with some of us. The very reason that we find God to be worthy of trust is that we trust that God is unchanging; that the same God who created the universe is the same God whom we meet in Jesus Christ and is the same God whom we worship here at OPC.

I do believe that this is true. But there is something earth-shattering that happened at the birth of Christ: incarnation…the human embodiment of the divine…God in baby form. As human beings ourselves, our best possible understanding of the nature of God comes through our understanding of the nature of Christ.

In our texts today, we moved from the almost fatalistic quality of Ecclesiastes to the sublime awe of Anna and Simeon. The author of Ecclesiastes lets us know that everything good and bad has its place: birth, death, planting, sowing, crying, laughing, killing, healing, holding on, letting go. And we see all of these things in the life and ministry of Jesus himself.

What springs forth in the lesson from Luke is in the echoes of Ecclesiastes, but in an incredible way. We meet these two characters who fade from the scene as quickly as they arrive. Both have been waiting a lifetime for the promises of their faith to come true: that God would deliver the Messianic goods. Simeon seems to channel the author of Ecclesiastes, saying of Jesus that he “marks the failure and the recovery of many, a figure misunderstood and contradicted…but his rejection will force honesty.” The infant will be a double-edged sword, bringing both division and the possibility of healing to the people.

For Simeon, this is enough. He doesn’t have to see the results. It’s enough for him to know that the child has arrived, that hope is on its way. Anna, too, is stunned by what she experiences. She had been faithfully waiting in the Temple for decades. As soon as Jesus arrives on the scene, she departs – both from the Temple and from our story – to sing God’s praises for the birth of this baby.

God is the same, the alpha and omega, the first and the last. And yet, there is a newness in the form of this infant Messiah. We now have the opportunity to know God more fully than ever before. Rather than dealing with a divine abstract, we now see God as a concrete reality. This is, no question, something new. And if we choose to embrace that concreteness, we must embrace it for the double-edged sword that it is. Christ comes to comfort us in our woes. And Christ comes to heal us, in the fullest possible sense of that word. And part of that healing means the shaking of our assumptions to the core.

How was your 2011? Are you happy to see it in the rear view mirror? Are you ready to start over completely? Or was it, like most years, a year of ups and downs? Are there those moments that you’d like to have another shot at? Then this is your year.

My invitation for all of us for 2012, beginning this week, is simply this: interact with God. Reflect on those places where your faith-life still exists in a 1.0, rough-draft kind of world. God wants your engagement! God wants your participation!

Amen.

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Isaiah 52:7-10
John 1:1-14

Acoustic Christmas tends to be a more intimate service. As such, rather than a formal sermon, we watched several brief YouTube videos and had good conversation. The gist of it is this: we tend to domesticate the birth of Christ, when in reality it happened in the real world – a world that contained its fair share of animal poop. Today, we trust that this living, breathing faith is every much as real as it was then.

Merry Christmas.

It’s amazing what you can and cannot find on the internet. No topic is left unaccounted for, right? Do you ever have that experience where you are looking for some very specific thing, and amazingly, your Google result is pages and pages of totally unrelated topics? How in the world can that happen? Everything is on the internet right? Apparently not.

If you Google “prayer and stewardship”, you’ll find what I did. There are countless examples of prayers from stewardship campaigns. Good stuff; heartfelt prayers. However, there was precious little about why prayer is important to stewardship.

Obviously, all Christians will agree that prayer is important. Yet the itch of “why prayer is important to stewardship” never seems to get scratched. How should prayer intersect with stewardship?

It would probably be a good idea to turn to scripture for some insight right about now. In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul reveals the answer to one of life’s most perplexing questions: What is God’s will? The answer: pray all the time. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” If we are praying continually and connecting thankfully to God in all circumstances, how we approach stewardship should take a radical turn for the better. Prayer will be our foundation for everything in life, and this will include our approach to stewardship.

Prayer is important to stewardship because it should actually be the foundation of stewardship. What we give, how we give, and when we give should all be fully bathed in prayer. Amazingly, we often determine our giving by looking at our budget rather than falling to our knees. When we begin by praying continually about what God would have us give back to the work of the kingdom, we will attain a purity of stewardship where our giving is based on prayer, not pressure.

This is good news! The Lord wants to tell us what to give. This is freeing! The amount of money we give or the ministry we are led to do is far more important than what any church leader, stewardship program, guilt tactic, or fundraising expert tells us to give. The response of the faithful steward is to discern through prayer and reflection what he or she will give.

Ultimately, prayer is important to stewardship because talking to God is to be our catalyst for giving of our time and talent, as well as of our giving of mercy and service. As you pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances, what is the Lord leading you to give?

© 2011 Matt Schoenfeld, used by permission

12-24-11.MP3
Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Luke 2:1-20

I love Christmas music. It probably had a lot to do with being raised in the family I was. My mom is the singer, and my dad was obsessed with Christmas. One of my most enduring Christmas memories is sitting in the balcony at First Presbyterian Church. And as the lights were dimmed and the candles were lit, and as we started singing “Silent Night”, a lump would rise in my throat. I was convinced that there was nothing more beautiful in the whole world.

I still love Christmas music, which is why I was particularly intrigued by an email I got from my sister yesterday, which has Christmas songs in code. Let me read a couple and see if you can guess them:

• The slight percussionist lad is…The Little Drummer Boy.
• Far back in a hay bin…Away in a Manger.
• Do you perceive the same longitudinal pressure which stimulates my auditory sense organs?…Do You Hear What I Hear?
• Sir Lancelot with laryngitis…Silent (K)Night.
• The apartment of two psychiatrists…The Nutcracker Suite.

There are about fifty of these, each more absurd than the last. And some of them are just downright impenetrable, but I’ll spare you those. You can find them easily enough online yourself.

It’s harmless fun, of course, but the exercise is actually counter to the whole point of Christmas. Tonight is not about a story that is available only to the select few. We’re not here because we’re “better” than anyone else, or because we have decoded the meaning of the manger. The story is available to all. From the first to the twelfth day of Christmas, we are reminded that the birth of the Christ child is something that all can celebrate: Judean shepherds. Persian Magi. There are no barriers between us and the child who was born far back in a hay bin.

That’s the gift of the ridiculous email: it takes songs that are deeply – perhaps too deeply – familiar and gives us a new way to hear them. Because let’s face it: our favorite Christmas songs tend to touch on the same things: a baby, Mary, Joseph, animals, shepherds, angels, Bethlehem, a star, and three kings. The verses may change up the order, but the song essentially remains the same. That has done nothing to shake the power this music holds on me. The danger, however, is that we domesticate the story to the point that we neglect the earth-shattering nature of it.

This year, as my iTunes worked through the familiar litany of Christmas songs, there was one that stood out in a brand new way. It’s of the pop music brand of Christmas music, released by John Lennon in 1971, just a year after the Beatles had disbanded. There’s no mention of the familiar Christmas themes whatsoever; but for some reason, it hit me in the gut right out of the gate: “So this is Christmas. And what have you done?”

A whole year has gone by since the last Christmas. Am I any different this year than I was last year? When next year comes around, will I be exactly the same? Or will the power of Christmas grab hold of me in more than just the emotionally resonant ways, shaking me to the core of my being?

And then the song hits its “of its time” chorus, which sounds awfully Pollyanna nowadays: “War is over…if you want it.” Surely we’re more sophisticated now than we were forty years ago. We know that war is never over. American troops have just left Iraq; and so, for us, that war is over. But “war is over” isn’t just about war being over for “us”; it’s about the end of war. For Iraqis, there is still a war raging. For soldiers battling the traumas of war, the battles are still aflame within. And there are plenty of places in the world where war most certainly isn’t over.

So what does it mean when we say that we celebrate the “Prince of Peace” tonight? Does the adorableness of a resting baby overtake the aspirations we hold as disciples of Christ, that we yearn, to the very fiber of our being, that war is over – not just for us, but for all? Or have we convinced ourselves that this, too, is a idealist’s dream of years gone by?

My prayer for us this night is that the music we sing and the words we proclaim would shake us, would move us, would cause us to tremble like the shepherds under the angel-lit sky. And that this Christmas would be one that would change us forever.

Amen.