Last Sunday was the first meeting for our new young adult Sunday morning class and it went really well.  The class – which will probably get a name at some point – is aimed at giving young adults (both single & married) and college students a place to connect to one another and to God’s work in the world around them.  We meet at 11am in room AB236, also known as the Leadership Room.  Emily Dukes, Hilary Hunt and Bre Oberdick have agreed to facilitate the group.  

As we finished 2010 and took a look at how we’ve been doing ministry with young adults we felt like it was time to do something new.  Ekklesia started as an experimental worship experience and did a lot of great things.  One of the best things it did was create a place for all of our young adults, from recently graduated students to married couples with children, to come together and work on becoming more like Christ.  But we were also honest that some parts of it weren’t perfect.

So we came up with a two-fold plan for 2011.  1) Offer a place where the good work form Ekklesia can continue.  That’s what the new Sunday morning class is about.  2) Create a new worship experience that will draw more young adults into life-changing relationships with God.  Even in just the initial conversations, this is really exciting and you’ll be hearing more about it soon.

So what is the class like?  Someone humble enough not to attach their name to the quote once said, “Christians should live with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”  They meant that following Christ means both knowing God’s word and being aware of the world around you.

That’s what we did last week.  There was a story in the New York Times about a Methodist Church in Brooklyn that houses both a shrinking Hispanic congregation and a quickly growing Chinese congregation.  [article]   The two were not getting along.  We talked about why that might be, what we might do in the same situation and what Jesus might say about it.  Then we looked up scripture passages that talked about conflict, humility, unity in Christ, and loving our enemies.  I was really impressed to see the wisdom and grace expressed by everyone in the discussion.  It makes me excited for the future of the class.

So, if you fit any of the descriptions above (college student, young person, single, married, Chinese…) I hope you’ll join us.   Add your wisdom and grace to our group.  Help us shape the future of First United Methodist Church, Broken Arrow.

[an artistic representation of a recent discovery that many different areas of the brain are used to recall a single memory]

The lectionary readings yesterday were (“in my humble and accurate opinion”) about memory.

In Jeremiah 29, the Israelites had been exiled to Babylon and all they could remember was what they’d lost. They’d lost Jerusalem, the Temple, the Promised Land – not only their homes, but the physical representations of their relationship to God. But God tells Jeremiah to give them a promise of rescue: “It may take 70 years, but you have to remember that I’m coming for you.” Those who remember and live according to God’s promise – who take care of their land and have children (29:5-6) – will see that promise fulfilled at least to their children.

In Luke 17, Jesus heals 10 men with leprosy and only one returns to give thanks. Only one remembers where his healing came from. And he’s the one who gets to hear Jesus say, “your faith has healed you” (17:19). His relationship and understanding deepen when he remembers.

So what does it look like for US to remember?

It can look like taking our religious (even denominational) traditions seriously – discovering where we came from and why. It can look like conversations with our parents, grandparents and others of their generations. I can look like making scripture (the collective memories of God’s devoted servants) the center of our lives.

It can look like broken bread and a cup of grape juice, shared among friends. We take Communion every week because it is a place where we remember what Jesus has done, and are strengthened to get involved in what Jesus is doing.  Jesus said, “do this in rememberance of me” because God knows we cannot move forward without our Memory.

Yesterday, I was reminded again that the Bible was meant to be read together.  I joke a lot about how most of the craziest (and most damaging) interpretations have come from guys who spend too much time locked in a dark room with just the Bible and their imagination.  But it’s more serious than avoiding nonsense – Christian leaders need to be reading the bible in community to keep from missing the deeper truths.  Lots of pastors do this by consulting congregation members throughout the week or teaching regularly to stay connected.  In Ekklesia, I knew from the start that I wanted to do it as a part of the gathering.  I write questions instead of sermons because it forces me to listen.  Yesterday, I needed to listen. 

We’re trying our hand at following the Lectionary, which meant yesterday we read the “parable of the dishonest steward” (Luke 16:1-13).  A rich man finds out his business manager is stealing from him and plans to fire him.  Before he’s fired, the business manager decides to make friends by stealing even more and giving it to the rich man’s debtors.  Jesus closes this story by seeming to compliment the steward for using the resources he had to win friends.  But then gives a series of seemingly contradictory advice like, “whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much” and  “if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” (vv. 10, 12)  I’ve never known what to do with this parable.

I’ve said before that if anyone ever tells you they know exactly what Jesus was trying to say, you should distrust everything else they try to sell you.  It’ has confused scholars since the day Jesus said it.  So I looked for clues in the rest of the assigned readings.

The Old Testament readings (Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113) both talk about the poor being mistreated by the wealthy.  So I sat in my office (alone with my Bible and my imagination) and typed up a series of questions that were all about money.  The title slide from my powerpoint was a close-up of a $1 bill:

But the discussion wasn’t going anywhere until someone else pointed out that when Jesus spoke in parables, he usually wasn’t talking about what he was talking about.  Seeds aren’t seeds, coins aren’t coins and Samaritans…well, maybe they’re still Samaritans, but still.  Money probably isn’t money – it’s power.

The question became “who’s who?”  We talked about, what If the Pharisees (who Jesus is talking to) are the rich man, then maybe Jesus is the dishonest steward, taking their illegitimate power and re-distributing it to others to win them to the gospel.  But we also talked about what if the Pharisees are the business manager.  That makes God the rich man – the one with all the power – and the Pharisees had been given a great deal of religious power because they were the keepers of the law.  But they were using it to win friends an influence for themselves instead of bringing glory to the One who deserved it.  Jesus calls them on it, using their favorite subject: money.  (see verse 14)

I’m not going to try to claim I now know “exactly what Jesus was trying to say,” but this makes a lot of sense.  And it affects the way I do ministry.  I’ve been given religious authority and it’s really tempting to use it to make friends and gain influence.  This story reminds me to make sure my primary goal is to follow the God whose “glory is exalted above the heaves” (ps 113: 4).  To surround myself with people who want to be on the side of the one who “lifts the poor from the dust and raises the needy from the ash heap” (113:7).  And I never would have heard this if I had written a lecture instead of a question.  Neither would the rest of the group.

So who’s who?  Am I the teacher?  Am I the student?  I honestly don’t think it matters as long as we’re listening, together.

(for more on my discussion-based preaching style, check out Doug Pagitt’s “Preaching Re-Imagined“)

Yesterday morning, we read Acts 19 in Ekklesia.  If I’d been wearing my biblical studies hat, I probably would have focused on the ways Paul varied from his regular evangelistic pattern in Ephesus.  If I’d been wearing my charismatic/Pentecostal hat I probably would have focused on the way the evil spirit spoke to the “itinerant exorcists” before trashing them so that they “fled the house naked and wounded” (v. 16).  If I’d been wearing my postmodern theologian hat, I probably would have looked at guys who were called “disciples” regardless of the fact that they knew nothing of the Holy Spirit (maybe even Jesus). 

But I was wearing my pastor’s hat and I focused on the riot.  Over and over in this book, when Peter and/or Paul preach the gospel, people start living the gospel.  And when people start living the gospel, it disrupts the world.  The world doesn’t like being disrupted so fights break out.  People are thrown in prison, people are stoned to death and whole cities break into riots.

My main question was this:  why doesn’t the gospel cause riots anymore?

I’m not saying I want to see more violence in the streets, but I don’t think the world has changed much since the 1^st Century.  I think living out the gospel is still a disruption, and still think the world hates disruptions.  That means part of living out the gospel is picking fights.

So which fights do we pick?  We talked about consumerism – specifically the Christian-ish practice of buying and wearing $2 crosses made by (maybe children but at least) impoverished women in developing countries.  And we talked about how to respond to governments who pass laws contrary to the gospel.  But we also did something.

We did the dishes.  Our church had a huge ice cream social last night and our group offered to do the dishes so that we could use real bowls and spoons, avoiding the usual dumpster-load of styrofoam and plastic.  I don’t think it’s gonna cause a riot (actually the response was fantastic) but it is a disruption to our culture’s apathy toward waste.  It was a place to start.  We’ll see where it goes.

I’m gonna start by admitting that my title is just for attention.  Paul probably did way crazier things than this – but it’s still pretty crazy.

This is part of what we talked about yesterday at Ekklesia BA.

In Acts 17, Paul ends up in Athens waiting for Timothy and Silas to catch up.  And because he’s Paul, he naturally starts sharing the gospel and arguing with local philosophers.  They haul him in front of the high court to accuse him of spreading dangerous religions and he defends himself this way:

• “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you:  The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…”  (17:22-24)    {this is the NIV, but I added the colon [:] where the NIV has a period}

This is crazy because Paul is standing at the intersection of 1st Century politics and paganism telling them, “your religious tradition is already teaching you some truth.”  That’s not how we think of speaking to paganism today.  The altar to an “unknown god” was already suggesting that there were powers the Athenians didn’t understand.  Paul doesn’t start with sin and hell, he doesn’t even mention the cross – he starts with what they got right.

There are two implications of this (that I’m willing to post here today):

1960s culture wars

1.  We Christians can engage the culture around us without resorting to “culture wars.”  If Paul can find a common starting place with Greek paganism, we can find starting points with hipster culture, urban/hip-hop culture, even (can I say this in 2010?) corporate culture…  We can start with the things they get right.  I’m not saying any of these cultural expressions get everything right, but c’mon now – neither does church culture.

2.  We as individual Christians need to start our attempts at evangelism with honest, authentic relationship.  You can’t find a common starting point without getting to know someone first.  No matter who you meet, God is already working on them.  This is what John Wesley (accidental founder of Methodism) taught about God’s grace - long before we notice it, the Spirit of God is working on our hearts teaching us to recognize truth and lies, allowing us to choose some right from wrong.  When you spend time with non-Christians, really trying to get to know them, you begin to find places where this truth shines through.  That’s their altar to an unknown God.  That’s the place you can point to and say, “You already know something very important.  Let me show you more.”

Yes.  Yes, that just happened. 

I don’t think any of us were reading Acts 5 for the first time yesterday, (if you were, nice.  you pulled it off well.)  But I don’t think any of us have gotten used to it either.  I kind of hope we never do.  Ananias and Sapphira sell some land, and only give part of the proceeds to the church.  Peter’s tirade against Ananias suggests that it would have been fine to keep it, or maybe even to give only part of the proceeds (5:4).  The problem is that they acted like they gave everything.  They lied.  They “put the Spirit of the Lord to the test” (v. 9).  And they both die.  First Ananias, then later Sapphira, and both at Peter’s feet. 

Why they did it in the first place is an interesting question.  Barnabas was just held up in the previous verses for selling a field and giving everything, so maybe they just wanted to come off as pious as Barnabas.  Maybe they even had a legitimate concern for those in need and thought their money could help.  Either way, their keeping some for themselves tells me that they hadn’t bought all the way in to this Jesus-following thing in the first place.  Twice already (2:44; 4:34), we’ve been told that the reason church members sold their stuff was to take care of “any who had need.”  Why would you be afraid of giving all you owned to a group who took care of “any who had need?”  If you ended up in need…you’d be taken care of.  Either they didn’t believe this, OR they wanted to be more than “taken care of.”  Distrust, or greed. 

The more interesting question is why do they die for it?  Over the last couple of months, I’ve built a nice neat little answer to this:  Ananias and Sapphira are the first members of the church to sin against the church.  The church in Jerusalem was a tiny point of light in a vast, dark, gospel-less world and these two greedy, distrusting jerks are the first to dim that light.  If this was allowed to continue, it might have gone out all together.  In oppressive darkness, every bit of light must be preserved.  God had to remove the threat.

But that makes the most interesting question “why am I still alive?”  I distrust the Church (a lot) and I’m sure I hold back because of it.  I’m also greedy.  And while I can’t think of any way in which my greed has directly harmed the Church, I have to admit that it probably has.  I’d love to believe that because there’s so much more light coming from the worldwide Church, my little dimmer switch is no longer cause for termination.  But that’s too self-serving, isn’t it?  And if God meant to stamp out distrust and greed in the church, the plan failed. 

We ended with Derek Webb’s song The Church for a reason.  He calls the church a “harlot and a whore” but also reminds us that Christ is active through the church.  The church is the “body of Christ” and as such, we have to realize that it’s both human AND divine.  Like all of us, it is not holy, but it is being made holy. 

Hopefully.

Thoughts?

Yesterday was just really encouraging.

Maybe it’s because I grew up with one foot in the United Methodist Church and one foot in the charismatic/pentecostal church, but I don’t think any single chapter of the Bible has more theological snares in it than Acts 2.  People are speaking in tongues, the first Christian sermon requires a degree in Old Testament studies, and the early church looks like a hippie commune. 

I’ve seen people fight themselves into the dirt over this stuff, but we didn’t do that.  The people at Ekklesia with me yesterday morning weren’t looking for things to fight over; they were looking for God’s power to change the world. 

THAT is what Pentecost is about.

It’s about God moving in the world through willing human followers.  Followers who not only proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God is near, but also give evidence of the Kingdom through the way they live.  It’s about these followers – people like you and me – who don’t even really know what’s going on yet, but they trust God enough to open their mouths to speak and their hands to act. 

I was reading N.T. Wright this week and since I’ll never do any better, I’m ending with a quote from him.  He’s talking about how people get tied up in the theology of the story and miss the power of it.

“Of course, the first day Pentecost (and the experience of God’s spirit from that day to this) can no more be reduced to theological formulae and interesting Old Testament echoes than you can reduce a hurricane to a list of diagrams on a meteorologist’s chart.  It’s important that someone somewhere is tracking the hurricane and telling us what It’s doing, but when it comes to Pentecost, it’s far more important that you’re out there in the wind, letting it sweep through your life, your heart, your imagination, your powers of speech and transform you from a listless or lifeless believer into someone whose heart is on fire with the love of God.”

Amen.

Most of our time at both of these were spent answering questions.  At sunrise, I asked “what does Easter mean to you?”  We got several good answers that ranged from family memories, to “hope right now” – Easter means that Jesus not only died for us, but also overcame death.  That gives us hope that God can overcome sin and suffering right here in our world.

At the 11:00, though, we read what I think is the most confusing resurrection story in the Bible.  The earliest copies of Mark’s Gospel appear to have ended in chapter 16 at verse 8.  (the verses we now find after v. 8 are largely pieced together from Matthew and Luke)  The first 8 verses give the story we’re used to hearing – women come to the tomb, find the stone rolled away, then are told that Jesus has risen and they should tell the apostles to wait for him in Galilee.  What’s different about Mark is that verse 8 says,  “⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.^”  

THE END.  That’s the last word as Mark was originally written.

What?  That’s no way to end a Gospel!  They were afraid and told no one?  Where is the rest of the story?

There are a lot of answers to this (and when I asked the group why, they come up with some good stuff I’d never thought of), but the one we focused on Easter morning was this:  Mark doesn’t need to tell us the rest of the story because WE are the rest of the story.  Especially for the Gospel’s first audience, they didn’t need to be told that the women eventually told Peter, Thomas, John and the rest because they had probably heard the story from Peter, Thomas, John or even the women themselves.  And even those of us reading today shouldn’t need to be told that Jesus is alive and present in the world.  We’re the church!  This is the story we proclaim every day. 

The first time I was confronted with the short ending of Mark, it was a real struggle for me.  But it’s quickly become my favorite gospel ending.  It doesn’t explain everything for you.  It makes you explain it yourself.  It doesn’t let you prove Jesus’ resurrection with stories about “doubting Thomas” or even the road to Emmaus.  It makes you offer evidence from your own experience: “I know Jesus is risen – that God has overcome and is overcoming the death-dealing ways of this world – because I have seen it myself in ___    ____    _____.”

How do you finish the sentence?  Where is the risen Messiah present in your life?

We’re gonna keep doing this thing!  Ekklesia BA started as an experiment for the 6 weeks of Lent.  We wanted to see if doing church differently could help young adults connect to what God is doing in the world.  I think it’s doing that, so we’re gonna keep on trying even after Easter.  Join us anytime.

WHAT WE READ: 

John 14

John 14 is part of Jesus’ farewell address to his disciples.  He tells them that he’s going someplace they can’t follow, but they know the way.  Thomas asks, “how can we know the way if we don’t know where it is?” and Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Philip says, “show us the Father.”  Jesus says, “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”  He even tells them, “you will do greater things than I’ve done.” 

Then Jesus says, “if you love me you’ll keep my commandments.”  Of course he knows just how difficult that is so he lets them know that they’ll be taken care of by the Advocate, Comforter, Helper…the Holy Spirit.  It is the Spirit of God who reminds us of Jesus’ words, teaches us, empowers us obey, and gives us peace.

QUESTIONS:

-What does it mean to “come to the Father?”

-Which commandments are we supposed to follow?

-How do we identify the Holy Spirit?  (more mentioned in passing than asked – we were running out of time)

DISCUSSION:

This is confusing.  Jesus clearly means to say that “coming to the Father” is the goal of faith (or life even), but exactly what “coming to the father” looks like is difficult to nail down.  If it were just our eternal resting place, why would it be so important to show our love for Jesus by following his commandments here in this life?  Of course, he also says that the Father, Son and Spirit will all come to us (v. 23).  Do we come to the Father now through the power of the Spirit?  Does the Spirit keep us holy enough to come to the Father later?  Who gets to come? 

The Christian faith as answers to all of this, but they don’t exactly come from this chapter.

As for which commandments we’re supposed to follow, we all seemed to agree that it was “Love God, love your neighbor.”  Of course, that’s a lot tougher than, “do not eat the rock badger for it chews its cud but does not have a cloven hoof” (Leviticus somewhere – look it up).  Love God; Love your neighbor is not nearly so specific.  We’re left on our own to decide how to love our neighbor, and which neighbor to love more often – I mean, we’ve only got so much time.  Without long lists of do’s and don’t’s , we’re left on our own to decide how much love is enough and whether we should love our neighbors through the church or by way of public programs, or directly…it’s not very easy.

But that’s exactly why Jesus says these words.  He knows he’s putting a lot at the Disciples’ feet and he knows they won’t have him around anymore.  (not the way they’re used to)  So he reminds them that they aren’t alone.  Yes, there’s a lot at their/our feet, but they/we don’t have to pick it up by themselves.  Yes, the pile at their/our feet is a complicated mess, but they/we don’t have to figure it out on our own.  God is with us always to “teach us everything” (v. 26), to “dwell in us” (v. 17), to “give us peace” (v. 27).  There is a way forward through the mess.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon us and we will do even greater things than these.

Thoughts?   Comments?   Questions?   Vegetarian recipes?

WHAT WE READ:  Luke 18:1-34

                Jesus tells two parables then is interrupted by two very different meetings.  In the first parable, a widow repeatedly bugs a judge for justice.  We’re told outright that the judge is unjust – he “neither feard God nor had respect for people” (v. 3).  Still, he gives in because the woman just won’t leave him alone.  In the second parable, two men come to the temple to pray.  The first is a pharisee who thanks God for making him better than everyone else, especially the second guy – a tax collector.  The tax collector won’t even approach the center of the room.  He stands bowing in the corner beating his chest and confessing his sins.  Jesus says only the tax collector went home justified.  Next the disciples try to keep some kids from bothering Jesus, but Jesus tells them that unless they receive the Kingdom of God like children, they’ll never enter it.  The second meeting is between Jesus and a guy we’ve come to know as the “rich young ruler.”  Jesus tells him if he wants eternal life, he’ll have to sell all he owns, give it to the poor and come follow Jesus.  The man goes away sad and Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.

Jesus ends by fortelling his own death and Luke lets us know that the disciples have no idea what he’s talking about.

QUESTIONS ASKED:

-What does the tax collector know that the pharisee doesn’t?

-What about children are we supposed to emulate?

-Why is it so tough for the rich to enter the Reign of God?

MY THOUGHTS ON OUR DISCUSSION:

This is a little different tactic, but you’re always welcome to disagree with it.  (really, you’re always welcome to disagree with anything I say.)

As I’ve reflected on it, I’ve realized that most of our discussion revolved around issues of innocence and power.  The widow is innocent but powerless while the judge is powerful but corrupt.  The tax collector knew that he was a sinner and had no right to be standing before God.  The pharisee thought his observance of law gave him power.  After all, it gave him social and political power to be among the Pharisees.  Why not power before God?  The children clearly had no power (innocence is undetermined), but Jesus held them up as examples.  The rich ruler had all the human power he could want – even the righteousness clout of following the Torah: “all these [commandments] I have followed since my youth” (v. 21).  Jesus tells him that regardless of this apparent innocence, he needed to give up the power his money and status had given him.

Finally, Jesus reminds them that the Son of Man must suffer.  What’s more ridiculous than this?  The epitome of innocence AND power killed in a manner that epitomizes humiliation and guilt.

Clearly, this “Kingdom of God” does not look like the kingdoms we set up for ourselves – ones based on military, social, or economic muscle.  Clearly this kingdom is better suited for children, for the poor, for persistent widows, for those who have been justified by admitting they are far from innocent and have no right to enter at all.  All the power and all the innocence lies with God: “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God” (v. 26).

Thoughts?    Disagreements?     Jokes about health insurance execs?